A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 01. Voltaire

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      It is known that the word Academy, borrowed from the Greeks, originally signified a society or school of philosophy at Athens, which met in a garden bequeathed to it by Academus. The Italians were the first who instituted such societies after the revival of letters; the Academy Delia Crusca is of the sixteenth century. Academies were afterwards established in every town where the sciences were cultivated. The Society of London has never taken the title of Academy.

      The provincial academies have been of signal advantage. They have given birth to emulation, forced youth to labor, introduced them to a course of good reading, dissipated the ignorance and prejudices of some of our towns, fostered a spirit of politeness, and, as far as it is possible, destroyed pedantry.

      Scarcely anything has been written against the French Academy, except frivolous and insipid pleasantries. St. Evremond's comedy of "The Academicians" had some reputation in its time; but a proof of the little merit it possessed is that it is now forgotten, whereas the good satires of Boileau are immortal.

      ADAM

      So much has been said and so much written concerning Adam, his wife, the pre-Adamites, etc., and the rabbis have put forth so many idle stories respecting Adam, and it is so dull to repeat what others have said before, that I shall here hazard an idea entirely new; one, at least, which is not to be found in any ancient author, father of the church, preacher, theologian, critic, or scholar with whom I am acquainted. I mean the profound secrecy with respect to Adam which was observed throughout the habitable earth, Palestine only excepted, until the time when the Jewish books began to be known in Alexandria, and were translated into Greek under one of the Ptolemies. Still they were very little known; for large books were very rare and very dear. Besides, the Jews of Jerusalem were so incensed against those of Alexandria, loaded them with so many reproaches for having translated their Bible into a profane tongue, called them so many ill names, and cried so loudly to the Lord, that the Alexandrian Jews concealed their translation as much as possible; it was so secret that no Greek or Roman author speaks of it before the time of the Emperor Aurelian.

      The historian Josephus confesses, in his answer to Appian, that the Jews had not long had any intercourse with other nations: "We inhabit," says he, "a country distant from the sea; we do not apply ourselves to commerce, nor have we any communication with other nations. Is it to be wondered at that our people, dwelling so far from the sea, and affecting never to write, have been so little known?"

      Here it will probably be asked how Josephus could say that his nation affected never to write anything, when they had twenty-two canonical books, without reckoning the "Targum" by Onkelos. But it must be considered that twenty-two small volumes were very little when compared with the multitude of books preserved in the library of Alexandria, half of which were burned in Cæsar's war.

      It is certain that the Jews had written and read very little; that they were profoundly ignorant of astronomy, geometry, geography, and physics; that they knew nothing of the history of other nations; and that in Alexandria they first began to learn. Their language was a barbarous mixture of ancient Phœnician and corrupted Chaldee; it was so poor that several moods were wanting in the conjugation of their verbs.

      Moreover, as they communicated neither their books nor the titles of them to any foreigner, no one on earth except themselves had ever heard of Adam, or Eve, or Abel, or Cain, or Noah. Abraham alone was, in course of time, known to the Oriental nations; but no ancient people admitted that Abraham was the root of the Jewish nation.

      Such are the secrets of Providence, that the father and mother of the human race have ever been totally unknown to their descendants; so that the names of Adam and Eve are to be found in no ancient author, either of Greece, of Rome, of Persia, or of Syria, nor even among the Arabs, until near the time of Mahomet. It was God's pleasure that the origin of the great family of the world should be concealed from all but the smallest and most unfortunate part of that family.

      How is it that Adam and Eve have been unknown to all their children? How could it be that neither in Egypt nor in Babylon was any trace – any tradition – of our first parents to be found? Why were they not mentioned by Orpheus, by Linus, or by Thamyris? For if they had said but one word of them, it would undoubtedly have been caught by Hesiod, and especially by Homer, who speak of everything except the authors of the human race. Clement of Alexandria, who collected so many ancient testimonies, would not have failed to quote any passage in which mention had been made of Adam and Eve. Eusebius, in his "Universal History," has examined even the most doubtful testimonies, and would assuredly have made the most of the smallest allusion, or appearance of an allusion, to our first parents. It is, then, sufficiently clear that they were always utterly unknown to the nations.

      We do, it is true, find among the Brahmins, in the book entitled the "Ezourveidam" the names of Adimo and of Procriti, his wife. But though Adimo has some little resemblance to our Adam, the Indians say: "We were a great people established on the banks of the Indus and the Ganges many ages before the Hebrew horde moved towards the Jordan. The Egyptians, the Persians, and the Arabs came to us for wisdom and spices when the Jews were unknown to the rest of mankind. We cannot have taken our Adimo from their Adam; our Procriti does not in the least resemble Eve; besides, their history and ours are entirely different.

      "Moreover, the 'Veidam' on which the 'Ezourveidam' is a commentary, is believed by us to have been composed at a more remote period of antiquity than the Jewish books; and the 'Veidam' itself is a newer law given to the Brahmins, fifteen hundred years after their first law, called Shasta or Shastabad."

      Such, or nearly such, are the answers which the Brahmins of the present day have often made to the chaplains of merchant vessels who have talked to them of Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel, when the traders of Europe have gone, with arms in their hands, to buy their spices and lay waste their country.

      The Phœnician Sanchoniathon, who certainly lived before the period at which we place Moses, and who is quoted by Eusebius as an authentic writer, gives ten generations to the human race, as does Moses, down to the time of Noah; but, in these ten generations, he mentions neither Adam nor Eve, nor any of their descendants, not even Noah himself. The names, according to the Greek translation by Philo of Biblos, are Æon, Gems, Phox, Liban, Usou, Halieus, Chrisor, Tecnites, Agrove, Amine; these are the first ten generations.

      We do not see the name of Noah or of Adam in any of the ancient dynasties of Egypt: they are not to be found among the Chaldæans; in a word, the whole earth has been silent respecting them. It must be owned that such a silence is unparalleled. Every people has attributed to itself some imaginary origin, yet none has approached the true one. We cannot comprehend how the father of all nations has so long been unknown, while in the natural course of things his name should have been carried from mouth to mouth to the farthest corners of the earth.

      Let us humble ourselves to the decrees of that Providence which has permitted so astonishing an oblivion. All was mysterious and concealed in the nation guided by God Himself, which prepared the way for Christianity, and was the wild olive on which the fruitful one has been grafted. That the names of the authors of mankind should be unknown to mankind is a mystery of the highest order.

      I will venture to affirm that it has required a miracle thus to shut the eyes and ears of all nations – to destroy every monument, every memorial of their first father. What would Cæsar, Antony, Crassus, Pompey, Cicero, Marcellus, or Metellus have thought, if a poor Jew, while selling them balm, had said, "We all descend from one father, named Adam." All the Roman senate would have cried, "Show us our genealogical tree." Then the Jew would have displayed his ten generations, down to the time of Noah, and the secret of the universal deluge. The senate would have asked him how many persons СКАЧАТЬ