things were inspired by their genius. The nine muses were nine genii, whom it was necessary to invoke ; therefore Ovid says:

Et Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo.

The God within us, he the mind inspires.

But, properly speaking, is genius anything but ca pability? What is capability but a disposition to succeed in an art? Why do we say the genius of a language? It is, that every language, by its terminations, articles, participles, and shorter or longer words, will necessarily have exclusive properties of its own.

By the genius of a nation is meant the character, manners, talents, and even vices, which distinguish one people from another. It is sufficient to see the French, English, and Spanish people, to feel this dif

ference.

We have said, that the particular genius of a man for an art is a different thing from his general talent; but this name is only given to a very superior ability. How many people have talent for poetry, music, and painting; yet it would be ridiculous to call them geniuses.

Genius, conducted by taste, will never commit a gross fault. Racine, since his Andromache, Le Poussin, and Rameau, have never committed one.

Genius, without taste, will often commit enormous errors; and, what is worse, it will not be sensible of them.

GEOGRAPHY.*

GEOGRAPHY is one of those sciences which will always require to be perfected.

Notwithstanding the pains that have been taken, it has hitherto been impossible to have an exact description of the earth. For this great work, it would be necessary that all sovereigns should come to an under

* The greater part of this article is taken up with a detail of the deficiencies of the elementary works on geography in use when Voltaire wrote: a few characteristic passages only are retained.-T.

standing, and lend mutual assistance. But they have ever taken more pains to ravage the world than to measure it.

No one has yet been able to make an exact map of Upper Egypt, nor of the regions bordering on the Red Sea nor of the vast country of Arabia.

Of Africa we know only the coasts: all the interior is no more known than it was in the times of Atlas and Hercules. There is not a single well-detailed map of all the Grand Turk's possessions in Asia; all is placed at random, excepting some few large towns, the crumbling remains of which are still existing. In the states of the Great Mogul something is known of the relative positions of Agra and Delhi; but from thence to the kingdom of Golconda everything is laid down at a

venture.

It is known that Japan extends from about the thirtieth to the fortieth degree of north latitude; there cannot be an error of more than two degrees, which are about fifty leagues; so that, relying on one of our best maps, a pilot would be in danger of losing his track or his life.

As for the longitude, the first maps of the jesuits determined it between the hundred and fifty-seventh and the hundred and seventy-fifth degree; whereas, it is now determined between the hundred and fortysixth and the hundred and sixtieth.

China is the only Asiatic country of which we have an exact measurement; because the emperor Kam-hi employed some astronomical jesuits to draw exact maps, which is the best thing the jesuits have done. Had they been content with measuring the earth, they would never have been proscribed.

In our western world, Italy, France, Russia, England, and the principal towns of the other states, have been measured by the same method which was employed in China; but it was not until a very few years ago, that in France it was undertaken to form an entire topography. A company taken from the Academy of Sciences dispatched engineers or surveyors into every corner of the kingdom, to lay down even the meanest hamlet, the

smallest rivulet, the hills, the woods, in their true places. Before that time, so confused was the topography, that on the eve of the battle of Fontenoi, the maps of the country being all examined, every one of them was found entirely defective.

If a positive order had been sent from Versailles to an inexperienced general to give battle, and post himself as appeared most advisable from the maps, as sometimes happened in the time of the minister Chamillars, the battle would infallibly have been lost.

A general who should carry on a war in the country of the Morlachians, or the Montenegrians, with no knowledge of places but from the maps, would be at as great a loss as if he were in the heart of Africa.

Happily, that which has often been traced by geographers, according to their own fancy, in their closets, is rectified on the spot.

In geography, as in morals, it is very difficult to know the world without going from home.

It is not with this department of knowledge as with the arts of poetry, music, and painting. The last works of these kinds are often the worst. But in the sciences, which require exactness rather than genius, the last are always the best, provided they are done with some degree of care.

One of the greatest advantages of geography, in my opinion, is this:-Your fool of a neighbour, and his wife almost as stupid, are incessantly reproaching you with not thinking as they think in the rue St. Jacques.

"See," say they, "what a multitude of great men have been of our opinion, from Peter the Lombard down to the abbé Petit-pied. The whole universe has received our truths; they reign in the faubourg St. Honoré, at Chaillot and at Etampes, at Rome and among the Uscoques." Take a map of the world; show them all Africa, the empires of Japan, China, India, Turkey, Persia, and that of Russia, more extensive than was the Roman empire; make them pass their finger over all Scandinavia, all the north of Germany, the three kingdoms of Great Britain, the greaterpart of the Low Countries, and of Helvetia; in short

make them observe, in the four great divisions of the earth; and in the fifth, which is as little known as it is great in extent, the prodigious number of races, who either never heard of those opinions, or have combated them, or have held them in abhorrence, and you will thus oppose the whole universe to the rue St. Jacques.

You will tell them that Julius Cæsar, who extended his power much further than that street, did not know a word of all which they think so universal; and that our ancestors, on whom Julius Cæsar bestowed the lash, knew no more of them than he did.

They will then, perhaps, feel somewhat ashamed at having believed that the organ of St. Severin's church gave the tone to the rest of the world.

GEOMETRY.

THE late M. Clairaut conceived the idea of making young people learn the elements of geometry with facility. He wished to go back to the source, and to trace the progress of our discoveries and the occasions which produced them.

This method appears agreeable and useful; but it has not been followed. It requires in the master a flexibility of mind which knows how to adapt itself, and an accommodating spirit which is rare among those who follow the routine of their profession.

It must be acknowledged that Euclid is somewhat unattractive; a beginner cannot divine whither he is to be led. Euclid says, in his first book, that "if a straight line is divided into two equal and into two unequal parts, the squares of the unequal segments are double of the squares of half the line, and of the portion of it included between the points of intersection.'

A diagram is necessary to understand this obscure theorem; and when it is understood, the student says, -Of what service can it be to me? what does it matter? He is disgusted with a science, of which he does not soon enough perceive the utility.

Painting began with the desire of roughly sketching

on a wall the features of some one dear to the designer. Music, before the octave was found, was a rude mixture of some sounds which were pleasing to the ear.

The setting of the stars was observed before men became astronomers. And it appears that the course of beginners in geometry should be similarly guided.

I will suppose that a child of ready conceptions hears his father say to his gardener," his gardener," you will plant tulips on this flower-bed half a foot from one another." The child wishes to know how many tulips there will be. He runs to the flower-bed with his tutor. The parterre is inundated, and only one side of the flower-bed appears. This side is thirty feet long; but the breadth is not known. The master in the first place easily makes him understand that these tulips must border the parterre at the distance of six inches from one another. Here are already sixty tulips for the first row on that side. There are to be six lines. The child sees that there will be six times sixty, or three hundred and sixty tulips. But what will be the breadth of this bed, which I cannot measure? It will evidently be six times six inches, which are three feet.

He also

He knows the length and the breadth. wishes to know the superficies. Is it not true, his teacher asks him, that if you were to run a rule three feet long and one foot broad over this bed, from one end to the other, it would successively have covered the whole? Here, then, we have the superficies; it is three times thirty. This piece of ground is ninety square feet.

A few days after, the gardener stretches a cord lengthwise from one angle to the other; which cord divides the rectangle into two equal parts.

This, says the pupil, is the same length as one of the two sides.

No. It is longer.

TUTOR.

PUPIL.

How? If I pass a line over this cross-line, which you call a diagonal, it will be no longer than the two others. When I form the letter N, is not this line,