CHAPTER IX THE TWELVE GODS OF ALL NATIONS.

The Twelve Gods of All Nations
CHAPTER IX
I A NEW EXPLANATION OF THE
ORIGIN OF GODS
These twelve ARfiTES have a significant aspect
worthy the attention of the analogist (I dare not
say of the philosopher, since this term today
passes as the exclusive property of solemn persons
who will shrug their shoulders on hearing me
invoke Him who nevertheless invented their
fine name of "philosophers"). In the eyes of
the poet, then, the greatest votary of analogy,
although by pure instinct, in the eyes of the
dreamer, does not each of these ARfiTES mark
the limit of the violent expansion of one of the
six efforts of which we are capable? Now this
limit is imposed precisely by the expansion of
one of the four adjoining efforts, to the first
obstacle which causes it to deviate and brings it
back obliquely to us. In reciprocally cutting
each other off they form an ARfiTE; they become
to one another the "thou shalt not," the imprescriptable
law.
There were, in the supreme Greco-Latin Olympus,
but 12 great gods: Vesta, Juno, Neptune,
Minerva, Venus, Apollo, Mercury, Jupiter, Ceres,
Vulcan, Mars and Diana, to enumerate them in
the order consecrated by their worship. And it
was not only thus in the classic pantheon, but in
India, where the 12 great gods bear the corresponding
names of Maia, Indrani, Vishnu, Saracouati,
Lakchmi, Indra, Boudha, Brahma, Gondopi,
Ganeja, Siva and Bhavani, and preside
respectively OVER THE SAME MONTHS OF THE
YEAR; in Egypt, where they bear the names of
Athor, Neith, Remfo, Bouto, Surot, Pi-re, Piromi,
Pi-Zeous, T'Armouth, Fre, Ertosi, and Poubasti;
in the Scandinavian Valhalla, where the Aesir
are called Vora, Frigga, Niorder, Snorra, Freya,
Balder, Loke, Thor, Freir, Heimdall, Oulloir and
Gefiona; among the Japanese, who count 12 gods
and demi-gods; among the ancient Persians, who
divided the sombre and the bright months
between the six Amschasfands and the six Devs,
opposed face to face; in far-away Peru, in ancient
Etruria, even in Tahiti, where today they still
invoke Papiri, Ovnounou, Paroromoua, Paromori,
Mouria, Heacha, Taoa, Hourororera, Houriama
Teaire, Tetai, Ouehao, Ouea; and in the various
Polynesian isles, in a word, among all polytheistic
peoples.
Why?
Must we here see, with Dupuis, who enumerates
the 12 Etruscan cantons, the 12 strategi, the
12 lictors, the 12 Arval Brethren, the 12 altars of
Janus, the 12 columns of the temple of Heliopolis,
the 12 palaces of the Labyrinth, the 12 gates of
the Dodocapylon, those of the New Jerusalem
in the APOCALYPSE, the 12 angels who guard
them, the 12 foundations of the wall, according
to St. John (Ap. XXI); the 12 branches of the
candlestick, the 12 stones in the breastplate of
the Jewish high priest (and, we might add, in the
MIEN or head-dress of the Emperors of China);
the 12 fountains of the desert, the 12 sacred
cushions, the 12 stars of the dream of Joseph, the
12 TCHEOU or provinces of the Chinese Empire,
etc., must we herein see, as he did, an eternal
and monotonous commemoration of the signs of
the zodiac? Ingenuous fancy of an astronomer!
Humanity does not pass through life with its
eyes glued to the nocturnal firmament, counting
and annotating the constellations. And, when
such an allegory has been mingled with the
"signs" consecrated to these constellations, the
Divine Figures have remained deprived of personality,
whereas, in the imagination of races,
nothing i$ more vivid than these Twelve Gods who
everywhere loom sublime, smiling and awesome.
Astarte, the Hindu Lakchmi, Venus of our
Latin Occident, Aphrodite, Slavic Lada, Persian
Enyo, Mexican Ichcouina, Celtic Roth, Finnish
Sakamieli, Salammbo of Babylon, Scandinavian
Siona, Saxon Magada, again Freia, Arabian
Alzoarah, is it not, everywhere, the same ideal
allurement which burns in our own hearts, and
to which, even today, we make ceaseless allusion?
Does not the sword of war everywhere sparkle
in the hand of him whose name only changes:
Mongol Daitching, Gaulish Hesus, Russian Lede,
Ares, Mars, Saxon Pepenouth, Quirinus, Polynesian
Rimarou, Ertosi the protector of Sesostris,
Assyrian Nergal, Phoenician Baal-Thurz, Areskovi
of the Hurons, Vitzlibochtli of Mexico,
Hindu Skanda, Alemane of the Rhine, threeheaded
Japanese Nequirou-Denichi-Maristin?
