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---Va nelle lettres--- Sebbene Bailly, nell'Histoire de l'astronomie moderne, avesse trovato numerose opportunità per fare nuove allusioni al popolo che aveva descritto nelle Lettres sur l'origine des sciences, Bailly molto probabilmente non si preoccupò immediatamente di estendere la sua teoria né l'avrebbe fatto se non fosse stato per la visita di Voltaire a Parigi nel 1778.

Conosciamo molti dei dettagli dei festeggiamenti monumentali offerti a Voltaire in occasione del suo ritorno a Parigi: riunioni speciali delle accademie, rappresentazioni teatrali alla Comédie-Française in suo onore, l'iniziazione del filosofo alla Loggia delle Nove Sorelle, ecc. Sembra quindi ben più che una coincidenza il fatto che Bailly riprese a scrivere delle lettere a Voltaire il 16 gennaio 1778, dopo la pausa di un anno dalla fine della loro corrispondenza nelle Lettres sur l'origine des sciences. Le Lettres sur l'Atlantide de Platon, almeno così fu chiamata questa sua nuova opera, sembra essere stata scritta dopo che il corpo principale della Histoire de l'astronomie moderne era stato terminato, anche perché non vi è alcuna prova dello sviluppo delle idee di questo libro nell′Histoire, e si affrettò al completamento in anticipo di quel lavoro. Bailly fa inoltre riferimento nella sua prima lettera alla «storia dell'astronomia moderna che pubblicherò a breve»32 e, sebbene entrambe le opere riportino la data 1779, le Lettres sur l'Atlantide sono menzionate nella corrispondenza epistolare di Friedrich Melchior von Grimm per il novembre 1778. L'ultima delle lettere è datata 12 maggio 1778.

Bailly scrive nel suo avertissement: «Queste lettere sono state scritte prima della morte del grande uomo che abbiamo appena perso; esse non gli erano ancora state ancora comunicate».

È chiaro allora che Bailly aveva sperato di presentare il lavoro finito a Voltaire durante il suo soggiorno a Parigi; però quella speranza fu distrutta dalla morte di Voltaire il 30 maggio. Le lettere furono probabilmente iniziate non appena Bailly sentì la notizia del viaggio di Voltaire a Parigi. Durante il mese di febbraio e nei primi giorni di marzo, Voltaire però si ammalò presso l'Hôtel de Villette e, chiaramente, non poteva essere disturbato. Dopodiché le prove e lo spettacolo dell′Irène lo tennero occupato fino alla fine di marzo. Il 30 marzo Voltaire presenziò all'Académie française; il 7 aprile fu iniziato alla Loggia delle Nove Sorelle; l'11 aprile visitò il duca di Chartres33; il 27 aprile, presenziò nuovamente presso l'Académie française e presso la Comédie per vedere la rappresentazione dell′Alzira; il 7 maggio presso l'Académie des sciences. È ben più che probabile che Bailly fu presente in una o più di queste occasioni, ma non è possibile dire se è si presentò personalmente a Voltaire. In ogni caso è difficile immaginarlo nel conversare con l'anziano filosofo di Ferney su delle discussioni a proposito di Atlantide quando uomini come Benjamin Franklin e l'astronomo Jérôme Lalande, per non parlare dell'abate Louis Gaultier, avevano anch'essi difficoltà a interpellarlo.

The letters on the Atlantis do not show the same missionary spirit as the first letters to Voltaire; "elles n'avaient point l'objet de convaincre M. de Voltaire; ce n'est pas a 85 ans qu'on change ses opinions pour des opinions opposees." 3 Whether they be "pedantesque et sot bavardage" as one detractor 35 has called them, or the search for historical truth which Bailly meant them to be, it would be unjust to disregard one startling fact. Bailly, far from converting Voltaire, is himself con- verted. The letters may, therefore, in all fairness to their author, be regarded as the homage of a self-styled opponent who was in the process of becoming a disciple. Bailly reproduces at the head of the letters Voltaire's acknowledgment of February 27, 1777, the gist of which was that Voltaire, while open to conviction, wanted written proof of the ancient race. The new volume is an attempt to find that proof in the written records of antiquity. The principal sources are Plato, Homer, Diodorus of Sicily, Sanchoniathon, and Hesiod. Bail- ly's first undertaking is to demonstrate that Plato's account of Atlantis in the Critias and Timaeus is not a work of fiction. The great nation founded by Uranus and ruled over successively by Hyperion, Atlas, Saturn, and Jupiter is a historical fact:

