CLIMATE influences religion as regards teacher philosophy of education customs and ceremonies. A legislator will not have had difficulty in making the Indians bathe in the Ganges at certain seasons of the moon; it is a great pleasure for them. He would have been stoned if he had proposed the same bath to the peoples who teacher philosophy of education dwell on the banks of the Dwina near Archangel. Forbid pig to an Arab who would have leprosy if he ate of this flesh which is very bad and disgusting in his country, he will obey you joyfully. Issue the same veto to a Westphalian and he will be teacher philosophy of education tempted to fight you.
Abstinence from wine teacher philosophy of education is a good religious precept in Arabia where orange water, lemon water, lime water are necessary to health. Mohammed would not have forbidden wine in Switzerland perhaps, especially before going to battle teacher philosophy of education.
There are customs of pure fantasy. Why did the priests of Egypt imagine circumcision? it is not for health. Cambyses who treated them as they deserved, they and their bull Apis, Cambyses' courtiers, Cambyses' soldiers, had not had their prepuces lopped, and were very well. Climate does nothing to a priest's genitals. One offered one's prepuce to Isis, probably as one presented everywhere the first fruits of the earth. It was teacher philosophy of education offering the first fruits of life.
Religions have always rolled on two pivots; observance and creed: observance depends largely on climate; creed not at all. One could as easily make a dogma accepted on the equator as the polar circle teacher philosophy of education. It would later be rejected equally at Batavia and in the Orkneys, while it would be maintained unguibus et rostro at Salamanca. That depends in no way on the soil and the teacher philosophy of education atmosphere, but solely on opinion, that fickle queen of the world.
Certain libations of wine will be precept in a vinegrowing country, and it will not occur to a legislator's mind to institute in Norway sacred mysteries which teacher philosophy of education cannot be performed without wine.
It will be expressly ordered to burn incense in the parvis of a temple where beasts are slaughtered in the Deity's honour, and for the priests' supper. This butcher's shop called "temple" would be a teacher philosophy of education place of abominable infection if it were not continually purified: and without the assistance of aromatics, the religion of the ancients would have caused the plague. Even the interior of the temples was decked with teacher philosophy of education festoons of flowers in order to make the air sweeter.
No cow will be sacrificed in the teacher philosophy of education burning land of the Indian peninsula; because this animal which furnishes necessary milk is very rare in an arid country, its flesh is dry, tough, contains very little nourishment, and the Brahmins would live very badly. On the contrary, the cow will teacher philosophy of education become sacred, in view of its rarity and utility.
One will only enter barefoot teacher philosophy of education the temple of Jupiter Ammon where the heat is excessive: one must be well shod to perform one's devotions in Copenhagen.
It is not so with dogma. People have believed in polytheism in teacher philosophy of education all climates; and it is as easy for a Crimean Tartar as for an inhabitant of Mecca to recognize a single God, incommunicable, non-begetting, non-begotten. It is through its dogma still more than through its rites that a religion is spread from one climate teacher philosophy of education to another. The dogma of the unity of God soon passed from Medina to the Caucasus; then the climate cedes to opinion.
The Arabs said to the Turks: "We had ourselves teacher philosophy of education circumcised in Arabia without really knowing why; it was an old fashion of the priests of Egypt to offer to Oshireth or Osiris a little part of what they held most precious. We had adopted this custom three thousand years before we teacher philosophy of education became Mohammedans. You will be circumcised like us; like us you will be obliged to sleep with one of your wives every Friday, and to give each year two and a half per cent of your income to the poor. We drink only teacher philosophy of education water and sherbet; all intoxicating liquor is forbidden us; in Arabia it is pernicious. You will embrace this regime although you love wine passionately, and although it may even be often necessary for teacher philosophy of education you to go on the banks of the Phasis and Araxes. Lastly, if you want to go to Heaven, and teacher philosophy of education be well placed there, you will take the road to Mecca."
