30.23. 23. General Idea of the Abbé du Bos' Book on the Establishment of the
French Monarchy in Gaul.
Before I finish this book, it will not be
improper to write a few strictures on the Abbé du Bos' performance,
because my notions are perpetually contrary to his; and if he has hit on
the truth, I must have missed it.
This performance has imposed upon a great many because it is penned
with art; because the point in question is constantly supposed; because
the more it is deficient in proofs the more it abounds in probabilities;
and, in fine, because an infinite number of conjectures are laid down as
principles, and thence other conjectures are inferred as consequences.
The reader forgets he has been doubting in order to begin to believe.
And as a prodigious fund of erudition is interspersed, not in the system
but around it, the mind is taken up with the appendages, and neglects
the principal. Besides, such a vast multitude of researches hardly
permits one to imagine that nothing has been found; the length of the
way makes us think that we have arrived at our journey's end.
But when we examine the matter thoroughly, we find an immense
colossus with earthen feet; and it is the earthen feet that render the
colossus immense. If the Abbé du Bos' system had been well grounded, he
would not have been obliged to write three tedious volumes to prove it;
he would have found everything within his subject, and without wandering
on every side in quest of what was extremely foreign to it; even reason
itself would have undertaken to range this in the same chain with the
other truths. Our history and laws would have told him, "Do not take so
much trouble, we shall be your vouchers."
