" From that time I
resolved never to argue.
_HELVETIA_
Happy Helvetia! to what charter do you owe your liberty? to your
courage, to your resolution, to your mountains.
"But I am your emperor."
"But I do not want you any longer."
"But your fathers were my father's slaves."
"It is for that very reason that their children do not wish to serve
you."
"But I had the right belonging to my rank."
"And we have the right of nature."
Why is liberty so rare?
Because it is the chiefest good.
_HISTORY_
DEFINITION
History is the recital of facts given as true, in contradistinction to
the fable, which is the recital of facts given as false.
There is the history of opinions which is hardly anything but a
collection of human errors.
The history of the arts can be the most useful of all when it joins to
the knowledge of the invention and the progress of the arts the
description of their mechanism.
Natural history, improperly called _history_, is an essential part of
natural philosophy. The history of events has been divided into sacred
history and profane history; sacred history is a series of divine and
miraculous operations whereby it pleased God once on a time to lead the
Jewish nation, and to-day to exercise our faith.
FIRST FOUNDATIONS OF HISTORY
The first foundations of all history are the recitals of the fathers to
the children, transmitted afterward from one generation to another; at
their origin they are at the very most probable, when they do not shock
common sense, and they lose one degree of probability in each
generation.
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