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Title: The Works of Voltaire, Vol. IV of XLIII.

Author: Voltaire

Annotator: T. Smollett

Contributor: Oliver Herbrand Gordon Leigh
        John Morley

Translator: William F. Fleming

Release date: August 17, 2015 [eBook #49726]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Clarity, RichardW, and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
        produced from images generously made available by The
        Internet Archive/American Libraries.)


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Produced by Clarity, RichardW, and the Online Distributed
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 _The WORKS of VOLTAIRE_

 _EDITION DE LA PACIFICATION_

 _Limited to one thousand sets
 for America and Great Britain._

             “_Between two servants of Humanity, who appeared
 eighteen hundred years apart, there is a mysterious relation.
 *    *    *    *    *    Let us say it with a sentiment of
 profound respect: JESUS WEPT: VOLTAIRE SMILED.
 Of that divine tear and of that human smile is composed the
 sweetness of the present civilization._”
                                             _VICTOR HUGO._


[Illustration: AT THIS INTERESTING MOMENT, AS MAY EASILY BE
IMAGINED, WHO SHOULD COME IN BUT THE UNCLE]




 _EDITION DE LA PACIFICATION_

 THE WORKS OF
 VOLTAIRE
 A CONTEMPORARY VERSION

 With Notes by Tobias Smollett, Revised and Modernized
 New Translations by William F. Fleming, and an
 Introduction by Oliver H. G. Leigh

 A CRITIQUE AND BIOGRAPHY
 BY
 THE RT. HON. JOHN MORLEY

 _FORTY-THREE VOLUMES_

 ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-EIGHT DESIGNS,
 COMPRISING REPRODUCTIONS OF RARE OLD
 ENGRAVINGS, STEEL PLATES, PHOTOGRAVURES,
 AND CURIOUS FAC-SIMILES

 VOLUME IV

 E. R. DuMONT
 PARIS : LONDON : NEW YORK : CHICAGO




 COPYRIGHT 1901
 BY E. R. DUMONT

 OWNED by
 THE WERNER COMPANY
 AKRON, OHIO


 MADE BY
 THE WERNER COMPANY
 AKRON, OHIO




 VOLTAIRE

 ROMANCES

 IN THREE VOLUMES
 VOL. III.




       CONTENTS

       ——————
    I. ANDRÉ DES TOUCHES IN SIAM … 5

   II. THE BLIND AS JUDGES OF COLOR … 13

  III. THE CLERGYMAN AND HIS SOUL … 15

   IV. A CONVERSATION WITH A CHINESE … 28

    V. MEMNON THE PHILOSOPHER … 33

   VI. PLATO’S DREAM … 42

  VII. AN ADVENTURE IN INDIA … 47

 VIII. BABABEC … 51

   IX. ANCIENT FAITH AND FABLE … 56

    X. THE TWO COMFORTERS … 61

   XI. DIALOGUE BETWEEN MARCUS AURELIUS AND A RECOLLET
       FRIAR … 64

  XII. DIALOGUE BETWEEN A BRAHMIN AND A JESUIT … 70

 XIII. DIALOGUES BETWEEN LUCRETIUS AND POSIDONIUS … 76

  XIV. DIALOGUE BETWEEN A CLIENT AND HIS LAWYER … 95

   XV. DIALOGUE BETWEEN MADAME DE MAINTENON AND MDLLE. DE
       L’ENCLOS … 101

  XVI. DIALOGUE BETWEEN A SAVAGE AND A BACHELOR OF ARTS … 108

       ——————
       A TREATISE ON TOLERATION.
       [In 1762 Jean Calas, a Protestant of Toulouse, was
       done to death by torture on the wheel on the false
       charge of having slain his son, a suicide. His widow
       and children were put to the torture to extort a
       confession, in utter lack of evidence. Voltaire
       devoted years of unremitting labor to agitating the
       terrible crime and raising money compensation for the
       victims. His pamphlets aroused substantial sympathy
       and protests in England and over the Continent. His
       efforts led to the writing of over one hundred plays,
       poems, and pamphlets on the case. Voltaire had the
       satisfaction of witnessing the triumph of his long
       struggle. He narrates the facts in this Treatise,
       which expands into a sweeping exposure of the
       cruelties committed in the name of religion, in all
       ages and countries.]



       LIST OF PLATES—VOL. IV

       ——————
       MEMNON AND THE LADY’S UNCLE … _Frontispiece_

       THE DISCONSOLATE WOMAN … 62

       THE MAID OF ORLEANS AT THE STAKE … 144

       WIDOW CALAS APPEALS TO THE KING … 286




 ANDRÉ DES TOUCHES IN SIAM.


André Des Touches was a very agreeable musician in the brilliant
reign of Louis XIV., before the science of music was perfected by
Rameau, and before it was corrupted by those who prefer the art of
surmounting difficulties to nature and the real graces of composition.

Before he had recourse to these talents he had been a musketeer, and
before that, in 1688, he went into Siam with the Jesuit Tachard, who
gave him many marks of his affection, for the amusement he afforded
on board the ship; and Des Touches spoke with admiration of Father
Tachard for the rest of his life.

In Siam he became acquainted with the first commissary of Barcalon,
whose name was Croutef, and he committed to writing most of those
questions which he asked of Croutef, and the answers of that Siamese.
They are as follows:

DES TOUCHES.—How many soldiers have you?

CROUTEF.—Fourscore thousand, very indifferently paid.

DES TOUCHES.—And how many talapoins?

CROUTEF.—A hundred and twenty thousand, very idle and very rich. It
is true that in the last war we were beaten, but our talapoins have
lived sumptuously and built fine houses.

DES TOUCHES.—Nothing could have discovered more judgment. And your
finances, in what state are they?

CROUTEF.—In a very bad state. We have, however, about ninety thousand
men employed to render them prosperous, and if they have not
succeeded, it has not been their fault, for there is not one of them
who does not honorably seize all that he can get possession of, and
strip and plunder those who cultivate the ground for the good of the
state.

DES TOUCHES.—Bravo! And is not your jurisprudence as perfect as the
rest of your administration?

CROUTEF.—It is much superior. We have no laws, but we have five or
six thousand volumes on the laws. We are governed in general by
customs; for it is known that a custom, having been established by
chance, is the wisest principle that can be imagined. Besides, all
customs being necessarily different in different provinces, the
judges may choose at their pleasure a custom which prevailed four
hundred years ago or one which prevailed last year. It occasions a
variety in our legislation which our neighbors are forever admiring.
This yields a certain fortune to practitioners. It is a resource for
all pleaders who are destitute of honor, and a pastime of infinite
amusement for the judges, who can, with safe consciences, decide
causes without understanding them.

DES TOUCHES.—But in criminal cases—you have laws which may be
depended upon?

CROUTEF.—God forbid! We can condemn men to exile, to the galleys, to
be hanged; or we can discharge them, according to our own fancy. We
sometimes complain of the arbitrary power of the Barcalon, but we
choose that all our decisions should be arbitrary.

DES TOUCHES.—That is very just. And the torture—do you put people to
the torture?

CROUTEF.—It is our greatest pleasure. We have found it an infallible
secret to save a guilty person, who has vigorous muscles, strong
and supple hamstrings, nervous arms, and firm loins, and we gayly
break on the wheel all those innocent persons to whom nature has
given feeble organs. It is thus we conduct ourselves with wonderful
wisdom and prudence. As there are half proofs, I mean half truths,
it is certain there are persons who are half innocent and half
guilty. We commence, therefore, by rendering them half dead; we then
go to breakfast; afterwards ensues entire death, which gives us
great consideration in the world, which is one of the most valuable
advantages of our offices.

DES TOUCHES.—It must be allowed that nothing can be more prudent and
humane. Pray tell me what becomes of the property of the condemned?

CROUTEF.—The children are deprived of it. For you know that nothing
can be more equitable than to punish the single fault of a parent on
all his descendants.

DES TOUCHES.—Yes. It is a great while since I have heard of this
jurisprudence.

CROUTEF.—The people of Laos, our neighbors, admit neither the
torture, nor arbitrary punishments, nor the different customs,
nor the horrible deaths which are in use among us; but we regard
them as barbarians who have no idea of good government. All Asia
is agreed that we dance the best of all its inhabitants, and
that, consequently, it is impossible they should come near us in
jurisprudence, in commerce, in finance, and, above all, in the
military art.

DES TOUCHES.—Tell me, I beseech you, by what steps men arrive at the
magistracy in Siam.

CROUTEF.—By ready money. You perceive that it may be impossible to be
a good judge if a man has not by him thirty or forty thousand pieces
of silver. It is in vain a man may be perfectly acquainted with all
our customs; it is to no purpose that he has pleaded five hundred
causes with success—that he has a mind which is the seat of judgment,
and a heart replete with justice; no man can become a magistrate
without money. This, I say, is the circumstance which distinguishes
us from all Asia, and particularly from the barbarous inhabitants of
Laos, who have the madness to recompense all kinds of talents, and
not to sell any employment.

André Des Touches, who was a little off his guard, said to the
Siamese that most of the airs which he had just sung sounded
discordant to him, and wished to receive information concerning real
Siamese music. But Croutef, full of his subject, and enthusiastic for
his country, continued in these words:

“What does it signify that our neighbors, who live beyond our
mountains, have better music than we have, or better pictures,
provided we have always wise and humane laws? It is in that
circumstance we excel. For example:

“If a man has adroitly stolen three or four hundred thousand pieces
of gold we respect him, and we go and dine with him. But if a poor
servant gets awkwardly into his possession three or four pieces
of copper out of his mistress’ box we never fail of putting that
servant to a public death; first, lest he should not correct himself;
secondly, that he may not have it in his power to produce a great
number of children for the state, one or two of whom might possibly
steal a few little pieces of copper, or become great men; thirdly,
because it is just to proportion the punishment to the crime, and
that it would be ridiculous to give any useful employment in a prison
to a person guilty of so enormous a crime.

“But we are still more just, more merciful, more reasonable in the
chastisements which we inflict on those who have the audacity to
make use of their legs to go wherever they choose. We treat those
warriors so well who sell us their lives, we give them so prodigious
a salary, they have so considerable a part in our conquests, that
they must be the most criminal of all men to wish to return to their
parents on the recovery of their reason, because they had been
enlisted in a state of intoxication. To oblige them to remain in one
place, we lodge about a dozen leaden balls in their heads, after
which they become infinitely useful to their country.

“I will not speak of a great number of excellent institutions which
do not go so far as to shed the blood of men, but which render life
so pleasant and agreeable that it is impossible the guilty should
avoid becoming virtuous. If a farmer has not been able to pay
promptly a tax which exceeds his ability, we sell the pot in which he
dresses his food; we sell his bed in order that, being relieved of
all his superfluities, he may be in a better condition to cultivate
the earth.”

DES TOUCHES.—That is extremely harmonious!

CROUTEF.—To comprehend our profound wisdom you must know that our
fundamental principle is to acknowledge in many places as our
sovereign a shaven-headed foreigner who lives at the distance of nine
hundred miles from us. When we assign some of our best territories
to any of our talapoins, which it is very prudent in us to do, that
Siamese talapoin must pay the revenue of his first year to that
shaven-headed Tartar, without which it is clear our lands would be
unfruitful.

But the time, the happy time, is no more when that tonsured priest
induced one-half of the nation to cut the throats of the other half
in order to decide whether Sammonocodom had played at leap-frog or
at some other game; whether he had been disguised in an elephant or
in a cow; if he had slept three hundred and ninety days on the right
side or on the left. Those grand questions, which so essentially
affect morality, agitated all minds; they shook the world; blood
flowed plentifully for it; women were massacred on the bodies of
their husbands; they dashed out the brains of their little infants
on the stones with a devotion, with a grace, with a contrition truly
angelic. Woe to us! degenerate offspring of pious ancestors, who
never offer such holy sacrifices! But, heaven be praised, there are
yet among us at least a few good souls who would imitate them if they
were permitted.

DES TOUCHES.—Tell me, I beseech you, sir, if in Siam you divide the
tone major into two commas, or into two semi-commas, and if the
progress of the fundamental sounds are made by one, three, and nine?

CROUTEF.—By Sammonocodom, you are laughing at me. You observe no
bounds. You have interrogated me on the form of our government, and
you speak to me of music!

DES TOUCHES.—Music is everything. It was at the foundation of all
the politics of the Greeks. But I beg your pardon; you have not a
good ear, and we will return to our subject. You said that in order
to produce a perfect harmony—

CROUTEF.—I was telling you that formerly the tonsured Tartar
pretended to dispose of all the kingdoms of Asia, which occasioned
something very different from perfect harmony. But a very
considerable benefit resulted from it; for people were then more
devout toward Sammonocodom and his elephant than they are now, for,
at the present time, all the world pretends to common sense, with an
indiscretion truly pitiable. However, all things go on; people divert
themselves, they dance, they play, they dine, they sup, they make
love; this makes every man shudder who entertains good intentions.

DES TOUCHES.—And what would you have more? You only want good music.
If you had good music you might call your nation the happiest in the
world.




 THE BLIND AS JUDGES OF COLOR.


When the hospital of the Quinze Vingt was first founded the
pensioners were all equal, and their little affairs were concluded
upon by a majority of votes. They distinguished perfectly by the
touch between copper and silver coin; they never mistook the wine
of Brie for that of Burgundy. Their sense of smell was finer than
that of their neighbors who had the use of two eyes. They reasoned
very well on the four senses; that is, they knew everything they
were permitted to know, and they lived as peaceably and as happily
as blind people could be supposed to do. But, unfortunately, one
of their professors pretended to have clear ideas in respect to
the sense of seeing; he drew attention; he intrigued; he formed
enthusiasts, and at last he was acknowledged chief of the community.
He pretended to be a judge of colors, and everything was lost.

This dictator of the Quinze Vingt chose at first a little council by
the assistance of which he got possession of all the alms. On this
account no person had the resolution to oppose him. He decreed that
all the inhabitants of the Quinze Vingt were clothed in white. The
blind pensioners believed him, and nothing was to be heard but their
talk of white garments, though, in fact, they possessed not one of
that color. All their acquaintances laughed at them. They made their
complaints to the dictator, who received them very ill; he rebuked
them as innovators, freethinkers, rebels, who had suffered themselves
to be seduced by the errors of those who had eyes, and who presumed
to doubt that their chief was infallible. This contention gave rise
to two parties.

To appease the tumult, the dictator issued a decree declaring that
all their vestments were red. There was not one vestment of that
color in the Quinze Vingt. The poor men were laughed at more than
ever. Complaints were again made by the community. The dictator
rushed furiously in, and the other blind men were as much enraged.
They fought a long time, and peace was not restored until the members
of the Quinze Vingt were permitted to suspend their judgments in
regard to the color of their dress.

A deaf man, reading this little history, allowed that these people,
being blind, were to blame in pretending to judge of colors, but he
remained steady to his own opinion that those persons who were deaf
were the only proper judges of music.




 THE CLERGYMAN AND HIS SOUL.


 CHAPTER I.

There can be no doubt that everything in the world is governed by
fatality. My own life is a convincing proof of this doctrine. The
earl of Chesterfield, with whom I was a great favorite, had promised
me that I should have the first living that fell to his gift. An old
incumbent of eighty happened to die, and I immediately travelled post
to London to remind the earl of his promise. I was honored with an
immediate interview, and was received with the greatest kindness. I
informed his lordship of the death of the rector, and of the hope I
cherished relative to the disposal of the vacant living. He replied
that I really looked very ill. I answered that, thanks to God, my
greatest affliction was poverty. “I am sorry for you,” said his
lordship, and he politely dismissed me with a letter of introduction
to a Mr. Sidrac, who dwelt in the vicinity of Guildhall. I ran as
fast as I could to this gentleman’s house, not doubting but that he
would immediately install me in the wished-for living. I delivered
the earl’s letter, and Mr. Sidrac, who had the honor to be my lord’s
surgeon, asked me to sit down, and, producing a case of surgical
instruments, began to assure me that he would perform an operation
which he trusted would very soon relieve me.

You must know that his lordship had understood that I was suffering
from some dreadful complaint, and that he generously intended to have
me cured at his own expense. The earl had the misfortune to be as
deaf as a post, a fact with which I, alas! had not been previously
acquainted.

During the time which I lost in defending myself against the attacks
of Mr. Sidrac, who insisted positively upon curing me, whether I
would or no, one out of the fifty candidates who were all on the
lookout, came to town, flew to my lord, begged the vacant living and
obtained it.

I was deeply in love with an interesting girl, a Miss Fidler, who
had promised to marry me upon condition of my being made rector. My
fortunate rival not only got the living, but also my mistress into
the bargain!

My patron, upon being told of his mistake, promised to make me ample
amends, but alas! he died two days afterwards.

Mr. Sidrac demonstrated to me that, according to his organic
structure, my good patron could not have lived one hour longer. He
also clearly proved that the earl’s deafness proceeded entirely from
the extreme dryness of the drums of his ears, and kindly offered, by
an application of spirits of wine, to harden both of my ears to such
a degree that I should, in one month only, become as deaf as any peer
of the realm.

I discovered Mr. Sidrac to be a man of profound knowledge. He
inspired me with a taste for the study of nature, and I could not but
be sensible of the valuable acquisition I had made in acquiring the
friendship of a man who was capable of relieving me, should I need
his services. Following his advice, I applied myself closely to the
study of nature, to console myself for the loss of the rectory and of
my enchanting Miss Fidler.


 CHAPTER II.
 THE STUDY OF NATURE.

After making many profound observations upon nature (having employed
in the research my five senses, my spectacles, and a very large
telescope), I said one day to Mr. Sidrac: “Unless I am much deceived,
philosophy laughs at us. I cannot discover any trace of what the
world calls nature; on the contrary, everything seems to me to be
the result of art. By art the planets are made to revolve around the
sun, while the sun revolves on its own axis. I am convinced that some
genius has arranged things in such a manner that the square of the
revolutions of the planets is always in proportion to the cubic root
from their distance to their centre, and one had need be a magician
to find out how this is accomplished. The tides of the sea are the
result of art no less profound and no less difficult to explain.

