Let us understand each other: every effect clearly has its cause, going back from cause to cause in the abyss of eternity; but every cause has not its effect going forward to the end of the centuries.All events are produced by each other, I admit; if the past is delivered of the present, the present is delivered of the future; everything has father, but everything has not always children.Here it is precisely as with a genealogical tree;each house goes back, as we say, to Adam; but in the family there are many persons who have died without leaving issue.
There is a genealogical tree of the events of this world.It is incontestable that the inhabitants of Gaul and Spain are descended from Gomer, and the Russians from Magog, his younger brother: one finds this genealogy in so many fat books! On this basis one cannot deny that the Great Turk, who is also descended from Magog, was not bound to be well beaten in 1769 by Catherine II., Empress of Russia.This adventure is clearly connected with other great adventures.But that Magog spat to right or left, near Mount Caucasus, and that he made two circles in a well or three, that he slept on the left side or on the right; I do not see that that has had much influence on present affairs.
One must think that everything is not complete in nature, as Newton has demonstrated, and that every movement is not communicated step by step until it makes a circuit of the world, as he has demonstrated still further.
Throw into water a body of like density, you calculate easily that after a short time the movement of this body, and the movement it has communicated to the water, are destroyed; the movement disappears and is effaced; therefore the movement that Magog might produce by spitting in a well cannot influence what is passing to-day in Moldavia and Wallachia; therefore present events are not the children of all past events: they have their direct lines;but a thousand little collateral lines do not serve them at all.Once more, every being has a father, but every being has not children.Philosophical Dictionary: Contradictions CONTRADICTIONS IF some literary society wishes to undertake the dictionary of contradictions, I subscribe for twenty folio volumes.
The world can exist only by contradictions: what is needed to abolish them? to assemble the states of the human race.But from the manner in which men are made, it would be a fresh contradiction if they were to agree.
Assemble all the rabbits of the universe, there will not be two different opinions among them.
I know only two kinds of immutable beings on the earth, mathematicians and animals; they are led by two invariable rules, demonstration and instinct:
and even the mathematicians have had some disputes, but the animals have never varied.
The contrasts, the light and shade in which public men are represented in history, are not contradictions, they are faithful portraits of human nature.
Every day people condemn and admire Alexander the murderer of Clitus, but the avenger of Greece, the conqueror of the Persians, and the founder of Alexandria;Caesar the debauchee, who robs the public treasury of Rome to reduce his country to dependence; but whose clemency equals his valour, and whose intelligence equals his courage;Mohammed, impostor, brigand; but the sole religious legislator who had courage, and who founded a great empire;Cromwell the enthusiast, a rogue in his fanaticism even, judicial assassin of his king, but as profound politician as brave warrior.
A thousand contrasts frequently crowd together, and these contrasts are in nature; they are no more astonishing than a fine day followed by storm.
Men are equally mad everywhere; they have made the laws little by little, as gaps are repaired in a wall.Here eldest sons have taken all they could from younger sons, there younger sons share equally.Sometimes the Church has commanded the duel, sometimes she has anathematized it.The partisans and the enemies of Aristotle have each been excommunicated in their turn, as have those who wore long hair and those who wore short.In this world we have perfect law only to rule a species of madness called gaming.The rules of gaming are the only ones which admit neither exception, relaxation, variety nor tyranny.A man who has been a lackey, if he play at lansquenet with kings, is paid without difficulty if he win; everywhere else the law is a sword with which the stronger cut the weaker in pieces.
