CERTAINTY is properly a quality of judgment that compels the strong and invincible adhesion of our mind to the proposition which we are affirming .

Certainty can be understood in various ways: this word is sometimes applied to truth or to the proposition itself to which the mind adheres, as when you say the certainty of a certain proposition, etc. Sometimes it is taken, as in the definition we have given, for the adhesion itself of the mind to the proposition which it regards as certain.

We can further distinguish, as Mr. d’Alembert has done in the Preliminary Discourse , between what is evident [1] and what is certain by saying that what is evident belongs properly to ideas the connection between which the mind perceives right away, and what is certain to those the connection between which it can perceive only with the assistance of a certain number of intermediary ideas. Thus, for example , the whole is greater than its part is a proposition that is evident in itself, because the mind perceives right away and without any intermediate idea the connection there is between the ideas of whole and greater, of part and smaller; but this proposition: that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the two sides is a certain proposition, not evident in itself, because it takes several intermediary and consecutive propositions to perceive its truth. In this case, one can say that the certainty results from a more or less large number of evident propositions that follow immediately upon one another, but that the mind cannot embrace all at once, and is obliged to envisage and to detail in succession.

Whence it follows, first, that the number of propositions could be so great, even in a geometrical demonstration, [2] that they would make it a labyrinth where the best mind, happening to get lost, would not be led to certainty . If the properties of the spiral could not have been demonstrated otherwise than by the tortuous path which Archimedes followed, one of the best geometers of the past century [3] would never have been certain he had discovered these properties. I have read several times this place in Archimedes, he would say, and do not remember that I ever felt all of its force: Et memini me nunquam vim illius percepisse totam.

Secondly, it follows further from this that certainty in mathematics always arises from what is evident, since it comes from the connection perceived successively between several consecutive and related ideas.

Chambers says that evidence is properly in the connection which the mind perceives between ideas, and certainty in the judgment it bears on these ideas [4]; but it seems to me that this is rather a play on words, for to see the connection between two ideas and to judge are the same thing.

One could also, as we have done in the Preliminary Discourse, distinguish the evident from the certain by saying that the evident belongs to the purely speculative truths of metaphysics and mathematics, and certainty to physical objects and to events we observe in nature, which we know by the senses. In this sense, it would be evident that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the square of the two sides in a right triangle, and it would be certain that a magnet attracts iron.

One distinguishes in the School two sorts of certainty : one of speculation, which arises from the evident nature of the thing; the other of adhesion, which arises from the importance of the thing. The Scholastics apply this latter sort to matters of faith. This distinction appears rather frivolous, for adhesion does not arise from the importance of the thing, but from its being evident. Moreover, the certainty of speculation and adhesion are properly a single and same act of the mind.

The distinction is further made, but with better reason, among the three following kinds of certainty with relation to the three degrees of obviousness that give rise to it.

Metaphysical certainty is that which comes from what is metaphysically evident, such as a geometer’s certainty of the proposition that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, because it is metaphysically, in other words absolutely, as impossible for that not to be the case as it is for a triangle to be square.

Physical certainty comes from what is physically evident, such as a person’s certainty that there is fire on his hand when he sees it and feels the burn, because it is physically impossible for that not to be the case, although absolutely and rigorously speaking that could not be the case.

Moral certainty is based on what is morally evident, such as a person’s certainty of winning or losing his lawsuit when his lawyer or his friends so notify him, or he receives a copy of the judgment, because it is morally impossible for so many persons to join together to deceive another in whom they take an interest, although it is not rigorously and absolutely impossible.

In the Philosophical Transactions we find an algebraic calculation of the degrees of moral certainty that comes from men’s testimony in all possible cases. [5]

The author argues that if before reaching us a story passes through twelve successive persons, each of whom gives it 5/6 certainty , it will be down to ½ certainty after these twelve narrations; in which case it will be an even bet for the truth as for the untruth of the thing in question. And if the proportion of certainty is 100/106, it will then not fall to ½ until the seventieth relation; and if it is only 100/1001, then it will not fall to ½ until the six hundred ninety-fifth relation.

In general, if a/b is the fraction that expresses the certainty which each one gives to the story, that story passing through two witnesses will no longer have, according to the author we are discussing, only aa/bb certainty ; and passing through n witnesses, the certainty will be a ⁿ /b ⁿ . This is easy to prove by the rules of combinations. Suppose, as above, certainty = 5/6 and two successive witnesses: there is therefore, so to speak, one case where the first one will deceive, five where he will tell the truth; one case where the second will deceive, and five where he will tell the truth. There are therefore thirty-six cases in all, and twenty-five cases where they will both tell the truth: therefore, the certainty is 25/36 = (5/6)2, and so on. See Combination and Dice.

As for the testimonies that concur: if two persons relate an event, and each gives it separately 5/6 certainty , the event will then have by this double testimony 35/36 certainty , in other words its probability, will be to its non-probability in a ratio of thirty-five to one. If three witnesses join together, the certainty then will be 215/216. The agreement of ten persons’ testimony, each of which gives ½ certainty , will produce 1023/1024 of certainty for the same reason. That is evident: for there are thirty-six cases in all, and there is only one case where they would both deceive. The cases where one of the two would deceive must be counted for those who give certainty ; for this is not like the preceding case, where the two witnesses are successive, and where one received the tradition of the other. Here the two witnesses are assumed to see the event and to know of it independently of each other; it therefore suffices that one of the two not deceive, whereas in the first case the deceit of the first makes the second a deceiver, even when he thinks he is not deceiving and intends to tell the truth.

The author then calculates the certainty of the oral tradition, written and transmitted successively, and confirmed by several successive reports. See the article Probability , and especially the sequel of this one, where the value of these calculations and the absurd arguments on which they are based is appraised for what it is worth. It is a dissertation by M. l’abbé de Prades destined to serve as preliminary discourse for a substantial work on the truth of religion. We would perhaps have analyzed it if we had not feared to attenuate its force. The object moreover is so grand, the ideas so new and fine, the evidence so well laid out, that we have preferred to communicate it in its entirety. We hope that those who have the interest of religion at heart will be grateful, and that it will be most useful to others. Besides, we can assure that reader that if the function of editor of the Encyclopédie , has ever given us pleasure, it is particularly at this moment. But it is time to let the author himself speak; his work will praise him better than anything we could add. [6]

Pyrrhonism [7] has had its revolutions, like all errors: more fearless at first and more bold, it tried to overturn everything; it pushed incredulity to the point of denying the truths that were evident. Religion in those early days was too absurd to occupy the minds of philosophers; no one is adamant to destroy that which does not seem founded, and the weakness of the opponent often halted the vivacity of pursuits. The facts [ faits ] [8] which the religion of the pagans proposed for belief could well satisfy the avid credulity of the common people, but they were not worthy of the serious examination of philosophers. The Christian religion appeared: by the light it spread, it soon dispersed all those phantoms which superstition had previously made real; it was no doubt a most surprising spectacle for the entire world when the multitude of the gods which were its terror or its expectation had become all at once its plaything and its contempt. The face of the universe, changed in such a short time, attracted the attention of the philosophers; they all turned their eyes on this new religion which required their submission no less than that of the common people.

It did not take long for them to perceive that it was principally built on facts, extraordinary ones to be sure, but which were quite worthy of discussion, given the evidence that supported them. The dispute therefore changed; sceptics recognized the rights of metaphysical and geometrical truths over our minds, and unbelieving philosophers turned their weapons against the facts. This matter so long disputed would have been better illuminated if before pleading, both sides had agreed on a tribunal where they could be judged. So as not to incur this problem, we say to the sceptics: You recognize certain facts as true; the existence of the city of Rome, which you cannot doubt, would suffice to convince you if your good faith did not assure us this concession; there are therefore tokens that allow you to determine the truth of an event; and if there were none, where would society be? Everything depends, so to speak, on facts; survey all the sciences and you will see from the first glance that they require that one be able to rely on certain facts. You would never be guided by prudence in carrying out your projects; for what is prudence if not the foresight which, illuminating man about all that has occurred and now occurs, suggests to him the most appropriate means for the success of his undertaking and allows him to avoid the reefs on which he could run aground? Prudence, if one may speak thus, is but a consequence of which the present and past are the premises; it is therefore based on facts. I need not insist further on a truth that everyone accepts; I shall only attempt to fix for unbelievers those tokens that characterize a true fact; I must get them to see that there are such, not only for those that occur in our times, so to speak, before our very eyes, but also for those that occur in far distant lands or which by their antiquity extend across the immense space of the centuries. This is the tribunal we seek, and which must decide on all the facts we shall present.

Facts occur in sight of one or more persons; the outward part which strikes the senses belongs to the fact; the consequences that can be drawn from it are the purview of the philosopher who assumes that it is certain. For eyewitnesses the eyes are irreproachable judges, whose decision we never fail to follow; but if the facts take place a thousand leagues away, or if they are events that occurred several centuries back, what means shall we use to reach them? On the one hand, because they are not dependent on any necessary truth, they elude our minds; and on the other, either because they exist no longer or because they occur in far-off lands, they escape our senses.

We have before us four things: the deposition of the eyewitnesses or contemporary witnesses, oral tradition, history, and monuments. [9] Eye- or contemporary witnesses speak in history; oral tradition should permit us to go back to them; and monuments link, if we may so speak, their testimony. These are the unshakable foundations of moral certainty : by it we can bring the most distant objects closer, depict and give a sort of body to what is no longer visible, make present, in sum, what no longer is.

One must carefully distinguish, in the search for the truth about events, between probability and the sovereign degree of certainty , and not imagine, like a fool, that that which includes probability in its sphere leads to pyrrhonism or compromises certainty even in the slightest. I have always believed, after mature reflection, that these two things were so far apart that one did not lead to the other. If some writers had worked on this matter only after careful reflection, they would not have degraded moral certainty with their calculations. The testimony of men is the sole source that can generate evidence for distant events; the different reports on which you consider it give you either probability or certainty . If you examine the witness directly to assure yourself of his probity, the event will become only probable for you; and if you combine it with several others which support it, you will soon reach certainty . You propose that I should believe a remarkable and engaging event; you have several witnesses who depose in its favor; you talk to me about their integrity and their sincerity; you try to probe their hearts to see in the open the movements that stir them; I approve of this examination; but if I affirmed something with you on that basis alone, I would fear it was rather a conjecture of my mind than a genuine discovery. I do not believe one should support a demonstration solely on one’s knowledge of a particular man’s heart. I dare say it is impossible to prove with a moral demonstration approaching metaphysical certainty , that Cato had the integrity which his era and posterity attribute to him. His reputation is a fact that one can demonstrate; but as to his integrity, we must, despite ourselves, rely on our conjectures, because not being inside his heart, his integrity eludes our senses, and our eyes are incapable of seeing it. As long as a man is enveloped in the sphere of humanity, however truthful he has been throughout his life, it will be no more than probable that he is not fooling me about the fact he relates. Therefore, the portrait of Cato offers you nothing you can fix on with entire certainty . But have a look, if I may so speak, at the man who represents humanity at its best, see the different passions by which men are stirred, examine this striking contrast: every passion has its goal and presents views that are its own; you do not know which passion dominates the person who addresses you; and that is what makes your faith waver. But when you consider a large number of men, you could not doubt the diversity of the passions that motivate them; even their weaknesses and their vices serve to make the foundation on which you must base your judgment unshakable. I know that apologists of the Christian religion have principally emphasized the apostles’ manifestations of sincerity and integrity, and I have no intention here of impugning those who are satisfied with such evidence; but as the sceptics of our times are very difficult about what constitutes the certainty of fact, I have felt I was risking nothing to be even more difficult on this point, persuaded that the events of the gospels are raised to a degree of certainty that defies the efforts of the most excessive pyrrhonism.