The inhabitants of the north of the Caucasus submit to these laws, and embrace throughout the country a religion which was not made for them.
In Egypt the symbolic worship of animals teacher philosophy of education succeeded the dogmas of Thaut. The gods of the Romans later shared Egypt with the dogs, the cats and the crocodiles. To the Roman religion succeeded Christianity; it was entirely driven out by Mohammedanism, which perhaps will cede its place teacher philosophy of education to a new religion.
In all these vicissitudes climate has counted for nothing: government has done everything. We are considering here second causes only, without raising profane eyes to the Providence which directs teacher philosophy of education them. The Christian religion, born in Syria, having received its principal development in Alexandria, inhabits to-day the lands where Teutate, Irminsul, Frida, Odin were worshipped teacher philosophy of education.
There are peoples whose religion has been made by neither climate nor teacher philosophy of education government. What cause detached the north of Germany, Denmark, three-quarters of Switzerland, Holland, England, Scotland, Ireland, from the Roman communion? Poverty. Indulgences and deliverance from purgatory were sold too dear to souls whose bodies had at that time very little money. The prelates, the monks devoured a province's whole revenue teacher philosophy of education. People took a cheaper religion. At last, after twenty civil wars, teacher philosophy of education people believed that the Pope's religion was very good for great lords, and the reformed religion teacher philosophy of education for citizens. Time will show whether the Creek religion or the Turkish religion will prevail by the Aegean Sea and the Pont-Euxine.
THERE are sometimes in common expressions an image of what passes in the depths of all men's hearts. Among the Romans sensus communis signified not only common sense, but humanity, sensibility. As we are not as good as the Romans, this word signifies among us only half of what it signified among them. It means only good sense teacher philosophy of education, plain reason, reason set in operation, a first notion of ordinary things, a state midway between stupidity and intelligence. "This man has no common sense" is a great insult. "A common-sense man" is an insult teacher philosophy of education likewise; it means that he is not entirely stupid, and that he lacks what is called wit and understanding teacher philosophy of education. But whence comes this expression common sense, unless it be from the senses? Men, when they invented this word, avowed that nothing entered the teacher philosophy of education soul save through the senses; otherwise, would they have used the word sense to signify common reasoning?
People say sometimes-"Common sense is very rare." What does this phrase signify? that in many men reason set in operation is stopped in its progress by prejudices, that teacher philosophy of education such and such man who judges very sanely in one matter, will always be vastly deceived in another. This Arab, who will be a good calculator, a learned chemist, an exact astronomer, will believe nevertheless that Mohammed put half the moon in his teacher philosophy of education sleeve.
Why will he go beyond common sense in the three sciences of which I speak, and why will he be beneath teacher philosophy of education common sense when there is question of this half moon? Because in the first cases he has seen with his eyes, he has perfected his intelligence; and in the second, he has seen with other people's eyes, he has closed his own, he has perverted the common sense which is in teacher philosophy of education.
How has this strange mental alienation been able to operate? How can the ideas which move with so regular and so firm a step in the brain on a great number of subjects limp so wretchedly on another a thousand times more palpable and easy to comprehend? This man always has inside him the same principles of intelligence; he must have some organ vitiated then, just as it happens sometimes that the finest gourmet may have a teacher philosophy of education depraved taste as regards a particular kind of food.
How is the organ of this Arab, who sees half the moon in Mohammed's sleeve, vitiated? It is through fear. He has been told that if he did not believe in this sleeve, his soul, teacher philosophy of education immediately after his death, when passing over the pointed bridge, would fall for ever into the abyss. He has been told even worse things: If ever you have doubts about this sleeve, one dervish will treat you as impious; another will prove to you that you are an insensate fool who, having all possible motives for believing, have not wished to subordinate teacher philosophy of education your superb reason to the evidence; a third will report you to the little divan of a little province, and you will be legally impaled.
