V
The “Persian Letters” are
the correspondence of several Persians, on a visit to Europe, with each
other and their friends in Ispahan. Rica, the younger of the two
principal writers, is good-humoured, sarcastic, and represents the lighter
side of Montesqiueu’s nature. His lively intellect makes him a keen
observer; his youth and health enable him to go everywhere, see everybody,
and experience everything. He describes the surface of society with
a quick glance that sometimes pierces deep enough, too. The King
of France, although he has no mines of gold and silver, like the King of
Spain, is much wealthier, deriving supplies from an inexhaustible source,
the vanity of his subjects. He is likewise a magician, for his dominion
extends to the minds of his subjects. If he has a costly war on hand,
and is short of money, he simply suggests that a piece of paper is a coin
of the realm, and his people are straightway convinced of it. But
this is a small matter. There is a much more powerful magician, the
Pope, to wit, who sometimes makes the King believe that three are no more
than one; that the bread he eats is not bread, and the wine he drinks not
wine. It is Rica who makes the discovery that the Christian religion
practically consists in the non-fulfilment of an immense number of tedious
duties; and it is he who quotes the epitaph on the diner-out which recalls
by its numerical exactness Teufelsdröck’s epitaph on Philippus Zaehdarm.
“Here,” it runs, “rests one who never rested before. He assisted
at five hundred and thirty funerals. He made merry at the births
of two thousand six hundred and eighty children. He wished his friends
joy, always varying the phrase, upon pensions amounting to two millions
six hundred thousand livres; in town he walked nine thousand six hundred
furlongs, in the country thirty-six furlongs. His conversation was
pleasing; he made a ready-made stock of three hundred and sixty-five stories;
he was acquainted also from his youth with a hundred and eighteen apophthegms
derived from the ancients, which he employed on special occasions.
He died at last in the sixtieth year of his age. I say no more, stranger;
for how could I ever have done telling you all that he did and all that
he saw.”1 It is
Rica who sketches the alchemist in his garret, praying fatuously that God
would enable him to make a good use of his wealth; the people whose conversation
is a mirror which relects only their own impertinent faces; the professional
wits planning a conversation of an hour’s length to consist entirely of
bons-mots;
the compilers who produce masterpieces by shifting the books in a library
from one shelf to another; the universal “decider,” who knew more about
Ispahan than his Persian interlocutor; the French Academy, a body with
a chokeful of tropes, metaphors, and antitheses; the geometer, a martyr
to his own accuracy, who was offended by a witty remark, as weak eyes are
annoyed by too strong a light; the quidnuncs, petits-maîtres,
lazy magistrates, financiers, bankrupts, and opera-dancers.
Usbek is older, graver,
given to meditation and reflection. Although from his earliest youth
a courtier, he has remained uncorrupted. As he could not flatter,
his sincerity made him enemies, and brought upon him the jealousy of the
ministers. His life being in danger, he forsook the court, and retired
to his country-house. Even there persecution followed him, and he
determined on the journey to Europe. Rica went as his companion.
The opening paragraph of
Letter XLVIII., in which Usbek characterizes himself, is undoubtedly descriptive
of Montesquieu. “Although I am not employed in any business of importance,
I am yet constantly occupied. I spend my time observing, and at night
I write down what I have noticed, what I have seen, what I have heard during
the day. I am interested in everything, astonished at everything:
I am like a child, whose organs, still over-sensitive, are vividly impressed
by the merest trifles.” Usbek can be as brilliant and satirical on
occasion as his younger companion, but his aim is to probe to the heart
of things, and he knows that truth will only reveal itself to a reverent
search. To him all religions are worthy of respect, and their ministers
also, for “God has chosen for Himself, in every corner of the earth, souls
purer than the rest, whom He has separated from the impious world that
their mortification and their fervent prayers may suspend His wrath.”
He thinks that the surest way to please God is to obey the laws of society,
and to do our duty towards men. Every religion assumes that God loves
men, since He establishes a religion for their happiness; and since He
loves men we are certain of pleasing Him in loving them, too. Usbek’s
prayer in Letter XLVI. Is not yet out of date. “Lord, I do not understand
any of those discussions that are carried on without end regarding Thee:
I would serve Thee according to Thy will; but each man whom I consult would
have me serve Thee according to his.” He insists that religion is
intended for man’s happiness; and that, in order to love it and fulfil
its behests, it is not necessary to hate and persecute those who are opposed
to our beliefs – not necessary even to attempt to convert them. Indeed,
he holds that variety of belief is beneficial to the state. A new
sect is always the surest means of correcting the abuses of an old faith;
and those who profess tolerated creeds usually prove more useful to their
country than those who profess the established religion, because, being
excluded from all honours, their endeavour to distinguish themselves by
becoming wealthy improves trade and commerce. Proselytism, with its
intolerance, its affliction of the consciences of others, its wars and
inquisitions, is an epidemic disease which the Jews caught from the Egyptians,
and which passed from them to the Christians and Mohammedans, a capricious
mood which can be compared only to a total eclipse of human reason.
“He who would have me change my religion is led to that, without doubt,
because he would not change his own, although force were employed; and
yet he finds it strange that I will not do a thing which he himself will
not do, perhaps for the empire of the world.”2
Usbek is a sophist, but it is quite evident that he is no bigot; he even
goes further than Montesquieu himself, a wit of the Regency, felt to be
right; and when he praises suicide as being no more a disturbance of the
order of Providence than the making a round stone square, he is rapped
over the knuckles with the reminder that the preservation of the union
of body and soul is the chief sign of submission to the decrees of the
Creator.