“All animals, vegetables, and minerals are arranged with due
regard to weight and measure, number and motion. All is performed
by springs, levers, pulleys, hydraulic machines, and chemical
combinations, from the insignificant flea to the being called man,
from the grass of the field to the far-spreading oak, from a grain of
sand to a cloud in the firmament of heaven. Assuredly, everything is
governed by art, and the word nature is but a chimera.”

“What you say,” answered Mr. Sidrac, “has been said many years ago,
and so much the better, for the probability is greater that your
remark is true. I am always astonished when I reflect that a grain
of wheat cast into the earth will produce in a short time above a
handful of the same corn.” “Stop,” said I, foolishly, “you forget
that wheat must die before it can spring up again, at least so
they say at college.” My friend Sidrac, laughing heartily at this
interruption, replied: “That assertion went down very well a few
years ago, when it was first published by an apostle called Paul, but
in our more enlightened age the meanest laborer knows that the thing
is altogether too ridiculous even for argument.”

“My dear friend,” said I, “excuse the absurdity of my remarks; I
have hitherto been a theologian, and one cannot divest one’s self in
a moment of every silly opinion.”


 CHAPTER III.
 GOOD ADVICE.

Some time after this conversation between the disconsolate person,
whom we shall call Goodman, and the clever anatomist, Mr. Sidrac, the
latter, one fine morning, observed his friend in St. James’s Park,
standing in an attitude of deep thought. “What is the matter?” said
the surgeon. “Is there anything amiss?” “No,” replied Goodman, “but I
am left without a patron in the world since the death of my friend,
who had the misfortune to be so deaf. Now, supposing there be only
ten thousand clergymen in England, and granting these ten thousand
have each two patrons, the odds against my obtaining a bishopric are
twenty thousand to one; a reflection quite sufficient to give any
man the blue-devils. I remember, it was once proposed to me to go
out as cabin-boy to the East Indies. I was told that I should make
my fortune. But as I did not think I should make a good admiral,
whenever I should arrive at the distinction, I declined; and so,
after turning my attention to every profession under the sun, I am
fixed for life as a poor clergyman, good for nothing.”

“Then be a clergyman no longer!” cried Sidrac, “and turn
philosopher. What is your income?” “Only thirty guineas a year,”
replied Goodman, “although at the death of my mother it will be
increased to fifty.” “Well, my dear Goodman,” continued Sidrac, “that
sum is quite sufficient to support you in comfort. Thirty guineas
are six hundred and thirty shillings, almost two shillings a day.
With this fixed income a man need do nothing to increase it, but is
at perfect liberty to say all he thinks of the East India Company,
the House of Commons, the king, and all the royal family, of man
generally and individually, and lastly, of God and His attributes;
and the liberty we enjoy of expressing our thoughts upon these most
interesting topics is certainly very agreeable and amusing.”

“Come and dine at my table every day. That will save you some little
money. We will afterwards amuse ourselves with conversation, and
your thinking faculty will have the pleasure of communicating with
mine by means of speech, which is certainly a very wonderful thing,
though its advantages are not duly appreciated by the greater part of
mankind.”


 CHAPTER IV.
 DIALOGUE UPON THE SOUL
 AND OTHER TOPICS.

GOODMAN.—But my dear Sidrac, why do you always say _my thinking
faculty_ and not _my soul_? If you used the latter term I should
understand you much better.

SIDRAC.—And for my part, I freely confess I should not understand
myself. I _feel_, I _know_, that God has endowed me with the
faculties of thinking and speaking, but I can neither _feel_ nor
_know_ that God has given me a thing called a soul.

GOODMAN.—Truly, upon reflection, I perceive that I know as little
about the matter as you do, though I own that I have all my life been
bold enough to believe that I knew. I have often remarked that the
eastern nations apply to the soul the same word they use to express
life. After their example, the Latins understood the word _anima_
to signify the life of the animal. The Greeks called the breath the
soul. The Romans translated the word breath by _spiritus_, and thence
it is that the word spirit or soul is found in every modern nation.
As it happens that no one has ever seen this spirit or breath, our
imagination has converted it into a being which it is impossible to
see or touch. The learned tell us that the soul inhabits the body
without having any place in it, that it has the power of setting our
different organs in motion without being able to reach and touch
them; indeed, what has not been said upon the subject? The great
Locke knew into what a chaos these absurdities had plunged the human
understanding. In writing the only reasonable book upon metaphysics
that has yet appeared in the world, he did not compose a single
chapter on the soul, and if by chance he now and then makes use of
the word, he only introduces it to stand for intellect or mind.

In fact, every human being, in spite of Bishop Berkeley, is sensible
that he has a mind, and that this mind or intellect is capable of
receiving ideas; but no one can feel that there is another being—a
soul—within him, which gives him motion, feeling, and thought. It
is, in fact, ridiculous to use words we do not understand, and to
admit the existence of beings of whom we cannot have the slightest
knowledge.

SIDRAC.—We are then agreed upon a subject which, for so many
centuries, has been a matter of dispute.

GOODMAN.—And I must observe that I am surprised we should have agreed
upon it so soon.

SIDRAC.—Oh! that is not so astonishing. We really wish to know what
is truth. If we were among the academies we should argue like the
characters in Rabelais. If we had lived in those ages of darkness,
the clouds of which so long enveloped Great Britain, one of us would
very likely have burned the other. We are so fortunate as to be born
in an age comparatively reasonable; we easily discover what appears
to us to be truth, and we are not afraid to proclaim it.

GOODMAN.—You are right, but I fear that, after all, the truth we have
discovered is not worth much. In mathematics, indeed, we have done
wonders; from the most simple causes we have produced effects that
would have astonished Apollonius or Archimedes; but what have we
proved in metaphysics? Absolutely nothing but our own ignorance.

SIDRAC.—And do you call that nothing? You grant the Supreme Being
has given you the faculties of feeling and thinking; He has in the
same manner given your feet the faculty of walking, your hands their
wonderful dexterity, your stomach the capability of digesting food,
and your heart the power of throwing arterial blood into all parts
of your body. Everything we enjoy is derived from God, and yet we
are totally ignorant of the means by which He governs and conducts
the universe. For my own part, as Shakespeare says, I thank Him for
having taught me that of the principles of things I know absolutely
nothing. It has always been a question in what manner the soul acted
upon the body. Before attempting to answer this question, I must be
convinced that I have a soul. Either God has given us this wonderful
spark of intellect, or He has gifted us with some principle that
answers equally well. In either case, we are still the creatures of
His divine will and goodness, and that is all I know about the matter.

GOODMAN.—But if you do not know, tell me at least what you are
inclined to think upon the subject. You have opened skulls, and
dissected the human fœtus. Have you ever, in these dissections,
discovered any appearance of a soul?

SIDRAC.—Not the least, and I have not been able to understand how an
immortal and spiritual essence could dwell for months together in a
membrane. It appears to me difficult to conceive that this pretended
soul existed before the foundation of the body; for in what could it
have been employed during the many ages previous to its mysterious
union with flesh? Again! how can we imagine a spiritual principle
waiting patiently in idleness during a whole eternity, in order to
animate a mass of matter for a space of time which, compared with
eternity, is less than a moment?

It is worse still when I am told that God forms immortal souls out
of nothing, and then cruelly dooms them to an eternity of flames and
torments. What? burn a spirit, in which there can be nothing capable
of burning; how can He burn the sound of a voice, or the wind that
blows? though both the sound and wind were material during the short
time of their existence; but a pure spirit—a thought—a doubt—I am
lost in the labyrinth; on whichever side I turn, I find nothing but
obscurity and absurdity, impossibility and contradiction. But I
am quite at ease when I say to myself God is Master of all. He who
can cause each star to hold its particular course through the broad
expanse of the firmament can easily give to us sentiments and ideas
without the aid of this atom called the soul. It is certain that God
has endowed all animals, in a greater or lesser degree, with thought,
memory, and judgment; He has given them life; it is demonstrated that
they have feeling, since they possess all the organs of feeling; if
then they have all this without a soul, why is it improbable that we
have none? and why do mankind flatter themselves that they alone are
gifted with a spiritual and immortal principle?

GOODMAN.—Perhaps this idea arises from their inordinate vanity. I am
persuaded that if the peacock could speak he would boast of his soul,
and would affirm that it inhabited his magnificent tail. I am very
much inclined to believe with you that God has created us thinking
creatures, with the faculties of eating, drinking, feeling, etc.,
without telling us one word about the matter. We are as ignorant as
the peacock I just mentioned, and he who said that we live and die
without knowing how, why, or wherefore, spoke nothing but the truth.

SIDRAC.—A celebrated author, whose name I forget, calls us nothing
more than the puppets of Providence, and this seems to me to be a
very good definition. An infinity of movements are necessary to our
existence, but we did not ourselves invent and produce motion. There
is a Being who has created light, caused it to move from the sun
to our eyes in about seven minutes. It is only by means of motion
that my five senses are put in action, and it is only by means of my
senses that I have ideas, hence it follows that my ideas are derived
from the great author of motion, and when He informs me how He
communicates these ideas to me, I will most sincerely thank Him.

GOODMAN.—And so will I. As it is I constantly thank Him for having
permitted me, as Epictetus says, to contemplate for a period of some
years this beautiful and glorious world. It is true that He could
have made me happier by putting me in possession of Miss Fidler and a
good rectory, but still, such as I am, I consider myself as under a
great obligation to God’s parental kindness and care.

_Sidrac._—You say that it is in the power of God to give you a good
living, and to make you still happier than you are at present. There
are many persons who would not scruple flatly to contradict this
proposition of yours. Do you forget that you yourself sometimes
complain of fatality? A man, and particularly a priest, ought never
to contradict one day an assertion he has perhaps made the day
before. All is but a succession of links, and God is wiser than to
break the eternal chain of events, even for the sake of my dear
friend Goodman.

GOODMAN.—I did not foresee this argument when I was speaking of
fatality, but to come at once to the point, if it be so, God is as
much a slave as myself.

SIDRAC.—He is the slave of His will, of His wisdom, and of the laws
which He has Himself instituted; and it is impossible that He can
infringe upon any of them, because it is impossible that He can
become either weak or inconsistent.

GOODMAN.—But, my friend, what you say would tend to make us
irreligious, for, if God cannot change any of the affairs of the
world, what is the use of teasing Him with prayers, or of singing
hymns to His praise?

SIDRAC.—Well! who bids you worship or pray to God? We praise a man
because we think him vain; we entreat of him when we think him weak
and likely to change his purpose on account of our petitions. Let us
do our duty to God, by being just and true to each other. In that
consists our real prayers, and our most heartfelt praises.




 A CONVERSATION WITH A CHINESE.


In the year 1723 there was a Chinese in Holland who was both a
learned man and a merchant, two things that ought by no means to be
incompatible; but which, thanks to the profound respect that is shown
to money, and the little regard that the human species pay to merit,
have become so among us.

This Chinese, who spoke a little Dutch, happened to be in a
bookseller’s shop at the same time that some literati were assembled
there. He asked for a book; they offered him Bossuet’s “Universal
History,” badly translated. At the title “Universal History”—

“How pleased am I,” cried the Oriental, “to have met with this
book. I shall now see what is said of our great empire, of a nation
that has subsisted for upwards of fifty thousand years; of that long
dynasty of emperors who have governed us for such a number of ages. I
shall see what these Europeans think of the religion of our literati,
and of that pure and simple worship we pay to the Supreme Being. What
a pleasure will it be for me to find how they speak of our arts, many
of which are of a more ancient date with us than the eras of all the
kingdoms of Europe! I fancy the author will be greatly mistaken in
relation to the war we had about twenty-two thousand five hundred and
fifty-two years ago with the martial people of Tonquin and Japan,
as well as the solemn embassy that the powerful emperor of Mogul
sent to request a body of laws from us in the year of the world
500000000000079123450000.”

“Lord bless you,” said one of the literati, “there is hardly any
mention made of that nation in this world. The only nation considered
is that marvellous people, the Jews.”

“The Jews!” said the Chinese; “those people then must certainly be
masters of three parts of the globe at least.”

“They hope to be so some day,” answered the other; “but all we have
here are those peddlers you see going about with toys and nic-nacs,
and who sometimes do us the honor to clip our gold and silver.”

“Surely you are not serious,” exclaimed the Chinese. “Could those
people ever have been in possession of a vast empire?”

Here I joined in the conversation, and told him that for a few years
they were in possession of a small country to themselves; but that we
were not to judge of a people from the extent of their dominions, any
more than of a man by his riches.

“But does not this book take notice of some other nations?” demanded
the man of letters.

“Undoubtedly,” replied a learned gentleman who stood at my elbow; “it
treats largely of a small country about sixty leagues wide, called
Egypt, in which it is said that there is a lake of one hundred and
fifty leagues in circumference, made by the hands of man.”

“My God!” exclaimed the Chinese, “a lake of one hundred and fifty
leagues in circumference within a spot of ground only sixty leagues
wide. This is very curious!”

“The inhabitants of that country,” continued the doctor, “were all
sages.”

“What happy times were those!” cried the Chinese; “but is that all?”

“No,” replied the other, “there is mention made of those famous
people the Greeks.”

“Greeks! Greeks!” said the Asiatic, “who are those Greeks?”

“Why,” replied the philosopher, “they were masters of a little
province, about the two-hundredth part as large as China, but whose
fame spread over the whole world.”

“Indeed!” said the Chinese, with an air of openness and
ingenuousness; “I declare I never heard the least mention of these
people, either in the Mogul’s country, in Japan, or in Great Tartary.”

“Oh, the barbarian! the ignorant creature!” cried out our sage very
politely. “Why, then, I suppose you know nothing of Epaminondas the
Theban, nor of the Pierian heaven, nor the names of Achilles’ two
horses, nor of Silenus’ ass? You have never heard speak of Jupiter,
nor of Diogenes, nor of Lais, nor of Cybele, nor of—”

“I am very much afraid,” said the learned Oriental, interrupting
him, “that you know nothing of that eternally memorable adventure of
the famous Xixofon Concochigramki, nor of the mysteries of the great
Fi-psi-hi-hi! But pray tell me what other unknown things does this
“Universal History” treat of?”

Upon this my learned neighbor harangued for a quarter of an hour
together about the Roman republic, and when he came to Julius Cæsar
the Chinese stopped him, and very gravely said:

“I think I have heard of him; was he not a Turk?”

“How!” cried our sage in a fury, “don’t you so much as know the
difference between pagans, Christians, and Mahometans? Did you never
hear of Constantine? Do you know nothing of the history of the popes?”

“We have heard something confusedly of one Mahomet,” replied the
Asiatic.

“It is surely impossible,” said the other, “but you must have heard
at least of Luther, Zwinglius, Bellarmine, and Œcolampadius.”

“I shall never remember all those names,” said the Chinese, and
so saying he quitted the shop, and went to sell a large quantity
of Pekoe tea and fine calico, and then, after purchasing what
merchandise he required, set sail for his own country, adoring Tien,
and recommending himself to Confucius.

As to myself, the conversation I had been witness to plainly
discovered to me the nature of vain glory; and I could not forbear
exclaiming:

“Since Cæsar and Jupiter are names unknown to the finest, most
ancient, most extensive, most populous, and most civilized kingdom
in the universe, it becomes ye well, O ye rulers of petty states!
ye pulpit orators of a narrow parish, or a little town! ye doctors
of Salamanca, or of Bourges! ye trifling authors, and ye heavy
commentators!—it becomes you well, indeed, to aspire to fame and
immortality.”




 MEMNON THE PHILOSOPHER.


Memnon one day took it into his head to become a great philosopher.
“To be perfectly happy,” said he to himself, “I have nothing to do
but to divest myself entirely of passions, and nothing is more easy,
as everybody knows. In the first place, I will never be in love,
for when I see a beautiful woman I will say to myself, These cheeks
will one day grow sallow and wrinkled, these eyes be encircled with
vermilion, that bosom become lean and emaciated, that head bald and
palsied. Now, I have only to consider her at present in imagination
as she will afterwards appear in reality, and certainly a fair face
will never turn my head.

“In the second place, I shall always be temperate. It will be in vain
to tempt me with good cheer, with delicious wines, or the charms of
society. I will have only to figure to myself the consequences of
excess—an aching head, a loathing stomach, the loss of reason, of
health, and of time; I will then only eat to supply the waste of
nature; my health will be always equal, my ideas pure and luminous.
All this is so easy that there is no merit in accomplishing it.

“But,” says Memnon, “I must think a little of how I am to regulate
my fortune; why, my desires are moderate, my wealth is securely
placed with the receiver-general of the finances of Nineveh. I
have wherewithal to live independent, and that is the greatest of
blessings. I shall never be under the cruel necessity of dancing
attendance at court. I will never envy any one, and nobody will envy
me. Still all this is easy. I have friends, and I will preserve them,
for we shall never have any difference. I will never take amiss
anything they may say or do; and they will behave in the same way to
me. There is no difficulty in all this.”

Having thus laid this little plan of philosophy in his closet,
Memnon put his head out of the window. He saw two women walking
under the plane trees near his house. The one was old and appeared
quite at her ease. The other was young, handsome, and seemingly much
agitated. She sighed, she wept, and seemed on that account still
more beautiful. Our philosopher was touched, not, to be sure, with
the lady (he was too much determined not to feel any uneasiness
of that kind), but with the distress which he saw her in. He came
downstairs and accosted the young Ninevite, designing to console
her with philosophy. That lovely person related to him, with an air
of the greatest simplicity and in the most affecting manner, the
injuries she sustained from an imaginary uncle—with what art he had
deprived her of some imaginary property, and of the violence which
she pretended to dread from him.

“You appear to me,” said she, “a man of such wisdom that if you will
come to my house and examine into my affairs, I am persuaded you will
be able to relieve me from the cruel embarrassment I am at present
involved in.”

Memnon did not hesitate to follow her, to examine her affairs
philosophically, and to give her sound counsel.

The afflicted lady led him into a perfumed chamber and politely
made him sit down with her on a large sofa, where they both placed
themselves opposite to each other, in the attitude of conversation,
the one eager in telling her story, the other listening with devout
attention. The lady spoke with downcast eyes, whence there sometimes
fell a tear, and which, as she now and then ventured to raise them,
always met those of the sage Memnon. Their discourse was full of
tenderness, which redoubled as often as their eyes met. Memnon took
her affairs exceedingly to heart and felt himself every instant more
and more inclined to oblige a person so virtuous and so unhappy. By
degrees, in the warmth of conversation, they drew nearer. Memnon
counselled her with great wisdom, and gave her most tender advice.