If I could be sure that a witness had seen correctly and wanted to tell me the truth, his testimony would become infallible for me. It is only in proportion to the degrees of this double assurance that my persuasion grows; it will never rise to a full demonstration as long as there is just one witness and I will be evaluating that witness alone, because whatever knowledge I may have of the human heart, I will never know it perfectly enough to guess its various caprices and all the mysterious forces that move it. But what I would seek in vain in one testimony, I find in the agreement of several testimonies, because there humanity depicts itself. I can, as a consequence of the laws that minds follow, assure you that only the truth could have combined so many persons whose interests are so varied and whose passions are so opposed. Error has different forms, according to men’s turn of mind, and according to the prejudices of religion and education in which they are nourished; so if I see them, despite this prodigious variety of prejudices which so strongly differentiate nations, combine in the deposition of the same event, I ought not at all to doubt its reality. The more you prove to me that the passions that govern men are bizarre, capricious, and unreasonable, the more eloquently you will exaggerate to me the multiplicity of errors fomented by so many different prejudices; and the more you will confirm me, to your great surprise, in my persuasion that truth alone can make so many men of opposite character speak of one accord. There is no way we could give being to truth: it exists independently of man; it therefore obeys neither our passions nor our prejudices. Error, on the contrary, which has no reality other than the one we give it, is by its dependency obliged to take the form we wish to give it; it must always by its nature bear the mark of the person who invented it; so it is easy to know the temper of mind of a man from the errors he spreads. If books on morality, instead of containing their author’s ideas, were only, as they should be, a collection of experiments on the human mind, I would refer you to them to convince you of the principle I advance. Choose a striking and engaging event, and you will see whether it is possible for the coincidence of witnesses who attest to it to fool you. Remember the glorious day of Fontenoy: could you doubt the signal victory won by the French after the deposition of a certain number of witnesses? [10] At that moment you paid no attention to the integrity or the sincerity of the witnesses; the agreement swept you up, and your faith could not hold back. A striking and engaging event bring consequences with it; these events serve marvelously to confirm the deposition of the witnesses. They are to contemporaries what monuments are to posterity: like paintings disseminated throughout the region you inhabit, they represent constantly to your eyes the event that engages you: include them in the combination which you make of the witnesses together, and the event with the witnesses: the result will be evidence all the stronger that every entrance will be closed to error, for these events cannot possibly lend themselves to the passions and interests of the witnesses.

You are asking, you will say, in order to be assured of an event invariably, that the witnesses who tell you of it have opposed passions and various interests; but if these characteristics of truth, which I do not disavow, were unique, one could doubt certain events not only implicating religion, but which are even its base. The apostles had neither opposite passions nor varied interests: your combination, you continue, thus becoming impossible, will be unable to assure us of the events they attest.

This difficulty would doubtless be better placed elsewhere, when I discuss the events of the gospel; but unjust or ignorant suspicions must be checked. Of all the events in which we believe, I know none that lends itself better to the combination I am talking about than the events of the gospel. This combination is even more striking here, and I think it adds a degree of force, because we can combine the witnesses with one another and also with the events. What does it mean to assert that the apostles had neither opposed passions nor varying interests, and that any combination related to them is impossible? God forbid I should wish here to lend passions to these first founders of a religion that is certainly divine; I know they had no other interest than that of truth, but I know this only because I am convinced of the truth of the Christian religion; and a man who takes the first steps toward this religion, with the Christian who works for his conversion having no need to find it wrong, can reason about the apostles as about all other men. Why were the apostles not driven either by passion or by interest? It is because they were defending a truth which set aside passion and interest. An educated Christian will therefore say to the person he wants to convince of the religion he professes: If the events which the apostles relate were not true, they would have been led by some private interests or some favorite passion to defend imposture so obstinately, because untruth can owe its origin only to passion and interest; but, this Christian will continue, no one is unaware that taking together a certain number of men there must be found opposing passions and varying interests; they would therefore not concur if they had been guided by passion and interest. One is then forced to admit that truth alone forms that convergence. His argument will receive a new force when after comparing persons with one another he considers them alongside the events. He will soon notice that they are of a nature to favor no passion, and that there could not be any interest other than that of the truth that could have incited them to affirm them. I need not extend this argument further; it is enough to see that the events of the Christian religion are amenable to the hallmarks of truth that we assign.

Someone will say to me further perhaps: Why do you insist on separating probability from certainty ? Why do you not concede with everyone who has written on the morally evident that it is just a heap of probabilities?

Those who raise this difficulty to me have never examined the subject very closely. Certainty is itself indivisible: one could not divide it without destroying it. It is perceived in a certain fixed point of combination, and it is that point where you have enough witnesses to be sure of enough opposed passions or divergent interests, or if you wish again, where the events cannot agree either with the passions nor with the interests of those who relate them; in a word, where, on the side of the witnesses or of the event one sees evidently that there could be no possible unanimity of motive. If you take away some necessary circumstance in this combination, the certainty of the event will disappear for you. You will be obliged to fall back on the witnesses that remain, because having too few for them to represent the character of humanity, you are obliged to examine each one individually. Now that is the essential difference between probability and certainty: the latter finds its source in the general laws that all men follow, and the former in the study of the hearts of the persons addressing you; one is liable to increase, and the other is not. You would not be more certain of the existence of Rome even if you had it before your eyes; your certainty would change in nature, since it would be physical, but your belief would not for that become more unshakable. You present me with several witnesses, and you share with me the thoughtful examination that you have made of each one separately: the probability will be more or less great according to the degree of skill that I know you to have to analyze men. It is evident that these individual examinations are still partly conjectural: that is a stain we cannot wash away. Multiply those examinations as much as you wish: if your narrowed focus does not grasp the law which the minds follow, you will, it is true, increase the number of your probabilities; but you will never acquire certainty. I can understand why they say that certainty is nothing more than a heap of probabilities: it is because one can go from probabilities to certainty; not that it is, so to speak, composed of them, but because a large number of probabilities requiring several witnesses puts you within reach, leaving aside individual ideas, of extending your views to man as a whole. Far from certainty resulting from these probabilities, you are obliged, as you see, to change objects in order to achieve that. In a word, the probabilities serve certainty only because with individual ideas you get to general ideas. After these reflections it will not be difficult to feel the vanity of the calculations of the English geometer who claimed he could compute the different degrees of certainty that several witnesses can procure. It will suffice to have this difficulty placed before our eyes for it to vanish.

As that writer has it, the various degrees of probability needed to make an event certain are like a path that leads at length to certainty. The first witness, whose authority is great enough to half-assure me of the event, so it is an even bet for and against the truth of what he declares, gets me half-way there. A witness equally as believable as the first, who got me half-way there, for the very reason that his testimony carries the same weight, will only take me half-way of this half, so that these two witnesses get me three-quarters of the way. A third added to them will only get me half the remaining distance which the first two have left me to cover; his testimony, not exceeding that of the first two taken separately, should, like them, make me accomplish only half the distance, however far that is. Here is doubtless the reason: each witness can only destroy in my mind half of the reasons that prevent complete certainty of the event.

The English geometer, as we see, examines each witness individually, since he evaluates the testimony of each one separately; thus he does not follow the path I have traced to arriving at certainty . The first witness will get me half-way there if I can be sure he is not wrong, and that he did not wish to fool me about the event he reported. I cannot, I admit, have such assurance; but examine the reason for this, and you will become convinced that it is only because you cannot know the passions that motivate him or the interest that makes him act. All your views must therefore turn in the direction of this problem. You go on to examine the second witness; ought you not to have noticed that, having to reason about this second witness as you did about the first, the same difficulty still remains? Even if you have recourse to the examination of a third, it will never be anything more than individual ideas: what stands in the way of your certainty is the heart of the witnesses, which you do not know. Seek therefore a means of making it show, so to speak, in plain sight: that is what a large number of witnesses procures. You know none of them individually, yet you can be sure that no plot has brought them together to fool you. The inequality of conditions, the distance of the locations, the nature of the event, and the number of witnesses make you aware in a way you cannot doubt that there exist among them opposed passions and varying interests. It is not until you have reached this point that certainty comes to you – which is, as we see, totally exempted from calculation.

I have been asked: Do you claim to use these tokens of truth for miracles, as for natural events? This question has always surprised me. I answer in turn: Is a miracle not an event? If it is an event, why can I not use the same token of truth for the ones as for the others? Would it be because the miracle is not inscribed in the chain of the ordinary course of things? In that case, the way in which miracles differ from natural events must not allow them to be susceptible to the same signs of truth, or at least they must not make the same impression. In what way are they different then? The latter are produced by natural agents, both free and necessary; the former by a force that is not contained in the order of nature. So I see God who produced the one, and the creature who produced the other (I am not dealing here with the question of miracles): who does not see that this difference in the causes is not sufficient for the same traits of truth not to suit them equally? The invariable rule which I have assigned for assuring oneself of an event concerns neither their nature, in other words whether they are natural or supernatural, nor the causes that produce them. Whatever difference you find then in that respect could not extend to the rule, which is unrelated to it. A simple supposition will make palpable the degree to which what I am saying is true. Imagine a world where all the miraculous events we see in this one are simple consequences of its established order. Let us take the course of the sun as our example: let us suppose that in this imaginary world, the sun, suspends its course at the beginning of the four different seasons of the year, in such a way that the first day is four times longer than usual. Continue to let your imagination play, and transport men as they are to that place: they will witness this spectacle, which is quite new to them. Can we deny that without changing their organs they would be capable of assuring themselves of the length of that day? So far this is still, as you see, a matter of eyewitnesses, in other words of whether a man can see a miracle as easily as a natural event. It falls equally under the senses; the difficulty is therefore lifted with respect to eyewitnesses. Now do those witnesses who report to us a miraculous event have more facility for fooling us than for any other event? And do the tokens of truth which we have assigned not return in all their force? I can also equally combine witnesses; I can know whether some passion or some common interest makes them act; all we have to do, in a word, it to examine the man, and consult the general laws which he follows; everything is equal on both sides.

You go too far, I will be told, everything is not equal; I know the characteristics of truth that you have assigned are not without use for miraculous events, but they could not make the same impression on our minds. I have just learned that a famous man has performed a wonder: this story bears all the most striking marks of truth, such, in a word, that I would not hesitate for an instant to trust it if it were a natural event; yet they can serve only to make me doubt the reality of the wonder. To claim, you will continue, that I thereby strip these marks of truth of all the force they should have on our minds, would be to say that of two equal weights placed on two different scales, one would not weigh as much as the other, because it would not equally outweigh the side opposite itself, without examining whether the two have only the same obstacles to overcome. What seems to you a paradox is about to develop clearly before your eyes. The marks of truth have the same force for the two events; but in one there is an obstacle to overcome, and in the other there is not; in the supernatural event I see the physical impossibility opposing the impression that these marks of truth would make on me; it acts so forcefully on my mind that it leaves it in suspense; it is as if it were between two forces in combat. It cannot deny it: the mark of truth it bears does not permit that; it cannot trust it: the physical impossibility it sees prevents it from doing so. Thus, according to the marks of truth that you have assigned all the force that you give them, they do not suffice to determine me to believe a miracle.

