144

Flatterers of Despots

[Book I.

vated talents wherever they are found. ‘ We might as well (says Seneca)commend a horse for his splendid trappin gs, as a man for his pompous ad-ditions.’

Let any unsophisticated mind peruse the dedications of European Works,in almost all departments of Science , for the last two centuries, and hewill find every attribute of the Deily blasphemously lavished on the vilestof princes, and on titled dolts, with a degree of ardor and apparent sin-cerity, that is as loathsome as the grossest practices of heathen idolatry. Atthe same time, these individuals who thus idolize, sometimes an idiot, atothers an infant, and often a brüte, affect pity for the ignorance and Super-stition of ancient pagans and modern savages.

But why this display of servile adulation ? Formerly to obtain bread:in later times to procure title, hereditary title.

If there is one dass of men, whose extensive knowledge of nature,and the sublimity of whose studies should lead them thoroughly to des-pise the tinsel and trappings of courts, and the unnatural, and to thegreat mass, degrading distinctions in European society, it is astronomers;men whose researches are preeminently calculated to ennoble the mind,whose labors have elicited the highest admiration of their talents, andwhose discoveries have opened sources of intellectual pleasures so refined,that pure intelligences might rejoice in them. That such men should stoopto lay at the feet of ignorant and sensual despots, their fame, their learmng,and in some degree the Science of which they are the conservators, andaccept from those, who are immeasurably their inferiors, what are prepos-terously named titles of honor, i. e. puerile and artificial distinctions,which, while they profess to advance those who are already in the fore-most ranks of society—really lower and degrade them—titles, relics oftimes when men were advanced but a few Steps from the savage state, andconferred by ceremonies which are the very essence of buffoonery,—istruly one of the most lamentable facts connected with the history of mo-dern Science.

Learned men by thus connecting themselves with the state, consummatean unholy, an unnatural alliance, and subject even Science herseif (al-though they may not intend it) to politicians to speculate on. Thev in ameasure, commit suicide on their fame, by thus supporting political insti-tutions, that can only exist by silencing the throbbings and stifling the aspi-rations of the general mind after knowledge; institutions, which, like theold errors in philosophy, are destined to be exploded forever. It will, wethink, one day appear strangely incongruous, that some of the brightestluminaries of Science should have turned to royal despots for factitious rank;as if they, in whose fair fame the World feels an interest, could descend fromtheir radiant spheres to move as satellites around such, with an increaseof lustre 1 Who can behold without sorrow, these men rendering homage .by kneeling and other more disgusting mummeries, to individuals who arenot only their inferiors in every attribute that adorns humanity, but often themost atrocious of criminals, and sometimes mere insensates ; to beg a por- |tion of honor, and a title to use it! When the World becomes free and |enlightened, such examples will be adduced as illustrations of the vaga-ries and inconsistencies of the human mind; and patents of nobility andhereditary titles of honor, especially from such sources, will be lookedupon as satires on Science , on the age, and on the intellect of man.

These titles form the most conspicuous feature in that System of impo-sition by which the European world has too long been deluded and de-based ; and in a political point of view, the friends of man’s inalienablerights, and of the amelioration of his condition, will always regret, that