Do not the thunders sound, in all climes,
from the judicial throne of the same majestic
Jupiter, Zeus, Indra, Celtic Taran, Arab Mochtara,
Lamppic Oragalls, Esthonian Perkoun, Burman,
Sigeann, Egyptian Pi-Zeous, Slavonic
Peroun, Wotan, Ethiopian Assabine, Carthaginian
Baal-Samen?
And do we not find everywhere creeping in,
artful and identical, Mercury, Hermes, Nebo,
Piromi from the Nile, Quetzalcoatl from Mexico,
Ogma of the Gauls, Eghouere the Parsee Dev,
Etruscan Xudan, Germanic Jedod? From all
lands resounds the hammer of the Irish Danan,
who is Vulcan, who is Hephaestos, who is Sidek,
who is Mimir, who is Ilmarenen in Finland,
Luno in Norway, who is Siorlamh, who is Diamich,
who is Vicouakarma. Just as everywhere flour,
ishes Ceres, Rhea-Demeter, Fauna, Gondopi-
Kouong-in pou-tsa in China, T'Armouth in Egypt,
Schaka, Ops, full-breasted Copia, Dame Nature
of our modern sentimentalists!
In the heavens, Grann the Alsatian Apollo,
Braga the Scandinavian, Abelios the Cretan, the
lyric Phoibos, Mahanna of the Tahitians succeed,
the same under a myriad names, to the identical
Diana, Artemis, Pooh, pale beneath her black
locks, or Selene, weaving her threads of silver
over the nocturnal sea, the sea, from whose
sinister depths rises the rebellious and greedy
Poseidon, Ahriman, Satan, Jemma, Despot of the
Japanese hells, Tuiston, the Gallo-German Pluto,
Gouleho of the Friendly Islands, Houe-Koub of
the Araucanians, Toia scorching his terrified
adorers in Florida, the Hindu Kansa, Czernobog
the dark god of the Varegues, Kronos, Scariafing
of Formosa, the destroyer Akerouniamen of the
ancient Umbrians, Gwaiotta of the Gouanches
in Teneriffe, the Siamese Tevetat, envious rival of
his brother the Buddha; Agnian, seated upon
Brazilian tombs, Derevech of the Parsees, Maboia
and Bouii in whom Caribs and Toungouses likewise
have recognized the Devil; Sova in Guinea,
Larthisca of the Moluccas, the vermiform Angat
of Madagascar, Koupai the Peruvian, Atre the
Angle-Saxon, Asuman, Nikken of the Danish
isles, Usous in struggles with the hardy Phoenician
vessels, Perdoit of the Prussian coast, Maguscan
of the Carthaginians, Tsoui-Kouan foaming
against Chinese prows, lebicon who defies the
Japanese, Orre-orre before whom the Tahitian
trembles in his log canoe, Mitg of Kamschatka,
Teuaratai who separates the Polynesian isles.
And at the hearth presides the pious Vesta,
Anouke, Dehemeh, Metis, Voltumna standing
amid the Etruscan councils, Conso in the Roman
senate, Egeria the eternal guardian fairy, to
whom stands in eternal antithesis the jealous
Hera, Juno, Nemesis, the solar Malina of Greenland.
We have considered above these Twelve Figures
concentrated in six or seven types. One very
striking point in these half-dozen visages is their
PLETHORIC character. None of us can have failed
to remark that there is a superabundance, an
excess of expression in the gods as the Renaissance
has painted them. In this respect the Jupiter
of Rubens, of Cornelius Agrippa or of Marlowe
goes far beyond that of Phidias or of Homer;
he has too much of flesh and blood, of muscle,
of self-consciousness. The same may be said of
the too sturdy Venus of the moderns, who has
come to be confused with the orgiac Demeter.
Mars becomes Herculean, and the others fare
likewise. Each of them, in fact, has within him
the equivalent of a second god. And each of
them, as we have observed, shows but the wild
and unrestrained flight of our energy in one of
the six directions which space opens to it.
When our Twelve Figures definitely outlined
themselves; when, driven by the spirit of analogy
so powerful of old, they were imposed upon all
things, successively established over all, over
the provinces of the fatherland and over the
countries of the earth; over the social classes and
the successive generations of the past; over the
virtues and the laws; over public powers and the
organs of our bodies ; over our natural actions and
our ceremonies ; over familiar and sacred objects,
what more natural than that those men who
sought also in the heavens for these types should
likewise perceive them at the twelve almost
equidistant points which divide the year?
They placed the phlegmatics, such as Vesta,
the vindictive Juno and the greedy Neptune in
the months of winter; the youthful and smiling
Venus, Minerva and Apollo in the months of
spring; Mercury, Jupiter and Ceres in the summer
affected by the sanguines, and, for their grim
sincerity, Vulcan, Mars and Diana in the sombre
autumn. Here, then, in my opinion, is all we
need retain of the theory of Dupuis.