This argument will no doubt strike any man who reads it rapidly without going into it; but the least examination suffices to make anyone see how false it is, like the phantoms that appear during the night and flee when we approach. Descend into the depths of the void: there you will see natural and supernatural events intermixed, neither ones having a greater hold on being. Their degree of possibility to emerge from that pit and appear in daylight is precisely the same; for it is as easy for God to restore life to the dead as to preserve it for the living. Let us take advantage now of all we are being conceded. The marks of truth which we have assigned are, we are told, good, and allow no doubt for a natural event that presents them. These characteristics of truth can even be applied to supernatural events; so if there were no obstacle to overcome, no reasons to refute, we would be as assured of a miraculous event as a natural one. So it only remains to be seen whether there are reasons in a supernatural event that oppose the impression that these marks ought to make. Now I dare assert that the situation is exactly the same for a supernatural event and a natural event; it is a mistake always to imagine we see the physical impossibility of a miraculous event combating all the reasons that combine to demonstrate to us its reality. For what is physical impossibility? It is the powerlessness of natural causes to produce such an effect; this powerlessness does not come from the event itself, which is not more impossible than the simplest natural event. When someone comes to tell you about a miraculous event, the claim is not that it was not produced by the forces of the natural causes alone; I admit that then the reasons that would prove the event would be not only combated but even destroyed, not by the physical impossibility, but by an absolute impossibility: for it is absolutely impossible for a natural cause by its strength alone to produce a supernatural event. You must therefore, when you are told of a miraculous event, combine the cause that can produce it with the event itself, and then the physical impossibility will not at all be able to oppose the reasons you have to believe that event. If several persons tell you that they have just seen a clock that is remarkable for the exactness with which it marks [the time] down to a sixtieth of a second: do you doubt the fact because all the locksmiths you know could not have made it, and are in a sort of physical impossibility to construct such a machine? This question no doubt surprises you, and with reason; why then, when you are told of a miraculous event, do you wish to doubt it because a natural cause could not have produced it? For the creature, should the physical impossibility of a supernatural event make more of an impression than the physical impossibility for the locksmith to construct this admirable clock? The only reasons I see are those that arise from a metaphysical impossibility that can oppose the proof of an event; this argument will always be invincible. The event which I propose that you believe has nothing absurd and contradictory for the mind: cease therefore to talk to me about its possibility or impossibility, and let us come to the proof of the event.

Experience, someone will say, disputes your response; there is no one who does not more easily believe a natural event than a miracle. There is therefore something more in the miracle than in the natural event; this difficulty in believing a miraculous event proves very well that the rule of events cannot make the same impression for the miracle as for the natural event.

If one preferred not to confuse probability and certainty , this difficulty would not occur. I admit that those who, lacking skepticism about what they are told, inquire into nothing, and feel a certain resistance of their mind to believe a miraculous event, are content with the slightest probability for a natural event; and as a miracle is always an engaging event, their mind demands more. The miracle is moreover a much rarer event than natural events; the greater number of probabilities must therefore compensate; in a word, it is harder to believe a miraculous event than a natural event only when one stays strictly within the sphere of probabilities. There is less likelihood, I admit, there must therefore be more probabilities; in other words, if someone can ordinarily trust a natural event that requires six degrees of probability, it might take ten to believe a miraculous event. I do not claim here to determine the exact proportion; but if, leaving probabilities aside, you enter the path that leads to certainty , it will all be the same. I see only one difference between natural events and miracles: for the latter we push things to the limit, and require that they sustain the most scrupulous examination; for the former, on the contrary, we do not go at all so far. That is justified by reason, because, as I have already observed, a miracle is always a very engaging event; but that does not at all prevent the rule of events from serving for miracles as well as for natural events; and if we want to examine the present difficulty very closely, we shall see that it is based only on our applying the rule of events to examine a miracle, and one does not usually apply it to a natural event. If a miracle had occurred in the fields of Fontenoy the day the battle of that name was fought; if the two armies had been able to observe it easily; if consequently the same mouths that published the news of the battle had published the miracle; if it had been accompanied by the same circumstances as that battle, and had consequences, who would trust news of the battle, and who would doubt the miracle? Here the two events are on the same level, because both of them have attained certainty .

What I have said so far is doubtless sufficient to repel easily all the darts which the author of Pensées philosophiques [ Philosophical Thoughts ] aims at the certainty of supernatural events; but the turn he gives to his thoughts presents them in such a way that I find it necessary to make a pause here. Let us listen to him speak himself, and see how he proves that one must not lend the same credence to a supernatural event as to a natural event: “I would believe without difficulty,” he says, “a single upright man who announced to me that His Majesty had just won a complete victory over the allies; but if all of Paris assured me that a dead man had just been resurrected in Passy, I would have nothing of it. If an historian deceives us or a whole people is wrong, these are not wonders.” [11] Let us dismantle this event. Let us give it all the circumstances that an event of this nature can have, because whatever circumstances we assume, the event will still remain in the order of natural events, and consequently the argument must still be valid or fail to be good in itself. It was a public person whose life mattered to countless individuals, and to whom the fate of the kingdom was in a way attached. His illness had filled every mind with consternation, and his death had utterly shattered them; his funeral was accompanied by the lamentable cries of a whole people to whom he was a father. He was buried with everyone watching, in the presence of all who mourned him; his face was exposed and already disfigured by the horrors of death. The king makes appointments to all the functions, and gives them to a man who has always been the implacable enemy of the family of the illustrious departed; a few days go by, and everything goes as it naturally should after such a death: this is the first round of the event. All of Paris is going to tell the author of the Philosophical Thoughts about it, and he does not doubt it: it is a natural event. A few days later, a man who claims to be sent by God turns up, announces some truth, and in order to prove the divinity of his legation, assembles a large crowd at the tomb of this man they so bitterly lament. At his voice, the tomb opens, the awful smell that emanates from the cadaver infects the air. The hideous cadaver, that same cadaver, the sight of which makes everyone pale, revives his cold remains in sight of all Paris who, taken aback by the wonder, recognize the emissary of God. A crowd of eyewitnesses who have touched the resurrected body and spoken with him several times, attest to this event to our sceptic, and tell him that the man of whose death he had learned a few days earlier is full of life. What does our sceptic, who is already assured of his death, reply to this? I cannot trust this resurrection, because it is more likely that all of Paris is wrong or hoped to fool me, than it is possible for this man to be resurrected.

There are two things to note in the response of our sceptic: First, the possibility that all of Paris could be wrong; second, that they meant to deceive. As to the first member of the response: it is evident that the dead man’s resurrection is no more impossible than that all of Paris is wrong, for both impossibilities are inscribed in the physical order. Indeed, it is no less against the laws of nature that all Paris think they have seen a man they have not seen, that they hear him speak, and do not; that they touch him, and do not, than it is that a dead man is resurrected. Would anyone dare tell us that in nature there are no laws for the senses? And if there are, as one cannot doubt, is not one of them for sight to see an object within the range of vision? I know that eyesight, as the author we are combating rightly observes, is a superficial sense, so we use it only for the surface of bodies, which alone suffices for making them out. But if to sight and hearing we add touch, that philosophical and profound sense, as again observes the same author, can we fear being wrong? Would that not require overturning the laws of nature relative to those senses? All Paris was able to assure itself of that man’s death: this the sceptic admits; therefore, it can likewise assure itself of his life, and consequently of his resurrection. I can then conclude against the author of Philosophical Thoughts that the resurrection of this dead man is no more impossible than the error of all Paris about this resurrection. Is it less of a miracle to animate a phantom, to give it a resemblance that can fool an entire people, than to restore life to a dead man? The sceptic must therefore be certain that all Paris could not have been wrong. His doubt, if he still has any, can therefore be founded only on the possibility that all Paris wanted to fool him. But he will come out no better with this second assumption.

Indeed, allow me to say: “Have you not lent credence to the death of this man on the testimony of all Paris, who told you about it? Yet it was possible that all Paris wanted to fool you (at least in your opinion); this possibility was not able to shake you.” I see, it is less the channel of tradition by which an event reaches us that makes the deists so defiant and suspicious, than the supernatural which is imprinted in it. But from the moment the supernatural is possible, their doubt should not end there, but only at appearances and phenomena which, becoming part of it, attest to its reality. For here is how I argue against them in the person of our sceptic: “It is as impossible for all Paris to have wanted to fool him about a miraculous event as about a natural event.” Thus one possibility should not make more of an impression on him than the other. It is therefore as ill-founded to want to doubt the resurrection that all Paris confirms to him, under the pretext that all Paris could have wanted to fool him, as it would be to doubt the death of a man on the unanimous testimony of this great city. He may say to us: this last event is not physically impossible; for a man to have died, there is nothing in that to surprise me; but for a man to have been resurrected, that is something that revolts and alarms my reason. In a word that is why the possibility that all Paris wished to fool me over the resurrection of this man makes an impression on me which I cannot deny; whereas the possibility that all Paris wished to mislead me about his death does not strike me at all. I will not repeat to him what I have already said: that these two events being equally possible, he should pause only at the external marks that accompany it, and which guide us in understanding events; so if a supernatural event has more of the external marks than a natural event, to me it will then become more possible. But let us examine the supernatural that alarms his reason and make it disappear to his eyes. It is indeed only a natural event that all Paris is proposing he believe: that this man is full of life. It is true that being already assured of his death, his being alive assumes a resurrection. But if he cannot doubt the life of this man on the testimony of all Paris since it is a natural event, he cannot then doubt his resurrection; the one is necessarily linked to the other. The miracle is bounded by two natural events, that is, the death of this man and his present life. The witnesses are sure of the miracle of his resurrection only because they are sure of a natural event. Thus I can say that the miracle is only a conclusion of the two natural events. The sceptic admits that one can confirm natural events; the miracle is a simple consequence of two facts, one of which is sure; thus the miracle which the sceptic is contesting proves to be, so to speak, composed of three things which he does not pretend to dispute, which are the certainty of two natural facts, the death of this man and his present life, and a metaphysical conclusion, which the sceptic does not contest. It consists in saying: this man who is now alive was dead three days ago; he has thus from death been restored to life. Why would the sceptic rather trust his judgment than all his senses? Do we not see every day that of ten men there are no two who envisage an opinion in the same way? That is because, you will say, of the bizarreness of those men, and their different turn of mind. I agree; but show me a similar bizarreness in the senses. If those ten men are where they can see the same object, they will all see it in the same way, and one can be sure that no dispute will arise among them over the reality of that object. Show me someone who can dispute the possibility of a thing when he sees it. I will allow him to rely rather on his judgment than on his senses: what does his judgment tell him about the resurrection of the man who was dead? That it is possible: his judgment goes no farther; it in no way contradicts the report of his senses, why then does he want to oppose them to each other?

Another argument which can illustrate the weakness of the author’s in Philosophical Thoughts is that he compares the possibility that all Paris wished to fool him with the impossibility of resurrection. Between the event and himself there is a gap to be filled, because he is not an eyewitness; this gap, this middle ground, is filled by the eyewitnesses. He must therefore compare the possibility that all of Paris is wrong with the possibility of resurrection. He will see that these two possibilities are of the same order, as I have already said. After that, he does not need to reason about resurrection, but only to examine the medium through which it comes to him. Now the examination cannot be other than the application of the rules I have given, through which one can be sure that those who report an event to you are not deceiving you; for the only issue here is to verify the testimony of all Paris. One can then say to oneself, as for natural events: the witnesses have neither the same passions nor the same interests; they do not know each other; there are even many who have never seen each other: there can therefore be no collusion among them. Besides, could one easily conceive how all Paris would decide, assuming the plot possible, to fool a man over such an event; and would it be possible for nothing about such a plot to surface? All the arguments which we have made about natural events come back as if to present themselves on their own to make us aware that such an imposture is impossible. I grant to the sceptic whom we are combatting that the possibility that all Paris should want to fool him is of a different order from the possibility of resurrection. But I maintain that the plot of a city as large as Paris, formed for no reason, lacking private interest or motive, between persons who do not know each other, even created not to know each other, is more difficult to believe than the resurrection of a dead man. Resurrection is against the laws of the physical world; this plot is against the laws of the moral world. Either one would require a wonder, with the difference that one would be much greater than the other. Nay, the one, since it is established only by arbitrary laws, and therefore is subject to a sovereign power, is not excluded by the wisdom of God; the other, because it is based on less arbitrary laws, I mean those by which he governs the moral world, could not be combined with the views of that supreme wisdom, and consequently it is impossible. For God to resurrect a dead man to manifest his goodness, or to seal some great truth: there I recognize an infinite power, directed by a wisdom as infinite as he; but for God to disrupt the order of society; for him to suspend the action of moral causes, to force men by a miraculous impression to violate all the rules of their ordinary conduct, and this in order to deceive a simple individual, in this I in truth recognize his infinite power, but I do not see any wisdom guiding it in its operations. It is therefore more possible for a dead man to be resurrected than for all Paris to deceive me about this wonder.

