Giphantia. Charles-François Tiphaigne de La Roche

into nothing. We cherish, with our utmost care, such as are sufficiently organized to produce their kind; and then plant them out in the Earth.

      A Naturalist wonders sometimes to find plants that had never been noticed before: it is because we had just then supplied the earth with them, of which he had not the least suspicion.

      Sometimes also these Exotics not meeting with a proper Climate, decay by degrees and the species is lost. Such are those productions which are mention’d by the Antients and which the Moderns complain are no where to be found.

      Such a plant still subsists but has long droop’d, and lost its qualities, and deceives the Physician who is daily disappointed. The Art is blam’d; it is not known that the fault is in Nature.

      I have now a collection of new simples of the greatest virtue; and I should have imparted them to mankind before now, had there not been strong reasons to induce me to delay it.

      For instance, I have a sovereign plant to fix the human mind, and which would give steadiness even to a Babylonian: but for these fifty years I have been diligently observing Babylon, and have not found one single moment, wherein the Inclinations, Customs, and Manners have been worth fixing.

      I have another plant, most excellent for checking the too lively sallies of the spirit of invention: but thou knowest how rare these sallies are now-a-days: never was invention at a lower ebb. One would think that every thing has been said, and that nothing more remained but to adapt things to the taste and mode of the age.

      I have a root which would never fail to allay that sourness of the Learned who censure one another: but I observe that without their abusing and railing at each other, no man would concern himself about their disputes. It is a sort of pleasure to see them bring themselves as well as Learning into contempt. I leave the malignity of the readers to divert themselves with the malignity of the Authors.

      Moreover, do not imagine that nature sleeps in any part of the earth; she strenuously labours even in those infinitely minute spaces where the eye cannot reach. At Giphantia, she disposes matter on extraordinary plans, and perpetually tends to produce something new: she every where incessantly repeats her labours, still endeavouring to carry her works to a degree of perfection which she never attains. These flowers which so agreeably strike the eye, she strives to render still more beautiful. These animals, which to you seem so dextrous, she endeavours to render still more so. In short, Man that to you appears so superior to the rest, she tries to render still more perfect; but in this her endeavours prove the most unsuccessful.

      Indeed, one would think that mankind do all in their power to remain in a much lower rank than nature designs them! and they seldom fail to turn to their hurt the best dispositions she gives them for their Good. On the Babylonians, for instance, nature has bestowed an inexhaustible fund of agreeableness. Her aim was manifestly to form a people the most aimable. They were made to enliven reason, to root out the thorns that spring from the approaches of the sciences, to soften the austerity of wisdom, and, if possible, to adorn virtue. Thou knowest it: her favours which should have been diffused on these objects have been diverted from their destination; and frivolousness and debauchery have been cloathed with them. In the hands of the Babylonians, vice loses all her deformity. Behold in their manners, their discourses, their writings, with what discretion vice unveils herself, with what art she ingages, with what address she insinuates: you have not yet thought of her, and she is seated in your heart. Even he who, by his function, lifts up his voice against her, dares not paint her in her true colours. In a word, no where does vice appear less vice than at Babylon. Even to the very names, all things are changed, all things are softened. The sincere and honest are now-a-days your modish men who are outwardly all complaisance but inwardly full of corruption: Good company are not the Virtuous but those who excel in palliating vice. The man of fortitude is not he that bears the shocks of fortune unmoved, but he that braves Providence. Bare-faced Irreligion is now styled free-thinking, blasphemy is called boldness of speech, and the most shameful excesses, Gallantry. Thus it is that with what they might become a pattern to all nations, the Babylonians (to say no worse) are grown libertines of the most seducing and most dangerous kind.

CHAP. V.

       The Apparitions.

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      I return (continues the Prefect of Giphantia) to the elementary spirits. Their constant abode in the air, always full of vapours and exhalations; in the sea, ever mixed with salts and earths; in the fire, perpetually used about a thousand heterogeneous bodies; in the earth, where all the other elements are blended together: this abode, I say, by degrees spoils the pure essence of the spirits, whose original nature is to be (as to their material substance) all fire, all air, or other unmixt element. This degradation has sometimes gone so far, as that by the mixture of the different elements, the spirits have acquired a sufficient consistence to render them visible. People have seen them in the fire and called them Salamanders, and Cyclops: they have seen them in the air and called them Sylphs, Zephyrs, Aquilons: they have seen them in the water and called them Sea-nymphs, Naiads, Nereids, Tritons: they have seen them in caverns, desarts, woods, and have called them Gnomes, Sylvans, Fauns, Satyrs, &c.

      From the astonishment caused by these Apparitions, men sunk into fear, and fear begot superstition. To these, Creatures like themselves, they erected altars which belong only to the Creator. Their imagination magnifying what they had seen, they soon formed a Hierarchy of Chimerical Deities. The Sun appeared to them a luminous chariot guided by Apollo through the celestial plains; Thunder, a fiery bolt darted by Jupiter at the heads of the guilty: the Ocean, a vast empire, where Neptune ruled the waves: the bowels of the earth, the gloomy residence of Pluto, where he gave laws to the pale and timorous Ghosts: in a word, they filled the world with Gods and Goddesses. The Earth itself became a Deity.

      When the elementary Spirits perceived how apt their Apparitions were to lead men into error, they took measures to be no longer visible: they devised a sort of refiner by which from time to time they get rid of all extraneous matter. From thence forward, no mortal eye has ever seen the least glimpse of these spirits.

CHAP. VI.

       The Surfaces.

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      Mean while the Prefect moved on and I followed, quite astonished and pensive. At our coming out of the wood we found ourselves before a hill, at the foot of which stood a hollow column above a hundred feet high and thick in proportion. I saw issuing out of the top of the column vapours (much like the exhalations raised by the sun) in such abundance that they were very visible. From the same column I saw coming out and dispersing themselves in the air certain human forms, certain images still lighter than the vapours by which they were supported.

      Behold (says the Prefect) the Refiner of the Elementary Spirits. The column is filled with four Essences, each of which has been extracted from each element. The Spirits plunge into them, and by a mechanism, too long to be described, get rid of all extraneous matter. The images which thou seest coming out of the column, are nothing more than very thin surfaces which surrounded them and served to make them visible. These surfaces partake of the different qualities of the spirits who excel more or less in certain respects, as visages are expressive of the characters of men, who differ infinitely. Thus, there are images or surfaces of science, of learning, of prudence, of wisdom, &c.

      Men often cloath themselves with them, and like masks these surfaces make them appear very different from what they really are. Hence it is that you constantly meet with the appearance of every good, of every virtue and every quality, though the things themselves are scarce to be found any where.

      At Babylon especially, these surfaces are in singular esteem: all is seen there in appearance. A Babylonian had rather be nothing and appear every thing than to be every thing and appear nothing. So, you see only surfaces every where and of every kind.

      Surface