To this astronomical localization, nevertheless,
I find it legitimate to subordinate certain of the
dozens grouped by him as examples, but certain
ones only, and on condition, I repeat, that
the astronomic localization be itself subordinated
to the conception of a psychology infinitely more
human and more profound. The origin of this
conception is not exterior to man; it proceeds
from our mental constitution itself, and is but
ITS IMPRESSION IN BELIEF.
In a word, there never have been, in religion,
more than twelve great Gods clearly defined, for
the very simple reason that no more could be
created.
For the rest, we may remark: If, in face of
the astronomic system of Dupuis, other mythologists
have been easily able to range the ETYMOLOGICAL
system, in which every myth results
from an EQUIVOQUE, a homonymy, a metaphor
interpreted literally, an imperfection in the language,
or finally from a sort of pun or play on
words, if they have been able to win over
to that theory the majority of old partisans of
the former, they have nevertheless not destroyed
it. For it still remains for them to explain in a
satisfactory manner the numerical coincidences
so surprising and so numerous.. . . Moreover,
their new thesis, a trifle ignoble, it mu
be admitted, was quite as quickly found wearisome
and unsatisfying, and we have seen, in
default of better solutions, many weak and at
the same time curious minds led astray in the
morass of occultism, while intellects more robust^
but repelled by the etymological doctrine, content
themselves regretfully with the vague socalled
PSYCHOLOGICAL doctrine. This affirms that
myths are a natural creation of the human mind,
and that the human mind ought naturally to
create them, but without attempting to demonstrate
either how or why!
To those awakened minds which have never
been satisfied with the somewhat feminine
"because . . ."of this theory, the present
analysis has furnished already an explanation of
the analogies, twelve by twelve, so patiently
ranged by Dupuis, and has not feared to further
enrich them. It can furnish, in addition, the
explanation of the etymological resemblances:
they are not less interesting, although less numerous,
it must be admitted, and especially less
striking. It is not impossible to reduce the
morphology of languages to a limited number of
generative laws. These laws bear especially upon
the essential and primitive words, notably on
those which are connected with the fundamental
idea of BEING: we know the unique importance
of this verb among all others, in all languages.
Now the idea of Being PAR EXCELLENCE is easily
identified with that of "Supreme" or "Divine"
Beings.
We have just seen that, according to the etymological
system, the mythic particularities which
were attached to these various divine types
resulted precisely in homonymies or involuntary
"puns," in a lexical CONFUSION. Believers will
be pleased to remark that this does not contradict
the sacred legend. Without doubt, the etymologic
system will readily date this confusion
from the very origin of the human being. But
it must be recognized that scientifically it is not
permissible to go back to so remote an epoch.
And we may recall that legend ascribes to the
same historic moment the beginning of polytheisms
and the difference of languages, which would
thus have determined, and not followed, the
dispersion of men, thenceforward incapable of
understanding one another.
I am here advancing, I need hardly say, only a
hypothesis, barely sketched, but amusing. May
I be permitted another remark? To accept the
etymological system, according to which mythology
is but a foolish "malady of language," is to
accept the implicit conclusion that since the
earliest ages (since the beginning, say the believers ;
in any case, for a longer time than any other
race) the one Chosen People has, despite the
idioms so diverse and so pagan which it has
successively adopted, maintained itself unscathed
by this linguistic malady, and consequently by
the mental malady which it engenders.
Since this people created, or, according to its
own humble avowal, providentially received and
simply conserved this triumphal idea of the
Unity of Being, how reconcile the assertions of
the modern critic? Is language, then, not the
cause nor mythology the effect? Or is this conception
of the One Being more ancient among
this people than is admitted? And is this primitive
language of the Hebrews superior to others,
since it alone remained free from the great
"malady" which contaminated them all until
the idea of Being was forced into a delirious
flowering?
Of this flowering, nevertheless so supremely
beautiful, let us study the morphology in the light
of our idea, which finally puts into accord the
three mythologic systems.
II HEROES, EPONYMS, TRIBES, FEDERATIONS,
PATRIARCHS, PEERS, DISCIPLES,
APOSTLES, PARTS OF THE MASS, ARTICLES
OF THE CREED, STONES, TOTEMS, IDOLATRIES,
HERESIES, SYSTEMS, SCHISMS AND
NATIONALITIES.
Man, as observed at the beginning of this book,
is above all else DOUBLE. And this is very natural,
if we reflect that he is the product of two beings.
He is, then, above all, a contradiction, a dialogue,
a duel. His pretended individuality, the absolute
Self of the philosophers, remains as chimerical, as
inconsistent as the mathematical point ; it has no
more real existence than the point; it appears
simply when two lines, two hereditary impulses,
coincide. These lines at least present a continuity,
a durable will. Now, in pursuing the same
geometric comparison, is not a line found at the
meeting of two surfaces, is it not an ARETE?
Thus symbolically the human figure presents
itself before us. ...