At this interesting moment, as may easily be imagined, who should
come in but the uncle? He was armed from head to foot, and the first
thing he said was that he would immediately sacrifice, as was just,
both Memnon and his niece. The latter, who made her escape, knew that
he was disposed to pardon, provided a good round sum were offered
to him. Memnon was obliged to purchase his safety with all he had
about him. In those days people were happy in getting so easily quit.
America was not then discovered, and distressed ladies were not then
so dangerous as they are now.

Memnon, covered with shame and confusion, got home to his own house.
He there found a card inviting him to attend dinner with some of his
intimate friends.

“If I remain at home alone,” said he, “I shall have my mind so
occupied with this vexatious adventure that I shall not be able
to eat a bit and I shall bring upon myself some disease. It will,
therefore be prudent in me to go to my intimate friends and partake
with them of a frugal repast. I shall forget in the sweets of their
society the folly I have this morning been guilty of.”

Accordingly he attends the meeting; he is discovered to be uneasy at
something, and he is urged to drink and banish care.

“A little wine, drunk in moderation, comforts the heart of God and
man”—so reasoned Memnon the philosopher, and he became intoxicated.
After the repast, play is proposed.

“A little play with one’s intimate friends is a harmless pastime.” He
plays and loses all in his purse and four times as much on his word.
A dispute arises on some circumstance in the game and the disputants
grow warm. One of his intimate friends throws a dice-box at his head
and strikes out one of his eyes. The philosopher Memnon is carried
home drunk and penniless, with the loss of an eye.

He sleeps out his debauch and when his head becomes clear he sends
his servant to the receiver-general of the finances of Nineveh to
draw a little money to pay his debt of honor to his intimate friends.
The servant returns and informs him that the receiver-general had
that morning been declared a fraudulent bankrupt, and that by this
means a hundred families are reduced to poverty and despair. Memnon,
almost beside himself, puts a plaster on his eye and a petition
in his pocket, and goes to court to solicit justice from the king
against the bankrupt. In the saloon he meets a number of ladies, all
in the highest spirits and sailing along with hoops four-and-twenty
feet in circumference. One of them, slightly acquainted with him,
eyed him askance, and cried aloud: “Ah! what a horrid monster!”

Another, who was better acquainted with him, thus accosts him:
“Good-morrow, Mr. Memnon; I hope you are well, Mr. Memnon. La! Mr.
Memnon, how did you lose your eye?” and, turning upon her heel, she
tripped unconcernedly away.

Memnon hid himself in a corner and waited for the moment when he
could throw himself at the feet of the monarch. That moment at last
arrived. Three times he kissed the earth and presented his petition.
His gracious majesty received him very favorably and referred the
paper to one of his satraps. The satrap takes Memnon aside and says
to him, with a haughty air and satirical grin:

“Hark ye, you fellow with the one eye; you must be a comical dog
indeed to address yourself to the king rather than to me, and still
more so to dare to demand justice against an honest bankrupt,
whom I honor with my protection, and who is also a nephew to the
waiting-maid of my mistress. Proceed no further in this business, my
good friend, if you wish to preserve the eye you have left.”

Memnon, having thus in his closet resolved to renounce women, the
excess of the table, play, and quarrelling, but especially having
determined never to go to court, had been, in the short space of
four-and-twenty hours, duped and robbed by a gentle dame, had got
drunk, had gamed, had been engaged in a quarrel, had got his eye
knocked out, and had been at court, where he was sneered at and also
insulted.

Petrified with astonishment, and his heart broken with grief, Memnon
returns homeward in despair. As he was about to enter his house,
he is repulsed by a number of officers who are carrying off his
furniture for the benefit of his creditors. He falls down almost
lifeless under a plane tree. There he finds the fair dame of the
morning, who was walking with her dear uncle, and both set up a loud
laugh on seeing Memnon with his plaster. The night approached, and
Memnon made his bed on some straw near the walls of his house. Here
the ague seized him and he fell asleep in one of the fits, when a
celestial spirit appeared to him in a dream.

It was all resplendent with light; it had six beautiful wings, but
neither feet, nor head, and could be likened to nothing.

“What art thou?” said Memnon.

“Thy good genius,” replied the spirit.

“Restore me, then, my eye, my health, my fortune, my reason,” said
Memnon, and he related how he had lost them all in one day.

“These are adventures which never happen to us in the world we
inhabit,” said the spirit.

“And what world do you inhabit?” said the man of affliction.

“My native country,” replied the other, “is five hundred millions of
leagues distant from the sun, in a little star near Sirius.”

“Charming country!” said Memnon. “And are there indeed with you no
jades to dupe a poor devil, no intimate friends that win his money
and knock out an eye for him, no fraudulent bankrupts, no satraps
that make a jest of you while they refuse you justice?”

“No,” said the inhabitant of the star, “we have nothing of the kind.
We are never duped by women because we have none among us; we never
commit excesses at table because we neither eat nor drink; we have
no bankrupts because with us there is neither silver nor gold; our
eyes cannot be knocked out because we have not bodies in the form of
yours, and satraps never do us injustice, because in our world we are
all equal.”

“Pray, my lord,” said Memnon, “without women and without eating, how
do you spend your time?”

“In watching over the other worlds that are entrusted to us, and I am
now come to give you consolation.”

“Alas!” replied Memnon, “why did you not come yesterday to hinder me
from committing so many indiscretions?”

“I was with your elder brother Hassan,” said the celestial being. “He
is still more to be pitied than you are. His most gracious majesty,
the sultan of the Indies, in whose court he has the honor to serve,
has caused both his eyes to be put out for some small indiscretion,
and he is now in a dungeon, his hands and feet loaded with chains.”

“Tis a happy thing, truly,” said Memnon, “to have a good genius in
one’s family, when out of two brothers, one is blind of an eye,
the other blind of both; one stretched upon straw, the other in a
dungeon.”

“Your fate will soon change,” said the spirit of the star. “It is
true you will never recover your eye, but, except that, you may be
sufficiently happy if you never again take it into your head to be a
perfect philosopher.”

“Is it, then, impossible?” said Memnon.

“As impossible as to be perfectly wise, perfectly strong, perfectly
powerful, perfectly happy. We ourselves are very far from it. There
is a world, indeed, where all this takes place; but, in the hundred
thousand millions of worlds dispersed over the regions of space,
everything goes on by degrees. There is less philosophy and less
enjoyment in the second than in the first, less in the third than in
the second, and so forth till the last in the scale, where all are
completely fools.”

“I am afraid,” said Memnon, “that our little terraqueous globe here
is the madhouse of those hundred thousand millions of worlds of which
your lordship does me the honor to speak.”

“Not quite,” said the spirit, “but very nearly; everything must be in
its proper place.”

“But are those poets and philosophers wrong, then, who tell us that
everything is for the best?”

“No, they are right, when we consider things in relation to the
gradation of the whole universe.”

“Oh! I shall never believe it till I recover my eye again,” said the
unfortunate Memnon.




 PLATO’S DREAM.


Plato was a great dreamer, as many others have been since his
time. He dreamed that mankind were formerly double, and that, as a
punishment for their crimes, they were divided into male and female.

He undertook to prove that there can be no more than five perfect
worlds, because there are but five regular mathematical bodies. His
republic was one of his principal dreams. He dreamed, moreover, that
watching arises from sleep, and sleep from watching, and that a
person who should attempt to look at an eclipse otherwise than in a
pail of water would surely lose his sight. Dreams were at that time
in great repute.

Here follows one of his dreams, which is not one of the least
interesting. He thought that the great Demiurgos, the eternal
geometer, having peopled the immensity of space with innumerable
globes, was willing to make a trial of the knowledge of the genii
who had been witnesses of his works. He gave to each of them a small
portion of matter to arrange, nearly in the same manner as Phidias
and Zeuxis would have given their scholars a statue to carve or a
picture to paint, if we may be allowed to compare small things to
great.

Demogorgon had for his lot the lump of mould which we call the earth,
and, having formed it such as it now appears, he thought he had
executed a masterpiece. He imagined he had silenced Envy herself, and
expected to receive the highest panegyrics, even from his brethren;
but how great was his surprise, when, at his next appearing among
them, they received him with a general hiss.

One among them, more satirical than the rest, accosted him thus:

“Truly you have performed mighty feats! you have divided your world
into two parts; and, to prevent the one from communication with the
other, you have carefully placed a vast collection of waters between
the two hemispheres. The inhabitants must perish with cold under both
your poles and be scorched to death under the equator. You have, in
your great prudence, formed immense deserts of sand, so that all who
travel over them may die with hunger and thirst. I have no fault to
find with your cows, your sheep, your cocks, and your hens, but can
never be reconciled to your serpents and your spiders. Your onions
and your artichokes are very good things, but I cannot conceive what
induced you to scatter such a heap of poisonous plants over the face
of the earth, unless it was to poison its inhabitants. Moreover, if
I am not mistaken, you have created about thirty different kinds
of monkeys, a still greater number of dogs, and only four or five
species of the human race. It is true, indeed, you have bestowed
on the latter of these animals a faculty by you called reason, but,
in truth, this same reason is a very ridiculous thing, and borders
very near upon folly. Besides, you do not seem to have shown any
very great regard to this two-legged creature, seeing you have left
him with so few means of defence, subjected him to so many disorders
and provided him with so few remedies, and formed him with such a
multitude of passions and so small a portion of wisdom or prudence to
resist them. You certainly were not willing that there should remain
any great number of these animals on the earth at once, for, without
reckoning the dangers to which you have exposed them, you have so
ordered matters that, taking every day throughout the year, smallpox
will regularly carry off the tenth part of the species, and sister
maladies will taint the springs of life in the nine remaining parts;
and then, as if this were not sufficient, you have so disposed things
that one-half of those who survive will be occupied in going to law
with each other or cutting one another’s throats.

“Now, they must doubtless be under infinite obligations to you, and
it must be owned you have executed a masterpiece.”

Demogorgon blushed. He was sensible there was much moral and physical
evil in this affair, but still he insisted there was more good than
ill in it.

“It is an easy matter to find fault, good folks,” said the genius,
“but do you imagine it is so easy to form an animal, who, having the
gift of reason and free-will, shall not sometimes abuse his liberty?
Do you think that, in rearing between nine and ten thousand different
plants, it is so easy to prevent some few from having noxious
qualities? Do you suppose that with a certain quantity of water,
sand, and mud you could make a globe that should have neither seas
nor deserts?

“As for you, my sneering friend, I think you have just finished the
planet Jupiter. Let us see now what figure you make with your great
belts and your long nights with four moons to enlighten them. Let us
examine your worlds and see whether the inhabitants you have made are
exempt from follies or diseases.”

Accordingly the genius fell to examining the planet Jupiter, when
the laugh went strongly against the laugher. The serious genius who
had made the planet Saturn did not escape without his share of the
censure, and his brother operators, the makers of Mars, Mercury, and
Venus, had each in his turn some reproaches to undergo.

Several large volumes and a great number of pamphlets were written on
this occasion; smart sayings and witty repartees flew about on all
sides; they railed against and ridiculed each other, and, in short,
the disputes were carried on with all the warmth of party heat, when
the eternal Demiurgos thus imposed silence on them all:

“In your several performances there is both good and bad, because you
have a great share of understanding, but at the same time fall short
of perfection. Your works will not endure above a hundred millions of
years, after which you will acquire more knowledge and perform much
better. It belongs to me alone to create things perfect and immortal.”

This was the doctrine Plato taught his disciples. One of them, when
he had finished his harangue, cried out: “And so you then awoke?”




 AN ADVENTURE IN INDIA.


All the world knows that Pythagoras, while he resided in India,
attended the school of the Gymnosophists and learned the language of
beasts and plants. One day while he was walking in a meadow near the
sea-shore he heard these words:

“How unfortunate that I was born an herb! I scarcely attain two
inches in height, when a voracious monster, a horrid animal, tramples
me under his large feet; his jaws are armed with rows of sharp
scythes, by which he cuts, then grinds, and then swallows me. Men
call this monster a sheep. I do not suppose there is in the whole
creation a more detestable creature.”

Pythagoras proceeded a little way and found an oyster yawning on a
small rock. He had not yet adopted that admirable law by which we are
enjoined not to eat those animals which have a resemblance to us. He
had scarcely taken up the oyster to swallow it, when it spoke these
affecting words:

“O Nature, how happy is the herb, which is, as I am, thy work! Though
it be cut down, it is regenerated and immortal, and we, poor oysters,
in vain are defended by a double cuirass; villains eat us by dozens
at their breakfast, and all is over with us forever. What a horrible
fate is that of an oyster, and how barbarous are men!”

Pythagoras shuddered; he felt the enormity of the crime he had nearly
committed; he begged pardon of the oyster, with tears in his eyes,
and replaced it very carefully on the rock.

As he was returning to the city, profoundly meditating on this
adventure, he saw spiders devouring flies; swallows eating spiders,
and sparrow-hawks eating swallows. “None of these,” said he, “are
philosophers.”

On his entrance, Pythagoras was stunned, bruised, and thrown down by
a lot of tatterdemalions, who were running and crying: “Well done, he
fully deserved it.” “Who? What?” said Pythagoras, as he was getting
up. The people continued running and crying: “Oh, how delightful it
will be to see them boiled!”

Pythagoras supposed they meant lentils or some other vegetables, but
he was in error; they meant two poor Indians. “Oh!” said Pythagoras,
“these Indians, without doubt, are two great philosophers weary of
their lives; they are desirous of regenerating under other forms; it
affords pleasure to a man to change his place of residence, though he
may be but indifferently lodged; there is no disputing on taste.”

He proceeded with the mob to the public square, where he perceived
a lighted pile of wood and a bench opposite to it, which was called
a tribunal. On this bench judges were seated, each of whom had a
cow’s tail in his hand and a cap on his head, with ears resembling
those of the animal which bore Silenus when he came into that country
with Bacchus, after having crossed the Erytrean sea without wetting
a foot, and stopping the sun and moon, as it is recorded with great
fidelity by the Orphics.

Among these judges there was an honest man with whom Pythagoras was
acquainted. The Indian sage explained to the sage of Samos the nature
of that festival to be given to the people of India.

“These two Indians,” said he, “have not the least desire to be
committed to the flames. My grave brethren have adjudged them to
be burnt; one for saying that the substance of Xaca is not that of
Brahma, and the other for supposing that the approbation of the
Supreme Being was to be obtained at the point of death without
holding a cow by the tail. ‘Because,’ said he, ‘we may be virtuous
at all times, and we cannot always have a cow to lay hold of just
when we may have occasion.’ The good women of the city were greatly
terrified at two such heretical opinions; they would not allow the
judges a moment’s peace until they had ordered the execution of those
unfortunate men.”

Pythagoras was convinced that from the herb up to man there were
many causes of chagrin. However, he obliged the judges and even the
devotees to listen to reason, which happened only at that time.

He went afterwards and preached toleration at Crotona; but a bigot
set fire to his house, and he was burned—the man who had delivered
the two Hindoos from the flames! Let those save themselves who can!




 BABABEC.


When I was in the city of Benares, on the borders of the Ganges, the
country of the ancient Brahmins, I endeavored to instruct myself
in their religion and manners. I understood the Indian language
tolerably well. I heard a great deal and remarked everything. I
lodged at the house of my correspondent, Omri, who was the most
worthy man I ever knew. He was of the religion of the Brahmins; I
have the honor to be a Mussulman. We never exchanged one word higher
than another about Mahomet or Brahma. We performed our ablutions each
on his own side; we drank of the same sherbet, and we ate of the same
rice, as if we had been two brothers.

One day we went together to the pagoda of Gavani. There we saw
several bands of fakirs, some of whom were janguis, that is to say,
contemplative fakirs, and others were disciples of the ancient
Gymnosophists, who led an active life. They all have a learned
language peculiar to themselves; it is that of the most ancient
Brahmins; and they have a book written in this language, which they
call the “_Shasta_.” It is, beyond all contradiction, the most
ancient book in all Asia, not excepting the “_Zend_.”

I happened by chance to cross in front of a fakir who was reading in
this book.

“Ah! wretched infidel!” cried he, “thou hast made me lose a number of
vowels that I was counting, which will cause my soul to pass into the
body of a hare instead of that of a parrot, with which I had before
the greatest reason to flatter myself.”

I gave him a rupee to comfort him for the accident. In going a few
paces farther I had the misfortune to sneeze. The noise I made roused
a fakir, who was in a trance.

“Heavens!” cried he, “what a dreadful noise. Where am I? I can no
longer see the tip of my nose—the heavenly light has disappeared.”

“If I am the cause,” said I, “of your not seeing farther than the
length of your nose, here is a rupee to repair the great injury I
have done you. Squint again, my friend, and resume the heavenly
light.”

Having thus brought myself off discreetly enough, I passed over to
the side of the Gymnosophists, several of whom brought me a parcel
of mighty pretty nails to drive into my arms and thighs, in honor
of Brahma. I bought their nails and made use of them to fasten down
my boxes. Others were dancing upon their hands, others cut capers
on the slack rope, and others went always upon one foot. There were
some who dragged a heavy chain about with them, and others carried a
packsaddle; some had their heads always in a bushel—the best people
in the world to live with. My friend Omri took me to the cell of one
of the most famous of these. His name was Bababec; he was as naked
as he was born, and had a great chain about his neck that weighed
upwards of sixty pounds. He sat on a wooden chair, very neatly
decorated with little points of nails that penetrated into his flesh,
and you would have thought he had been sitting on a velvet cushion.
Numbers of women flocked to him to consult him. He was the oracle of
all the families in the neighborhood, and was, truly speaking, in
great reputation. I was witness to a long conversation that Omri had
with him.

“Do you think, father,” said my friend, “that after having gone
through seven metempsychoses, I may at length arrive at the
habitation of Brahma?”

“That is as it may happen,” said the fakir. “What sort of life do you
lead?”

“I endeavor,” answered Omri, “to be a good subject, a good husband,
a good father, and a good friend. I lend money without interest to
the rich who want it, and I give it to the poor; I always strive to
preserve peace among my neighbors.”

