paid
without difficulty if he win; everywhere else the law is a sword with
which the stronger cut the weaker in pieces.

Nevertheless, this world exists as if everything were well ordered; the
irregularity is of our nature; our political world is like our globe, a
misshapen thing which always preserves itself. It would be mad to wish
that the mountains, the seas, the rivers, were traced in beautiful
regular forms; it would be still more mad to ask perfect wisdom of men;
it would be wishing to give wings to dogs or horns to eagles.

_CORN_

The Gauls had corn in Caesar's time: one is curious to know where they
and the Teutons found it to sow. People answer you that the Tyrians had
brought it into Spain, the Spaniards into Gaul, the Gauls into Germany.
And where did the Tyrians get this corn? Among the Greeks probably, from
whom they received it in exchange for their alphabet.

Who had made this present to the Greeks? It was formerly Ceres without a
doubt; and when one has gone back to Ceres one can hardly go farther.
Ceres must have come down on purpose from the sky to give us wheat, rye,
barley, etc.

But as the credit of Ceres who gave the corn to the Greeks, and that of
Isheth or Isis who bestowed it on the Egyptians, is very much fallen in
these days, we remain in uncertainty as to the origin of corn.

Sanchoniathon affirms that Dagon or Dagan, one of the grandsons of
Thaut, had the control of corn in Phoenicia. Well, his Thaut is of
about the same time as our Jared. From this it results that corn is very
old, and that it is of the same antiquity as grass. Perhaps this Dagon
was the first man to make bread, but that is not demonstrated.

Strange thing! we know positively that it is to Noah that we are under
an obligation for wine, and we do not know to whom we owe bread. And,
still more strange thing, we are so ungrateful to Noah, that we have
more than two thousand songs in honour of Bacchus, and we chant barely
one in honour of Noah our benefactor.

A Jew has assured me that corn came by itself in Mesopotamia, like the
apples, wild pears, chestnuts, medlars in the West. I want to believe
it until I am sure of the contrary; for corn must certainly grow
somewhere. It has become the ordinary and indispensable food in the good
climates, and throughout the North.

Some great philosophers whose talents we esteem and whose systems we do
not follow (Buffon) have claimed on page 195 of the "Natural History