The twelve Divine Figures reveal themselves
as the very incarnations of the TWELVE CONTRADICTIONS
produced bwtween the six directions
of energy. Thus they correspond to man: the
twelve human-types, the twelve eternal ancestors.
He may meet them, recognize them, evoke them
on all his paths. Not in the heavens alone, but
in the past he finds them, at first in the legendary
period of eponyms, then in authentic history,
whose heroes, simplified in memory, he has obstinately
identified with one of these twelve types.
Here, then, is the explanation of the fourth and
last mythologic system, EUHEMERISM.
Yes, the heroes of humanity pass, after death,
to the state of divinities. But the divine roles
which are attributed to them were ready in
advance; the roles existed before the actors, for
these were not the authors; they did naught but
enter and shape themselves, as they could well
do, to a mould already constructed. The type of
Jupiter existed before the most ancient of mortal
Jupiters, and from each of them has been accepted
only what was appropriate to the type, only what
in each was Jupiterian.
Thus may be explained the multiplicity of
heroes blended in a single legend, with nevertheless
an admirable unity of poetic tone (Hercules,
Buddha, etc.). Do we not, moreover, assist in
this work? are not words and sayings thus
transferred from one celebrated man to another?
We may verify this by Voltaire, for example,
who inherited, for the most part, from English
authors his biting sallies of wit, to which have
been added others, imagined since his death.
Napoleon, despite his square jaw and his plebeianism,
must needs be a Caesar of triangular
and aquiline visage; Caesar in turn an Alexander,
Alexander a Sesostris, a Rama.
A gocl, an individual-type, is then an ARETE, a
dialogue, one of those primitive combinations such
as we encounter at our first step in descending to
the interior of the human soul. And this probably
explains why, of the 12 inevitable gods,
there are so often 6 masculine and 6 feminine,
as if through need to express, by means of the
one, the victory of the paternal (or vital) principle,
and by means of the other, that of maternal
principle in our individual-type.
By the milogynism of the pre-Manichaean
pessimists, duality was expressed by GOOD and
BAD demons, amschasfands and devs of Iranian
origin, rather than by sexual antitheses. The
Japanese SUPERPOSED six gods and six demigods.
In the pure intellectuality of the Judaic-Christian
religion, sex is effaced, and between the twelve
personages there is no more than the tie of brotherhood,
natural or spiritual: the twelve tribes
of Israel descend from twelve patriarchs, sons
of Jacob, and the Christ expressly says to his
apostles: "Ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones,
judging the twelve tribes of Israel." (Matt.
XIX, 28).*
So we should not be surprised to find this obsessing
number 12 at the base of most social groupings ;
it is a natural result, psychological and inevitable,
and has nothing to do with this or that astronomical
conception, mystic and artificial. It is
not only the 12 Jewish tribes and the 12 Etruscan,
the 12 tribes of the Platonic Republic, the 12
confederated towns of Ionia, those of JEolia,
those of the Achaian League, or the 12 burghs of
Athens which may be cited, but, if we will, in the
two most vigorous republican efforts of modern
times, the 13 cantons which first formed and
for many centuries constituted Switzerland, or
the 13 original United States: the number 13
being to the number 12, psychologically, what
7 is to 6, its centralization around a dominating
unity.
Likewise it is sometimes 12 equal comrades,
and sometimes these accompanied by their chief
(comparable to Joseph, Jesus, etc.) whom we
find in all the orders of chivalry, from the famous
Peers of Charlemagne (Roland, Oliver, Turpin,
Estoult, Haton, Gerin, Gorier, Samson, Girart,
Anseis, Berangier, Hue, according to the generally
accepted list) to the order of the DAME DE L'ECU
VERT founded by Bouciquat (he and his brother
Geoffrey, Charles d'Albret, chief of the order,
Gaucourt, Bonnebaut, Torsay, B6tas, Colleville,
Chateaumorant, d'Aubissecourt, Castelbayac,
Chambrillac, LignieYes) in conformity with the
plan given by Philippe de Mezidres for his ideal
Chivalry of the Passion, in which, about the
"Prince," were grouped the Constable, the
Chancellor, the Marshal, the Admiral, the Treasurer,
the Procurator, the Provisor, the Advocate,
the Moderator, the Justiciar and the two Consuls.
Confucius had 12 disciples.
If the Jews enumerated 4 Great Prophets
(Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah and Daniel), they
added to them the 12 Lesser Prophets Hosea,
Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum,
Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi,
just as the Christians connect the Acts
of the Apostles with the writings of the 4 Evangelists.
The 4 sacred figures (the Angel, the Lion,
the Calf and the Eagle) which accompany these
last, accompanied the 4 Great Prophets. They
accompany in turn the 4 Fathers of the Greek
Church (Athanasius, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen
and John Chrysostom) and those of the Roman
(Jerome, Augustine, Gregory the Great, Ambrose)
connected with the 12 great classic Doctors (the
same, plus Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Francis
de Sales, Alphonse de Liguori, Hilaire, Anselm
of Canterbury, Bernard and Peter Damien).
