Publisher's Synopsis
The Philosophical Dictionary is one of the most lively, amusing and various books of fact and illustration now in existence; comprising information adapted to every taste and lines of study, delivered with the wit, animation, and ease for which its gifted author was unrivalled. There is scarcely a topic which has instructed or amused the world of letters which is not treated of; not any part of the varied shores which bound with the ever-revolving tide of human opinion, left unexplored.A senior magistrate of a French town had the misfortune to have a wife who was debauched by a priest before her marriage, and who since covered herself with disgrace by public scandals: he was so moderate as to leave her without noise. This man, about forty years old, vigorous and of agreeable appearance, needs a woman; he is too scrupulous to seek to seduce another man's wife, he fears intercourse with a public woman or with a widow who would serve him as concubine. In this disquieting and sad state, he addresses to his Church a plea of which the following is a pr-cis: My wife is criminal, and it is I who am punished. Another woman is necessary as a comfort to my life, to my virtue even; and the sect of which I am a member refuses her to me; it forbids me to marry an honest girl. The civil laws of to-day, unfortunately founded on canon law, deprive me of the rights of humanity. The Church reduces me to seeking either the pleasures it reproves, or the shameful compensations it condemns; it tries to force me to be criminal
