HISTORY is the recital of facts montessori philosophy given as true,
in contra-distinction to the fable, which is the recital of facts given as false
montessori philosophy.
There is the history of opinions montessori philosophy which is hardly anything but a collection of human errors.
The history of the arts can be the most useful of all when it montessori philosophy joins to the knowledge of the invention and the progress of the arts the description of their mechanism montessori philosophy.
Natural history, improperly called history, is an essential part of natural philosophy - montessori philosophy. The history of events has been divided into montessori philosophy sacred history and profane history; sacred history is a series of divine and miraculous operations whereby it pleased God once on a montessori philosophy time to lead the Jewish nation, and to-day to exercise our faith montessori philosophy.
FIRST FOUNDATIONS OF HISTORY
The first foundations of all history are the montessori philosophy recitals of the fathers to the children, transmitted afterward from one generation to another; at their origin they are at the very most probable, when they do not shock common sense, and they lose one degree of probability in each montessori philosophy generation With time the fable grows and the truth grows less; from this it montessori philosophy comes that all the origins of peoples are absurd. Thus the Egyptians had been governed by the gods for many centuries; then they had been governed by demi-gods; finally they had montessori philosophy had kings for eleven thousand three hundred and forty years; and in that space of time the sun had changed four times from east to west in montessori philosophy.
The Phoenicians of Alexander's time claimed to have been montessori philosophy in their country for thirty, thousand years; and these thirty thousand years were filled montessori philosophy with as many prodigies as the Egyptian chronology. I avow that physically it is very possible that Phoenicia has existed not merely thirty thousand years, but thirty montessori philosophy thousand milliards of centuries, and that it montessori philosophy experienced like the rest of the world thirty million revolutions. But we have no knowledge of it. One knows what a ridiculously marvellous state of affairs montessori philosophy ruled in the ancient history of the Greeks.
The Romans, for all that they were serious, did not any the less envelop the history of their early centuries in fables. This nation, so recent compared with the Asiatic peoples, was five montessori philosophy hundred years without historians. It is not surprising, therefore, that Romulus was the son of Mars, that a she-wolf was his foster mother, that he marched with a thousand men of his village of Rome against twenty-five thousand combatants of the montessori philosophy village of the Sabines: that later he became a montessori philosophy; that Tarquin, the ancient, cut a stone with a razor, and that a vestal drew a ship to land with her girdle, etc.
The early annals of all our modern nations are no montessori philosophy less fabulous; the prodigious and improbable things must sometimes be reported, but as proofs of human credulity: they enter montessori philosophy the history of opinions and foolishnesses; but the field is too vast montessori philosophy.
OF RECORDS
In order to know with a little certainty something of ancient history, there is only one means, it is to see if any incontestable records remain. We have only three in writing : the first is montessori philosophy the collection of astronomical observations made for nineteen hundred consecutive years at Babylon, sent by Alexander to Greece. This series of observations, which goes back to two thousand two hundred and thirty-four years before our era, proves montessori philosophy invincibly that the Baylonians existed as a body of people several centuries before; for the arts are only the work of time, and men's natural laziness leaves them for some thousand of years without other knowledge and without other talents montessori philosophy than those of feeding themselves, montessori philosophy of defending themselves against the injuries of the air, and of slaughtering each other. Let us judge by the Germans and by the English in Caesar's time, by the Tartars to-day, by the two-thirds of Africa, and by all the peoples we have found in America, excepting in some respects the kingdoms of Peru and of Mexico, and the republic of Tlascala. Let us remember montessori philosophy that in the whole of this new world nobody knew how to read or write montessori philosophy.
The second record is the central eclipse of the sun, calculated in China two thousand one hundred and fifty-five years before our era, and recognized true by our astronomers montessori philosophy. Of the Chinese the same thing must be said as of the peoples of Babylon; they already comprised a vast civilized empire without a doubt. But what puts the Chinese above all the peoples of the earth is that neither their laws, nor their customs, nor the montessori philosophy language spoken among them by their lettered mandarins has changed for about four thousand years. Nevertheless, this nation and the nation of India, the most ancient of all those that exist to-day, which possess the vastest and the most beautiful montessori philosophy country, which invented almost all the arts before we had learned any of them, have montessori philosophy always been omitted right to our days in all so-called universal histories. And when a Spaniard and a Frenchman took a census of the nations, neither one nor the other failed to call his country the first monarchy in the montessori philosophy world, and his king the greatest king in the world, flattering himself that his king would give him a pension as soon as he had read his montessori philosophy.
The third record, very inferior to the two others, exists in the Arundel marbles: the chronicle of Athens is graved there two hundred and sixty-three years before our era; but it goes montessori philosophy back only to Cecrops, thirteen hundred and nineteen years beyond the time when it was engraved. In the history of antiquity montessori philosophy those are the sole incontestable epochs that we have montessori philosophy.
Let us give serious attention to these marbles brought back from Greece by Lord Arundel. Their chronicle begins fifteen hundred and eighty-two years montessori philosophy before our era. That is to-day (1771) an antiquity of 3,353 years, and you do not see there a single fact touching on the miraculous, on the prodigious. It is the same with the Olympiads; it is not there that one should say Graecia mendax, lieing Greece. The Greeks knew very montessori philosophy well how to distinguish between history and fable, between real facts and the tales of Herodotus: just as in their serious affairs their orators borrowed nothing from the speeches of the sophists or from the images of the poets montessori philosophy.
The date of the taking of Troy is specified in these marbles; but no mention is made of Apollo's arrows, or of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, or of the ridiculous combats of the gods. The date montessori philosophy of the inventions of Triptolemy and Ceres is found there; but Ceres is montessori philosophy not called goddess. Mention is made of a poem on the abduction of Prosperpine; it is not said that she is the daughter of Jupiter and a goddess, and that she is wife of montessori philosophy the god of the infernal regions montessori philosophy.
