ESSAY ON THE SACRED FIRE

once the miracle performed among the Jews had spread, other Nations hastened to imagine similar ones. Why cling to suppositions regarding indifferent objects? It is enough to find the essential facts attested; it is the multitude of trifles that people strive to make important which provide weapons to unbelief. The prodigy in question happened in the desert; the Jews then were hardly known; for a long time they were known only to their neighbors; during their captivity in Babylon, they found that the Chaldeans boasted of a similar miracle, which dated back almost as far as their astronomical observations.

Besides this Sacred Fire, the Israelites also had the lamps of the golden candlestick, which, judging by various passages of the Scripture, were meant to burn without ceasing in the sanctuary. This opinion is contested by some scholars who claim that the word without ceasing or perpetual original: "sans cesse ou perpétuel" does not have the same extent in the sacred language Hebrew as in ours, and that it often signifies what is done every day, even if there are interruptions; they imagine consequently that they were extinguished every evening. Others respond that likely the Priests had need of light for the offerings of incense they made during the night, and maintain that these lamps were lit every evening and extinguished every morning, because their brightness then became useless. One could reconcile them by supposing that there was always a certain num-

AND ON THE VESTALS.

-ber of them lit, and that at certain times they were all lit: several Jews are of this sentiment; one would think that on these matters one ought to rely on them: unfortunately, there is no people who are less informed about their own antiquities; they have added many customs to those they hold from Moses; they have forgotten the motives for them, or they account for them through daydreams: I will report this one. On the night of the Sabbath, they extinguish all their domestic fires; they preserve only one lamp, the care of which is entrusted only to women. Their Rabbis say they observe this custom in memory of the Sun hiding its light at the time of Eve's sin. Their women, consequently, are obliged to relight the torch that our common mother extinguished.

In all times the Indians maintained a Sacred Fire; the Brahmans original: "Brachmanes" also made it descend from heaven; almost all the peoples of the North revere this element; the discovery of the New World has shown us this superstition among the Peruvians, the Mexicans, and among other savage nations. The era of the existence of these Peoples in that part of the world is absolutely unknown to us; one can determine neither their antiquity nor that of their errors. There was some resemblance between their customs and those of the Persians and the Romans; I will remark upon them when the occasion presents itself.

The Greeks made a more extensive use of the