“But have you ever run nails into your flesh?” demanded the Brahmin.

“Never, reverend father.”

“I am sorry for it,” replied the father, “very sorry for it, indeed.
It is a thousand pities, but you will certainly not reach above the
nineteenth heaven.”

“No higher!” said Omri. “In truth, I am very well contented with
my lot. What is it to me whether I go into the nineteenth or the
twentieth, provided I do my duty in my pilgrimage, and am well
received at the end of my journey? Is it not as much as one can
desire to live with a fair character in this world and be happy with
Brahma in the next? And pray what heaven do you think of going to,
good master Bababec, with your chain?”

“Into the thirty-fifth,” said Bababec.

“I admire your modesty,” replied Omri, “to pretend to be better
lodged than me. This is surely the result of an excessive ambition.
How can you, who condemn others that covet honors in this world,
arrogate such distinguished ones to yourself in the next? What right
have you to be better treated than me? Know that I bestow more alms
to the poor in ten days than the nails you run into your flesh cost
for ten years. What is it to Brahma that you pass the whole day stark
naked with a chain about your neck? This is doing a notable service
to your country, doubtless! I have a thousand times more esteem for
the man who sows pulse or plants trees than for all your tribe, who
look at the tips of their noses or carry packsaddles to show their
magnanimity.”

Having finished this speech, Omri softened his voice, embraced the
Brahmin, and, with an endearing sweetness, besought him to throw
aside his nails and his chain, to go home with him and live with
decency and comfort.

The fakir was persuaded: he was washed clean, rubbed with essences
and perfumes and clad in a decent habit; he lived a fortnight in this
manner, behaved with prudence and wisdom and acknowledged that he was
a thousand times happier than before; but he lost his credit among
the people; the women no longer crowded to consult him; he therefore
quitted the house of the friendly Omri and returned to his nails and
his chain—to regain his reputation.




 ANCIENT FAITH AND FABLE.


In order to be successful in their efforts to govern the multitude,
rulers have endeavored to instil all the visionary notions possible
into the minds of their subjects.

The good people who read Virgil, or the “Provincial Letters,” do
not know that there are twenty times more copies of the “Almanac of
Liège” and of the “_Courier Boiteux_” printed than of all the ancient
and modern books together. No one can have a greater admiration
than myself for the illustrious authors of these almanacs and their
brethren. I know that ever since the time of the ancient Chaldæans
there have been fixed and stated days for taking physic, paring our
nails, giving battle, and cleaving wood. I know that the best part of
the revenue of an illustrious academy consists in the sale of these
almanacs. May I presume to ask, with all possible submission and a
becoming diffidence of my own judgment, what harm it would do to the
world if some powerful astrologer were to assure the peasants and the
good inhabitants of little villages that they might safely pare their
nails when they please, provided it be done with a good intention?
The people, I shall be told, would not buy the almanacs of this new
astrologer. On the contrary, I will venture to affirm that there
would be found among your great geniuses many who would make a merit
in following this novelty. Should it be alleged, however, that these
geniuses, in their new-born zeal, would form factions and kindle a
civil war, I would have nothing further to say on the subject, but
readily give up for the sake of peace my too radical and dangerous
opinion.

Everybody knows the king of Boutan. He is one of the greatest princes
in the universe. He tramples under his feet the thrones of the earth,
and his shoes (if he has any) are provided with sceptres instead
of buckles. He adores the devil, as is well known, and his example
is followed by all his courtiers. He one day sent for a famous
sculptor of my country and ordered him to make a beautiful statue
of Beelzebub. The sculptor succeeded admirably. Never before was
there seen such an interesting and handsome devil. But, unhappily,
our Praxiteles had only given five clutches to his statue, whereas
the devout Boutaniers always gave him six. This serious blunder of
the artist was attributed by the grand master of ceremonies to the
devil with all the zeal of a man justly jealous of his master’s
acknowledged rights, and also of the established and sacred customs
of the kingdom of Boutan. He insisted that the sculptor should be
punished for his thoughtless innovation, by the loss of his head. The
anxious sculptor explained that his five clutches were exactly equal
in weight to six ordinary clutches; and the king of Boutan, who was
a prince of great clemency, granted him a pardon. From that time the
people of Boutan no longer believed the dogma relating to the devil’s
six clutches.

The same day it was thought necessary that his majesty should be
bled, and a surgeon of Gascony, who had come to his court in a ship
belonging to our East India company, was appointed to take from him
five ounces of his precious blood. The astrologer of that quarter
cried out that the king would be in danger of losing his life if the
surgeon opened a vein while the heavens were in their present state.
The Gascon might have told him that the only question was about the
king’s health; but he prudently waited a few moments, and then,
taking an almanac in his hand, thus addressed the astrologer:

“You were in the right, great man! The king would have died had he
been bled at the instant you mentioned, but the heavens have since
changed their aspect, and now is the favorable moment.”

The astrologer assented to the surgeon’s observation. The king was
cured; and by degrees it became an established custom among the
Boutaniers to bleed their kings whenever it was considered necessary.

Although the Indian astrologers understood the method of calculating
eclipses, yet the common people obstinately held to the old belief
that the sun, when obscured, had fallen into the throat of a great
dragon, and that the only way to free him from thence was by standing
naked in the water and making a hideous noise to frighten away the
monster, and oblige him to release his hold. This notion, which is
quite prevalent among the orientals, is an evident proof how much the
symbols of religion and natural philosophy have at all times been
perverted by the common people. The astronomers of all ages have been
wont to distinguish the two points of intersection, upon which every
eclipse happens, and which are called the lunar nodes, by marking
them with a dragon’s head and tail. Now the vulgar, who are equally
ignorant in every part of the world, took the symbol or sign for
the thing itself. Thus, when the astronomers said the sun is in the
dragon’s head, the common people said the dragon is going to swallow
up the sun; and yet these people were remarkable for their fondness
for astrology. But while we laugh at the ignorance and credulity of
the Indians, we do not reflect that there are no less than 300,000
almanacs sold yearly in Europe, all of them filled with observations
and predictions equally as false and absurd as any to be met with
among the Indians. It is surely as reasonable to say that the sun is
in the mouth or the claws of a dragon as to tell people every year
in print that they must not sow, nor plant, nor take physic, nor be
bled, but on certain days of the moon. It is high time, in an age
like ours, that some men of learning should think it worth their
while to compose a calendar that might be of use to the industrious
classes by instructing instead of deceiving them.

A blustering Dominican at Rome said to an English philosopher with
whom he was disputing:

“You are a dog; you say that it is the earth that turns round, never
reflecting that Joshua made the sun to stand still!”

“Well! my reverend father,” replied the philosopher, “ever since that
time has not the sun been immovable?”

The dog and the Dominican embraced each other, and even the devout
Italians were at length convinced that the earth turns round.

An augur and a senator lamented, in the time of Cæsar, the declining
state of the republic.

“The times, indeed, are very bad,” said the senator; “we have reason
to tremble for the liberty of Rome.”

“Ah!” said the augur, “that is not the greatest evil; the people now
begin to lose the respect which they formerly had for our order. We
seem barely to be tolerated—we cease to be necessary. Some generals
have the assurance to give battle without consulting us. And, to
complete our misfortunes, even those who sell us the sacred pullets
begin to reason.”

“Well, and why don’t you reason likewise?” replied the senator, “and
since the dealers in pullets in the time of Cæsar are more knowing
than they were in the time of Numa, ought not you modern augurs to be
better philosophers than those who lived in former ages?”




 THE TWO COMFORTERS.


The great philosopher Citosile once said to a woman who was
disconsolate, and who had good reason to be so: “Madame, the queen
of England, daughter to Henry IV., was as wretched as you. She was
banished from her kingdom, was in great danger of losing her life at
sea, and saw her royal spouse expire on a scaffold.”

“I am sorry for her,” said the lady, and began again to lament her
own misfortunes.

“But,” said Citosile, “remember the fate of Mary Stuart. She loved
(but with a most chaste and virtuous affection) an excellent
musician, who played admirably on the bass-viol. Her husband killed
her musician before her face; and in the sequel her good friend and
relative, Queen Elizabeth, who called herself a virgin, caused her
head to be cut off on a scaffold covered with black, after having
confined her in prison for the space of eighteen years.”

“That was very cruel,” replied the lady, and presently relapsed into
her former melancholy.

“Perhaps,” said the comforter, “you have heard of the beautiful Joan
of Naples, who was taken prisoner and strangled.”

“I have a dim remembrance of her,” said the afflicted lady.

“I must relate to you,” continued the other, “the adventure of a
sovereign princess who, within my recollection, was dethroned after
supper and who died on a desert island.”

“I know her whole history,” replied the lady.

“Well, then,” said Citosile, “I will tell you what happened to
another great princess whom I instructed in philosophy. She had
a lover, as all great and beautiful princesses have. Her father
surprised this lover in her company, and was so displeased with
the young man’s confused manner and excited countenance that he
gave him one of the most terrible blows that had ever been given in
his province. The lover seized a pair of tongs and broke the head
of the angry parent, who was cured with great difficulty, and who
still bears the marks of the wound. The lady in a fright leaped out
of the window and dislocated her foot, in consequence of which she
habitually halts, though still possessed in other respects of a very
handsome person. The lover was condemned to death for having broken
the head of a great prince. You can imagine in what a deplorable
condition the princess must have been when her lover was led to the
gallows. I have seen her long ago when she was in prison, and she
always spoke to me of her own misfortunes.”

“And why will you not allow me to think of mine?” said the lady.

[Illustration: SO MANY GREAT LADIES HAVE BEEN SO UNFORTUNATE, IT ILL
BECOMES YOU TO DESPAIR]

“Because,” said the philosopher, “you ought not to think of
them; and since so many great ladies have been so unfortunate, it ill
becomes you to despair. Think of Hecuba—think of Niobe.”

“Ah!” said the lady, “had I lived in their time, or in that of so
many beautiful princesses, and had you endeavored to console them by
a relation of my misfortunes, would they have listened to you, do you
imagine?”

Next day the philosopher lost his only son, and was entirely
prostrated with grief. The lady caused a catalogue to be drawn up
of all the kings who had lost their children, and carried it to the
philosopher. He read it—found it very exact—and wept nevertheless.

Three months afterwards they chanced to renew their acquaintance,
and were mutually surprised to find each other in such a gay and
sprightly humor. To commemorate this event, they caused to be erected
a beautiful statue to Time, with this inscription: “TO HIM WHO
COMFORTS.”




 A DIALOGUE  BETWEEN
 MARCUS AURELIUS AND
 A RECOLLET FRIAR.


MARCUS AURELIUS.—Now I think I begin to know where I am. That’s
certainly the capitol, and that basilica, the temple. The person I
behold there is undoubtedly the priest of Jupiter. Hark ye, friend;
one word with you, if you please.

FRIAR.—Friend! very familiar, truly: you must certainly be a stranger
in Rome, to accost in this manner brother Fulgentius the recollet, an
inhabitant of the capitol, confessor to the duchess de Popoli, and
who speaks sometimes to the pope, with as much familiarity as if he
were a mere mortal.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—Brother Fulgentius in the capitol! Matters are
somewhat changed indeed. I don’t understand one word you say. Is
there no such place here as the temple of Jupiter?

FRIAR.—Get you gone about your business, honest friend; you seem to
be out of your senses. Who are you, prithee, with your antique dress
and your Jew’s beard? Whence come you, and what do you want here?

MARCUS AURELIUS.—This is my ordinary apparel: I am come back to see
Rome once more. My name is Marcus Aurelius.

FRIAR.—Marcus Aurelius! I think I remember to have heard of such a
name. If I don’t mistake, there was a Pagan emperor so called.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—I am he. I longed to have another view of that Rome
which I loved, and which was so fond of me; that capitol in which I
triumphed by my contempt of triumph; that land I formerly rendered
so happy: but now I can hardly think it to be the same place. I have
been to see the column that was erected to my honor, and have not
been able to find the statue of the sage Antonine, my father. The
face is quite altered from what it was.

FRIAR.—So it ought, M. Damned Soul. Sixtus V. erected that column;
but then he put on it a better man than you and your father to boot.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—I was always of opinion it was no difficult matter
to excel me; but I thought it no such easy affair to surpass my
father. Perhaps my piety towards him has imposed on my judgment. All
men are liable to error. But why give me the epithet of Damned Soul?

FRIAR.—Because so you are. Was it not you—let me see, I don’t
mistake—that so often persecuted a set of folks, to whom you lay
under very great obligations, and who procured you a shower of rain
which enabled you to thrash your enemies?

MARCUS AURELIUS.—Alas! I was very far from persecuting any one. I
thank Heaven, by a very happy conjuncture, a storm happened, just in
the nick of time, to save my troops, who were dying of thirst; but
I never heard before that I owed the favor of this tempest to the
folks you mention, though, to tell you the truth, they were very good
soldiers. I assure you, in the most solemn manner, I am not damned:
I have done too much good to mankind, that the Divine Being should
do me any evil. But, prithee tell me, where is the palace of the
emperor, my successor? Is it still on the Palatine hill? For really I
hardly know my own country again.

FRIAR.—I believe it, truly, we have so improved everything. If you
please, I will carry you to Monte Cavallo: you shall have the honor
to kiss the great toe of St. Peter; and you will, besides, receive a
handsome present of indulgences, which, in my humble opinion, will be
very seasonable; for I don’t doubt you stand in great need of them.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—First of all, I desire you would grant me your own;
and tell me ingenuously, is there an end of the emperors and empire
of Rome?

FRIAR.—No, no, by no means; there is still an empire and an emperor;
but then he keeps his court at the distance of about four hundred
leagues hence, at a small city called Vienna, on the Danube. My
advice is, that you go there to pay a visit to your successors;
because here you stand a great chance to visit the inquisition. I
warn you that the reverend Dominican fathers are not at all disposed
to jest in such matters, and that your Marcus Aureliuses, your
Antonines, your Trajans, and your Tituses, and such gentry as cannot
say their catechism, are treated by them after a very scurvy manner.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—The catechism! the inquisition! Dominicans!
Recollets! a pope and cardinals! and the Roman Empire in a little
city on the Danube! I could never have dreamt of such things; though
I will allow, that in sixteen hundred years things will change
strangely in this world of ours. I could like, methinks, to see one
of these Roman emperors, Marcoman, Quadus, Cimber, and Teuto.

FRIAR.—You shall not want that pleasure when you please, and a
greater than that still. You would, in all likelihood, be surprised,
were I to tell you that the Scythians hold one half of your empire,
and we the other: that the sovereign of Rome is a priest like me:
that brother Fulgentius may be that sovereign in his turn: that I
shall disperse indulgences on the very spot where you were wont to be
drawn in your car by vanquished sovereigns: and, lastly, that your
successor on the Danube has not a city he can call his own; but that
there is a certain priest that lets him have the use of his capital,
when he has occasion for it.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—You tell me strange news, indeed. All these great
changes could never have happened without great misfortunes. I own I
still love the human race, and am heartily sorry for them.

FRIAR.—You are too good. These revolutions have really cost a deluge
of blood, and a hundred provinces have been ravaged; but had it not
been so, your servant, brother Fulgentius, had never slept at his
ease in the capitol.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—Rome, that metropolis of the universe, is then most
miserably fallen.

FRIAR.—Fallen, I grant you; but as for miserably, there I must
say you nay: on the contrary, peace and the fine arts flourish
here eternally. The ancient masters of the world are now become
music-masters. Instead of sending colonies into England, we now send
them eunuchs and fiddlers. We have, it is true, none of your Scipios
now, those destroyers of Carthage; but then we have none of your
proscriptions neither. We have bartered glory for tranquillity.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—I tried what I could to become a philosopher in
my life-time, but now I am sure I have become one indeed. I find
tranquillity is at the least an equivalent for glory: but, by what
you tell me, I should be apt to suspect brother Fulgentius is no
adept in philosophy.

FRIAR.—What do you mean? Not a philosopher! I am one with a
vengeance. I once taught philosophy; nay, better still, I read
lectures in theology.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—And, pray, what may this theology of yours be, an’t
please you?

FRIAR.—Why, it is—it is that which has made me be here, and the
emperor elsewhere. You seem to grudge me the honor I enjoy, and are
out of humor at the trifling revolution that has happened to your
empire.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—I adore the eternal decrees of Providence: I know
man ought not to repine at fate: I admire the vicissitude of human
affairs; but since everything is so liable to change, and since the
Roman Empire has experienced this wonderful mutability, let me hope
the recollets may also experience it in their turn.

FRIAR.—I declare you anathematized: but hold, now I think on’t, it is
time to go to matins.

MARCUS AURELIUS.—And I will go and be reunited to the Being of
Beings.




 DIALOGUE   BETWEEN   A   BRAHMIN
   AND A JESUIT, ON NECESSITY AND
   FREE-WILL,   AND  THE  GENERAL
   CONCATENATION  OF  CAUSES  AND
   EFFECTS.

JESUIT.—In all probability, you are indebted to the prayers of St.
Francis Xavier for that long and happy life you have enjoyed a
hundred and fourscore years! Why, ’tis a life-time for a patriarch.

BRAHMIN.—My master, Fonfouca, lived till three hundred; it is the
ordinary course of life among us Brahmins. I have a very great regard
for Francis Xavier; but all his prayers would never have put nature
out of her destined order: had he really been able to prolong the
life of a gnat but for one single instant beyond what the general
concatenation of causes and events allows of, this globe of ours had
worn a quite different appearance from that in which you now behold
it.

JESUIT.—You have a strange opinion of future contingents: why, you
must be entirely ignorant that man is free, and that our free-will
disposes of everything in this sublunary world at its mere fancy and
pleasure. I can assure you the Jesuits alone have contributed not a
little to some very considerable revolutions.

BRAHMIN.—I have no manner of question in regard to the learning and
power of the reverend fathers, the Jesuits: they are a very valuable
part of human society; yet I cannot by any means believe them the
sovereign arbiters of human transactions: every single person, every
single being, whether Jesuit or Brahmin, is one of the springs which
act in the general movement of the universe; in which he is the
slave, and not the master of destiny. Pray, to what do you think
Genghis Khan owed the conquest of Asia? To the very moment in which
his father one day happened to awake as he was in bed with his wife;
to a word which a Tartar chanced to let fall some years before. I,
for example, the very person you behold, am one of the chief causes
of the deplorable death of Henry IV., for which, you may see, I am
still much afflicted.