We know now the rule of truth that can serve contemporaries to make sure of events they communicate to each other, of whatever nature they be, either natural or supernatural. This does not suffice: it is further required that, buried as they are in the depths of the ages, they be present to the eyes of the most remote posterity. That is what we shall now examine.

What we have said so far tends to prove that an event has all the certainty of which it is capable when it is attested to by a large number of witnesses, and at the same time linked to a certain concurrence of appearances and phenomena that assume it as the sole cause for explaining them. But if the event is ancient, and becomes lost, so to speak, in the fading of centuries, who will assure us that it bears the two characteristics enunciated above, which by their co-presence raise an event to the highest degree of certainty ? How will we know that it was once attested to by a crowd of eyewitnesses, and that those monuments that still subsist today, as well as the other traces scattered down the sequence of centuries, merge with it rather than with any other? History and tradition take the place of the eyewitnesses we could wish for. It is these two channels that transmit to us a certain knowledge of the most remote events; it is by them that the eyewitnesses are virtually reproduced before our eyes, and make us, in a way, contemporaries of those events. Those marbles, medals, columns, pyramids, arcs of triumph, are virtually animated by history and tradition, and abundantly confirm to us what history and tradition have already taught us. How, says the sceptic, can these transmit an event to us in all its purity? Are they not like rivers that swell and lose their very name as they flow farther from their source? We are going to satisfy what is being asked here: we will begin first with oral tradition; from there we will pass on to written tradition or history, and we will end with the tradition of monuments. It is not possible that an event which is as if linked and enchained with these three sorts of traditions could ever become lost, or even to suffer any alteration in the immensity of time.

Oral tradition consists in a chain of testimonies given by persons who have followed each other throughout the expanse of centuries beginning with the time when an event occurred. This tradition is sure and faithful only when we can go back easily to its source, and through an uninterrupted series of irreproachable witnesses we arrive at the original witnesses who are contemporaries of the events: for if it cannot be assured that this tradition, one end of which we hold, indeed goes back to the epoch assigned to certain events, and that there has not been, well within that epoch, some impostor who amused himself inventing them in order to abuse posterity, the chain of witnesses, however well linked, being untethered, will lead us only to untruth. Now how can we attain this assurance? This is what the pyrrhonists cannot conceive, and with respect to which they do not believe it possible to establish rules with which one can discern the true traditions from the false. I only want to oppose to them the following one.

It will promptly be conceded that the deposition of a large number of eyewitnesses can only have truth at its center; we have already laid out the reasons for that. Now, I say that tradition, one end of which I am currently touching, can lead me infallibly to that circle of testimonies made by a crowd of eyewitnesses. Here is how. Several of those who lived at the time when the event took place, and who, having learned of it from the mouth of eyewitnesses, can entertain no doubts about it, live into the following age and take that certainty with them. They recount this event to people in this second age, who can make the same argument which these contemporaries made when they examined whether they should trust the eyewitnesses who told it to them. All these witnesses, they can tell themselves, being contemporaries of such an event, could not have been wrong about it. But maybe they wished to fool us; that is what we must now examine, one of these men of the second age, so named relative to the event in question, will say. First I observe, our contemplator must say, that the plot of these contemporaries to deceive us would have encountered a thousand obstacles in the diversity of passions, prejudices, and interests that divide the spirit of peoples and the individuals of a single nation. The men of the second age will, in a word, assure themselves that the contemporaries are not deceiving them, as these had assured themselves of the fidelity of the eyewitnesses: for everywhere that one assumes a large multitude of men, one will find a prodigious diversity of genius and character, passions and interests; and consequently it will easily be possible to ascertain that any plot between them is impossible. And if men are separated from each other by the interposition of seas and mountains, will they be able to meet to imagine a single event, and have it serve as the basis of the fable with which they wish to amuse posterity? The men of yesteryear were what we are today. In judging them by ourselves we imitate nature, which acts in a uniform manner in the production of the men in all times. I know that one distinguishes one era from another by a certain turn of mind and by customs [ moeurs ] that are just as different; so if we could bring back a man from each era, those who were aware of history, seeing them, would place them in a line, each taking the place of his era without error. But one thing in which all eras are uniform is the diversity that prevails among men of the same time, which suffices for what we are asking, and for assuring those of the second age that the contemporaries could not have agreed amongst themselves in order to deceive them. Now those of the third age will be able to make, with respect to those of the second age who would relate this event to them, the same argument that these latter made with relation to the contemporaries from whom they learned it: thus one will come down through all the centuries.

To make it more and more clear how pure is the channel of a tradition that transmits a public and notorious event to us (for I declare it is of this kind alone that I mean to speak, agreeing moreover that on a secret and wholly indifferent event an ancient and extensive tradition may be false), I have only this argument to make: that I defy anyone to designate in this long succession of ages a time when this event could have been invented, and consequently have a false origin. For where could this erroneous source be found of a tradition bearing such characteristics? Will it be among the contemporaries? It is entirely unlikely. Indeed, when could they have formed the plot to deceive the following ages about this event? Make no mistake: the passage from one era to the next is imperceptible. The ages follow on each other and one cannot perceive them. The contemporaries in question here are in the age following the one in which they learned of this event, which they think still to be in among the eyewitnesses who had told it to them. One does not go from one age to the next as if one went from a public square into a palace. One can, for example, make in a palace the plot to deceive a whole people assembled in a public square about a purported event, because between the palace and the public square there is a sort of wall of separation that breaks all communication between the ones and the others. But we find nothing in the passage from one age to the next which cuts all the channels through which they could communicate together. If then in the first age some fraud occurs, the second age would necessarily become apprised of it. The reason for this is that a large number of those who compose the first age enter into the composition of the second age and several others following, and that almost all those of the second age have seen those of the first; consequently, several of those who would be accomplices of the fraud form the second age. Now it is unlikely that these men whom we assume to be very numerous, and at the same time governed by different passions, should all agree to spread the same untruth, and to say nothing of the fraud to all those who are only of the second age. If some of the first age, but contemporary to those of the second, wish to entertain the illusion, do we believe that all the others who lived in the first age and are still living in the second will not cry out against the fraud? For that, one would have to assume that the same interest unites them all for the same lie. Now it is certain that a large number of men could not have the same interest in disguising the truth: therefore, it is impossible for the fraud of the first age to pass unanimously into the second without suffering any contradiction. Now if the second age is apprised of the fraud, it will apprise the third of it, and so on, down through the centuries. And if no barrier separates the ages from one another, they must necessarily pass it on in turn. No age will therefore be the dupe of the others, and consequently no false tradition can become established for a public and notorious event.

The is no set point in time that does not include at least sixty or eighty generations at the same time, running from the earliest childhood to extreme old age. Now this perpetual mixture of so many overlapping generations chained to each other makes fraud impossible for a public and noteworthy event. To be convinced, assume that all men of age forty at a determined point in time conspire against posterity to seduce it with respect to an event. I am willing to grant you that this plot is possible, although everything authorizes me to reject it. Do you think that in this case all the men who compose the generations from forty to eighty years of age, at this same point in time, will not object, that they will not make the imposture known? Choose if you wish the last generation, and assume that all the men of eighty make a plot to deceive posterity about an event. Even in this assumption, which is certainly the most advantageous one we can make, imposture could not be hidden well enough not to come to light, for the men who make up the generations immediately following can say to them: We have long lived with your contemporaries, and yet this is the first time we have heard of this event. It is too important, and it must have been too well-known, for us not to have been informed of it earlier. And if they further added that they perceive none of the consequences which that event ought to have entailed, and several other things which we will subsequently develop, would it be possible for the lie not to come to light? And could those old men hope to persuade the other men of this lie they had invented? Yet all ages are alike with respect to the number of generations; therefore, we can assume none where the fraud could take hold. But if the fraud cannot establish itself in any of the ages that make up tradition, it follows that every event that tradition brings down to us, provided it is public and engaging, will be transmitted to us in all its purity.

I am therefore certain that the contemporaries of an event were not any more able to deceive the following ages as to its reality, than they could themselves have been duped by the eyewitnesses. Indeed (may I be allowed to insist on this), I consider tradition as a chain of which all the links are of equal strength, by means of which, when I take hold of the last link, I am secured by a fixed point which is the truth, with all the strength by which the first link is attached to that fixed point. Of that here is my proof: the deposition of the eyewitnesses is the first link; that of contemporaries is the second; those who come immediately afterwards make up the third by their testimony, and so forth, coming down to the last, which I grasp. If the testimony of contemporaries is of equal strength to that of the eyewitnesses, the same will be true of all those that follow on them, and who by their close interlacing will make up this continuous chain of tradition. If there were some diminution in this gradation of testimonies that arise from each other, that reason would also take place with respect to the testimony of the contemporaries, considered respectively to that of the eyewitnesses, since one of the two is based on the other. Now whether the testimony of the contemporaries had with respect to me as much strength as that of the eyewitnesses is a thing I cannot doubt. I would be as certain that Henry IV conquered France, even if I had learned it only from contemporaries of those who could see the great and good king, as I am that its throne has been occupied by Louis the Great, although that fact is attested to me by eyewitnesses. [12] Do you want to know why? Because it is not less impossible for men all to get together, despite the distance of place, the difference of minds, the variety of passions, the clash of interests, the diversity of religions, to maintain a single untruth, than it is that several persons imagine they have seen an event which however they do not see. Men can lie, as I have said; but I defy them to do it all in the same way. It would require several persons who wrote on the same subjects to think and express themselves in the same way. Let a thousand writers treat the same material: they will all do it differently, each according to his own particular turn of mind. They will always be notable for the air, the turn, the coloration of their thoughts. Like all men who have a store of ideas, they may encounter along their way the same truths; but each of them, seeing them in his own way, will describe them in a different light. If the variety of minds suffices to put so many differences into writings that deal with the same subjects, we should believe that the diversity of the passions will not put fewer into errors about facts. It appears from what I have said so far that one must argue on the basis of tradition as on eyewitnesses. An event transmitted by a single traditional line no more deserve our credence than the deposition of a single eyewitness, for the traditional line only represents one eyewitness; therefore, it can only equal a single witness. In what way could you indeed assure the truth of an event that was transmitted to you by a single traditional line? It would be only by examining the integrity and sincerity of the men who made up this line: a very difficult discussion, as I have said, which leaves you open to a thousand errors, and will never produce more than a simple probability. But if an event, like an abundant spring, forms different channels, I can easily assure myself of its reality. Here I am using the rule that minds follow, as I have for eyewitnesses. I combine the different testimonies of each person who represents his line: their different customs [ moeurs ], their contrasting passions, and their various interests, demonstrate to me that there has been no collusion between them in order to deceive me. This examination is enough for me, since by it I am assured that they got the event they report to me from the person immediately preceding them in their line. If therefore I go back to the event on the same number of traditional lines, I would be unable to doubt the reality of the event to which all these lines have led me, because I will always make the same argument about all the men who represent their line in whatever point in time I take it.

There is, I will be told, such a great number of false traditions in the world that I cannot give in to your evidence. It is as if I were filled with countless errors that prevent them from reaching to me; and do not believe, this pyrrhonist will further state, that I pretend to speak about those fables by which most nobles flatter their pride; I know that, their being kept in a single family, you reject them with me. But I mean to speak of those events transmitted to us by a large number of traditional lines, yet the falsity of which you recognize. Such are for example the fabulous dynasties of the Egyptians, the stories of Greek gods and demi-gods, the tale of the she-wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus; such is the famous event of Pope Joan, which was universally believed for a very long time, although it was very recent. [13] If they could have given her two thousand years of antiquity, who would even have dared examine it? Such again is the history of the holy vial which a pigeon brought from heaven to serve at the consecration of our kings: [14] is this event not universally known in France, as well as others I could cite? All these events suffice to make it clear that error can come to us through several traditional lines. So that could not be made a characteristic of truth for events that are transmitted in this way.