We may recall the care with which Jevohah
disposes the 12 tribes in 4 groups, according to
the 4 cardinal points. "On the east
the camp of Judah . . . next unto him
the tribe of Issachar then the tribe
of Zebulon ... on the south the camp of
Reuben. . . and by him the tribe of Simeon
. then the tribe of Gad ... on
the west the camp of Ephraim . . . and by
him the tribe of Manasseh . . . then the
tribe of Benjamin . . . the camp of Dan
on the north . . . and by him the tribe of
Asher . . . then the tribe of Naphtali .
they shall go hindmost with their standards."
(Numbers II, 3-31.) And in fact we see always
the tribes defile in the same order. Need we
recall here the 12 parts composing the Mass,
which celebrates the Passion, itself the resume
and center of history? These are: the INTRODUCTION
between the preparation of the faithful
and the Confession, the Introit or ENTRANCE OF
THE CHOIR with the litany and the "gloria," the
EPISTLE flanked by the collect and the psalmodies,
the GOSPEL of the day with the homily,
the CREDO, the OFFERTORY, the secret prayer and
the PREFACE, the canon and the solemn ELEVATION,
the PATER, the FRACTION and the "agnus,"
the COMMUNION, lastly the graces, the BENEDICTION
and the gospel of St. John. I have
already noted the senary subdivision of the Mass.
I have indicated also how each of the 6 days or
periods of Genesis is divided into two antithetic
creations. And it is interesting to observe that
geology reckons, in the history of our globe, 12
upheavals before the appearance of man.
Now the same poetic tradition which, in the
representations of the Apostles, places on the
forehead of each one of the 12 precious stones
(attributed also to the 12 Patriarchs), and
figuring likewise in the Jewish high priest's breastplate
and in the foundations of the columns of
the New Jerusalem in the Apocalypse) the
same tradition which gives to Andrew the sapphire
(of Naphtali), to Peter the jasper (of Gad), to
James the chalcedony (the carbuncle of Dan), to
James the Less the yellow topaz (of Simeon), to
Matthew the green peridot (of Ephraim), to Jude
the chrysoprase (of Issachar), to gentle John the
emerald (of Judah), to zealous Simon the hyacinth
(or ligure of Asher), to Matthias the purple
amethyst (of Zebulon), to Thomas the aquamarine
or beryl (of Benjamin), to Bartholomew the
carnelian (of Reuben), and to Philip the orange
sardonyx (of Manasseh) wrote also at their
feet the 12 articles of the CREED which has transformed
human thought and has served as its
basis for twenty centuries.
"I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker
of heaven and earth," said the prince of the
Apostles. "And in Jesus Christ his only Son our
Lord," continued Andrew. "Who was conceived
by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary,"
affirmed James. "Suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead and buried," testified John.
"Descended into hell," recalled Philip. "The
third day he rose from the dead," declared the
majestic Bartholomew. "He ascended into heaven
and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father
Almighty," proclaimed Matthew. "From whence
he shall come to judge the quick and the dead,"
prophesied Thomas. "I believe in the Holy
Ghost," resumed the pious James the Less, cousin
and counterpart of Christ. "The Holy Catholic
Church, the Communion of Saints," confessed
Jude. "The forgiveness of sins," added Simon.
"The resurrection of the body and life everlasting,"
concluded Matthias.
Thus tradition* has it that they announced in
unforgettable terms the dogmas of the CREED,
before dispersing, three toward each cardinal
point, as we have already remarked: westward,
John (Ephesus and the Greek world), Peter
(Rome), and James (Spain); southward, James
the Less (Jerusalem), Simon (Egypt) and Matthew
(the vast Ethiopia of the black races); eastward,
Jude (Persia), Bartholomew (India) and Thomas
(Major India and the Extreme Orient); northward,
Philip (Cappadocia, Asia Minor), Matthias
(Colchis, the Caucasus) and Andrew (Scythia and
the barbarian lands of the north). A generation
later their work is almost everywhere historically
visible, and the world is shaken by it.
Now, since the Apostles Creed in its 12 articles
summarizes the Faith, every heresy must consist
of an attack upon at least one of these articles,
and the heresies may thus be distributed upon
the same duodenary plan. Furthermore, the
idolatries, according to sacred teaching, were but
primitive heresies, indurated. "Twelve gates give
access to Heaven, for the people of various religions,"
said the Brahmins. The bad habits, the
attitudes of mind which the idolatries fixed, the
mental vices on which they lived, degenerated
sometimes into fetichism, or into the animalism
whose totems, like the god-types, are everywhere
found to be almost the same (wolf, lion, dog,
bull, etc.) be it on many altars, the Egyptian
among others (whence the Golden Calf perhaps
emigrated with the Exodus), be it even, an unconscious
reminiscence, in the blazon of heraldry or
among the gracious allegories of the fabulists, to
be one day summed up so well in the dozen types
of REYNARD: Noble the lion, Reynard the fox,
Bruin the bear, Isegrim the wolf, Tybert the
cat, Grimbert the badger, Morhou the dog, Kyward
the hare, Baldwin the ass, Chantecler the cock,
the Monkey and Beaucent the boar.