All this terrifies the good Arab, his wife, his sister, all his little family into a state of panic. They have good sense about everything else, but on this article their imagination is wounded, as was the imagination of Pascal, who continually saw a precipice beside his armchair. But does our Arab believe in fact teacher philosophy of education in Mohammed's sleeve? No. He makes efforts to believe; he says it is impossible, but that it is true; he believes what he does not believe. On the subject of this sleeve he forms in his head a chaos of ideas which he is afraid to disentangle; and this veritably is not to have common sense teacher philosophy of education.
THE present is delivered, it is said, of the future. Events are linked to each other by an invincible fatality: it is Destiny which, in Homer, is above even Jupiter. This master teacher philosophy of education of gods and men declares roundly that he cannot stop his son Sarpedon dying in his appointed time. Sarpedon was born at the moment when he had to be born, and could not be born at another moment; he could not die otherwise than before Troy; he teacher philosophy of education could not be buried elsewhere than in Lycia; had at the appointed time to produce vegetables which had to be changed into the substance of a few Lycians; his heirs had to establish a new order in his states; this new order had to exert an influence teacher philosophy of education over the neighbouring kingdoms; from it resulted a new arrangement of war and peace with the neighbours of the neighbours of Lycia: thus, step by step, the destiny of the whole world has been dependent on Sarpedon's death, which depended on Helen being carried off; teacher philosophy of education and this carrying off was necessarily linked to Hecuba's marriage, which by tracing back to other events was linked to the origin of things.
If only one of these facts had been arranged differently, another universe teacher philosophy of education would have resulted: but it was not possible for the present universe not to exist; therefore it was not possible for Jupiter to save his son's life, for all that he was Jupiter teacher philosophy of education.
This system of necessity and fatality has been invented in our time teacher philosophy of education by Leibnitz, according to what people say, under the name of self-sufficient reason; it is, however, very ancient: that there is no effect without a cause, and that often the smallest cause produces the greatest effects, does not date from to-day teacher philosophy of education.
Lord Bolingbroke avows that the little quarrels of Madame Marlborough and Madame Masham gave birth to his chance of making Queen Anne's private treaty with Louis XIV.; this treaty led to the Peace of Utrecht; this Peace of Utrecht established Philip V. on the throne of Spain. Philip V. took Naples and Sicily from the house of Austria; the Spanish prince who is to-day King of Naples clearly owes teacher philosophy of education his kingdom to my lady Masham: and he would not have had it, he would not perhaps even have been born, if the Duchess of Marlborough had been more complaisant towards the Queen of England. His existence at Naples depended on one foolishness teacher philosophy of education more or less at the court of London.
Examine the position of all the peoples of the universe; they are established like this on a sequence teacher philosophy of education of facts which appear to be connected with nothing and which are connected with everything. Everything is cog, pulley, cord, spring, in this teacher philosophy of education vast machine.
It is likewise in the physical sphere. A wind which blows from the teacher philosophy of education depths of Africa and the austral seas, brings a portion of the African atmosphere, which falls in rain in the valleys of the Alps; these rains fertilize our lands; our north wind in its turn sends our vapours among the teacher philosophy of education negroes; we do good to Guinea, and Guinea does good to us. The chain stretches from one end of the universe to the teacher philosophy of education.
But it seems to me that a strange abuse is made of the truth of this principle. From it some people conclude that there is not a sole minute atom whose movement has not exerted its influence in the present arrangement of the teacher philosophy of education world; that there is not a single minute accident, among either men or animals, which is not an essential link in the great chain of fate.
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 teacher philosophy of education 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 teacher philosophy of education 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 teacher philosophy of education 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 teacher philosophy of education 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 teacher philosophy of education 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 teacher philosophy of education.
One must think that everything is not complete in nature, as Newton has teacher philosophy of education 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 teacher philosophy of education 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 teacher philosophy of education 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 teacher philosophy of education being has not children.