he says in the
letter just quoted: 'that even amid the worst misfortunes and the most
overwhelming sufferings one may always be content, if only one knows how to
exercise reason'. M. Bayle says concerning this (_Reply to the Questions of
a Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 157, p. 991) 'that it is saying nothing, that
it is prescribing for us a remedy whose preparation hardly anyone
understands'. I hold that the thing is not impossible, and that men could
attain it by dint of meditation and practice. For apart from the true
martyrs and those who have been aided in wonderful wise from on high, there
have been counterfeits who imitated them. That Spanish slave who killed the
Carthaginian governor in order to avenge his master and who evinced great
joy in his deed, even in the greatest tortures, may shame the philosophers.
Why should not one go as far as he? One may say of an advantage, as of a
disadvantage:

_Cuivis potest accidere, quod cuiquam potest_.

256. But even to-day entire tribes, such as the Hurons, the Iroquois, the
Galibis and other peoples of America teach us a great lesson on this
matter: one cannot read without astonishment of the intrepidity and
well-nigh insensibility wherewith they brave their enemies, who roast them
over a slow fire and eat them by slices. If such people could retain their
physical superiority and their courage, and combine them with our
acquirements, they would surpass us in every way,

_Extat ut in mediis turris aprica casis_.

They would be, in comparison with us, as a giant to a dwarf, a mountain to
a hill:

_Quantus Eryx, et quantus Athos, gaudetque nivali_
_Vertice se attollens pater Apenninus ad auras._

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257. All that which is effected by a wonderful vigour of body and mind in
these savages, who persist obstinately in the strangest point of honour,
might be acquired in our case by training, by well-seasoned mortifications,
by an overmastering joy founded on reason, by great practice in preserving
a certain presence of mind in the midst of the distractions and impressions
most liable to disturb it. Something of this kind is related of the ancient
Assassins, subjects and pupils of the Old Man or rather the Seigneur
(_Senior_) of the Mountain. Such a school (for a better purpose) would be
good for missionaries who would wish to return to Japan. The Gymnosophists
of the ancient Indians had perhaps so