JESUIT.—Your reverence is pleased to be very merry upon the matter?
You the cause of the death of Henry IV.!

BRAHMIN.—Alas! it is too true. This happened in the nine hundred and
eighty-three thousandth year of the revolution of Saturn, which makes
the fifteen hundred and fiftieth of your era. I was then young and
giddy headed. I thought proper, upon a time, to take a walk, which I
began with moving my left foot first, on the coast of Malabar, whence
most evidently followed the death of Henry IV.

JESUIT.—How so, prithee? For, as to our society, who were accused
with having had a large share in that affair, we had not the least
knowledge of it.

BRAHMIN.—I’ll tell ye how fate thought proper to order the matter.
By moving my left foot, as I told you, I unluckily tumbled my friend
Eriban, the Persian merchant, into the water, and he was drowned. My
friend, it seems, had a very handsome wife, that ran away with an
Armenian merchant: this lady had a daughter, who married a Greek; the
daughter of this Greek settled in France, and married the father of
Ravaillac. Now, had not every tittle of this happened exactly as it
did, you are very sensible the affairs of the houses of France and
Austria would have turned out in a very different manner. The system
of Europe would have been entirely changed. The wars between Turkey
and the German Empire would have had quite another issue; which issue
would have had an effect on Persia, as well as Persia on the East
Indies; so you see it is plain to a demonstration, that the whole
depended on my left foot, which was connected with all the other
events of the universe, past, present, and to come.

JESUIT.—I must have this affair laid before some of our fathers, who
are theologians.

BRAHMIN.—In the meantime, I will tell you, father, that
the maid-servant of the grandfather of the founder of the
_Feuillants_—for you must know I have dipped into your histories—was
likewise one principal cause of the death of Henry IV., and of all
the accidents which it produced.

JESUIT.—This servant-maid must then have been a domineering quean!

BRAHMIN.—Oh fie! no such thing. She was a mere idiot, by whom her
master had a child. Madame de la Barrière, poor soul, died of grief
at it. She who succeeded her was, as your chronicles tell, the
grandmother of the blessed John de la Barrière, who founded the order
of _Feuillants_. Ravaillac was a monk of this order. With them he
sucked in a certain doctrine very fashionable in those days, as you
well enough know. This doctrine taught him to believe that the most
meritorious thing he could possibly do was to assassinate the best
king in the whole world. What followed is known to everybody.

JESUIT.—In spite of your left foot, and the wench of the grandfather
of the founder of the _Feuillants_, I shall ever be of opinion that
the horrible action committed by Ravaillac was a future contingent,
which might very well not have happened: for, after all, man is
certainly a free agent.

BRAHMIN.—I do not know what you mean by a free agent. I can affix no
certain idea to these words. To be free, is to do whatever we think
proper, and not to will whatever we please. All I know of the matter
is, that Ravaillac voluntarily committed the crime, of which he was
destined by fate to be the instrument. This crime was no more than a
link of the great chain of destiny.

JESUIT.—You may say what you will, but the affairs of this world are
far from having any such dependence as you are pleased to think.
What signifies, for example, this useless conversation of ours, here
on the shores of the East Indies?

BRAHMIN.—What you and I say in conversation is doubtless sufficiently
insignificant; but, for all that, were you not here, the machine of
the universe would be extremely changed from what it is.

JESUIT.—There your Brahmin reverence is pleased to advance a huge
paradox truly.

BRAHMIN.—Your Ignatian fathership may believe me or no, as you
like it. But assuredly, we should never have had this conversation
together, had you not come into the East Indies. You had never made
this voyage, had not your St. Ignatius de Loyola been wounded at the
siege of Pampeluna, or had not the king of Portugal persisted in
discovering the passage round the Cape of Good Hope. Now, prithee,
did not the king of Portugal, with the help of the compass, entirely
change the face of this world of ours? But it was first of all
necessary that a certain Neapolitan should make this discovery of the
compass; now tell me, if you have the face, that everything is not
wholly subservient to one constant and uniform tenor of action; which
by indissoluble, but invisible, concatenation, unites all that lives,
or acts, or dies, or suffers on the surface of our globe?

JESUIT.—What then would become of our future contingents?

BRAHMIN.—What care I what become of them? but yet the order
established by the hand of an eternal and almighty God must certainly
exist forever.

JESUIT.—Were one to listen to you, we ought not to pray to God at all.

BRAHMIN.—It is our duty to adore Him. But pray what mean ye by
praying to God?

JESUIT.—What all the world means by it, to be sure: that He would
grant our petitions, and favor us in all our wants.

BRAHMIN.—I understand you. You mean, that a gardener might obtain
clear sunshine weather, at a time which God had ordained from all
eternity to produce rains; and that a pilot should have an easterly
wind, when a westerly wind ought to refresh the earth, as well as the
seas? My good father, to pray as we ought is to submit one’s self
wholly to Providence. So good evening to you. Destiny requires I
should now visit my Brahminess.

JESUIT.—And my free-will urges me to give a lesson to a young
scholar.




 DIALOGUES BETWEEN
     LUCRETIUS AND
     POSIDONIUS.


 FIRST COLLOQUY.

POSIDONIUS.—Your poetry is sometimes admirable; but the philosophy of
Epicurus is, in my opinion, very bad.

LUCRETIUS.—What! will you not allow that the atoms, of their own
accord, disposed themselves in such a manner as to produce the
universe?

POSIDONIUS.—We mathematicians can admit nothing but what is proved by
incontestable principles.

LUCRETIUS.—My principles are so.

 _Ex nihilo nihil, in nihilum nil posse reverti._
 _Tangere enim & tangi nisi corpus nulla potest res._

 From nothing nought can spring, to nothing nought return.
 Nought but a body can a body touch.

POSIDONIUS.—Should I grant you these principles, and even your atoms
and your vacuum, you can no more persuade me that the universe put
itself into the admirable order in which we now behold it, than if
you were to tell the Romans that the armillary sphere composed by
Posidonius made itself.

LUCRETIUS.—But who then could make the world?

POSIDONIUS.—An intelligent Being, much more superior to the world
and to me than I am to the brass of which I made my sphere.

LUCRETIUS.—How can you, who admit nothing but what is evident,
acknowledge a principle of which you have not the least idea?

POSIDONIUS.—In the same manner as, before I knew you, I judged that
your book was the work of a man of genius.

LUCRETIUS.—You allow that nature is eternal, and exists because it
does exist. Now if it exists by its own power, why may it not, by the
same power, have formed suns, and worlds, and plants, and animals,
and men?

POSIDONIUS.—All the ancient philosophers have supposed matter to be
eternal, but have never proved it to be really so; and even allowing
it to be eternal, it would by no means follow that it could form
works in which there are so many striking proofs of wisdom and
design. Suppose this stone to be eternal if you will, you can never
persuade me that it could have composed the “Iliad” of Homer.

LUCRETIUS.—No: a stone could never have composed the “Iliad,” any
more than it could have produced a horse: but matter organized in
process of time, and become bones, flesh, and blood, will produce a
horse; and organized more finely, will produce the “Iliad.”

POSIDONIUS.—You suppose all this without any proof; and I ought to
admit nothing without proof. I will give you bones, flesh, and blood,
ready made, and will leave you and all the Epicureans in the world
to make your best of them. Will you only consent to this alternative:
to be put in possession of the whole Roman Empire, if, with all the
ingredients ready prepared, you produce a horse, and to be hanged if
you fail in the attempt?

LUCRETIUS.—No; that surpasses my power, but not the power of nature.
It requires millions of ages for nature, after having passed through
all the possible forms, to arrive at last at the only one which can
produce living beings.

POSIDONIUS.—You might, if you pleased, continue all your lifetime to
shake in a cask all the materials of the earth mixed together, you
would never be able to form any regular figure; you could produce
nothing. If the length of your life is not sufficient to produce even
a mushroom, will the length of another man’s life be sufficient for
that purpose? Why should several ages be able to effect what one age
has not effected? One ought to have seen men and animals spring from
the bosom of the earth, and corn produced without seed, etc., before
he should venture to affirm that matter, by its own energy, could
give itself such forms; but no one that I know of has seen such an
operation, and therefore no one ought to believe it.

LUCRETIUS.—Well! men, animals, and trees must always have existed.
All the philosophers allow that matter is eternal; and they must
further allow, that generations are so likewise. It is the very
nature of matter that there should be stars that revolve, birds that
fly, horses that run, and men that compose “Iliads.”

POSIDONIUS.—In this new supposition you change your opinion; but you
always suppose the point in question, and admit a thing for which you
have not the least proof.

LUCRETIUS.—I am at liberty to believe that what is to-day was
yesterday, was a century ago, was a hundred centuries ago, and so on
backwards without end. I make use of your argument: no one has ever
seen the sun and stars begin their course, nor the first animals
formed and endowed with life. We may, therefore, safely believe that
all things were from eternity as they are at present.

POSIDONIUS.—There is a very great difference. I see an admirable
design, and I ought to believe that an intelligent being formed that
design.

LUCRETIUS.—You ought not to admit a being of whom you have no
knowledge.

POSIDONIUS.—You might as well tell me that I should not believe that
an architect built the capitol because I never saw that architect.

LUCRETIUS.—Your comparison is not just. You have seen houses built,
and you have seen architects; and therefore you ought to conclude
that it was a man like our present architects that built the capitol.
But here the case is very different: the capitol does not exist of
itself, but matter does. It must necessarily have had some form; and
why will you not allow it to possess, by its own energy, the form in
which it now is? Is it not much easier for you to admit that nature
modifies itself, than to acknowledge a being that modifies it? In the
former case you have only one difficulty to encounter, namely, to
comprehend how nature acts. In the latter you have two difficulties
to surmount: to comprehend this same nature, and the visible being
that acts on it.

POSIDONIUS.—It is quite the reverse. I see not only a difficulty, but
even an impossibility in comprehending how matter can have infinite
designs; but I see no difficulty in admitting an intelligent being,
who governs this matter by his infinite wisdom, and by his almighty
will.

LUCRETIUS.—What? is it because your mind cannot comprehend one thing
that you are to suppose another? Is it because you do not understand
the secret springs, and admirable contrivances, by which nature
disposed itself into planets, suns, and animals, that you have
recourse to another being?

POSIDONIUS.—No; I have not recourse to a god, because I cannot
comprehend nature; but I plainly perceive that nature needs a supreme
intelligence; and this reason alone would to me be a sufficient proof
of a deity had I no other.

LUCRETIUS.—And what if this matter possessed intelligence of itself?

POSIDONIUS.—It is plain to me that it does not possess it.

LUCRETIUS.—And to me it is plain that it does possess it, since I see
bodies like you and me reason.

POSIDONIUS.—If matter possesses, of itself, the faculty of thinking,
you must affirm that it possesses it necessarily and independently:
but if this property be essential to matter, it must have it at
all times and in all places; for whatever is essential to a thing
can never be separated from it. A bit of clay, and even the vilest
excrement would think; but sure you will not say that dung thinks.
Thought, therefore, is not an essential attribute of matter.

LUCRETIUS.—Your reasoning is a mere sophism. I hold motion to be
essential to matter; and yet this dung, or that piece of clay, is not
actually in motion; but they will be so when they are impelled by
some other body. In like manner thought will not be an attribute of a
body, except when that body is organized for thinking.

POSIDONIUS.—Your error proceeds from this, that you always suppose
the point in question. You do not reflect that, in order to organize
a body, to make it a man, to render it a thinking being, there must
previously be thought, there must be a fixed design. But you cannot
admit such a thing as design before the only beings in this world
capable of design are formed; you cannot admit thought before the
only beings capable of thinking exist. You likewise suppose the
point in question, when you say that motion is necessary to matter;
for what is absolutely necessary always exists, as extension, for
instance, exists always and in every part of matter; but motion does
not exist always. The pyramids of Egypt are not surely in motion.
A subtile matter perhaps, may penetrate between the stones which
compose the pyramids; but the body of the pyramid is immovable.
Motion, therefore, is not essential to matter, but is communicated to
it by a foreign cause, in the same manner as thought is to men. Hence
it follows that there must be a powerful and intelligent being, who
communicates motion, life, and thought to his creatures.

LUCRETIUS.—I can easily answer your objections by saying that there
have always been motion and intelligence in the world. This motion
and this intelligence have been distributed at all times according to
the laws of nature. Matter being eternal, it must necessarily have
been in some order; but it could not be put into any order without
thought and motion; and therefore thought and motion must have always
been inherent in it.

POSIDONIUS.—Do what you will, you can at best but make suppositions.
You suppose an order; there must, therefore, have been some
intelligent mind who formed this order. You suppose motion and
thought before matter was in motion, and before there were men and
thoughts. You must allow, that thought is not essential to matter,
since you dare not say that a flint thinks. You can oppose nothing
but a _perhaps_ to the truth that presses hard upon you. You are
sensible of the weakness of matter, and are forced to admit a
supreme intelligent and almighty being, who organized matter and
thinking beings. The designs of this superior intelligence shine
forth in every part of nature, and you must perceive them as
distinctly in a blade of grass, as in the course of the stars.
Everything is evidently directed to a certain end.

LUCRETIUS.—But do you not take for a design what is only a necessary
existence? Do you not take for an end what is no more than the use
which we make of things that exist? The Argonauts built a ship to
sail to Colchis. Will you say that the trees were created in order
that the Argonauts might build a ship, and that the sea was made to
enable them to undertake their voyage? Men wear stockings: will you
say that legs were made by the Supreme Being in order to be covered
with stockings? No, doubtless; but the Argonauts, having seen wood,
built a ship with it, and having learned that the water could carry
a ship, they undertook their voyage. In the same manner, after an
infinite number of forms and combinations which matter had assumed,
it was found that the humors, and the transparent horn which compose
the eye, and which were formerly separated in different parts of
the body, were united in the head, and animals began to see. The
organs of generation, dispersed before, were likewise collected, and
took the form they now have; and then all kinds of procreation were
conducted with regularity. The matter of the sun, which had been
long diffused and scattered through the universe, was conglobated,
and formed the luminary that enlightens our world. Is there anything
impossible in all this?

POSIDONIUS.—In fact, you cannot surely be serious when you have
recourse to such a system: for, in the first place, if you adopt this
hypothesis, you must, of course, reject the eternal generations of
which you have just now been talking: and, in the second place, you
are mistaken with regard to final causes. There are voluntary uses to
which we apply the gifts of nature; and there are likewise necessary
effects. The Argonauts need not, unless they had pleased, have
employed the trees of the forest to build a ship; but these trees
were plainly destined to grow on the earth, and to produce fruits and
leaves. We need not cover our legs with stockings; but the leg was
evidently made to support the body, and to walk, the eyes to see, the
ears to hear, and the parts of generation to perpetuate the species.
If you consider that a star, placed at the distance of four or five
hundred millions of leagues from us, sends forth rays of light, which
make precisely the same angle in the eyes of every animal, and that,
at that instant, all animals have the sensation of light, you must
acknowledge that this is an instance of the most admirable mechanism
and design. But is it not unreasonable to admit mechanism without a
mechanic, a design without intelligence, and such designs without a
Supreme Being?

LUCRETIUS.—If I admit the Supreme Being, what form must I give Him?
Is He in one place? Is He out of all place? Is He in time or out
of time? Does He fill the whole of space, or does He not fill it?
Why did He make the world? What was His end in making it? Why form
sensible and unhappy beings? Why moral and natural evil? On whatever
side I turn my mind, everything appears dark and incomprehensible.

POSIDONIUS.—’Tis a necessary consequence of the existence of this
Supreme Being that His nature should be incomprehensible; for, if
He exists, there must be an infinite distance between Him and us.
We ought to believe that He is, without endeavoring to know what
He is, or how He operates. Are you not obliged to admit asymptotes
in geometry, without comprehending how it is possible for the same
lines to be always approaching, and yet never to meet? Are there not
many things as incomprehensible as demonstrable, in the properties
of the circle? Confess, therefore, that you ought to admit what is
incomprehensible, when the existence of that incomprehensible is
proved.

LUCRETIUS.—What! must I renounce the dogmas of Epicurus?

POSIDONIUS.—It is better to renounce Epicurus than to abandon the
dictates of reason.


 SECOND COLLOQUY.

LUCRETIUS.—I begin to recognize a Supreme Being, inaccessible to our
senses, and proved by our reason, who made the world, and preserves
it; but with regard to what I have said of the soul, in my third
book, which has been so much admired by all the learned men of Rome,
I hardly think you can oblige me to alter my opinion.

POSIDONIUS.—You say: “_Idque situm media regione in pectoris
hæret._”—“The mind is in the middle of the breast.”—But, when you
composed your beautiful verses, did you never make any effort of the
head? When you speak of the orators Cicero and Mark Antony, do you
not say that they had good heads? And were you to say that they had
good breasts, would not people imagine that you were talking of their
voice and lungs?

LUCRETIUS.—Are you not convinced, from experience, that the feelings
of joy, of sorrow, and of fear, are formed about the heart?

 _Hic exultat enim pavor ac metus; hæc loca circum Lætitiæ mulcent._

 For there our passions live, our joy, our fear, And hope.

Do you not feel your heart dilate or contract itself on the hearing
of good or bad news? Is it not possessed of some secret springs of a
yielding and elastic quality? This, therefore, must be the seat of
the soul.

POSIDONIUS.—There are two nerves which proceed from the brain, pass
through the heart and stomach, reach to the parts of generation, and
communicate motion to them; but would you therefore say, that the
human mind resides in the parts of generation?

LUCRETIUS.—No; I dare not say so. But though I should place the soul
in the head, instead of placing it in the breast, my principles will
still subsist: the soul will still be an infinitely subtile matter,
resembling the elementary fire that animates the whole machine.

POSIDONIUS.—And why do you imagine that a subtile matter can have
thoughts and sentiments of itself?

LUCRETIUS.—Because I experience it; because all the parts of my body,
when touched, presently feel the impression; because this feeling is
diffused through my whole machine; because it could not be diffused
through it but by a matter of a very subtile nature, and of a very
rapid motion; because I am a body, and one body cannot be affected
but by another; because the interior part of my body could not be
penetrated but by very small corpuscles; and, in consequence, my soul
must be an assemblage of these corpuscles.