C'est une etrange manie de pretendre raconter comment s'est forme le monde que nous habitons, le monde qui existait lorsque nous n'existions encore. ... Pour les peuples qui ont oublie Dieu, le commencement du monde est le commencement connu de la race humaine. Au-dela sont les tenebres d'un abime impenetrable: ... mais immediatement sur ses bords, sur le sommet du temps et de l'existence, ils ont place leurs ancetres qu'ils regardaient comme les premiers hommes; et ces ancetres sont ceux des Atlantes.36

Bailly points out that references to Atlantis in Plato, Diodorus, Strabo, Pliny, Euripides, etc., vary in detail, and concludes from this fact that "il y avait donc un fond d'histoire ou de tradition; il y avait donc des sources originales oiu ces ecrivains ont puise comme Platon." 37 Bailly finds in Plato's account evidence that the Atlanteans were the ancestors of the Greeks and the Egyptians, and he interprets Plato's story of the inva- sion of Athens by the Atlanteans and the heroic resist- ance of that city as proof of successive waves of inva- sions. But Diodorus also links the Atlanteans with the history of Egypt, and Sanchoniathon, without nam- ing the Atlanteans, describes a similar race as the fonnders of Phcenicia. "Voil'a donc trois grandes nations qui sont de la race d'Atlas." 38 "Quand le mot Atlas et tous ses derives seraient allegoriques, ce peuple est celui que je nomme Atlantique, ce peuple est celui qui est sorti de l'ile de Platon." So far so good, but what of the tradition which placed the island of Atlantis in the Atlantic Ocean beyond the pillars of Hercules? Bailly examines in turn and rejects the arguments for identifying Atlantis with America or the Canaries.40 The real reason for assigning this location to Atlantis, he says, is the fact that Plato placed it beyond the pillars of Hercules, and subsequent historians have been misled by imagining that Gibraltar was the site of these pillars. They are, according to Bailly, only the attributes of the god, which appear with his effigy in temples dedi- cated to him and are no indication at all: "Platon . n'aurait pu mieux s'exprimer, s'il efit voulu tromper la posterite." 41

Nommer ces colonnes, c'etait indiquer un temple d'Her- cule; ces c6lonnes annonqaient encore des bornes; elles etaient les limites et les repos de la course de ce fameux voyageur; les temples d'Hercule sont ses stations. Je n examine point si Hercule est un chef reel, deifie apres sa mort, ou si c'est un embleme de la nature; mais je vois un peuple qui se transporte de pays en pays avec son Dieu, qui le pose a chaque lieu oiu il arrive, oii il demeure dressant un temple pour y prier, y deploie les signes de son culte et y inscrit le terme actuel de ses voyages.42

Herodotus had said that the Atlantic Ocean was none other than the Red Sea lying beyond the temple of Hercules at Tyre. Strabo and Diodorus had placed Arabia on the shores of the Atlantic. A contemporary of Bailly 43 placed Atlantis in Palestine. But these de- terminations do not satisfactorily explain the origins of the Asiatic peoples or satisfy Bailly's conclusions, based on astronomical and other evidence, in favor of an origin of civilization in the northern latitudes. In Strabo, however, he found mention of the descent of the Scythians from their mountains and the founding of a civilization in Cappadocia and Phrygia by their leader Acmon. This Acmon, according to Diodorus, was the legendary father of Uranus. Another ancient source says that the Adonis cult was introduced into Phcenicia by Deucalion, a Scythian, son or descendant of Prometheus. It is commonly said that Prometheus' mother was Asia; his brother, Atlas (i.e. one of the rulers of Atlantis); and the rock to which he was chained, the Caucasus. Following Macrobius and Plu- tarch, Bailly judges the Adonis cult to be the same as the worship of Apollo in Greece and of Osiris in Egypt. Applying the astronomical explanation which he had so frequently used to the deities of Greece, Egypt and Phcenicia, Bailly finds them all related to sun or sky worship and native to the latitudes where the Scythians originated. Then, turning to the Persians, Bailly relates, mostly out of Herbelot,44 the legends of the Dives and the Peris, which he regards as no more fictional than Plato's account of the Atlantis. As in Plato, there is a story of a powerful (and perhaps wicked) race-the Dives, which repeatedly invaded and harassed an enlightened and civilized people-the Peris, from whom the Persians claim descent. The mountains of Caf, which were the stronghold of the Dives, are identified with the Caucasus also. Thus Bailly pictures a commffon origin for the inhabitants of the Middle East, Egypt, and Asia Minor; they are the vestiges of successive waves of migration from the area to the north of the Caucasus. Indians and Chinese, too, have their traditions of migration, of origins behind the mountains. The Brah- mins are regarded as the vestiges of a civilized race that descended from Tibet, bringing their language with them; and in China tradition has it that Shansi province, in the northwest, was the first inhabited. Bailly sup- poses, then, that all the peoples of Asia emerged at some remote time from the high central plateau of Asia, following first the mountain passes, then the rivers-the Yangtze, the Ganges, the Indus, the Tigris and the Euphrates-and the plains to warmer and more pleasant climes where art and science flourished.

