Declaration of Admirers, Questioners and Doubters
DECLARATION OF THE ADMIRERS, QUESTIONERS AND DOUBTERS WHO HAVE AMUSED THEMSELVES BY PROPOUNDING TO THE SCHOLARS THE ABOVE QUESTIONS IN NINE VOLUMES.23
We declare to the scholars that, being like them prodigiously ignorant about the first principles of all things, and about the natural, typical, mystic, allegorical sense of many things, we refer these things to the infallible judgment of the Holy Inquisition of Rome, Florence, Madrid, Lisbon, and to the decrees of the Sorbonne of Paris, perpetual council of the Gauls.
Our errors springing in no wise from malice, but being the natural consequence of human frailty, we hope that they will be pardoned to us in this world and the other.
We beseech the small number of heavenly spirits who are still shut up in France in mortal bodies, and who, from there, enlighten the universe at thirty sous the sheet, to communicate their luminousness to us for the tenth volume which we reckon on publishing at the end of Lent 1772, or in Advent 1773; and for their luminousness we will pay forty sous.
This tenth volume will contain some very curious articles, which, if God favours us, will give new point to the salt which we shall endeavour to bestow in the thanks we shall give to these gentlemen.
Executed on Mount Krapack, the thirtieth day of the month of Janus, the year of the world
| according to Scaliger | 5722 |
| according to Riccioli | 5956 |
| according to Eusebius | 6972 |
| according to the Alphonsine Tables | 8707 |
| according to the Egyptians | 370000 |
| according to the Chaldeans | 465102 |
| according to the Brahmins | 780000 |
| according to the philosophers | ∞ |
Footnotes
23 The Philosophical Dictionary was first published as “Questions on the Encyclopedia,” then reprinted as “Reason by Alphabet,” and then finally, with many additions, became the “Philosophical Dictionary.”
pafe 224: It was allowed among the Egyptians{original had “Egyptains”}, the Athenians and even among the Jews, to marry one’s sister on the father’s side.
page 251: Your parents have told you that you should bow before this man; you respect him before knowing whether he merits your respect;{original had colon} you grow in years and in knowledge; page 280: (Corporalitas animæ in ipso Evangelio relucescit, De Anima,{original had period} cap. vii.)
page 295: “She soon became a monarchy, then,{original had period}” said the Brahmin.
page 315: we refer these things to the infallible{original had “infallable”} judgment of the Holy Inquisition of Rome, Florence, Madrid, Lisbon,