I do not see that this difficulty makes what I have said useless: it in no way attacks my evidence, because it only takes away part of it. For I admit that an event, even though false, can come to me attested to by a large number of persons who will represent different traditional lines. But here is the difference I make between error and truth: the truth, at whatever point in time you take it, holds up; it is always defended by a large number of traditional lines that protect it from pyrrhonism, and lead you on clear paths to the event itself. The lines that transmit an error to us are, on the contrary, always covered by a certain veil that makes them easy to recognize. The further you follow them back, the more their number diminishes; and what is characteristic of error is that you come to the end without reaching the event they transmit to you. What a fact, the Egyptian dynasties! They went back several thousand years, but the traditional lines would have to lead us all the way back there. If you paid attention, you would see that it is not a fact that is being put forward here, but an opinion to which the arrogance of the Egyptians had given rise. One must not confuse what we call fact , which is our subject here, with what different nations believe about their origins. It only takes a scholar, sometimes a visionary, who claims after long research to have discovered the true founders of a monarchy or a republic, and a whole country believes it, especially if that origin flatters one of the passions of the interested peoples; but then it is the discovery of a scholar or the fantasy of a visionary, and not a fact. That will always be problematical unless that scholar finds the means of combining the different threads of the tradition with the discovery of certain histories or some inscriptions that will make innumerable monuments speak which previously had nothing to tell us. None of these facts that are cited meet the two conditions I require: that is, a great number of traditional lines that transmit them to us, so that in going back at least by most of those lines we can arrive at the fact. Who are the eyewitnesses who have deposed for the factuality of Remus and Romulus? Are there many, and have these facts been transmitted to us along firm lines, if I may be allowed this term? We see that all those who have spoken of them have done so in a doubtful manner. Let us see whether the Romans did not believe differently the memorable acts of the Scipions. It was then rather an opinion on their part than fact. So much has been written about Pope Joan that it would be superfluous for me to pause at her. It is enough for me to observe that this fable rather owes its origin to partisanship than to traditional lines; and who believed the story of the holy vial? I can say at least that if that event was transmitted as true, it was transmitted at the same time as false, so only gross ignorance could bring about such a superstition.

But I would very much like to know on what proof the sceptic I am combating regards the dynasties of the Egyptians as legends, as well as all the other facts he has cited, [15] for he must be able to transport himself to the times when these different errors occupied peoples’ minds; he must become, so to speak, their contemporary, so that beginning with them with that point of view he can see that they follow a path that leads them infallibly to error, and that all their traditions are false. But I defy him to succeed in that without the help of tradition; I defy him even more to make this examination, and to bear this judgment, if he has no rule to enable him to discern the true traditions from the false. Let him tell us then the reason that makes him take all these events as apocryphal, and what will happen is that against his intention he will establish what he claimed to attack. Will you tell me that everything I have said may be good insofar as natural events are concerned, but that that could not demonstrate the truth of miraculous events; that a great number of these events, although false, come down to posterity along any number of traditional lines? Fortify your objection if you wish with all the foolishness one reads in the Qur’an, and which the credulous Mohammedan respects; decorate it with the rapture of Romulus that has been so touted; distill your bile about all these pious fables, which out of pure caution are more tolerated than believed: what do you conclude from that? That there cannot be rules that enable us to discern true traditions from false ones having to do with miracles?

My reply to you is that the rules are the same for natural and miraculous events. You name events, and none of the ones you cite meets the conditions I require. This is not the place to examine the miracles of Mohammed, nor to put them in parallel with those that prove the Christian religion. Everyone knows that the imposter always performed his miracles in secret: if he had visions, no one witnessed them; if the trees made sensitive out of respect bow in his presence, if he makes the moon come down to earth, and sends it back into its orbit; alone present at these wonders, he faced no contradictors; all the testimonies of the event thus come down to the author of the hoax himself. That is where all the traditional lines we are being told about will end up: I see there no reasoned faith, but the most superstitious credulity. Can anyone cite against us events so poorly proved, whose imposture is discovered by the rules which we have ourselves established? I do not think one can seriously cite to us the rapture of Romulus to heaven and his apparition to Proculus; [16] this apparition is supported only by the deposition of a single witness, a deposition that fooled no one but the commoners; the senators did in this respect what their politics required. In a word, I defy anyone to cite against me an event which in its origin bears the characteristics which I have assigned, which is transmitted to posterity along several collateral lines that begin at the event itself, and which yet turns out to be false.

You are right, says Mr. Craig; [17] it is impossible not to know the truth of certain events, once you get close to the times when they occurred: the characteristics with which they are imprinted are so striking and so clear that no mistake could be made. But the lapse of time obscures and effaces, so to speak, these characteristics; the best attested events in certain times are subsequently reduced to the level of imposture and lie, and this because the force of the testimonies continually decreases, so that the highest degree of certainty is produced by the sight of the events themselves; the second, by the report of those who have seen them; and the third, by the simple deposition of those who have only heard them recounted to the witnesses of witnesses, and so forth ad infinitum.

The facts of Caesar and Alexander suffice to demonstrate the vanity of the English geometer’s calculations; for we are as convinced presently of the existence of those two great captains as people were four hundred years ago, and the reason is quite simple: it is because we have the same evidence for those facts as they had then. The succession which occurs in the different generations down through the centuries resembles that of the human body, which always possesses the same essence, the same form, although the matter that composes it partly dissipates at every moment and is renewed at every instant by the matter that takes its place. A man is always a certain man, whatever imperceptible renewal has taken place in the substance of his body, because he does not undergo a complete change all at once. Likewise, the different generations that succeed one another must be regarded as being the same because the passage from the ones to the next is imperceptible. It is always the same society of men that preserves the memory of certain events, just as a man is as certain in his old age of what he saw that was remarkable in his youth as he was two or three years after that action. Thus there is no more difference between the men who make up society at such and such a time than between a person of twenty and that same person at sixty; consequently, the testimony of different generations is as worthy of credence, and loses no more of its force, as that of a man who at twenty would relate an event he has just seen, and at sixty the same event he had seen forty years earlier. If the English writer had wished to say merely that the impression made by an event on minds is all the more intense and deep when the event is more recent, [18] he would have said nothing that is not very true. Who does not know that one is much less affected by what takes place in a narrative than by what is presented on the stage to the eyes of spectators? The man whose imagination will serve him the best to assist the actors in fooling him about the reality of an action being performed for him, will be the most affected and intensely moved. Bloody St. Bartholomew’s Day, like the assassination of one of our best kings, [19] does not by far make the same impression on us as those two events once made on our ancestors. Whatever is sensation only fades with the object that elicits it, and to the degree it outlasts it, it is always by fading until it finally disappears completely; but the conviction that arises from the force of evidence subsists universally. A well-proven event passes through the immense space of centuries without the conviction losing the power it had over our mind, whatever decline it undergoes in the impression it makes on the heart. We are indeed as certain of the murder of Henry the Great as were those who were living at that time, but we are not as affected by it.

What we have just said in favor of tradition must not prevent us from admitting that we would know very few events if we were informed by tradition alone, because this kind of tradition can be a faithful repository only when an event is engaging enough to make deep impressions in the mind and is simple enough to be easily preserved there; it is not that it can lead us into error about an event laden with circumstances and otherwise uncompelling, for then the lack of consistency we would find in the testimonies would protect us from it. Alone, it can teach us simple and significant events, and if it transmits an event to us with the written tradition, that serves to confirm it: it fixes the memory of men, and preserves the smallest detail which otherwise would escape us. That is the second monument able to transmit events, and which we shall now develop.

One would say that nature, in teaching men the art of preserving their thoughts by means of various figures, took pleasure in passing down through the centuries eyewitness accounts of events which are the most hidden in the depth of the ages so that we cannot doubt them. What would the sceptics say if, by a sort of enchantment, eyewitnesses could be detached from their own centuries to pass through those when they did not live so as to seal with their own voices the truth of certain events? What respect would they not have for the testimony of those venerable old men! Could they doubt what they would tell them? Such is the innocent magic that history proposes to perform on us: through it, the witnesses themselves seem to cross the immense space that separates them from us; they pass through the centuries and attest in all times to the verity of what they have written. Moreover, I would rather read an event in several historians who agree than to learn it from the very mouths of those venerable old men I have mentioned. I could make a thousand conjectures about their passions, their natural tendency to say extraordinary things. Those few old men who would be endowed with the privilege of the earliest patriarchs to live so long, being necessarily bound together by the most intimate friendship, and not fearing, on the other hand, being refuted by eyewitnesses or contemporaries, could easily agree to make sport of humankind: they could amuse themselves relating a large number of false wonders to which they would claim to be witnesses, imagining they share, with the false marvels they would recount, the admiration they would provoke in the soul of the credulous dullard. The only contradictions they could find would be in the tradition that had passed from mouth to mouth. But who are the men who, having learned of these events only through the channel of tradition, would dare to dispute against a troop of eyewitnesses whose venerable wrinkles would also make such a great impression on minds? One easily senses that little by little these old men could make the traditions change; but having once spoken in writing, they are no longer free to speak otherwise: the events which they have, so to speak, enchained in the different figures they have traced come down to the most distant posterity. And what justifies these events, and at the same time puts history above the testimony they would now give by mouth, is that at the time when they wrote they were surrounded by eyewitnesses and contemporaries who could easily have refuted them had they altered truth. We enjoy, with respect to historians, the same privileges which the eyewitnesses of the events they related enjoyed; for it is certain that an historian would be unable to deceive eyewitnesses and contemporaries. If today someone published a history full of astonishing and engaging events that had occurred in our time, but which no one had heard told before this history, do you think it would pass on to posterity without contradiction? The scorn into which it would fall would alone suffice to preserve posterity from the impostures it contained.

History has great advantages, even over eyewitnesses. Let a single witness tell you about an event: whatever knowledge you have of that witness, as it will never be perfect, that event will become only more or less probable for you; you will be sure of it only when several witnesses depose in its favor, and you can, as I have said, combine their passions and their interests together. History makes you walk with a more assured step: when it reports an astonishing and engaging event, it is not the historian alone who attests to it, but an infinite number of witnesses who join with him. Indeed, history speaks to its whole era. It is not to learn about engaging events that contemporaries read it, since several of them are the authors of those events; it is to admire how the facts are connected, the depth of the reflections, the coloration of the portraits, and above all its accuracy. Maimbourg’s histories have fallen into discredit owing less to their pompous phrases than to their unreliability. [20] Thus an historian could never deceive posterity unless his own era conspired with him, so to speak. Now how likely is that? Is this plot not as illusory as that of several eyewitnesses? It is precisely the same thing. Therefore, I find it necessary to make the same combinations with a single historian who tells me of an engaging event as if several eyewitnesses attested to it. If several persons during the last war had come into a neutral city, into Liège for example, and seen a crowd of French, English, German, and Dutch officers, all jumbled up together; if on their approach each had asked his neighbor what they were talking about, and a French officer had answered them: We are talking about the victory we won yesterday over the enemies, where the English especially were soundly defeated , that event will doubtless be probable for these foreigners who are arriving; but they will be absolutely sure of it only when several officers have joined together to confirm it. If, on the contrary, upon their arrival a French officer, raising his voice so as to be heard at a distance, gives them that news with great demonstrations of joy, the event for them will become certain; they would be incapable of doubting it, because the English, Germans, and Dutch who are present depose in favor of that event simply by failure to protest. That is because an historian, when he writes, raises his voice and makes himself heard by an entire era, which if it does not protest deposes in favor of the compelling things he relates. It is not a single man who is speaking into another’s ear, and who can fool him; it is a man who speaks to the whole world, and therefore could not fool anyone. The silence of all men in this circumstance makes them speak like this historian; it is not necessary that those who have an interest in not believing an event, and even in its not being believed, should admit it can be trusted, and depose formally in its favor; it suffices that they say nothing, and leave nothing that can prove the falsity of the event. For if I see nothing but arguments against an event, when they could have spoken or left invincible evidence of the imposture, I must invariably be satisfied with the historian who attests to it. And does one believe, to return to the example I have already cited, that vague statements of the English about the superiority of their nation over the French, would have been enough to make these foreigners refuse to trust the news given them in a raised and firm voice by the French officer, who by all appearances had no fear that anyone would contradict him? No, no doubt: they would have found the statements out of place, and would have asked them whether what the Frenchman said was true or false, which was all they needed for now.