Not only may we thus lay out a world-map of
the heresies, idolatries and aberrations of the
Faith, but has not the great Varro, according to
St. Augustine in THE CITY OF GOD, classed the
philosophies (those indispensable crowns of the
antique idolatries as of the modern heresies), in
observing their most characteristic effort, the
conception of the Sovereign Good, in 12 principal
ideas, from which come, as he demonstrated, the
288 possible systems, and to which yet turn, it
must be admitted, all our actual theories. The
Intoxication of Life, Contemplative Repose,
or the two reconciled in Epicurean voluptuousness,
or all three finally augmented by the
Primordial Blessings of Nature (health of body
and mind) are alternately the objects of inquiry,
either direct or by means of virtue, or simply for
the sake of the research itself.
To one contemplating history from a detached
point of view, the nationalities are revealed as
simple links of that more general and durable
chain, a religion. This is clearly visible in Greece.
It is not less visible throughout Europe. And
Schism appears as the first effort, the first fissure
of that separatism provoked by the weight of
despotism, by the tyrannic ambition of a new
power. Its ideal, if it preserves one, in religion,
must be totally different, and tends consequently
toward one of the types which we have enumerated :
every nationalism (Judaism, Anglicanism, Gallicanism),
ends in a rudiment of idolatry, in some
sort of distortion of the great complete which
is to say divine human Type. And it is
interesting to grasp here the incompatibility of
Church and Tyranny or, according to our
phrase, Church and State. It is, moreover, much
less the heresy or schism which captures the
interest of the really profound historian than the
manifestation of the dogma which they prepare,
which they necessitate: the FILIOQUB provoked
by the quibbles of the Byzantine schism, this is
the "fiat lux" of the Occident; the Council of
Trent, this is the Catholic Shakespeare.
Ill GEOGRAPHY, HISTORY
But, whether already separated or not, each
State remains none the less a member of a group
of a dozen equals. In connection with the
Church (our "Vesta"), can we not observe that
from the moment when we let Poland disappear,
our France, its equilibrium changed at a blow,
saw her hegemony pass to England, whose role
was at the same time inherited by the United
States: of this dozen of civilized nations, Germany
increased her strength by all the power vainly
wrested by us from the house of Austria; Russia,
the Scandinavian world and the Low Countries
counterbalanced each other; Spain descended a
little lower, Italy rose as much higher. And
perhaps it is because Turkey is being effaced that
Japan, an element likewise foreign, now rises
upon our horizon.
Most of these States are composed of two
elements primitively hostile, comparable to the
two planes whose intersection forms the lines
of an ARfiTE. For it is one of the gross errors of
our time to identify RACE and NATION. A nation,
a state, seems, on the contrary, to have no other
mission than to unite and bind opposed races,
with a view to some human combination as yet
unknown; to attempt to limit a nation to one
race would be as foolish as to limit one family to
incestuous unions.
Anglo-Saxons and Celts on the island of Great
Britain, northern French and Albigenses, Germans
of north and south, Austrians and Hungarians,
and for a long period Swedes and Norwegians,
their new divorce perhaps the precursor of other
separations in Europe, illustrate my assertion.
Moreover, each one among these couples formed
not a unity but a dozen, when it existed independently.
We can still find in the real France
(the North) the types, so distinct in features,
language and arts, curiously grouped by antitheses,
of the Breton and the Norman, the Fleming and
the Champenois, the native of the Ile-de-France
and the heavy Beauceron, the artistic Limousin
and the Auvergnat, the nonchalant Touranian
and the Poitevin, the Lorrain and the Burgundian.
In that one of the two dozens which, in any
country, shows itself morally superior to the
other, we can discover a national subdivision
into two half-dozens: Scotland and Ireland,
Asiatic Greece and Morea, Gascony and the
Rhone valley, etc. Let us go further: tradition,
yet living, divides each one of these 12 regions
among 12 little peoples in turn. And one could
go on thus into every country, into every one of
its natural provinces. Imperial Italy, it is true,
was divided into ten provinces only, but because
its administration failed to join to it the two
halves, so characteristic, of Cisalpine Gaul. These
12 divisions survive in the ethnic physiognomies,
so clearly cut, of the modern Italians. There
were 12 kingdoms in Spain: Old Castile, New
Castile, Leon, Galicia, Navarre, Aragon, Murcia,
Jaen, Cordova, Seville, Granada and Valencia.
Germany comprises two dozen states, Sweden
24 LANS, etc.
From another point of view: is not the government
of a country formed of a dozen ministers?