Je vois, donc, Monsieur, le mur et les palissades de la Core'e, la grande muraille de la Chine, le rempart de Gog, les portes Caspiennes du Caucase, ouvrages de l'art, se joindre aux montagnes escarpees, aux fortifications de la nature, pour former une vaste circonvallation, qui setpare le midi d'avec le nord de l'Asie. Ce rempart, place 'a la Chine a la hauteur du 406 degre de latitude, place a la hauteur du 42' vers Derbend, de la mer Caspienne a la mer Noire, se releve vers le nord dans l'intervalle compte entre la Chine et la mer Caspienne; il se porte jusque vers le 488 degre de latitude, pour atteindre la distance de l'equateur et la demeure du peuple instituteur que j'ai detja soupqonnee. Ce peuple savant habitait sans doute en deqa des montagnes. Au-dela sont restees les mceurs agrestes, l'ignorance; dans l'interieur la civilisation s'est 'etablie, les lumieres sont nees; et ces barrieres elevees contre le Nord etaient la ligne de demarcation. .. . 45 ... en meme temps que cette chaine est une barriere, elle est encore une commune origine.46

This theory has found pretty wide acceptance among modern ethnologists.47 The remarkable idea here is that Bailly is beginning to abandon the fiction of the ancient golden age: "dans l'interieur la civilisation s'est etablie"-not re-established as he had previously held, but established for the first time. And the home of the Atlanteans had still to be found. There is, after all, something to Bailly's promise that he will write "en cherchant la lumiere." 48 Examining the plains to the north of the Himalayas, Bailly finds from north to south the reverse of the conditions existing in China, India, and Persia. Flat and well-watered lands give way to barren foothills and forbidding mountains. The only motive which could induce migrating tribes to cross such obstacles would be climatic change, and the Buffon theory of the diminution of the earth's heat supplies that motive. Archeological discoveries in north central Asia in the vicinity of Krasnojarsk had revealed stone and bronze age implements worked with a certain skill which ob- viously antedated the Mongolian (iron age) occupation of that area. On this evidence Bailly postulated an- other step in the migration of ancient peoples, following upstream from the Arctic Ocean the numerous rivers of Siberia-the Ob, the Lena, the Yenisei, and the Irtysh. For lack of recorded evidence of these migrations, Bailly turns to the field of etymology.

Les langues bien connues, bien etudiees peuvent . . reveler l'origine des peuples, leur parente, les pays qu'ils ont habites, le terme des connaissances ou ils sont arrives et le degre de maturite de leur esprit.... Personne n'a, ce me semble, plus avance cette science par des travaux multiplies et par des decouvertes heureuses que M. de G& belin. II a rapproche toutes les langues, il a re'duit tous les mots 'a leurs primitifs, il en a separe encore les additions nationales; le reste qui se trouve commun a toutes les langues, appartient a une langue primitive. II y a donc une langue primitive, et M. de Gebelin vous la promet, lorsque son travail aura parcouru et detpouille toutes les langues pour la recomposer; ce sera une grande decouverte de notre siecle.49

Bailly was willing to assist this recomposition, but most of his etymologies are taken from Rudbeck 50 and are fantastic, to say the least.51 Here again is Bailly's mania for over-simplification of an exacting study; he has perceived the kernel of truth in Gebelin's notion, but is too anxious to exploit the implications. By a remarkable succession of etymologies we are brought to understand that the Greek underworld, Tartarus, the Elysian fields, the gardens of the Hesperides, etc. are all of Nordic invention, and this fact is confirmed by the witness of the poets who place these elusive lands "aux extremites du monde et dans le pays des tene- bres." 52 With the assistance of quotations from Hesiod, Homer, Pliny, Plutarch, etc., Bailly locates the island of Atlantis in the North Atlantic or Arctic Oceans; it is either Greenland, Iceland, Spitzbergen, or Nova Zembla-"ou quelques iles inconnues, plus avancees, et aujourd'hui inaccessibles par les glaces. . . . Je me garderai bien de faire un choix dans les iles qui sub- sistent encore et qui sont accessibles. On peut avoir cru que l'ile Atlantide etait abimee ou perdue dans la mer, seulement parce qu'on a cesse d'y aller. . . . " 53 Nevertheless, he leans towards Nova Zembla because it has direct access to the Siberian rivers by which route he believes mankind migrated southward. Having carried and developed his theme with con- siderable skill, Bailly ends the Lettres sur l'Atlantide de Platon on an unresolved chord.

