Among us, on the contrary, a standard is brought from heaven by an angel
to the monks of Saint-Denis; a pigeon brings a bottle of oil to a church
in Rheims; two armies of snakes give themselves over to a pitched battle
in Germany; an archbishop of Mayence is besieged and eaten by rats; and,
to crown everything, great care has been taken to mark the year of these
adventures.
All history is recent. It is not astonishing that we have no ancient
profane history beyond about four thousand years. The revolutions of
this globe, the long and universal ignorance of that art which transmits
facts by writing are the cause of it. This art was common only among a
very small number of civilized nations; and was in very few hands even.
Nothing rarer among the French and the Germans than to know how to
write; up to the fourteenth century of our era nearly all deeds were
only attested by witnesses. It was, in France, only under Charles VII.,
in 1454, that one started to draft in writing some of the customs of
France. The art of writing was still rarer among the Spanish, and from
that it results that their history is so dry and so uncertain, up to the
time of Ferdinand and Isabella. One sees by that to what extent the very
small number of men who knew how to write could deceive, and how easy it
was to make us believe the most enormous absurdities.
There are nations which have subjugated a part of the world without
having the usage of characters.
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