Worship (Vesta), Finance (Juno), Marine, (Neptune),
diplomatic Foreign Affairs (Minerva), the
Interior with hygiene, police and . . . charity
(Venus), Public Instruction with the fine arts
(Apollo), Commerce and Mails (Mercury), Justice
(Jupiter), Agriculture (Ceres), Public Works
(Vulcan), War (Mars) and the Colonies with
their wild and virgin lands (Diana). And, very
recently, Labor, which has mysteriously replaced
the first.
Each of the 4 great Races which cover the
globe, the choleric and ambitious White, the
sanguine and careless Black the phlegmatic Yellow
and the melancholy Red or Brown so widely
scattered, throws out three important branches.
We have seen how the EUROPEAN branch of
the White Race ramifies into one dozen great
peoples, of whom the smaller peoples are the
detached branches. We may see the same in
the case of the SEMITES, and of the NON-SEMITES
remaining in Asia (Hindus, Persians, etc.), whom,
in my opinion, we are too much inclined to connect
with the European, for they are equal to it in
numbers, and differ from it in mind, physiognomy
and arts not less than the Arab.
Finally, geographically, if we divide the world
longitudinally into three slices, beginning from
about 25 West, we obtain the three actual worlds:
the OCCIDENTAL, between the EXTREME ORIENTAL
(from 90 East to 150 West) and the American
(from 150 West to 25 West). Or, if you prefer
to cut the world into four slices, very well, you
will have: for the first (25 W. to 65 E.) our HISTORIC
WORLD; then eastward (to 155) the Orient,
Hindu, Japanese, Chinese, Malayan; therefrom
to 115 W., the mysterious Pacific whose isles
appear here and there like the last remaining
columns of a destroyed temple; and finally,
America.
Over these four quarters of the earth are reigning
each moment the four parts of the day, in
such a way that, if we wish, we may subdivide
it into 24 parts, like the face of a clock. Each
twelfth of this longitudinal clock each couple
of hours means a civilization. To gratify Japan,
we call her the Empire of the Rising Sun, whose
light announces a vernal day; while the day
breaks, calm morning has dawned over Korea,
the laborious day has commenced for New Zealand ;
when it is but half past nine in smiling Tahiti
the first quarter of the day is already ending in
the Far West. Two o'clock, three o'clock, moment
of the siesta, sound over the ancient colonies,
those which threw off the yoke of England in the
18th century and the lighter yoke of Spain in the
19th. It is four o'clock in pensive Brazil and
six on the Atlantic. Our western Europe is
contemplating the sunset, eight o'clock already !
Twilight is enveloping Germany and the Angelus
is sounding in Rome. Night is closing over
Greece, over Egypt and Judea; it is ten and
eleven o'clock in Arabia and Chaldea. Midnight
sounds in the land of Ahriman and Tamerlane!
The rest of the night possesses, the first two hours
India and Thibet, and the hours before dawn
Annam and China.
Need we remind ourselves that to each of
these couples of hours the spirit of analogy attached
a sign of the zodiac, with the god placed over it
by the ancient Greeks, Hindus, etc.?
Thus, space and time being united, let us now
recall those Centuries whose evolution we compared,
four by four, to that of the seasons.
Each of these centuries producing three generations,
a generation relates itself, in the mind of
the dreamer, to a Month, as, on the above
longitudinal clock, to a Two-hour Period and to
the civilizations which we have just seen marked
out by them, or to a pair of Homeric cantos,
etc. It relates itself likewise to one of the 12
great Gods. And the verifications of this, in
our own annals, is curious.
We know that our great national dynasty of
the Capetians connected itself with Charlemagne,
glory of the preceding, by his cousin-german
Nebelong, grandfather of Robert-le-Fort. Twelve
generations later is attained its own supreme
glory in Saint Louis; another twelve generations,
and it produced the splendid Louis XIV. It is
pleasing to find, in connection with each of these
great men, the same importance accorded to the
mother, whether Bertha Broad-foot, Blanche of
Castile or Anne of Austria. Pepin de Landen
and Saint Arnulf were the two pillars of that
dynasty. The scrupulous piety which caused
both to be beatified characterized, 36 generations
later (3 x 12) the comte de Chambord, and, in
the interval, it bent the knees, for a moment
rebellious, of Philippe I, and surged beneath the
shining armor of St. Jeanne d'Arc. It is, in
short, the generation of Vesta.
Louis XI and Louis XIV belong, in two different
branches, to a like generation: they have
(from Juno) the spirit of chicanery which, 12
generations earlier, showed itself so plainly in
their not less popular ancestor Louis-le-Gros.
Ambition to the point of imprudence is shown
in three branches of the family, also in a like
generation, by Charles VIII, Francis I and Antoine
de Bourbon, repeating thus the moral physiognomy
of Louis-le-Jeune and Pepin d'Heristal.