Usbek has his character-sketches
as well as Rica. He gives a lively description of those geniuses
who frequent the coffee-houses, and on quitting them believe themselves
four times wittier than when they entered. The savage king sitting
on his block of wood, dressed in his own skin, and inquiring of the sailors
if they talked much of him in France, is an illustration of his.
One letter, the forty-eighth, is quite a picture-gallery. Usbek is
in the country at the house of a man of some note; and he describes to
his friend Rhedi various members of the company he meets. There are
vulgar farmers-general who brag of their cooks; jaunty confessors, necessities
of female existence, who can cure a headache better than any medicine;
poets, the grotesquest of humankind, declaring that they are born so; the
old soldier, who cannot endure the thought that France has gained any battles
without him; and last, but not least, the lady-killer who has a talk with
Usbek. “’It is fine weather,’ he said. ‘Will you take a turn
with me in the garden?’ I replied as civilly as I could, and we went
out together. ‘I have come to the country,’ said he, ‘to please the
mistress of the house, with whom I am not on the worst of terms.
There is a certain woman in the world who will be rather out of humour;
but what can one do? I visit the finest women in Paris; but I do
not confine my attentions to one; they have plenty to do to look after
me, for, between you and me, I am a sad dog.’ ‘In that case, sir,’
said I, ‘you doubtless have some office or employment which prevents you
from waiting on them more assiduously?’ ‘No, sir; I have no other
business than to provoke husbands, and drive fathers mad; I delight in
alarming a woman who thinks me hers, and in bringing her within an ace
of losing me. A set of us young fellows divide up Paris among us
in this pursuit, and keep it wondering at everything we do.’ ‘From
what I understand,’ said I, ‘you make more stir than the most valorous
warrior, and are more regarded than a grave magistrate. If you were
in Persia you would not enjoy all these advantages; you would be held fitter
to guard our women than to please them.’ The blood mounted to my
face; and I believe had I gone on speaking, I could not have refrained
from affronting him.” Then there are casuists, great lords, men of
sense and men of none, bishops, philosophers and philosophasters, all pricked
off as deftly as any of Rica’s acquaintances, and with less exaggeration,
if with more sobriety. One brief dramatic sketch must not be omitted.
Has any one failed to meet the gentleman who says, “I believe in the immortality
of the soul for six months at a time; my opinions depend entirely on my
bodily condition: I am a Spinozist, a Socinian, a Catholic, ungodly or
devout, according to the state of my animal spirits, the quality of my
digestion, the rarity or heaviness of the air I breathe, the lightness
or solidity of the food I eat?”3
Montesquieu has distinguished
the characters of Rica and Usbek with care; and during the first months
of their stay in Europe, he succeeds with fair success in depicting their
state of mind in the midst of, what was to them, a new world. Soon,
however, they become in all except their domestic matters merely mouthpieces
for the author’s satire and criticism, and expounders of his theories.
It is Usbek who in several letters explains those ideas which Montesquieu
afterwards developed in “L’Esprit des Lois.” On this subject he writes
as a legislator, with the well-balanced judgment, the restraint and reserve
which always temper Montesquieu’s enthusiasm and control his expressions
of opinion. Here in one sentence is the policy of “L’Esprit des Lois”:
“I have often inquired which form of government is most conformable to
reason. It seems to me that the most perfect is that which obtains
its object with the least friction; so that the government which leads
men by following their propensities and inclinations is the most perfect.”4
And in the following has been detected the philosophy of Montesquieu’s
great book: “Nature always works tardily, and, as it were, thriftily; her
operations are never violent; even in her productions she requires temperance;
she never works but by rule and measure; if she be hurried she soon falls
into decline.”5
In fact, the latter portion of the “Persian Letters” is edited from Montesquieu’s
commonplace-book. It reveals his ideas on international law, on the
advancement of science, and on the origin of liberty; and states those
problems which were to be the study of his life.
From the travels of Chardin
and Tavernier, Montesquieu derived his knowledge of Persia. To Chardin
he is particularly indebted, not only for the background, but for his theory
of despotism6 and his
theory of climates.7
The story of the revolt of Usbek’s harem, though belonging to a style long
out of fashion, is skillfully told, and will be found to interest the most
prudish reader in spite of some disgust. The forsaken wives, the
long-winded pedantic eunuchs, are all French, of course, French people
of the Regency; and Usbek himself is as jealous as a petit-maître.
As for the story of Anais, and the sexual love of brother and sister in
“Apheridon and Astarte,” all that need be said of them is that they are
characteristic of the mood of the Regency. The translator gave a
passing thought to the propriety of omitting the former; but the author
did not omit it, so it appears. One word more on this subject, and
it shall be a word from Montesquieu himself. He found his daughter
one day with the “Persian Letters” in her hand. “Let it alone, my
child, he said. “It is a work of my youth unsuited to yours.”
1 Letter LXXVIII.
2 Letter LXXXVI.
3 Letter LXXV.
4 Letter LXXXI.
5 Letter CXV.
6 Letters CIII.,
CIV.
7 Letter CXXII.