POSIDONIUS.—We have already agreed, in our first colloquy, that it
is extremely improbable that a rock could compose the “Iliad.” Will
a ray of the sun be more capable of composing it? Suppose this ray a
hundred thousand times more subtile and rapid than usual, will this
light, or this tenuity of parts, produce thoughts and sentiments?

LUCRETIUS.—Perhaps it may, when placed in organs properly prepared.

POSIDONIUS.—You are perpetually reduced to your _perhaps_. Fire, of
itself, is no more capable of thinking than ice. Should I suppose
that it is fire that thinks, perceives, and wills in you, you would
then be forced to acknowledge that it is not by its own virtue that
it has either will, thought, or perception.

LUCRETIUS.—No; these sensations will be produced not by its own
virtue, but by the assemblage of the fire, and of my organs.

POSIDONIUS.—How can you imagine that two bodies, neither of which can
think apart, should be able to produce thought, when joined together?

LUCRETIUS.—In the same manner as a tree and earth, when taken
separately, do not produce fruit, but do so when the tree is planted
in the earth.

POSIDONIUS.—The comparison is only specious. This tree has in it
the seeds of fruit: we plainly perceive them in the buds, and the
moisture of the earth unfolds the substance of these fruits. Fire,
therefore, must possess in itself the seeds of thought, and the
organs of the body serve only to develop these seeds.

LUCRETIUS.—And do you find anything impossible in this?

POSIDONIUS.—I find that this fire, this highly refined matter, is
as devoid of the faculty of thinking as a stone. The production of
a being must have something similar to that which produced it; but
thought, will, and perception have nothing similar to fiery matter.

LUCRETIUS.—Two bodies, struck against each other, produce motion,
and yet this motion has nothing similar to the two bodies; it has
none of their three dimensions, nor has it any figure. A being,
therefore, may have nothing similar to that which produced it, and,
in consequence, thought may spring from an assemblage of two bodies
which have no thought.

POSIDONIUS.—This comparison likewise is more specious than just. I
see nothing but matter in two bodies in motion: I only see bodies
passing from one place to another. But when we reason together I see
no matter in your ideas, or in my own. I shall only observe that I
can no more conceive how one body has the power of moving another,
than I can comprehend the manner of my having ideas. To me both are
equally inexplicable, and both equally prove the existence and the
power of a Supreme Being, the author of thought and motion.

LUCRETIUS.—If our soul is not a subtile fire, an ethereal
quintessence, what is it?

POSIDONIUS.—Neither you nor I know aught of the matter. I will tell
you plainly what it is not; but I cannot tell you what it actually
is. I see that it is a power lodged in my body; that I did not give
myself this power; and, in consequence, that it must have come from
a Being superior to myself.

LUCRETIUS.—You did not give yourself life; you received it from your
father; from whom, likewise, together with life, you received the
faculty of thinking, as he had received both from his father, and so
on backwards to infinity. You no more know the true principle of life
than you do that of thought. This succession of living and thinking
beings has always existed.

POSIDONIUS.—I plainly see that you are always obliged to abandon the
system of Epicurus, and that you dare no longer maintain that the
declination of atoms produced thought. I have already, in our last
colloquy, refuted the eternal succession of sensible and thinking
beings. I showed you that, if there are material beings capable of
thinking by their own power, thought must necessarily be an attribute
essential to all matter; that, if matter thought necessarily, and
by its own virtue, all matter must of course think: but this is not
the case, and therefore it is impossible to maintain a succession of
material beings, who, of themselves, possess the faculty of thinking.

LUCRETIUS.—Notwithstanding this reasoning, which you repeat, it is
certain that a father communicates a soul to his son at the same time
that he forms his body. This soul and this body grow together; they
gradually acquire strength; they are subject to calamities, and to
the infirmities of old age. The decay of our strength draws along
with it that of our judgment; the effect at last ceases with the
cause, and the soul vanishes like smoke into air.

 _Præterea, gigni pariter cum corpore, & una_
 _Crescere sentimus, pariterque senescere mentem._
 _Nam velet infirmo pueri, teneroque vagantur_
 _Corpore, sic animi sequitur sententia tenuis._
 _Inde ubi robustis adolevit viribus ætas,_
 _Consilium quoque majus, & auctior est animi vis._
 _Post ubi jam validis quassatum est viribus ævi_
 _Corpus, & obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus:_
 _Claudicat ingenium delirat linguaque, mensque;_
 _Omnia deficiunt, atque uno tempore desunt,_
 _Ergo dissolvi quoque convenit omnem animai_
 _Naturam, ceu fumus in altas aeris auras:_
 _Quandoquidem gigni pariter, pariterque videmus_
 _Crescere, & (ut docui) simul ævo fessa fatiscit._

 Besides, ’tis plain that souls are born, and grow;
 And all by age decay, as bodies do;
 To prove this truth: in infants, minds appear
 Infirm, and tender as their bodies are:
 In man, the mind is strong; when age prevails,
 And the quick vigor of each member fails,
 The mind’s powers, too, decrease, and waste apace;
 And grave and reverend folly takes the place.
 ’Tis likely then the soul and mind must die;
 Like smoke in air, its scattered atoms fly;
 Since all these proofs have shown, these reasons told,
 ’Tis with the body born, grows strong, and old.
                                           —CREECH.

POSIDONIUS.—These, to be sure, are very fine verses; but do you
thereby inform me of the nature of the soul?

LUCRETIUS.—No; I only give you its history, and I reason with
probability.

POSIDONIUS.—Where is the probability of a father’s communicating to
his son the faculty of thinking?

LUCRETIUS.—Do you not daily see children resembling their fathers in
their inclinations, as well as in their features?

POSIDONIUS.—But does not a father, in begetting his son, act as a
blind agent? Does he pretend, when he enjoys his wife, to make a
soul, or to make thoughts? Do either of them know the manner in
which a child is formed in the mother’s womb? Must we not, in this
case, have recourse to a superior cause, as well as in all the other
operations of nature which we have examined? Must you not see, if you
are in earnest, that men give themselves nothing, but are under the
hand of an absolute master?

LUCRETIUS.—If you know more of the matter than I do, tell me what the
soul is.

POSIDONIUS.—I do not pretend to know what it is more than you. Let us
endeavor to enlighten each other. Tell me, first, what is vegetation.

LUCRETIUS.—It is an internal motion, that carries the moisture of the
earth into plants, makes them grow, unfolds their fruits, expands
their leaves, etc.

POSIDONIUS.—Surely you do not think that there is a being called
_Vegetation_ that performs these wonders?

LUCRETIUS.—Who ever thought so?

POSIDONIUS.—From our former colloquy you ought to conclude that the
tree did not give vegetation to itself.

LUCRETIUS.—I am forced to allow it.

POSIDONIUS.—Tell me next what life is.

LUCRETIUS.—It is vegetation joined with perception in an organized
body.

POSIDONIUS.—And is there not a being called life, that gives
perception to an organized body?

LUCRETIUS.—Doubtless vegetation and life are words which signify
things that live and vegetate.

POSIDONIUS.—If a tree and an animal cannot give themselves life and
vegetation, can you give yourself thoughts?

LUCRETIUS.—I think I can, for I think of whatever I please. My
intention was to converse with you about metaphysics, and I have done
so.

POSIDONIUS.—You think that you are master of your ideas; do you know,
then, what thoughts you will have in an hour, or in a quarter of an
hour?

LUCRETIUS.—I must own that I do not.

POSIDONIUS.—You frequently have ideas in your sleep; you make verses
in a dream: Cæsar takes cities: I resolve problems; and hounds pursue
the stag in their dreams. Ideas, therefore, come to us independently
of our own will; they are given us by a Superior Being.

LUCRETIUS.—In what manner do you mean? Do you suppose that the
Supreme Being is continually employed in communicating ideas; or that
he created incorporeal substances, which were afterwards capable of
forming ideas of themselves, sometimes with the assistance of the
senses, and sometimes without it? Are these substances formed at
the moment of the animal’s conception? Or are they formed before its
conception? Do they wait for bodies, in order to insinuate themselves
into them? or are they not lodged there till the animal is capable of
receiving them? Or, in fine, is it in the Supreme Being that every
animated being sees the ideas of things? What is your opinion?

POSIDONIUS.—When you tell me how our will produces an instantaneous
motion in our bodies, how your arm obeys your will, how we receive
life, how food digests in the stomach, and how corn is transformed
into blood, I will then tell you how we have ideas. With regard to
all these particulars I frankly confess my ignorance. The world,
perhaps, may one day obtain new lights; but from the time of Thales
to the present age we have not had any. All we can do is to be
sensible of our own weakness, to acknowledge an Almighty Being, and
to be upon our guard against these systems.




 DIALOGUE BETWEEN
     A CLIENT AND
     HIS LAWYER.


CLIENT.—Well, sir! with regard to the cause of those poor orphans?

LAWYER.—What do you mean? It is but eighteen years since their estate
has been in litigation.

CLIENT.—I don’t complain of that trifling matter; I know the custom
well enough; I respect it, but how in the name of heaven comes it to
pass that you have been these three months soliciting a hearing and
have not yet obtained it?

LAWYER.—The reason is because you have not solicited an audience in
person in behalf of your pupils; you ought to have waited on the
judge several different times, to entreat him to try your cause.

CLIENT.—It is their duty to do justice of their own accord without
waiting till it is asked them. He is a very great man that has it
in his power to sit in judgment on men’s lives and fortunes, but he
is by no means so to desire that the miserable should wait in his
antechamber. I do not go to our parson’s levee to pray and beseech
him to have the goodness to sing high mass, why ought I then to
petition my judge to discharge the function of his office? In short,
after so many and such tedious delays, are we at length going to be
so happy as to have our cause tried to-day?

LAWYER.—Why yes, and there is great likelihood of your carrying a
very material point in your process; you have a very decisive article
in “Charondas” on your side.

CLIENT.—This same Charondas was, in all probability, some
lord-chancellor in the time of one of the kings of the first race who
has passed a law in favor of orphans?

LAWYER.—By no means, he is no more than a private person who has
given his opinion in a great volume which nobody reads, but then your
advocate quotes him, the judges take it upon his credit, so there’s
your cause gained in a trice.

CLIENT.—What! do you tell me the opinion of this Judge Charondas
passes current for a law?

LAWYER.—But there is one devilish bad circumstance attends us. Turnet
and Brodeau are both against us.

CLIENT.—These, I suppose, are two other legislators whose laws have
much the same authority with those of that other hard-named gentleman.

LAWYER.—Yes, certainly, as it was impossible to explain the Roman law
sufficiently in the present case the world took different sides of
the question.

CLIENT.—What the devil signifies it to bring in the Roman law in this
affair? Do we live in the present age under Theodosius or Justinian?

LAWYER.—By no means, but our forefathers, you must know, had a
prodigious passion for tilting and fox hunting; they ran all, as if
they were mad, to the Holy Land with their doxies. You will grant
me that men in such a hurry of business of consequence could not be
supposed to have time on their hands to frame a complete body of
universal jurisprudence.

CLIENT.—Aye, aye, I understand you. For want of laws of your own you
are forced to beg of Charondas and Justinian to be so good as tell
you how you should proceed when an inheritance is to be divided.

LAWYER.—There you are mistaken, we have more laws than all Europe
besides; almost every city has a body of laws of its own.

CLIENT.—Your most obedient. Here’s another miracle.

LAWYER.—Ah! had your wards been born at Guignes-la-Putain instead of
being natives of Melun near Corbeil!

CLIENT.—Very well; what had happened then, for God’s sake?

LAWYER.—You should have gained your cause as sure as two and two
make four, that’s all, for at this same Guignes-la-Putain there is
a custom which is wholly in your favor; but were you to go but two
leagues beyond this, you would then be in a very different situation.

CLIENT.—But pray are not Guignes and Melun both in France? And can
anything be more absurd or horrible than to tell me that what’s right
in one village is wrong in another? By what fatal barbarity does
it happen that people born in the same country do yet live under
different laws?

LAWYER.—The reason is, that formerly the inhabitants of Guignes and
those of Melun were not inhabitants of the same country: these two
fine cities formed in the golden days of yore two distinct empires,
and the august sovereign of Guignes, though a vassal to the king of
France, gave laws to his own subjects. Those laws depended on the
good will and pleasure of his _major domo_, who, it seems, could
not read, so that they have been handed down by a most venerable
tradition from father to son, so that the whole race of the barons de
Guignes becoming extinct, to the irrecoverable loss of all mankind,
the conceits of their first lackeys still exist and are held for the
fundamental law of the land. The case is exactly the same in every
six leagues in the whole kingdom, so that you change laws every time
you change horses, so you may judge what a taking we poor advocates
are in when we are to plead, for instance, for an inhabitant of
Poictou against an inhabitant of Auvergne.

CLIENT.—But these same men of Poictou, Auvergne, with your Guignes
gentry, are they not all dressed in the same manner? Is it a harder
matter to use the same laws than it is to wear the same clothes? And
since it is evident the tailors and cobblers understand one another
from one end of the kingdom to the other, why cannot the judges
learn of them, and follow so excellent an example?

LAWYER.—You desire a thing altogether as impossible as it would be to
bring the nation to make use of one sort of weights and measures. Why
would you have the laws everywhere the same when you see the point is
different in all places? For my own part, after thinking till my head
was like to split, all I have been able to conclude for the soul of
me, is this: That as the measure of Paris is different from that at
St. Denis, it follows that men’s judgments must also be different in
both. The varieties of nature are infinite, and it would be wrong in
us to endeavor to render uniform what she intends shall not be so.

CLIENT.—Yet, now I think on it, I have a strong notion the English
have but one sort of weight and measures.

LAWYER.—The English! aye. Why the English are mere barbarians; they
have, it is true, but one kind of measure, but, to make amends, they
have a score of different religions.

CLIENT.—There you mention something strange indeed! Is it possible
that a nation who live under the same laws, should not likewise live
under the same religion?

LAWYER.—It is; which makes it plain they are abandoned to their own
reprobate understandings.

CLIENT.—But may not it also prove that they think laws made for
regulating the external actions of men and religion the internal?
Possibly the English, and other nations, were of opinion that laws
related to the concernments of man with man and that religion
regarded man’s relation to God. I am sure I should never quarrel with
an Anabaptist who should take it into his head to be christened at
thirty years old, but I should be horridly offended with him should
he fail paying his bill of exchange. They who sin against God ought
to be punished in the other world; they who sin against man ought to
be chastised in this.

LAWYER.—I understand nothing of all this. I am just going to plead
your cause.

CLIENT.—I wish to God you understood it better first.




 DIALOGUE  BETWEEN  MADAME DE
   MAINTENON AND MADEMOISELLE
   DE L’ENCLOS.[1]


MADAME DE MAINTENON.—’Tis true, I did request you to come to see me
privately, perhaps you may think it was only to make a display of my
grandeur; by no means, I really meant it that I might receive in you
a real consolation—

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—Consolation, madam! I must acknowledge
that, having never been favored with hearing of you since you were
grown great, I concluded you must be perfectly happy.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—I have the good fortune to be thought so. There
are people in the world who are satisfied with this, though, to be
plain with you, it is not at all my case, I have always exceedingly
regretted your company.

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—I understand you. In the midst of your
grandeur you were sensible of the want of friendship; and I, on
the other hand, who am entirely engrossed by friendship, never had
occasion to wish for grandeur; but how then comes it to pass you
forgot me so long?

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—You know the necessity I was under to seem at
least to forget you. Believe me, amidst all the misfortunes attached
to my elevation I always considered this restraint the chief.

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—As for my part, I neither forget my former
pleasures nor my old friends; but if you are really unhappy, as you
say you are, you impose prodigiously on the whole world who believe
you otherwise.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—I was the first person deceived in this manner
myself. If, while we were at supper together, in company with
Villarfaux and Nantouillet at our little house the Tournelles,
when the mediocrity of our fortune was scarce worth thinking of,
somebody had said, You will, before ’tis long, approach very near
to the throne; the most powerful monarch in the world will soon
make you his sole confidante; all favors will pass through your
hands; you will be regarded as a sovereign: if, said I, any one had
made me such predictions I should have answered, The accomplishment
of this strange prognostication must certainly kill one with mere
astonishment. The whole of it was actually accomplished. I felt some
surprise in the first moments but, in hoping for joy, I found myself
entirely mistaken.

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—A philosopher might possibly believe this,
but the public will with great difficulty be brought to believe
you were dissatisfied, and should they really think so they would
certainly blame you for it.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—The world must then be as much in the wrong as
I was. This world of ours is a vast amphitheatre where every one is
placed on his bench by mere chance. They imagine the supreme degree
of felicity to be on the uppermost benches. What an egregious mistake!

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—I take this mistake to be necessary to
human nature: they would never give themselves any trouble about
getting higher were they not led by an opinion that happiness
is placed above them. Both of us are acquainted with pleasures
infinitely less deceiving or fanciful, but, for Heaven’s sake, how
did you contrive to be so exceedingly wretched on your exalted seat?

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—Alas! my dear Ninon! from the time I left off
calling you anything but Mademoiselle de l’Enclos, I from that moment
began to be less happy. It was decreed I must be a prude. This is
telling all in one word. My heart is empty, my mind under restraint.
I make the first figure in France, but it is really no more than a
figure, a shadow! I live only a kind of borrowed life. Ah! did you
but know what a burden it must be to a drooping soul to animate
another soul or to amuse a mind no longer capable of amusement!

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—I easily guess the uneasiness of your
situation. I fear insulting you should I mention the reflection
that Ninon is happier at Paris in her little house with the Abbé de
Châteauneuf, and some friends, than you at Versailles in the company
of the most respectable personage in all Europe, who lays all his
power at your feet. I am afraid to show you the superiority of my
situation; I know it is wrong to discover too sensible a relish of
our felicity in the presence of the unhappy. Endeavor, madam, to
bear the load of your grandeur with patience, try to forget that
delightful obscurity in which we formerly lived together, in the same
manner you have been obliged to forget your ancient friends. The
sole remedy in your painful state is to avoid reflection as much as
possible, crying out with the poet,

 _Félicité passée,_
 _Qui ne peut revenir,_
 _Tourment de ma pensée,_
 _Que n’ai-je en te perdant, perdu le souvenir!_

Tormenting thought of former happiness gone, never to return! Why,
when I was bereft of the joy, did I not lose the remembrance of it
also!