Likewise a Henri IV, eloquent and ingenious
(Minerva), repeats at 12 generations' distance
f
almost trait for trait, the Ulyssean type of Philippe-
Auguste.
After this, one will hardly be surprised to meet,
in the generations consecrated to the orgiac Ceres,
the scandals of the TOUR DE NESLE and those of
the PARC AUX CERFS, nor to see the weakness
(Diana) of this family drag it down with the
foolish Charles VI, and, 12 generations later, with
Louis XVII, with the Due de Berry and Ferdinand
d'Orleans. Was it for want of a Duguesclin
(Mars), we ask, that Louis XVI, at least as
worthy the name of "Sage" as his corresponding
duodenaire Charles V, found himself overwhelmed
by a militarist generation? a generation which,
deluded by a duodecimal remembrance, thought
it found in Marie-Antoinette of Austria another
Isabel of Bavaria, and in the Comte d'Artois a
Charles d'Orleans, and whose first achievement
as soon as it came into power, was the inauguration
of twenty-five years of senseless wars. Thus
was the way opened for Napoleon, who lacked
the control of a suzerain and moderate advisor,
whose wisdom might have avoided for us the
final Waterloo. Another possibility: if the honest
but weak Henri V was unable to reclaim his throne,
or Napoleon III to maintain himself upon his,
was it through lack of a rhythm remaining sufficiently
vibrant in the exhausted race of the
former, or of a rhythm sufficiently well established
in the upstart race of the latter, and because
the qualities of the two could not be united in a
single man capable of responding to the imperious
appeal of the new dogmas proclaimed by Pius IX?
What history needs, as vertebral column, is a
duly organized science of Comparative Heredity.
Of this science we possess the documents, marvelously
in order, in the genealogies of the great
families. We have only to note the laws.
Now a law does not exist in itself. A law simply
establishes the more or less frequent return of
an analogous association between phenomena,
and of these phenomena it terms the more ancient
the CAUSE and the more recent the EFFECT.*
The return which permits it to verify once more
this association, this succession, what is it but
Rhythm? Thus it is the mission of the scholar
to ascertain rhythms.
All life is movement; all movement is observed
from the point of view of a relative immobility,
of a repetition, of an identity rediscovered here
and there in the moving stream. From these
rhythms to be studied in history, I have selected
the most obvious, as well as the most disquieting.
What is this strange duodenary rhythm, the
only common dividend of 2, 3 and 4, which we
have felt vibrating, beat by beat,
through heredity,
through the history of a people,
through that of humanity entire,
in the roles which the various races of the world
have seized upon simultaneously or have bequeathed
to one another,
in the flight of the hours which sound over their
sleep or their activity,
in the dance of the seasons and the months,
in that of the years of our lives,
in that of generations and centuries,
in the division of public powers,
in the equilibrium of Europe,
in that of the world,
in that of each nation,
of each of its cities,
in the philosophic systems of various peoples,
in the heresies which rend religious faith ,
in the articles of its Creed,
in the ceremonies of worship,
in song,
in the poetic metres of all literatures,
in the composition of the greatest poems,
in the conflicts of the drama and in legendary
cycles,
in the idolatries,
in the series of gods, into which are absorbed,
and among which are ranged, one after another,
prophets, apostles, eponyms, animals of the fables,
and heroes of fairy tales, even the popular
heroes acclaimed by our contemporaries?
And still I have not detailed the 12 terrains
which geologists discover between the central and
unknown regions of Earth and the simple "alluvions"
of its epidermis, nor the dozen upheavals
which have moulded it ! Nor the 12 solid elements
found in a free state in nature (antimony, sulphur,
arsenic, platinum, copper, gold, mercury, bismuth,
tellure, carbon, iron, silver). Nor the
3x4 embranchments which Delafosse, Linne and
Cuvier count in nature, nor the 2 x 12 classes which
Cuvier enumerates for the animal kingdom, nor
the general tendency of all these "orders" toward
multiples of the same number 12.
What is it, this strange, obsessing rhythm?
It is the rhythm of Life. Hear it beating in
your own heart, in your arteries, in your nerves
What we have done for the Temperaments and
the Seasons, in drawing the innumerable analogies
which they suggest, what we have done for the
six directions in which our energies, born of the
explosive binary combinations of temperaments,
can dart over the three dimensions of space, what
we have begun for the twelve ARfiTES or god-types
recognized in all religions and all social groupings,
we have but to study more and more deeply, in
descending, step by step, into the mysteries of
the human heart, by means of patient comparison
of the secondary types which will be successively
engendered before us, carefully distinguishing them
one from another in their most intimate details.
The task is infinite, and I do not pretend to
have completed it, but at least we shall lay hold
upon realities not heretofore grasped, thanks to
the classification now to be opened, the first
attempted classification, I believe, of the unnumbered
Characters which, whether real or imaginary,
obsess the divers peoples of the earth.