Je prevois, Monsieur, que vous allez me demander si les Atlantes sont le peuple anterieur dont j'ai voulu renouveler la memoire; cette question est embarrassante. . . . Le livre de l'ancienne histoire est dechire, le temps en a disperse et perdu les lambeaux. J'en reunis quelques-uns, et lorsque j'ai reussi a trouver un sens suivi, je vous propose d'y lire une partie de cette histoire; mais si vous voulez le tout, demandez-le au temps qui nous l'a pris.54 On voudrait remonter contre ces generations, considerer ces developpements dans leurs cours, voir le bien et l'homme dans son origine, comme on se plait 'a remonter un fleuve qui produit nos richesses et dont les bords sont varies et fertiles. Quand on a trouve la source d'oii ces tresors sont sortis, on dit: 1'esprit humain est comme ces eaux; il s'accroit et se fortifie en marchant; humble et pauvre dans ses commencements, il s'enrichit de tout ce qu'il rencontre, il fertilise tout ce qu'il touche, et il etonne par la grandeur et la majeste.

This is a far cry from the "peuple . . . qui a precede et &claire' les plus anciens peuples connus" of whom Bailly spoke in the ancient astronomy and his first letters to Voltaire. In exploring the world of antiquity, Bailly has in fact come around to Voltaire's point of view; by his own account the peoples of Tartary and the far north were less civilized than their modern descendants of southern and western Asia and Europe. Arago, Nourrisson, Sainte-Beuve-in fact all of Bailly's critics and biographers-have regarded the two volumes of letters to Voltaire as consecutive parts of a homogeneous whole. This is a patent error; the sixteen-month break between them might in itself be an indication; but the text is unmistakable. Bailly gradually abandons in the second volume the position he had adopted in the first. He writes more about "l'homme qui est perfectible, qui tous les jours devient, pour ainsi dire, de plus en plus intellectuel," 56 and there is no more talk of a first golden age of which the second is to be an imitation.

The impact of Bailly's ideas on Europe is perhaps exaggerated in a recent work whose author writes:

Et enfin, pour que rien ne manquat a la gloire de Bailly, Voltaire s'emut du bruit fait autour des Atlantes.... Quand l'homme qui "tenait son siecle dans sa main" franchit le seuil de la loge des Neuf Sceurs, appuye au bras de Franklin et de Court de Gebelin, il entra dans le sanctuaire oCu la doctrine de Bailly eclatait triomphalement.57

This "conversion" of Voltaire can be pretty much discounted in view of the tone of his letters to Bailly, Condorcet, and d'Alembert concerning the origin of the sciences and especially in view of Bailly's statement that the letters on the Atlantis were never communicated to him. The same author makes the rash statement that Condorcet applauded the discovery of the primitive people of Selinginskoe. But it will be remembered that Condorcet had called Bailly "frere illumine." Later, obliged by his position in the Academie Francaise to receive Bailly into that august body and make a reply to the latter's discours de re'ception, Condorcet was to say somewhat equivocally, "En lisant ces lettres, il faut mnalgre soi croire 'a votre peuple hyperboreen, puisque vous avez su le rendre si interessant." 58 Condorcet never esteemed Bailly as a writer and often referred in conversation to his style as "rempli de toutes les beautes qu'il faut eviter en ecrivant." 59 It is true, however, that the appearance in rapid suc- cession of the letters on the Atlantis and the two volumes of the modern astronomy brought Bailly and his notions very much into the limelight. The moment was auspicious. The preceding year (1778) Buffon had cited the history of ancient astronomy as a work of "sagacite de genie et une profondeur d'erudition." 60 Now the poets and literati hastened to pay their respects. Fanny de Beauharnais publicly honored Bailly with a poem in praise of the Atlantide:

De Platon partageant la gloire, Vous sondez l'abirne des ans, Et nous montrez ce qu'il faut croire. Il parlait aux Atheniens, Peuple leger, frivole, aimable: Pour instruire un peuple semblable, Vos talents egalent les siens. Chaque verite qu'il suppose, Vous la prouvez elegamment: Je retrouve dans votre prose De la sienne tout l'agre'ment; Et tout m'oblige, en ce moment, De croire a la metempsycose.... 61