Drink of the river Lethe, and above all, comfort yourself with having
before your eyes so many royal dames whose time lies as heavy on
their hands as yours can do.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—Ah, my dear! what felicity can one find in being
alone? I would fain make a proposal to you but I am afraid to open
myself.

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—Indeed, madam, to be plain with you, you
have reason to be a little mistrustful, but take courage.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—I mean that you will barter, at least in
appearance, your philosophy for prudery, and then you will become a
truly respectable woman. You shall live with me in Versailles, you
shall be more my friend than ever, and help me to support my present
condition.

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—I still have a great affection for you,
madam, but I must freely own to you I love myself still better, and
can never consent to turn hypocrite and render myself miserable
forever because fortune has treated you cruelly.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—Ah, cruel Ninon! you have a heart more hard than
even the very courtiers themselves. Can you then abandon me without
the least remorse?

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—By no means; I am still but too sensible.
You really melt me, and, to convince you I have the same regard
for you as ever I now make you the last offer in my power; quit
Versailles and come and live with me at the rues des Tournelles.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—You pierce my very heart. I cannot be happy near
the throne, nor can I enjoy pleasure in a retired life. This is one
of the fatal effects of living in a court.

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—There is no remedy for an incurable
disorder. I shall take the opinion of the philosophers who frequent
my house concerning your malady, but I cannot promise you they will
effect impossibilities.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—Good heavens! what a cruel situation! to behold
myself on the very pinnacle of greatness, to be worshipped as a
deity, and yet not to be able to taste of happiness!

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—Hold, my dear friend, I fancy there is
some mistake in this; you believe yourself unhappy merely on account
of your greatness, but may not the misfortune proceed from another
cause, that your eyes have no longer the same lustre, your appetite
no longer so good, nor your relish for pleasures so lively as
heretofore? You have lost your youth, beauty, and feelings; this,
this is your real misfortune. This is the reason why so many women
turn devotees at fifty and so fly from one chagrin into the arms of
another.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—But, after all, you have more years over your
head than I have and you are neither unhappy nor a devotee.

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—Let us understand each other. We ought not
to imagine that at your age and mine we can enjoy complete happiness.
It requires a soul glowing with the most exquisite sensations and
the five senses in their highest perfection to taste this kind of
felicity. But with a few friends, a little philosophy, and liberty,
one may be as much at one’s ease as this age will admit of. The mind
is never unhappy but when out of its sphere. So e’en take my advice
and come and live with me and my philosophical friends.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.—I see two ministers of state coming this way.
They are very different company from philosophers, so fare you well,
my dear Ninon.

MADEMOISELLE DE L’ENCLOS.—Adieu, illustrious unfortunate.


FOOTNOTE

[1] Madame de Maintenon and Mademoiselle Ninon de l’Enclos had
lived long together. The author has often heard the late Abbé de
Châteauneuf say, that Madame de Maintenon had used her utmost
endeavors to engage Ninon to turn nun, and to come and comfort her at
Versailles.



 DIALOGUE BETWEEN A SAVAGE
   AND A BACHELOR OF ARTS.


A governor of Cayenne, having brought over with him a savage from
Guiana, who had a great share of good natural understanding, and
spoke French tolerably well; a bachelor of arts at Paris had the
honor of entering into the following conversation with him:

BACHELOR.—I suppose, Mr. Savage, you have seen a number of your
country people who pass their lives all alone, for it is said that
this is the true way of living natural to man, and that society is
only an artificial depravity?

SAVAGE.—Indeed I never did see any of those people you speak of.
Man appears to me to be born for society, as well as several other
species of animals. Each species follows the dictates of its nature;
as for us, we live all together in a community.

BACHELOR.—How! in community? Why, then, you have fine towns, and
cities with walls, and kings who keep a court. You have shows,
convents, universities, libraries, and taverns, have you?

SAVAGE.—No; but have I not frequently heard it said that in your
continent you have Arabians and Scythians who never knew anything of
these matters, and yet form considerable nations? Now we live like
these people; neighboring families assist each other. We inhabit a
warm climate, and so have very few necessities; we can easily procure
ourselves food; we marry; we get children; we bring them up, and
then we die. You see this is just the same as among you; some few
ceremonies excepted.

BACHELOR.—Why, my good sir, then you are not a savage?

SAVAGE.—I do not know what you mean by that word.

BACHELOR.—Nor, to tell you the truth, do I myself—stay—let me
consider a little—Oh!—a savage?—Why—a savage is—what we call a
savage, is a man of a morose, unsociable disposition, who flies all
company.

SAVAGE.—I have told you already that we live together in families.

BACHELOR.—We also give the name of savage to those beasts who are
not tamed, but roam wild about the forests; and from hence we have
transferred that appellation to men who inhabit the woods.

SAVAGE.—I go into the woods sometimes, as well as you do, to hunt.

BACHELOR.—Pray, now, do you think sometimes?

SAVAGE.—It is impossible to be without some sort of ideas.

BACHELOR.—I have a great curiosity to know what your ideas are. What
think you of man?

SAVAGE.—Think of him! Why, that he is a two-footed animal, who has
the faculty of reasoning, speaking, and who uses his hands much more
dexterously than the monkey. I have seen several kinds of men, some
white, like you, others copper-colored, like me, and others black,
like those that wait upon the governor of Cayenne. You have a beard,
we have none; the negroes have wool, you and I have hair. They say,
that in your more northerly climates the inhabitants have white hair,
whereas that of the Americans is black. This is all I know about man.

BACHELOR.—But your soul, my dear sir? your soul? what notion have you
of that? whence comes it? what is it? what does it do? how does it
act? where does it go?

SAVAGE.—I know nothing about all this, indeed; for I never saw the
soul.

BACHELOR.—Apropos; do you think that brutes are machines?

SAVAGE.—They appear to me to be organized machines, that have
sentiment and memory.

BACHELOR.—Well; and pray now, Mr. Savage, what do you think that you,
you yourself, I say, possess above those brutes?

SAVAGE.—The gifts of an infinitely superior memory, a much greater
share of ideas, and, as I have already told you, a tongue capable
of forming many more sounds than those of brutes; with hands more
ready at executing; and the faculty of laughing, which a long-winded
argumentator always makes me exercise.

BACHELOR.—But tell me, if you please, how came you by all this? What
is the nature of your mind? How does your soul animate your body? Do
you always think? Is your will free?

SAVAGE.—Here are a great number of questions; you ask me how I came
to possess what God has given to man? You might as well ask me how I
was born? For certainly, since I am born a man, I must possess the
things that constitute a man in the same manner as a tree has its
bark, roots, and leaves. You would have me to know what is the nature
of my mind. I did not give it to myself, and therefore I cannot know
what it is; and as to how my soul animates my body, I am as much a
stranger to that, too; and, in my opinion, you must first have seen
the springs that put your watch in motion before you can tell how
it shows the hour. You ask me if I always think? No, for sometimes
I have half-formed ideas, in the same manner as I see objects at a
distance, confusedly; sometimes my ideas are much stronger, as I
can distinguish an object better when it is nearer to me; sometimes
I have no ideas at all, as when I shut my eyes I can see nothing.
Lastly, you ask me, if my will is free? Here I do not understand you;
these are things with which you are perfectly well acquainted, no
doubt, therefore I shall be glad you will explain them to me.

BACHELOR.—Yes, yes, I have studied all these matters thoroughly; I
could talk to you about them for a month together without ceasing,
in such a manner as would surpass your understanding. But tell me,
do you know good and evil, right and wrong? Do you know which is the
best form of government? which the best worship? what is the law of
nations? the common law? the civil law? the canon law? Do you know
the names of the first man and woman who peopled America? Do you know
the reason why rain falls into the sea; and why you have no beard?

SAVAGE.—Upon my word, sir, you take rather too great advantage of the
confession I made just now, that man has a superior memory to the
brutes; for I can hardly recollect the many questions you have asked
me; you talk of good and evil, right and wrong; now, I think that
whatever gives you pleasure, and does injury to no one, is very good
and very right; that what injures our fellow-creatures, and gives us
no pleasure, is abominable; and what gives us pleasure but, at the
same time, hurts others, may be good with respect to us for the time,
but it is in itself both dangerous to us, and very wrong in regard to
others.

BACHELOR.—And do you live in society with these maxims?

SAVAGE.—Yes, with our relatives and neighbors, and, without much
pain or vexation, we quietly attain our hundredth year; some indeed
reach to a hundred and twenty, after which our bodies serve to
fertilize the earth that has nourished us.

BACHELOR.—You seem to me to have a clear understanding, I would
very fain puzzle it. Let us dine together, after which we will
philosophize methodically.

       *       *       *       *       *

SAVAGE.—I find that I have swallowed foods that are not made for me,
notwithstanding I have a good stomach; you have made me eat after my
stomach was satisfied, and drink when I was no longer dry. My legs
are not so firm under me as they were before dinner; my head feels
heavy, and my ideas are confused. I never felt this diminution of my
faculties in my own country. For my part, I think the more a man puts
into his body here, the more he takes away from his understanding.
Pray, tell me, what is the reason of all this damage and disorder?

BACHELOR.—I will tell you. In the first place, as to what passes in
your legs, I know nothing about the matter, you must consult the
physicians about that; they will satisfy you in a trice. But I am
perfectly well acquainted with how things go in your head. You must
know, then, that the soul being confined to no place, has fixed her
seat either in the pineal gland, or callous body in the middle of the
brain. The animal spirits that rise from the stomach fly up to the
soul, which they cannot affect, they being matter and it immaterial.
Now, as neither can act upon the other, therefore the soul takes
their impression, and, as it is a simple principle, and consequently
subject to no change, therefore it suffers a change, and becomes
heavy and dull when we eat too much; and this is the reason that so
many great men sleep after dinner.

SAVAGE.—What you tell me appears very ingenious and profound, but I
should take it as a favor if you would explain it to me in such a
manner as I might comprehend.

BACHELOR.—Why, I have told you everything that can be said upon
this weighty affair; but, to satisfy you, I will be a little more
explicit. Let us go step by step. First, then, do you know that this
is the best of all possible worlds?

SAVAGE.—How! is it impossible for the Infinite Being to create
anything better than what we now see?

BACHELOR.—Undoubtedly; for nothing can be better than what we see.
It is true, indeed, that mankind rob and murder each other, but they
all the while extol equity and moderation. Several years ago they
massacred about twelve millions of your Americans, but then it was to
make the rest more reasonable. A famous calculator has proved that
from a certain war of Troy, which you know nothing of, to the last
war in North America, which you do know something of, there have been
killed in pitched battles no less than five hundred and fifty-five
million six hundred and fifty thousand men, without reckoning young
children and women buried under the ruins of cities and towns which
have been set on fire; but this was all for the good of community;
four or five thousand dreadful maladies, to which mankind are
subject, teach us the true value of health; and the crimes that cover
the face of the earth greatly enhance the merit of religious men,
of which I am one; you see that everything goes in the best manner
possible, at least as to me.

Now things could never be in this state of perfection, if the soul
was not placed in the pineal gland. For—but let me take you along
with me in the argument. Let us go step by step. What notion have you
of laws, and of the rule of right and wrong; of the _to Kalon_, as
Plato calls it?

SAVAGE.—Well, but my good sir, while you talk of going step by step,
you speak to me of a hundred different things at a time.

BACHELOR.—Every one converses in this manner. But tell me who made
the laws in your country?

SAVAGE.—The public good.

BACHELOR.—That word _public good_ means a great deal. We have not any
so expressive; pray, in what sense do you understand?

SAVAGE.—I understand by it that those who have a plantation of cocoa
trees or maize, have forbidden others to meddle with them, and that
those who had them not, are obliged to work, in order to have a
right to eat part of them. Everything that I have seen, either in
your country or my own, teaches me that there can be no other spirit
of the laws.

BACHELOR.—But as to women, Mr. Savage, women?

SAVAGE.—As to women, they please me when they are handsome and
sweet-tempered; I prize them even before our cocoa trees; they are a
fruit which we are not willing to have plucked by any but ourselves.
A man has no more right to take my wife from me than to take my
child. However, I have heard it said, that there are people who will
suffer this; they have it certainly in their will; every one may do
what he pleases with his own property.

BACHELOR.—But as to successors, legatees, heirs, and collateral
kindred?

SAVAGE.—Every one must have a successor. I can no longer possess my
field when I am buried in it, I leave it to my son; if I have two,
I divide it equally between them. I hear that among you Europeans,
there are several nations where the law gives the whole to the eldest
child, and nothing to the younger. It must have been sordid interest
that dictated such unequal and ridiculous laws. I suppose either the
elder children made it themselves, or their fathers, who were willing
they should have the pre-eminence.

BACHELOR.—What body of laws appears to you the best?

SAVAGE.—Those in which the interests of mankind, my fellow
creatures, have been most consulted.

BACHELOR.—And where are such laws to be found?

SAVAGE.—In no place that I have ever heard of.

BACHELOR.—You must tell me from whence the inhabitants of your
country first came? Who do you think first peopled America?

SAVAGE.—God—whom else should we think?

BACHELOR.—That is no answer. I ask you from what country your people
first came?

SAVAGE.—The same country from which our trees came; really the
Europeans appear to me a very pleasant kind of people, to pretend
that we can have nothing without them; we have just as much reason to
suppose ourselves your ancestors as you have to imagine yourselves
ours.

BACHELOR.—You are an obstinate little savage.

SAVAGE.—You a very babbling bachelor.

BACHELOR.—But, hark ye, Mr. Savage, one word more with you, if you
please. Do you think it right in Guiana to put those to death who are
not of the same opinion with yourselves?

SAVAGE.—Undoubtedly, provided you eat them afterwards.

BACHELOR.—Now you are joking. What do think of the constitution?

SAVAGE.—Your servant.




 A TREATISE ON TOLERATION.


 CHAPTER I.
 A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE DEATH OF JOHN CALAS.

The murder of John Calas, committed in Toulouse with the sword of
justice, the 9th of March, 1762, is an event which, on account of its
singularity, calls for the attention of the present age, and that of
posterity. We soon forget the crowd of victims who have fallen in the
course of innumerable battles, not only because this is a destiny
inevitably connected with a life of warfare, but because those who
thus fell might also have given death to their enemies, and did not
lose their lives till after having first stood in their own defence.
Where the danger and the advantage are equal, our wonder ceases, and
even pity itself is in some measure lessened; but where the father of
an innocent family is delivered up to the sword of error, prejudice,
or enthusiasm, where the accused person has no other defence but his
conscious virtue; where the arbiters of his destiny have nothing to
hazard in putting him to death but the having been mistaken, and
where they may murder with impunity under the sanction of a judicial
process, then every one is ready to cry out, every one brings the
case home to himself, and sees with fear and trembling that no
person’s life is in safety in a court erected to watch over the lives
of the subject, the public unite in demanding vengeance.

In this strange affair, we find religion, self-murder and parricide
blended. The object of inquiry was, whether a father and a mother
had murdered their own son with a view to please God, and whether a
brother had murdered his brother, or a friend his friend; or whether
the judges had to reproach themselves with having publicly executed
an innocent father, or with having acquitted a guilty mother,
brother, and friend.

John Calas, a person of sixty-eight years of age, had followed the
profession of a merchant in Toulouse for upwards of forty years,
and had always borne the character of a tender parent in his family
and neighborhood; he was himself by religion a Protestant, as was
also his wife, and all his children, one son only excepted, who had
abjured heresy, and to whom the father allowed a small annuity;
indeed, the good man appeared so far from being infected with that
absurd zeal which destroys the bands of society, that he even
approved of the conversion of his son, Louis Calas. He had for above
thirty years kept in his house a maid-servant, who was a zealous
Catholic, and who had brought up all his children.

Another of his sons, whose name was Mark Antony, was a man of
letters, but, at the same time, of a restless, gloomy, and impetuous
disposition. This young man finding that he had no prospect of
getting into business as a merchant, for which indeed he was very
unfit, nor of being admitted to the bar as a lawyer, as not being
able to obtain the requisite certificates of his being a Catholic,
resolved to lay violent hands upon himself, and gave some intimation
of his design to one of his friends. In order to confirm himself in
the resolution he had formed, he carefully collected everything that
had been written upon the subject of suicide, all of which he read
with great attention; at length, one day, having lost all his money
at play, he chose that as a most proper opportunity for putting his
design into execution. One Lavaisse, a young man of nineteen years
of age, the son of a lawyer in great repute at Toulouse, and who was
esteemed by every one who knew him, happened to come from Bordeaux
the evening before,[2] when he went by chance to sup with the Calas
family at their house, being an acquaintance of that family’s, and of
Mark Antony Calas in particular. Old Calas, his wife, Mark Antony,
their eldest son, and Peter their second son, supped all together
that evening; after supper was over, they retired into another room,
where Mark Antony suddenly disappeared. After some time, young
Lavaisse took his leave, and Peter Calas accompanied him downstairs;
when they came to the warehouse they saw Mark Antony hanging in his
shirt behind the door, and his coat and waistcoat folded up and laid
upon the counter; his shirt was not in the least rumpled, nor his
hair, which he had dressed that day, in any wise disordered; there
was no wound upon his body, nor any other mark of violence.[3]

We shall not here enter into all the minute circumstances with
which the lawyers have filled their briefs; nor shall we attempt to
describe the grief and distraction of the unhappy parents; their
cries were heard by the whole neighborhood. Lavaisse and Peter Calas,
almost beside themselves, ran, the one to fetch a surgeon, and the
other an officer of justice. While they were thus employed, and
old Calas and his wife in all the agonies of grief, the people of
the town gathered in crowds about the house. The Toulousians are a
superstitious and headstrong people, and look upon all persons, even
their own relations, who are not of the same religion as themselves,
as monsters and objects of detestation. It was at Toulouse that a
solemn thanksgiving was ordered for the death of Henry III. and that
the inhabitants took an oath to murder the first person who should
propose to acknowledge that great and good prince Henry IV. for their
sovereign; and this same city still continues to solemnize, by an
annual procession, illuminations, and bonfires, the day on which,
about two hundred years ago, it ordered the massacre of four thousand
of its citizens for being heretics. In vain has the council issued
six decrees prohibiting the keeping of this detestable anniversary,
the Toulousians still continuing to celebrate it as a high festival.