Since a single historian carries so much weight about compelling events, what is one to think when several historians relate the same events to us? Can we believe that several persons have struck a deal to attest to the same untruth and attract the contempt of their contemporaries? Here we can combine both the historians as a group and those same historians with contemporaries who did not protest.

A book, you say, cannot have any authority unless it is reliably authentic. Now who will assure us that these histories placed in our hands are not faked, [21] and are genuinely by the writers to whom they are attributed? Do we not know that imposture has at all times been busy forging monuments, fabricating writings under ancient names, to color by this artifice the most false and the most modern traditions with an appearance of antiquity in the eyes of a stupid and dull people?

All these reproaches that are made against the forging of books are true; doubtless many have been forged. The severe and enlightened critique of recent times has discovered the imposture, and through those antique wrinkles by which they were purposely disfigured has detected the air of youth that has betrayed them. But despite the severity it has practiced, has it touched the commentaries of Caesar or the poetry of Virgil and Horace? How was the opinion of Father Hardouin received when he tried to deny to those two great men those masterpieces that immortalize the century of Augustus? [22] Who did not feel that the silence of the cloister was not suited to the fine and delicate turns that reveal the man of the world? Criticism, by suppressing several apocryphal works and casting them into oblivion, has confirmed in their antique possession those which are legitimate, and shed new light on them. If with one hand it has overturned, we can say that with the other it has constructed. By the light of its torch we can penetrate into the dark depths of antiquity and separate the faked works by its own rules from the authentic ones. What rules does it give us for that?

First, if a work has not been cited by the contemporaries of whoever’s name it bears, if his characteristics are not even be seen in it, and if there is some interest, either real or apparent, in its forgery, then it must appear suspect to us: thus an Artapanus, a Hermes Trismegistus, and some other authors of that sort cited by Josephus, by Eusebius, and by George Syncellus, do not bear the hallmarks of pagans, and by that fact bear their own sentence on their forehead. The same interest was behind their forgeries as those of Aristaeus and the Sibyls, which, to borrow the terms of a man of wit, spoke so clearly of our mysteries that the Hebrew prophets in comparison with them understood nothing. [23] Second, a work bears in itself signs of its own forgery when we do not see imprinted in it the character of the era when it passes for having been written. Whatever difference there is among all the minds that make up the same era, one can yet say that they have something more specific than those of other eras in the air, the turn, the coloration of thought, in certain comparisons that are more frequently used, and in a thousand other little things that are readily observed when the works are examined closely. Third, another sign of forgery is when a book alludes to usages that were not yet known at the time when it is said to have been written, or when we observe in it some features of systems of later invention, although hidden and, so to speak, disguised by a more ancient style. Thus the works of Hermes Trismegistus (I am not speaking of those that were forged by the Christians: I have mentioned them above; but of those that were forged by the pagans themselves to defend themselves against the attacks of the Christians), by the very fact that they have a tinge of the subtle and refined doctrine of the Greeks, are not authentic.

If there are marks by which a judicious critique recognizes the supposition of certain works, there are others also which serve, so to speak, as compass, and which guide it in the discernment of those that are authentic. Indeed, how can it be suspected that a book has been faked when we see it cited by ancient writers and based on an uninterrupted chain of witnesses consistent with one another, especially if that chain begins at the time when the book is said to have been written, and ends only with us? Moreover, if there were no works that cited another one as belonging to a particular author to recognize its authenticity, it would be enough for me that it had been given to me as being by such a particular author by an oral tradition sustained without interruption from his era down to me over several collateral lines. There are, in addition, works that are tied to so many things that it would be mad to shed doubt on their authenticity. But in my view the best sign of a book’s authenticity is when someone has worked for a long time at voiding its antiquity to deny it to the author it is attributed to, and for that could only find such frivolous reasons that even his declared enemies scarcely deign to pay attention. There are works that concern several realms, entire nations, even the world, which for that very reason could not possibly be fakes. Some contain the annals of the nation and its titles; others, its laws and customs; finally, there are some that contain their religion. The more men are accused in general of being superstitious and faint-hearted, to use the current expression, the more one must admit that they always have their eyes open to what concerns their religion. The Qur’an would never have been assigned to the time of Mohammed if it had been written long after his death, for an entire people could not fail to know the era of a book that determines its belief and fixes all its expectations. Let us go farther: to what time would one want to attribute a history that contained very engaging but apocryphal events? Doubtless it is not to the lifetime of the author to whom it is attributed, which would unmask the deceit; and if one wishes such an imposture not to be known to himself, which as we see is nearly impossible, would not everyone deny the events which that history contained? We have shown above than an historian could not deceive his own era. Thus an imposter, under whatever name he puts his history, would be incapable of leading the eyewitness or contemporaries into error; his misrepresentation would pass on to posterity. One must therefore say that long after the death of the purported author, this fake history was done in his name. For that it will be necessary to say also that this history was long unknown, in which case it becomes suspect if it contains notable events, and is the sole history to relate them. For if the same events which it relates are contained in other histories, the fakery is then unnecessary. I do not imagine anyone claiming it is possible to persuade all men that they have seen that book all along, and that it has not recently appeared. Do we not know with what meticulousness a newly discovered manuscript is examined, even though that manuscript is often only a copy of several others we already have? What if it were unique in its genre? It is thus not possible to fix a time when certain books too significant by their nature could have been faked.

Besides, you will say, it is not enough to be able to assure the authenticity of a book, one must further be certain it has come down to us without alteration. Now who will guarantee me that the history you are using to prove a certain event came down to me in all its purity? Does the diversity of manuscripts not seem to indicate the changes it has undergone? After that, what credit do you want me to give to the events which that history tells me about?

Only the length of time and the multiplicity of copies can occasion alteration in manuscripts. I do not believe that will be contested. But what causes the harm at the same time gives us the remedy: for if there are countless manuscripts, it is evident that everything that is the same in them is the original text. Thus you will not be able to refuse your trust to what all these manuscripts report unanimously. On the variants you are free, and no one will ever tell you that you are obliged to adhere to a particular manuscript rather than another if they both have the same authority. Will you contend that a hoaxer can alter all the manuscripts? For that, one would need to fix the time of the alteration; but perhaps no one will have noticed the fraud. How likely, especially if that book is extremely widespread, if it concerns whole nations, if the book happens to be the rule of their conduct, or if by the exquisite taste it represents it is prized by the refined public? Could it be possible for a man, whatever power we attribute to him, to disfigure Vergil, or to change the significant facts of Roman history which we read in Livy and the other historians? Were someone skillful enough to alter secretly all the editions and all the manuscripts, which is impossible, the imposture would still be discovered, because every memory would also have to be altered: here the oral tradition would defend authentic history. There would be no way to change all at once what men hold about certain events. It would also take overturning all the monuments, as we shall soon see: monuments assure the truth of history, as does the oral tradition. Peruse the Qur’an, and look for a time when that book could have been altered from Mohammed down to us. Do you not believe that we have it, at least with respect to substance, as it was given by the imposter? If this book had been turned upside down, and alteration had made of it a completely different book from the one Mohammed wrote, we should also see a different religion among the Turks, different usages, and even different manners [ moeurs ], for everyone knows how much religion influences manners. It is surprising, when such things are exposed, that anyone can suggest them. But how dare anyone make such a case of these purported alterations? I defy anyone to show us a known and significant book so altered that different copies contradict each other in the events they relate, especially if they are essential. All the manuscripts and all the editions of Virgil, Horace, or Cicero are alike with very few exceptions. We can say the same thing about all books. We shall see in the first book of this volume what constitutes the alteration with which the Pentateuch is reproached as a reason for undermining its authority.  [24] It all comes down to changes in certain words, which do not destroy the fact at all, and to different explanations of the same words, so true is it that essential alteration is difficult in a significant book: for as everyone admits, the Pentateuch is one of the most ancient books known to us.

The rules that criticism provides us for recognizing the fakery and alteration of books are not sufficient, someone will say; it must provide us with others to arm us against the untruth so common in histories. Indeed, the history that we regard as the register of events of past centuries is most often anything but that. Instead of genuine events, it feeds our foolish curiosity on fables. The history of the earliest centuries is shrouded in clouds; they are unknown lands for us where we can tread only in trembling. One would be mistaken to believe that the histories nearer our own time are for that reason more reliable. Prejudices, bias, national vanity, the difference of religions, love of the supernatural: so many open springs from which fable spreads into the annals of all peoples. Historians, by dint of trying to embellish their history and make it pleasing, very often change facts; by adding certain circumstances they disfigure them and make them unrecognizable. I am no longer surprised that some, trusting Cicero or Quintilian, tell us that history is poetry freed from versification . The differences of religion and the various opinions which in recent centuries have divided Europe have cast as much confusion on modern history as antiquity did on ancient history. The same facts, the same events become quite different according to the pens that have written them. The same man looks completely different in the different lives that have been written about him. It is enough for an event to have been posited by a Catholic for it to be immediately denied by a Lutheran or Calvinist. It is not without reason that Bayle says of himself that he never read historians with a view to learning what had occurred, but only to learn what was said in each nation and each party. After that, I do not think one can demand the trust of anyone on such warrants.

We should further have increased the difficulty of all the false anecdotes and all the little stories of our times, and concluded therefrom that all the events we read in Roman history are at the very least doubtful.

I do not understand how one can imagine overturning historic trust with such arguments. The passions cited against us are precisely the most powerful motive we have for trusting certain events. The Protestants are extremely bitter toward Louis XIV: is there anyone who, despite this, has dared disavow the famous crossing of the Rhine? [25] Are they not in agreement with the Catholics about the victories of that great king? Neither prejudices, nor bias, nor national vanity, have any affect on such brilliant and compelling events. The English may well say that they were not aided on the day of Fontenoy; national vanity may make them minimize the price of the victory and compensate for it, so to speak, with the number: but they will never dispute the fact that the French came away with a victory. One must therefore distinguish clearly between the events that history relates and the reflections of the historian; the latter vary with his passions and interests, the former remain invariably the same. Never was anyone portrayed so variously as admiral Coligny and the duke de Guise; [26] the Protestants have laden Guise’s portrait with a thousand traits that did not fit him, and the Catholics, for their part, refused to Coligny the touches he deserved. The two parties nevertheless invoked the same events to portray them; for although the Calvinists say that Admiral Coligny was a greater warrior than the duke de Guise, they yet admit that St. Quentin, which the admiral was defending, was taken by assault, and that he was himself taken prisoner; and that on the contrary the duke de Guise saved Metz against the efforts of a massive army that was besieging it, further inspired by the presence of Charles V; but according to them the admiral executed more master strokes, more acts of the heart, mind, and vigilance to defend St. Quentin than the duke de Guise to defend Metz. We see then that the two parties diverge only when it comes to reasoning about the events, and not about the events themselves. Those who raise this difficulty have only to have a look at a remark by the illustrious M. de Fontenelle, who, speaking of the motives which historians lend to their heroes, tells us: “We know very well that the historians have guessed them as they could, and that it is nearly impossible for them to have guessed exactly right. Yet we do not disapprove their pursuit of this embellishment, which does not exceed plausibility; and it is because of that plausibility that this mixture of falsehood which we recognize, which can be in our histories, does not make us regard them as fables.” [27] Tacitus lends political, profound views to his characters, where Livy would see only what was simple and natural. Believe the facts he relates, and examine his politics. It is always easy to distinguish the part of the historian from what is foreign to him. If some passion makes him act, it shows, and as soon as you see it, it is no longer worrisome. So you can trust the facts that you read in a history, especially if the same fact is reported by other historians, even if on other things they are not in agreement. This tendency of theirs to contradict each other assures you of the truth of the events on which they agree.