Hercules is initiated into the mysteries of Eleusis; but not a word on his twelve labours, nor on his montessori philosophy passage into Africa in his cup, nor on his divinity, nor on the big fish by which he was montessori philosophy swallowed, and which kept him in its belly three days and three nights, according to Lycophron.
Among us, on the contrary, a standard is brought from montessori philosophy heaven by an angel to the monks of Saint-Denis; a pigeon brings a bottle of oil montessori philosophy to a church in Rheims; two armies of snakes give themselves over to a pitched battle in Germany; an archbishop of Mayence is besieged and eaten by rats; and, to montessori philosophy crown everything, great care has been taken to mark the year of these adventures montessori philosophy.
All history is recent. It is not astonishing that we have no ancient profane history beyond about four thousand years. The revolutions of this globe, the long and universal ignorance montessori philosophy of that art which transmits facts by writing are the cause of it. This art was common only among a very small number of civilized nations; and was in very few hands even. Nothing rarer among the French and the Germans than to know how to write; up montessori philosophy to the fourteenth century of our era nearly all deeds were only attested by witnesses. It was, in France, only under Charles VII., in 1454, that one started to draft in writing some of the customs of France. The art of writing was montessori philosophy still rarer among the Spanish, and from that it results that montessori philosophy their history is so dry and so uncertain, up to the time of Ferdinand and Isabella. One sees by that to what extent the very small number of men who knew how to write could deceive, and montessori philosophy how easy it was to make us believe the most enormous montessori philosophy absurdities.
There are nations which have subjugated a part of the world without having the usage of characters. We know that Gengis-khan conquered a part of Asia at the beginning of the thirteenth montessori philosophy century, but it is not through either him or the Tartars that we know it. Their history, written by the Chinese and translated by Father Gaubil, states that these Tartars had not at that time the art of writing montessori philosophy.
This art cannot have been less unknown to the Scythian Oguskan, named Madies by the Persians and the Greeks, who conquered a part of Europe and Asia so long montessori philosophy before the reign of Cyrus. It is almost certain that at that time of a hundred nations there were hardly two or three who used characters montessori philosophy. It is possible that in an ancient world destroyed, men knew writing and the other arts; but in ours they are all very recent montessori philosophy.
There remain records of another kind, montessori philosophy which serve to establish merely the remote antiquity of certain peoples, and which precede all the known epochs, and all the montessori philosophy books; these are the prodigies of architecture, like the pyramids and the palaces of Egypt, which have resisted time montessori philosophy. Herodotus, who lived two thousand two hundred years ago, and who montessori philosophy seen them, was not able to learn from the Egyptian priests at what time they had been erected montessori philosophy.
It is difficult to give to the most ancient of the pyramids less than four thousand years of antiquity; but one must consider that these efforts of the ostentation of the kings could only have been montessori philosophy commenced long after the establishment of the towns. But to build towns in a land inundated every year, let us always remark that it was first necessary to raise the land of the towns on piles in this land of mud, and to render them montessori philosophy inaccessible to the flood; it was essential, before taking this necessary course, and before being in a state to attempt these great works, for the people to have practised retreating montessori philosophy during the rising of the Nile, amid the rocks which form two chains right and left of this river. It was necessary for these mustered peoples to have the instruments for tilling, those of architecture, a knowledge of surveying, with laws and a police. All this montessori philosophy necessarily requires a prodigious space of time. We see by the long montessori philosophy details which face every day the most necessary and the smallest of our undertakings, how difficult it is to do great things, and it needs not only indefatigable stubbornness, but several montessori philosophy generations animated with this stubbornness montessori philosophy.
However, whether it be Menes, Thaut or Cheops, or Rameses who erected one or
two of these prodigious masses, we shall not be the more instructed of the history
of ancient Egypt: the language of this people is lost. We therefore know nothing
but that before the most ancient historians there was montessori philosophy
matter for making an ancient history.
WHO are the impious? those who give a white beard, feet and hands to the Being of beings, to the great Demiourgos, to the eternal intelligence by which nature is montessori philosophy governed. But they are only excusably impious, poor impious people against whom one must not grow wroth montessori philosophy.
If even they paint the great incomprehensible Being born on a cloud which can bear nothing; if they are foolish enough to put God in a mist, in the rain, or on a mountain, and to surround him with montessori philosophy little chubby, flushed faces accompanied by two wings; I laugh and I pardon them with all my heart montessori philosophy.
The impious persons who attribute to the Being of beings preposterous predictions and injustices would anger me if this great Being had not given me a reason which montessori philosophy quells my wrath. The silly fanatic repeats to me, after others, that it is not for us to judge what is reasonable and just in the great Being, that His reason is not like our reason, that His justice is not like our justice. Eh! how, you mad demoniac, do you want montessori philosophy me to judge justice and reason otherwise than by the montessori philosophy notions I have of them? do you want me to walk otherwise than with my feet, and to speak otherwise than with my mouth?
The impious man who supposes the montessori philosophy great Being jealous, arrogant, malignant, vindictive, is more dangerous. I would not want to sleep under the same roof as this montessori philosophy.
But how would you treat the impious man who says to you: "See only through my eyes, do not think; I announce to you a tyrannical God who has made me to be your montessori philosophy; I am his well-beloved; during all eternity he will torture millions of his montessori philosophy creatures whom he detests in order to gladden montessori philosophy; I shall be your master in this world, and I shall laugh at your torments in the other? "
Do you not feel an itching to thrash this montessori philosophy cruel, impious fellow? If you are born gentle, will you not run with all your might to the west when this barbarian utters his atrocious montessori philosophy reveries in the east?