Fetching
One moment.
1L’homme n’a point fu conserver cette sublime jouissance qui fut jadis son apanage , il a voulu transposer l’ordre de ces quatre points fondamentaux de toute lumière , & de toute vérité ; or les transposer , c’est: les confondre ; & les confondre , c’est les perdre , & s’en priver. C’est pour cela que l’homme est aujourd’hu1 ravalé dans les classes inférieures , où non seulement il ne connoît plus cette lumière intellectuelle qui malgré tous nos crimes conserve éternellement sa splendeur ? mais encore où il a peine à l’appercevoir quelquefois , & où il devient souvent pour elle ce que sont les minéraux par rapport à la lumière élémentaire. C’est cependant au mileu de cette privation que N A T IT R JE ti 97, que les hommes imprudens se laissent aller à concevoir des idées si hazardées sur leur nature , à bâtir des systêmes aveugles sur les liens qut nous retiennent en esclavage ; à nous perfuaden même que par le suicide nous pouvons parvenir; à les briser. Si Dieu seul connoît les chaînes qui lient notre Etre inrelle&uel avec la région temporelle , lut seul sans doute a la puissance d’en opérer la rupture : mais ne craignons point de dire qu’il n’en, a pas la volonté ; attendu qu’il agiroit alors contre sa justice.
2L’homme , au contraire y peut bien avoir 1 X volonté de se délivrer de ces entraves étrangères à sa propre nature mais il n’en a pas la puis— ; fance ; car les malheureux qui se donnent la mort , croient en vain échapper aux maux & aux pâtimens : ils ne peuvent détruire ni éviter une loi qui condamne l’homme injuste à souffrir. Et en effet , les hommes impurs peuvent être' séparés de leur corps , sans être pour cela séparés de leur ame sensible ,• puisque , selon les principes précédera , si leur corps , quoique réel pouC les autres corps , n’est qu’apparent pour leur Etre intellectuel , ils doivent être , après qu’ils se sont délivrés de ce corps , ce qu’ils étoient pendanî qu’ils y étoient renfermés, G Tableau Si c’étoit donc la foibîesse à supporter le^ Couleurs ; si c’étoit le poisson des vices & les vapeurs du crime , qui leur rendroient la vie corporelle insupportable , la mort du corps n’a rien changé à leur situation intelleêtuelîe ; ils sont encore rongés par les mêmes poissons j ils ont encore les mêmes vapeurs à relpirer , les mêmes langueurs à subir; en un mot, ils sont comme ces fruits peu mûrs & déjà gâtés , dont la qualité mal saine ne change pas , quoiqu’on, leur ôte leur enveloppe , & qui recevant par-là plus immédiatement l’action d elV/'r, ne sont que se corrompre davantage.”
3En outre , l’homme pouvant se fouiller de plusieurs crimes pendant sa vie , & s’identifier avec une multitude d’objets contraires à son être , il doit , après la mort , éprouver fuccefïïvement toutes les impressions relatives à ces objets ] il doit se nourrir encore des affections «Scdes goûts qui lui ont paru les plus innocens pendant sa vie , mais qui n’ayant point à lui offrir un but solide & vrai , biffent son Etre dans l’inaction & le néant. Ce sont toutes ces sub fiance s étrangères qui sont alors le tourment du Suicide , comme de tout autre coupable privé de la vie : ,, & peut-être trouverions-nous ici quelque explication du fyfitême de la Métempsycose , dans lequel les Nature jÜ 99 Ibommes , après leur mort , sont encore liés \ différens objets élémentaires , & même sont transformés en plantes & en vils animaux ; expressions qui ne sont que la peinture des goûts, des vices > des objets dont l’homme a fait ses idoles sur la Terre ” : car qui sont ceux dont l’Ecre , apiès la mort , sera assailli par les tourmens & les îllusions de leur ame sensible ? Enfin , qui seront ceux dont l’Etre vivra sensiblement , quoique séparé de leur corps ? ce seront ceux qui ici-bas auront vécu séparés de leur Etre ?
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
1Man knew not how to preserve that sublime enjoyment which was once his appanage; he wished to transpose the order of those four fundamental points of all light & of all truth; now to transpose them is to confound them; & to confound them is to lose them, & to deprive oneself of them. It is for this that man is today1 brought down into the inferior classes, where not only does he no longer know that intellectual light which despite all our crimes preserves eternally its splendour, but where further he has difficulty in perceiving it sometimes, & where he becomes often toward it what minerals are in relation to elementary light. It is nevertheless in the midst of this privation that N A T IT R JE ti 97, imprudent men let themselves go to conceiving ideas so hazarded upon their nature, to building blind systems upon the bonds which hold us in slavery; even to persuading us that by suicide we may come to break them. If God alone knows the chains which bind our intellectual Being with the temporal region, he alone doubtless has the power to work their rupture: but let us not fear to say that he has not the will; seeing that he would then act against his justice.
2Man, on the contrary, may well have 1 X the will to deliver himself from these fetters foreign to his own nature, but he has not the power; for the wretches who give themselves death believe in vain that they escape ills & sufferings: they can neither destroy nor avoid a law which condemns the unjust man to suffer. And in effect, impure men may be separated from their body without being for that separated from their sensible soul; since, according to the preceding principles, if their body, though real for other bodies, is but apparent for their intellectual Being, they must be, after they have delivered themselves from that body, what they were while they were shut up in it. G Tableau If it were then weakness in bearing pains; if it were the poison of the vices & the vapours of crime which rendered corporeal life insupportable to them, the death of the body has changed nothing in their intellectual situation; they are still gnawed by the same poisons; they have still the same vapours to breathe, the same languors to undergo; in a word, they are like those fruits little ripe & already spoiled, whose unwholesome quality does not change though their envelope be taken from them, & which thereby receiving more immediately the action of the air, do but corrupt themselves the more."
3Moreover, man being able to defile himself with several crimes during his life, & to identify himself with a multitude of objects contrary to his being, he must, after death, undergo successively all the impressions relative to those objects; he must feed still upon the affections & the tastes which appeared to him the most innocent during his life, but which, having no solid & true end to offer him, leave his Being in inaction & in nothingness. It is all these foreign substances which are then the torment of the Suicide, as of every other guilty man deprived of life: ,, & perhaps we should find here some explanation of the system of Metempsychosis, in which Nature jÜ 99 men, after their death, are still bound to different elementary objects, & are even transformed into plants & into vile animals; expressions which are but the painting of the tastes, of the vices, of the objects of which man has made his idols upon the Earth ": for who are those whose Being, after death, will be assailed by the torments & the illusions of their sensible soul? In short, who will be those whose Being will live sensibly, though separated from their body? they will be those who here below will have lived separated from their Being.
Our translation, period-faithful. Citable as our translation, never as the source.
PROVENANCE OF THE COPY SCANNED. The volume carries the bookplate of Sidney Edward Bouverie-Pusey, printed above the title page and here trimmed out of the reading text along with the scanner debris around it. It is recorded rather than discarded: it says whose copy of the 1782 Tableau naturel this archive is reading from, which is a fact about the artefact even though it is not a fact about the book.