You will say that historians sometimes mix events so skillfully with their own reflections, to which they lend a factual air, that it is very difficult to distinguish them. It could never be difficult to distinguish a notorious and significant event from the historian’s own reflections. And first of all, what is reported in precisely the same way by several historians is obviously a fact, since several historians could not make precisely the same reflection. The things on which they coincide must therefore not come from them, and be wholly external to them; it is therefore easy to distinguish facts from the historian’s reflections once several historians relate the same thing. If you read the fact in a single history, consult the oral tradition: what you get from there could not be coming from the historian, for he cannot have communicated to the previous tradition what he thought only long after. Do you want further assurance? Consult the monuments, a third kind of tradition that can transmit events to posterity.

A notorious and compelling event always entails sequels; often it makes all matters in a very large country take on a different cast. Peoples eager to transmit these events to posterity use marble and brass to perpetuate their memory. One can say of Athens and Rome that today one treads on monuments that confirm their history; this sort of history, after the oral tradition, is the most ancient; peoples of all times have been very attentive to preserving the memory of certain events. In those early times soon after the chaos, a pile of raw stones signaled that in this spot something significant took place. After the discovery of the arts, columns and pyramids were raised to immortalize certain actions; subsequently hieroglyphs designated them more specifically: the invention of letters relieved the memory and helped it to carry the weight of so many events that would ultimately have overwhelmed it. Yet they did not cease to erect monuments, for the times when they wrote the most are also those when they made the finest monuments of every kind. A significant event that causes the historian to take up the pen puts the chisel in the hand of the sculptor, the brush in the hand of the painter; in a word, it provokes the genius of almost all artists. If we must interrogate history to know what the monuments represent, we must also consult the monuments to see whether they confirm history. If someone saw the paintings of the famous Rubens which adorn the gallery of the Luxembourg Palace, he would, I confess, learn no distinct fact; these paintings would only summon him to admire the masterworks of one of the greatest painters; but if after reading the history of Marie de’ Medici, he betook himself to that gallery, they would no longer be simple paintings for him: here he would see Henry the Great’s marriage ceremony with the princess, there the queen mourning the great king’s death with all of France. [28] Silent monuments wait until history has spoken to tell us something; history determines the heroes of the exploits it relates, and the monuments confirm them. Sometimes everything you see before your eyes serves to attest to a history you hold in your hands. Go to the Orient and take the life of Mohammed with you: what you will see and what you will read will equally instruct you about the astonishing revolutions which that part of the world suffered; churches changed into mosques will teach you the newness of the Mohammedan religion; you will distinguish the remains of an ancient people from those who subjected them; in the beautiful fragments you will find, you will easily recognize that this country has not always been in the barbarian state into which it is plunged; every turban, so to speak, will serve to confirm for you the history of the imposter.

Will you say to us that the most egregious errors as well as the best attested facts have their monuments, and that the entire world was once filled with temples and statues erected in memory of some celebrated action of the gods whom superstition worshipped? Will you further cite certain facts of Roman history, like those of Attus Navius and Curtius? Here is the way Livy relates these facts. [29] Attus Navius being an augur, Tarquinius Priscus wanted to increase the Roman cavalry. He had not consulted the flight of birds, persuaded that the weakness of his cavalry, which had just been apparent in the last combat against the Sabines, informed him much better about the necessity of increasing it than all the augurs in the world. Attus Navius, a zealous augur, stopped him and said that no innovation in the state was allowed until it was indicated by the birds. Tarquin, angry with spite, because, as they say, he did not place much faith in these sorts of things: Well, said he to the augur, you who know the future, is what I am thinking possible? The augur, after questioning his art, answered him that what he was thinking was possible. Well, said Tarquin, then cut this stone with your razor, for that was what I was thinking. The augur immediately performed what Tarquin desired of him; in memory of that act they erected on the very spot where it had occurred a statue to Attus Navius, whose head was covered with a veil, and at his feet were the razor and the stone, so this monument would commemorate the event for posterity. The feat of Curtius too was very famous: an earthquake, or some other cause, opened up the middle of the public square and made an immensely deep chasm. The gods were consulted about this extraordinary event, and they replied that it would be futile to try to fill it in; that they had to throw into it the most precious thing in Rome, and at that price the chasm would close of itself. Curtius, a young warrior, stalwart and full of daring, thought he owed this sacrifice to his country, and hurled himself in. The chasm immediately closed up, and this place has since retained the name of Lake Curtius , a monument well suited to commemorate him to posterity. [30] These are the facts that have been cited to destroy what we have said about monuments.

A monument is not, I admit, a good warrant for the truth of an event unless it was erected at the same time as the feat took place, to perpetuate its memory; even then, long after, it loses all its authority with respect to the truth of the event: all it proves is that at the time it was erected, belief in this event was public. But as an event, whatever its notoriety, can have an erroneous tradition at its origin, it follows that the monument erected long after cannot make it more credible than it was at that time. Such are the monuments that filled the whole world, when the darkness of paganism covered the entire face of the earth. Neither history, nor tradition, nor those monuments, went back to the origin of the events they represented; they could therefore not prove the truth of the event itself. For the monument only begins to serve as evidence the day it is erected; if is erected at the same time as the event, then it proves its reality, because at whatever time it was erected, one cannot doubt that then the event passed for genuine. Now a fact that passes for true at the very time when it is said to have occurred bears thereby a stamp of truth which cannot be mistaken, since it could not be false unless the contemporaries of that event were fooled, which is impossible for a public and compelling event. All the monuments cited from ancient Greece and other countries can therefore serve only to prove that at the time they were erected those events were believed, which is quite true; and that is what demonstrates what we are saying: that the tradition of the monuments is infallible when you ask of it only what it should relate, which is the truth of the event when they go back to the event itself, and public belief in the event when they were erected only long after that event. We do find, it is true, the events involving Attus Navius and Curtius in Livy, but you only have to read this historian to be convinced that they do not refute us. Livy never saw the statue of Attus Navius; he only speaks of it based on a popular rumor. It is thus not a monument that can be raised in objection; it would have to have subsisted in the time of Livy. And moreover, if you compare this event with the death of Lucrecia and the other incontestable events of Roman history, you will see that in them the historian’s pen is firm and decisive, whereas in the former case it wavers, and doubt is essentially represented in the narrative. ( Id quia inaugurato Romulus fecerat, negavit Attius Navius, inclitus ea tempestate augur, neque mutari neque novum constitui, nisi aves addixissent, posse. Ex eo ira regi mota eludereque artem (ut ferunt) agendum, inquit, divine tu, inaugura, fieri ne possit quod nunc ego mente concipio? cum ille in augurio rem expertus profecto futuram dixisset; atqui hæc animo agitavi, te novacula cotem discissurum: cape hæc et perage quod aves tuæ fieri posse portendunt. Tum illum haud cunctanter discidisse cotem ferunt. Statua Attii posita capite velato, quo in loco res acta est, in comitio, in gradibus ipsis ad loevam curiæ fuit; cotem quoque eodem loco sitam fuisse memorant, ut esset ad posteros miraculi ejus monumentum . Livy, book I, Tarquinius Priscus, reg.) [31] Besides, I believe this statue never existed, for is it likely that the priests and augurs, who were so powerful in Rome, would have allowed the ruin of a monument that was so favorable to them? And if that monument had been destroyed in the storms that almost engulfed Rome, would they not have taken great care to re-erect it at a calmer and more clement time? The people themselves, superstitious as they were, would have demanded it. Cicero, who relates the same event, makes no mention of the statue, nor of the razor, nor of the stone that lay at its feet; he says on the contrary that the stone and the razor were buried in the square where the Roman people assembled. Moreover, this event is of a different nature in Cicero than in Livy: in Cicero, Attus Navius displeases Tarquin, who is trying to make him look ridiculous to the people with the crafty question he poses to him; but the augur, by carrying out what Tarquin asks of him, makes the very subtlety of the philosopher king serve to make him respect the flight of birds which he seemed to scorn. ( Ex quo factum est, ut eum (Attium Navium) ad se rex Priscus accerseret. Cujus cum tentaret scientiam auguratus, dixit ei se cogitare quiddam: id posset ne fieri consuluit. Ille, inaugurio acto, posse respondit: Tarquinius autem dixit se cogitasse cotem novacula posse proecidi. Tum Attium jussisse experiri, ita cotem in comitium allatam, inspectante et rege et populo, novacula esse discissam. In co evenit ut et Tarquinius augure Attio Navio uteretur, et populus de suis rebus ad eum referret. Cotem autem illam et novaculam defossam in comitio, supraque impositum puteal accepimus . Cicero, de Divinatione , book I.) [32] In Livy, Attus Navius is a creature of Tarquin and the instrument he makes use of to take advantage of the Romans’ superstition. Far from displeasing him by intruding in matters of state, he is sent for by the king himself no doubt to bring him in on them. In Cicero, the question Tarquin asks of the augur is not crafty; on the contrary, it seems prepared to encourage and foment the superstition of the people. He proposes it at his house to Attus Navius, and not in the public square in the presence of the people and unexpected by the augur. It is not the first stone at hand that is used to satisfy the king’s question; the augur makes sure to bring it with him. In a word, in Cicero we see Attus Navius plotting with Tarquin to trick the people; the augur and the king seem to think the same way about the flight of the birds. In Livy, on the contrary, Attus Navius is a devout pagan zealously opposing the unbelief of a king whose philosophy could have dealt a blow to the superstitions of paganism. What faith can we place in an event with such variance, and what monuments are raised for us against it? Those where the writers who spoke of them are not in agreement. If we listen to one, it is a statue; if we listen to the other, it is a cover. According to Livy, the razor and the stone were long visible, and according to Cicero they were buried in the square. ( Cura non deesset, si qua ad verum via inquirentem ferret, nunc fama rerum standum est, ubi certam derogat vetustas fidem; et lacus nomen ab hac recentiore insignitius fabula est . Livy, book VII. q. serv. L.) [33] The feat [ fait ] of Curtius is no more favorable to the sceptics. Livy himself, who recounts it, furnishes us with the reply. According to that historian, it would be difficult to confirm the truth of this event if we wanted to find it: he senses that he has not said enough, for soon after he treats it as a fable. It is therefore with the greatest injustice that it is cited against us, since in the time of Livy, through whom we know about it, there was no evidence of it; I add that in the time of the historian it was considered a fable.

Let the pyrrhonist then finally open his eyes to the light, and recognize with us a rule of truth for facts. Can he deny their existence, he who is forced to recognize certain facts as true even though his vanity, his interest, all his passions in a word seem to conspire together to disguise the truth to him? As judge between him and me I call on only his inner sense. [34] If he tries to doubt the truth of certain facts, does he not feel the same resistance from his reason as if he were trying to doubt the most evident propositions? And if he casts his eyes on society, he will surely be convinced, since without a rule of truth for events it could not subsist.

If he is assured of the reality of the rule, he will not take long to perceive in what it consists. His eyes ever open on some object, and his judgment still in synchrony with what his eyes tell him, will make him realize that for eyewitnesses the senses are the infallible rule which they must follow with respect to facts. Immediately will come to mind that memorable day when the French monarch in the fields of Fontenoy astonished both his subjects and his enemies with his intrepidity. Eyewitness of that paternal goodness that endeared Louis even to the English soldiers, still steaming from the blood they had shed for his glory, his entrails stirred and his love redoubled for a king who, not content with watching over the welfare of the state, was willing to stoop to watching over the welfare of each individual. What he has since felt for his king reminds him every moment that these sentiments entered his heart on the report of his senses.