The poet Roucher, reviewing the three volumes of astronomy which had appeared in 1775 and 1779, wrote:

Dans un temps oii notre litterature perd chaque jour, depuis trois annees, ses membres les plus distingues, il est doux et consolant d'annoncer au public qu'il s'eleve des hommes non moins dignes de ses hommages et que les generations a venir envieront a la generation presente, qui peut-ere n'en est pas digne, puisqu'elle ne les honore pas assez.62

It was also about this time that Andre Chenier con- ceived the project of his "Epitre 'a Bailly" 63 as the man who had recaptured the history of the earth in the history of the heavens.6' Even abbe Baudeau, who re- turned to the attack and monopolized the pages of the Journal de Paris for three months 65 with his point by point rebuttal of Bailly's erudition, found that "les agrements de son esprit, la beaute de son style, et l'honnetete de ses meeurs meritent certainement les plus grandes eloges." 66

28 Ibid. 2: 132, note b.
29 Ibid. 1: 432.
30 Ibid. 1: 418.
31 See infra, pp. 477-478.
32 ATLAN, 13.
33 It would be interesting to know the motive of this visit. The duc de Chartres was present at Voltaire's initiation on April 7, and the event took place according to Amiable at the "ancien noviciat des Jesuites"-i.e. at the Grand Orient.
34 ATLAN, Avertissemenit.
35 Nourrisson, 345.
36 ATLAN, 72-74.
37 Ibid., 48.
38 Ibid., 76.
39 Ibid., 79.
40 In ASTR MOD 1: 289 Bailly had suggested that "les peuples des deux mondes ont une meme origine. Et dans cette supposition, comme l'Amerique n'a pu etre peuplee que par le nord, il semble naturel de conclure que cette origine commune a ete placee au nord de la terre, oiu les deux continents se reunis- sent peut-tre par une communication encore ignoree."
41 ATLAN, 83.
42 Ibid., 109.
43 Frederic-Charles Baer (1719-1797), Protestant theologian and professor of theology at Strasbourg, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences, author of an Essai historique et critique sur les Atlantiques, Paris, 1762.
44 Bibliothetque orientale ou dictionnaire universel, contenant geineralement tout ce qui regarde la connaissance des peuples de l'Orient. . . , Paris, 1697.
45 ATLAN, 220-221.
46 Ibid., 226.
47 See Col. Sir Thomas Hungerford Holdich, "Ethnology" and Sir Charles Norton Edgecumbe Eliot, "History" in article "Asia," Encyclopadia Brittannica, 11th edition.
48 ATLAN, 26.
49 Ibid., 193-195.
50 Olatis Riidbeck (1630-1702), a doctor of Upsala, author of Atland eller Manheirn, 3 v., 1677-1698, held that the Biblical paradise and the Atlantis were one and the same and situated on the Scandinavian peninsula. Upsala was flattered with be- coming the ancient capital of Uranus. Bailly was familiar with this work and quoted from it occasionally in ASTR ANC and ORIG SCI.
51 A few examples will serve to demonstrate:

Hercules < Swedish heer-culle, meaning army chief.
Styx < Swedish stegg, disagreeable.
Lethe < Swedish lata, forget.
Minos < Swedish mann, man.
Rhadamanthus < Swedish rad-amen, royal judge.
Phlegethon < Swedish flogeld, fiery meteors.

52ATLAN, 369.
53 Ibid., 415
54 Ibid., 450-45 1.
55 Ibid., 463.
56 Ibid., 294.
57 Le Flamanc, Les Utopies prerevolutionnaires, 103.
58 Merard de Saint-Just, 49. For the coolness of Condorcet at this reception, see Bachaumont for February 26, 1784.
59 Condorcet, Memoires 2: 244.
60 Epoques de la nature, 232.
61 Vers a M. B...., de l'Academie des Sciences, en recevant de lui le present de ses Lettres sur l'Atlantide de Platon" in Journal de Paris, September 4, 1780: 1005-1006. This poem is reprinted in Bailly's posthumous Reciueil, 278-280.
62 Journal de Paris, August 25, 1780: 966.
63 Dimoff 1: 61.
64 Chenier 3: 189.
65 Baudeau's letters to the editor appeared in the issues of September 18, 28; October 4, 10, 15, 21, 27; November 3, 13 and 30, 1780. Cubieres later reflected on this lengthy cor- respondence, "Cette saillie lui etait permise, car on sait qu'il devint fou a la fin de ses jours.... (Recueil, xx.)