Every mouth opens to announce such admirable events to contemporaries. All these different peoples who despite their divergent interests and their opposed passions blended their voices with the concert of praise which the victors raised to the valor, wisdom, and moderation of our monarch, did not allow their contemporaries to doubt the events they were being told about. It is less the number of witnesses that assures us of these events than the combination of their characters and their interests both among themselves and with the events themselves. The testimony of six Englishmen on the victories of Melle and Lauffeld will make more of an impression on me than the testimony of a dozen Frenchmen. Events thus attested at their origin cannot fail to come down to posterity; this base is too firm to fear that the chain of tradition will ever be decoupled. Even though the ages pass, society always remains the same, because it is impossible to set a time when all men could change. In the succession of centuries, whatever distance one supposes, it will always be easy to go back to that era when the flattering name of Beloved was given to this king, [35] who wears the crown not to fill his head with pride, but to protect those of his subjects. Oral tradition preserves these great features of the life of a man, too prominent ever to be forgotten; but it misses through the immense space of centuries a thousand small details and a thousand circumstances, always engaging when they relate to notorious events. The victories of Melle, Raucoux, and Lauffeld [36] will pass from mouth to mouth on to posterity, but if history did not combine with this tradition, how many circumstances, glorious for the great general whom the king entrusted with France’s destiny, [37] would be plunged into oblivion! People will always remember that Brussels was won in the heart of winter; that Bergen op zoom, that reef fatal for the glory of the Requesens, Parmes and Spinolas, those heroes of their era, was overrun; that the siege of Maastricht ended the war; [38] but without the aid of history they would not know what new secrets of the art of war were deployed before Brussels and Bergen op zoom, and what sublime intelligence dispersed the enemies lined up around the walls of Maastricht to open a passage through their army to ours, so as to besiege it in his presence.

Posterity will no doubt have difficulty believing all these great exploits, and the monuments they see will be entirely necessary to confirm them. All the features history will present to them will seem to come to life in marble, brass, and bronze. The military academy will make them see how in a great soul the most long-term views and the most profound politics combine naturally with simple and truly paternal love. Titles of nobility accorded to the officers who previously had possessed noble sentiments will forever be an authentic monument to his esteem for military valor. These will be like the proofs which the historians will bring in their wake to depose in favor of their sincerity, in the great features by which they will adorn the portrait of their king. The eyewitnesses are assured by their senses of these events that characterize this great monarch; contemporaries cannot doubt them because of the unanimous deposition of several eyewitnesses, among whom all collusion is impossible, as much because of their various interests as because of their opposite passions; and the posterity which will see all these events come down to them by oral tradition, by history and by monuments will easily realize that only the truth can combine those three hallmarks. [39]

That is the proper way to defend religion. That is what we can call fighting one’s enemy hand to hand and attacking in the most inaccessible places. It is full of sense and energy and there is not the slightest hint of bile. He has not feared to leave to his antagonist whatever skill and wit he might have, because he was sure of having even more. He made him appear on the battlefield with all the art he could muster, and he was not caught in a cowardly trap, because he had to be made to confess that he was defeated, and he could be sure of this advantage. Compare this dissertation with the most potent things that have been published so far on the same subject, and you will agree that if someone had enabled such a fine piece of writing by the objections it resolves, he would have rendered an important service to religion, although there might have been some brashness in proposing them, especially in the vernacular. [40] I say perhaps, because obvious truth is bound sooner or later to obtain a similar triumph over the enchantments of sophism. In vain does untruth blow on the torch of truth; far from extinguishing it, all its efforts only make it redouble in brightness. If the author of the Philosophical Thoughts was a bit fond of his work, he would be very content with three or four writers we shall not name here out of deference to their zeal and respect for their cause; but conversely, how unhappy he would be with the abbé de Prades if he did not infinitely love truth! We invite the abbé to follow his career courageously, [41] and to use his great talents in defense of the only faith on earth that deserves such a defender as himself. We say to others and to those who would be tempted to imitate them: please know that there are no objections that can do as much harm to religion as bad answers; please know that such is the wickedness of men that if you have said nothing worthwhile, they will abase your cause, granting you the honor of believing that there was nothing better to say.

1. Évidence . In French, évidence is the quality of something that is evident, not merely things that are attested. The English noun “evidence” could be misleading and is therefore avoided in this translation except with the English meaning of facts adduced in an argument, as in a trial.

2. Démonstration , “in terms of philosophy, is said of a formal syllogism, which proves a proposition clearly and invincibly,” ( Dictionnaire de Trévoux ).

3. Galileo (1564-1642).

4. It is difficult to know to what passage of Chambers he may be referring, since the évidence/certitude contrast does not work at all the same way in English; perhaps he is thinking of Chambers’s opposition of intuitive knowledge to rational knowledge in the article “Knowledge.”

5. John Craig (1663–1731), FRS, “A calculation of credibility of human testimony,” published in 1699 (1700) issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (21: 359-65); Craig is also the author of Theologiae Christianae Principia Mathematica (‘Mathematical principles of Christian theology’), 1698.

6. Up to this point the entire article has been set in italics so as to set off Diderot’s introduction (and conclusion, later) from Prades’s “dissertation” which constitutes the bulk of the article beginning here.

7. Specifically, a school of skepticism in the 4 ^th century BCE, this name was in the 18 ^th CE century a generic term for systematic doubt or at the limit the theory that all genuine knowledge was impossible. Trévoux defines it as “The habit or affectation of doubting everything.” See also the Encyclopédie article, “Pyrrhonic or skeptical philosophy,” ascribed to Diderot.

8. Faits is sometimes translated as “facts” and sometimes as “events,” highlighting the nature of the “facts” of revealed religion which are “events” such as miracles or the Resurrection, and the importance of narrative accounts or testimony in determining certainty. The noun fait is related to the verb faire , meaning “to make” or “to do.” Thus, a fait is something that has been made or done.

9. The monuments referred to in this article are principally things like statues and engraved pedestals and the like, but can also include any kind of ruins, traces, or even documents.

10. War of the Austrian Succession: on 11 May 1745, French troops under Marshall Maurice de Saxe defeated an allied army in the Austrian Netherlands and occupied Tournai and then Brussels.

11. Pensées philosophiques, by Diderot himself, was published in June 1746 and promptly condemned by the Paris parlement . The passage quoted is from § XLVI. An English translation can be found here.

12. Since Louis XIV died in 1715 and Prades was born about 1720, he could well have met people who had seen that king.

13. The legend of Pope Joan, who was said to have held office in the 9 ^th century, has been traced back to chronicles from the 15 ^th century. In the 17 ^th century, Pope Clement VIII declared the legend untrue, but scholars continue to try to explain it.

14. This legend relates to the baptism of Clovis by St. Rémi in 508 CE.

15. Prades possibly alludes to a fairly brief treatment of the subject in Diderot’s article Egyptian philosophy in vol. 5 of the Encyclopédie ; although not printed until 1755, it could have been written before Prades’s own departure in 1752.

16. Livy says that Romulus may have been swept up to heaven in a tempest, and later appeared to Proculus Julius (book I, xvi). This anecdote is discussed, without any suggestion of its veracity, in Diderot’s Philosophical Thoughts , XLIX.

17. See note 5.

18. A memory trace was thought to be analogous to, if not identical with, a groove or fold in the surface of the brain.

19. The massacre of French Protestants on St. Bartholomew’s Day (24 August) 1572, and the assassination of King Henry IV on 4 May 1610.

20. Louis Maimbourg (1610–1686), prolific Jesuit historian.

21. Supposées , a word which in this discussion can refer either to complete forgeries or to substitutions and falsifications such as antedating of manuscripts.

22. Jean Hardouin (1646–1729) argued that most classics had to be rejected as medieval forgeries.

23. I.e., though pagan they anticipated important aspects of Christian teaching.

24. Diderot had stated at the outset that this “dissertation” by Prades was intended to serve as “preliminary discourse for an engaging work on the truth of religion.”

25. A major event of 1744 in the War of the Austrian Succession.

26. Gaspard II de Coligny (1519–1572) was a Huguenot leader in the French Wars of Religion and defender of St. Quentin in August 1557; François de Guise (1519–1563) was the Catholic defender of Metz in 1552.

27. Sur l’histoire [On history], in Œuvres de Monsieur de Fontenelle (Amsterdam, 1764), vol. 9, p. 242.

28. Peter Paul Rubens’ (1577-1640) series of 24 history paintings known as the Marie de’ Medici cycle, is today housed in the Louvre.

29. Livy, Ab urbe condita , book 1, xxxvi, 5. Diderot also discusses this anecdote in Philosophical Thoughts , XLVII.

30. The legend of Marcus Curtius also comes principally from Livy, Ab urbe condita , 7, vi.

31. “Now as Romulus had acted under the sanction of the auspices, Attus Navius, a celebrated augur at that time, insisted that no change could be made, nothing new introduced, unless the birds gave a favourable omen. The king’s anger was roused, and in mockery of the augur’s skill he is reported to have said, ‘Come, you diviner, find out by your augury whether what I am now contemplating can be done.’ Attus, after consulting the omens, declared that it could. ‘Well,’ the king replied, ‘I had it in my mind that you should cut a whetstone with a razor. Take these, and perform the feat which your birds portend can be done.’ It is said that without the slightest hesitation he cut it through. There used to be a statue of Attus, representing him with his head covered, in the Comitium, on the steps to the left of the senate-house, where the incident occurred. The whetstone also, it is recorded, was placed there to be a memorial of the marvel for future generations.” ( Ab urbe condita , I, xxxvi, 3–5, trans. Canon Roberts, 1912.)

32. “The consequence was that King Priscus summoned him to his presence. The king, wishing to make trial of his skill as an augur, said to him: ‘I am thinking of something; tell me whether it can be done or not.’ Attus, having taken the auspices, replied that it could be done. Thereupon Tarquinius said that what he had been thinking of was the possibility of cutting a whetstone in two with a razor, and ordered the trial to be made. So the stone was brought into the comitium, and, while the king and his people looked on, it was cut in two with a razor. The result was that Tarquin employed him as his augur, and the people consulted him about their private concerns. Moreover, according to tradition, the whetstone and razor were buried in the comitium and a stone curbing placed over them.” ( De divinatione , I, xvii, 32, Loeb Classical Library, 154.)

33. “Diligence would not be wanting, were there any path which could lead the inquirer to the truth; as it is, one must hold by the tradition, where antiquity will not allow us to be certain; and the name of the pool is better known from this more recent legend.” (Livy, VII, 6, Harvard University Press, 1924.)

34. On this concept in metaphysics, see the article Inner sense by an unknown author, which begins: “The inner sense that each of us has of his own existence, and of what he experiences within himself, is the first source and principle of all truth of which we are susceptible.

35. Louis XV was often called le bien-aimé after recovering from a nearly fatal illness at Metz in 1744.

36. Melle, in East Flanders (1745); Rocourt or Rocoux (1746) and Lawfeldt (1747), in Belgium: all of this in the context of the War of Austrian Succession.

37. Marshall Maurice de Saxe.

38. The Spaniard Luis de Requeséns y Zúñiga was governor of the Spanish Netherlands 1573–1576 in the context of the Dutch rebellion (Eighty Years’ War). Bergen op zoom was unsuccessfully besieged by Alessandro Farnese, duke of Parma (1588), and by Ambrogio Spinola (1622), but was to be taken and sacked by the French in 1747. The Siege of Maastricht took place in April–May 1748.

39. Here ends Prades’s “dissertation.” The following paragraph is marked with an asterisk, signature of Diderot. In addition, this paragraph is set in italics, as Diderot’s text which introduced it was. It is, of course, Diderot himself, author of Philosophical Thoughts , whom Prades has been attacking in this long tirade.

40. There was much more leeway given to religious subjects when discussed in Latin rather than French.

41. At this point (1753), Prades was in exile in Prussia.