Some one among the mob, a greater enthusiast than the rest, cried out
that John Calas himself had hanged his son; this cry became in an
instant unanimous, some persons taking occasion to observe that the
deceased was to have made his abjuration the next day, and that his
own family and young Lavaisse had murdered him out of the hatred they
bore to the Catholic religion. No sooner was this opinion broached,
than it was fully believed by every one; and the whole town was
persuaded that it is one of the articles of the Protestant religion
for a father or mother to murder their own son, if he attempts to
show any inclination to change his faith.

When the minds of the populace are once put into a ferment they are
not easily appeased; it was now imagined that all the Protestants of
Languedoc had assembled together the preceding night, and had chosen
by a plurality of voices one of their sect for an executioner; that
the choice had fallen upon Lavaisse; that this young man had, in less
than four and twenty hours, received the news of his election, and
had come from Bordeaux to assist John Calas, his wife, and their son
Peter, to murder a son, a brother, and a friend.

The Sieur David, capitoul of Toulouse, instigated by these rumors,
and being desirous of bringing himself into notice, by the ready
execution of his office, took a step contrary to all the established
rules and ordinances, by ordering the Calas family, together with
their Catholic maid-servant and Lavaisse, to be put in irons.

After this a monitory was published, which was as erroneous as the
former step. Nay, matters were carried still farther; Mark Antony
Calas had certainly died a Calvinist, and as such, if he had laid
violent hands on himself, his body ought to have been dragged on a
hurdle; whereas it was interred with the greatest funeral pomp in the
church of St. Stephen, notwithstanding the curate entered his protest
against this profanation of holy ground.

There are in Languedoc four orders of penitents, the white, the blue,
the gray, and the black, who wear a long capuchin or hood, having a
mask of cloth falling down over the face, in which are two holes for
the sight. These orders wanted the Duke of Fitz-James to become one
of their body, but he refused them. On the present occasion the white
penitents performed a solemn service for Mark Antony Calas as for a
martyr; nor was the festival of a real martyr ever celebrated with
greater pomp by any church: but then this pomp was truly terrible.
Beneath a magnificent canopy was placed a skeleton, which was made to
move by springs; this skeleton was to represent Mark Antony Calas,
holding in one hand a branch of palm, and, in the other, the pen
with which he was to sign his abjuration of heresy; or rather, as the
sequel proved, the death-warrant of his father.

And now nothing more remained to be done for this wretch who had been
his own murderer but the office of canonization; the people, already
to a man, looked on him as a saint; some invoked him, some went to
pray at his tomb, some besought him to work miracles, while others
gravely recounted those he had already performed; a monk pulled out
one or two of his teeth, in order to have some lasting relics; an
old woman, more pious than the rest, but unhappily troubled with a
deafness, declared that she had heard the sound of bells very plainly
at his interment; and a priest was cured of an apoplectic fit, after
taking a stout emetic; protocols were drawn up of these stupendous
miracles, and the author of this account has in his possession an
affidavit to prove that a young man of Toulouse had his brain turned,
on having prayed several nights successively at the tomb of the new
saint, without having been able to obtain the miracle he requested of
him.

Among the order of the white penitents there were some magistrates of
justice; the death of John Calas seemed then inevitable.

But what more particularly hastened his fate was the approach of
that singular festival, which, as I have already observed, the
Toulousians celebrate every year, in commemoration of the massacre
of four thousand Huguenots; the year 1762 happened to be the _annum
seculare_ of this execrable deed. The inhabitants were busied in
making preparations for the solemnity; this circumstance added fresh
fuel to the heated imagination of the populace; every one cried out
that a scaffold for the execution of the Calas family would be one of
the greatest ornaments of the ceremony; and that heaven itself seemed
to have brought them thither as victims, to be sacrificed to our holy
religion. Twenty persons were ear-witnesses to these speeches, and to
others still more outrageous. And this, in the present age! this at
a time when philosophy has made so great a progress! and while the
pens of a hundred academies are employed in inculcating humanity and
gentleness of manners. It should seem that enthusiasm enraged at the
late success of reason, fought under her standard with redoubled fury.

Thirteen judges met every day to try this cause; they had not, they
could not, have any proof against this unhappy family; but mistaken
zeal held the place of proofs. Six of the judges continued a long
time obstinate, being resolved to sentence John Calas, his son, and
Lavaisse, to be broken on the wheel, and his wife to be burned at
the stake; the other seven judges, rather more moderate, were at
least for having the accused examined; the debates were frequent
and long. One of the judges, convinced in his mind of the innocence
of the parties, and of the impossibility of the crime laid to their
charge, spoke warmly in their favor; he opposed the zeal of humanity
to that of cruelty, and openly pleaded the cause of the Calas family
in all the houses of Toulouse where misguided religion demanded with
incessant cries the blood of these unfortunate wretches. Another
judge, well known for his violence and severity, went about the town,
raving with as much fury against the accused as his brother had been
earnest in defending them. In short, the contest became so warm that
both were obliged to enter protests against each other’s proceedings,
and retire into the country.

But by a strange fatality, the judge who had been on the favorable
side had the delicacy to persist in his exceptions, and the other
returned to give his vote against those on whom he could no longer
sit as judge; and it was his single vote which carried the sentence
of being broken upon the wheel against them, there being eight voices
against five, one of the six merciful judges being at last, after
much contestation, brought over to the rigorous side.

In my opinion, in cases of parricide, and where the master of a
family is to be devoted to the most dreadful punishment, the sentence
ought to be unanimous, inasmuch as the proofs of so unparalleled[4]
a crime ought to be proved in such a manner as to satisfy all the
world, and the least shadow of a doubt in a case of this nature
should be sufficient to make the judge tremble who is about to pass
sentence of death. The weakness of our reason, and the insufficiency
of our laws, become every day more obvious; but surely there cannot
be a greater example of this deficiency than that one single casting
vote should be sufficient to condemn a fellow-citizen to be broken
alive on the wheel; the Athenians required at least fifty voices,
over and above the one-half of the judges, before they would dare to
pronounce sentence of death; but to what does all this tend? Why, to
what we know, but make very little use of, that the Greeks were wiser
and more humane than ourselves.

It appeared altogether impossible that John Calas, who was an old man
of sixty-eight, and had a long while been troubled with a swelling
and weakness in his legs, should have been able by himself to have
mastered his son and hanged him, who was a stout young fellow of
eight and twenty, and more than commonly robust; therefore he must
absolutely have been assisted in this act by his wife, his other
son, Peter Calas, Lavaisse, and by the servant-maid, and they had
been together the whole night of this fatal adventure. But this
supposition is altogether as absurd as the other; for can any one
believe that a servant, who was a zealous Catholic, would have
permitted those whom she looked on as heretics to murder a young man
whom she herself had brought up, for his attachment to a religion
to which she herself was devoted; that Lavaisse would have come
purposely from Bordeaux to assist in hanging his friend, of whose
pretended conversion he knew nothing, or that an affectionate mother
would have joined in laying violent hands on her own son? And lastly,
how could they all together have been able to strangle a young man
stronger than them all, without a long and violent struggle, or
without his making such a noise as must have been heard by the whole
neighborhood, without repeated blows passing between them, without
any marks of violence, or without any of their clothes being in the
least soiled or disordered!

It was evident that if this murder could in the nature of things have
been committed, the accused persons were all of them equally guilty,
because they did not quit each other’s company an instant the whole
night; but then it was equally evident that they were not guilty, and
that the father alone could not be so, and yet, by the sentence of
the judges, the father alone was condemned to suffer.

The motive on which this sentence was passed was as unaccountable
as all the rest of the proceeding. Those judges who had given their
opinion for the execution of John Calas persuaded the others that
this poor old man, unable to support the torments, would, when on
the wheel, make a full confession of his own guilt and that of his
accomplices; but how wretchedly were they confounded, when yielding
up his breath on that instrument of execution, he called God as a
witness of his innocence, and besought Him to forgive his judges!

They were afterwards obliged to pass a second decree, which
contradicted the first, namely to set at liberty the mother, her
son Peter, young Lavaisse, and the maid-servant; but one of the
counsellors having made them sensible that this latter decree
contradicted the other, and that they condemned themselves, inasmuch
as, it having been proved that all the accused parties had been
constantly together during the whole time the murder was supposed
to be committed, the setting at liberty the survivors was an
incontestable proof of the innocence of the master of the family whom
they had ordered to be executed; on this it was determined to banish
Peter Calas, the son, which was an act as ill-grounded and absurd as
any of the rest, for Peter Calas was either guilty or not guilty of
the murder; if he was guilty, he ought to have suffered in the same
manner as his father; if he was innocent, there was no reason for
banishing him. But the judges, frightened with the sufferings of the
father, and with that affecting piety with which he had resigned his
life, thought to preserve their characters by making people believe
that they showed mercy to the son; as if this was not a new degree
of prevarication, and that, thinking no bad consequences could arise
from banishing this young man, who was poor and destitute of friends,
was not a very great additional act of injustice after that which
they had been already so unfortunate as to commit.

They now began to go to work with Peter Calas in his confinement,
threatening to treat him as they had done his father, if he would
not abjure his religion. This the young man has declared on oath, as
follows:

 “A Dominican friar came to me to my cell, and threatened me with the
 same kind of death if I did not abjure; this I attest before God,
 this 23d day of July, 1762.                          PETER CALAS.”

As Peter was going out of the town, he was met by one of the abbés
with a converting spirit, who made him return back to Toulouse, where
he was shut up in a convent of Dominicans, and there compelled to
perform all the functions of a convert to the Catholic religion;
this was in part what his persecutors aimed at, it was the price of
his father’s blood, and due atonement now seemed to be made to the
religion of which they looked on themselves as the avengers.

The daughters were next taken from their mother, and shut up in a
convent. This unhappy woman, who had been, as it were, sprinkled with
the blood of her husband, who had held her eldest son lifeless within
her arms, had seen the other banished, her daughters taken from her,
herself stripped of her effects, and left alone in the wide world
destitute of bread, and bereft of hopes, was almost weighed down to
the grave with the excess of her misfortunes. Some certain persons,
who had maturely weighed all the circumstances of this horrible
adventure, were so struck with them that they pressed Mrs. Calas, who
now led a life of retirement and solitude, to exert herself, and go
and demand justice at the foot of the throne. At this time she was
scarcely able to drag about the remains of a miserable life; besides,
having been born in England and brought over to a distant province in
France when very young, the very name of the city of Paris frightened
her. She imagined that in the capital of the kingdom they must be
still more cruel than in Toulouse; at length, however, the duty of
revenging the death of her husband got the better of her weakness.
She set out for Paris, arrived there half dead, and was surprised
to find herself received with tenderness, sympathy, and offers of
assistance.

In Paris reason always triumphs over enthusiasm, however great,
whereas in the more distant provinces of the kingdom, enthusiasm
almost always triumphs over reason.

M. de Beaumont, a famous lawyer of the Parliament of Paris,
immediately took her cause in hand, and drew up an opinion, which
was signed by fifteen other lawyers. M. Loiseau, equally famous for
his eloquence, likewise drew up a memorial in favor of this unhappy
family; and M. Mariette, solicitor to the council, drew up a formal
statement of the case, which struck every one who read it with
conviction.

These three noble defenders of the laws and of innocence made the
widow a present of all the profits arising from the publication of
these pieces,[5] which filled not only Paris but all Europe with pity
for this unfortunate woman, and every one cried aloud for justice to
be done her. In a word, the public passed sentence on this affair
long before it was determined by the council.

The soft infection made its way even to the Cabinet, notwithstanding
the continual round of business, which often excludes pity, and the
familiarity of beholding miserable objects, which too frequently
steels the heart of the statesman against the cries of distress. The
daughters were restored to their disconsolate mother, and all three
in deep mourning, and bathed in tears, drew a sympathetic flood from
the eyes of their judges, before whom they prostrated themselves in
thankful acknowledgment.

Nevertheless, this family had still some enemies to encounter, for
it is to be considered that this was an affair of religion. Several
persons, whom in France we call _dévots_,[6] declared publicly that
it was much better to suffer an old Calvinist, though innocent, to
be broken alive upon the wheel, than to expose eight counsellors of
Languedoc to the mortification of being obliged to own that they had
been mistaken; nay, these people made use of this very expression:
“That there were more magistrates than Calases”; by which it would
seem they inferred that the Calas family ought to be sacrificed
to the honor of the magistracy. Alas! they never reflected that
the honor of a judge, like that of another man, consists in making
reparation for the faults he may have committed.

In France no one believes that the pope, even when assisted by his
cardinals, is infallible; ought they then to have believed that eight
judges of Toulouse were so? Every sensible and disinterested person
did without scruple declare that the decree of the court of justice
of Toulouse would be looked upon as void by all Europe, even though
particular considerations might prevent it from being declared so by
the council.

Such was the state of this surprising affair when it occasioned
certain impartial, but sensible, persons to form the design of laying
before the public a few reflections upon toleration, indulgence,
and commiseration, which the Abbé Houteville in his bombastic and
declamatory work, which is false in all the facts, calls a _monstrous
doctrine_, but which reason calls the portion of human nature.

Either the judges of Toulouse, carried away by popular enthusiasm,
caused the innocent master of a family to be put to a painful
and ignominious death, a thing which is without example; or this
master of a family and his wife murdered their eldest son, with the
assistance of another son and a friend, which is altogether contrary
to nature. In either case, the most holy of all religions has been
perverted to the production of an enormous crime. It is therefore
to the interest of mankind to examine how far charity or cruelty is
consistent with true religion.


 CHAPTER II.
 CONSEQUENCES OF THE EXECUTION OF JOHN CALAS.

If the order of white penitents had been the cause of the punishment
of an innocent person, and of the utter ruin and dispersion of a
whole family, and of branding them with that ignominy which is
annexed to those who suffer, when it ought properly to fall only
upon those who pass an unjust sentence; if the frantic hurry of
these penitents in celebrating as a saint one whom they ought to
have treated as a self-murderer, brought a virtuous, an innocent
fellow-citizen to the scaffold, surely this fatal mistake ought to
make them true penitents for the rest of their lives, and they and
the judges ought to have their eyes continually filled with tears,
without wearing a white cloak or a mask on their faces, to hide
those tears. We have a proper respect for all religious orders—they
are edifying; but will all the good they have ever been able to do
the state compensate for the shocking disaster of which they have
been the cause? Their institution seems to have been the work of
that zeal which animates the Catholics of Languedoc against those we
call Huguenots. One would be tempted to imagine that they had made
a vow to hate their brethren; and that, though men have religion
enough to hate and persecute, they have not sufficient to love and
cherish one another. But what would be the case if these orders were
governed by enthusiastic superiors, as were certain congregations,
among whom, to use the words of one of our most eloquent and learned
magistrates, the custom of seeing visions was reduced to an art and
system? Or that their convents had in them those dark rooms, called
meditation rooms, which were filled with pictures of frightful
devils, armed with long horns and talons, flaming gulfs, crosses, and
daggers, with the holy name of Jesus in a scroll over them? Edifying
spectacles, doubtless, for eyes already blinded with fanaticism, and
for imaginations no less filled with mistaken zeal than with abject
submission to the will of their directors!

There have been times, and we know it but too well, in which
religious orders have been dangerous to the state. The Frérots and
the Flagellants have excited troubles in the kingdom. The League owed
its origin to such associations. But wherefore should any set of men
thus distinguish themselves from the rest of their fellow-citizens?
Is it that they think themselves more perfect? If so, it is offering
an insult to the rest of the community; or are they desirous that
every Christian should become a member of their society? Truly, it
would be a curious sight to see all the inhabitants of Europe in long
hoods and masks, with two little round holes to peep through! Or,
lastly, do they seriously think that this dress is more acceptable to
God than the coats and waistcoats we usually wear? No, no, there is
something more at the bottom; this habit is a kind of controversial
uniform, a signal for those of a contrary opinion to stand upon their
guard, and might in time kindle a kind of civil war in our minds
that would terminate in the most terrible consequences, were not the
wisdom of the king and of his ministers as great as the folly of
these fanatics.

Every one is sufficiently sensible what fatal effects have arisen
since Christians have begun to dispute among themselves concerning
modes of belief; the blood of the subjects has flown in torrents
either on the scaffold or in the field, from the fourth century to
the present time. But let us confine ourselves only to the wars and
disasters which the disputes concerning reformation have excited in
France, and examine into their source. Perhaps a short and faithful
portrait of these numberless calamities may open the eyes of some who
have not had the advantage of education, and touch those hearts which
are not by nature callous.


 CHAPTER III.
 A SKETCH OF THE REFORMATION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

When learning began to revive, and the understandings of mankind
became more enlightened, there was a general complaint of errors and
abuses, and every one acknowledged the complaint to be just.

Pope Alexander VI. made a public purchase of the pontifical crown,
and his five bastards shared with him the profits. His son, the
Cardinal Duke of Borgia, in concert with the pope, his father, caused
the noble families of Vitelli, Urbino, Gravina, and Oliveretto,
together with a hundred other lords, to be made away with, in order
to seize upon their estates. Julius II., full of the same spirit,
excommunicated Louis XII. of France, while he himself, armed
cap-a-pie, ravaged a part of Italy with fire and sword. Leo X., in
order to raise money to pay the expenses of his pleasures, made a
sale of indulgences, like goods in a common market. Those who opposed
such shameful impositions were certainly right in a moral view; let
us see how far they were so with regard to us, in a political one.

They asserted that as Jesus Christ had never exacted annats, nor
reversions, nor sold dispensations for this world nor indulgences for
the next, they saw no reason why they should pay a foreign prince
his price for these things. Supposing that the annats, the law
proceedings in the pope’s court, and the dispensations which still
subsist were to cost us no more than five hundred thousand crowns a
year; it is clear that since the time of Francis I., that is, in two
hundred and fifty years, we have paid a hundred and twenty millions;
and if we calculate the different value of the mark of silver, we
shall find that this sum amounts to about two hundred and fifty
millions of the present money. It may therefore, I think, without any
blasphemy be allowed that the heretics in proposing the abolition of
these extraordinary taxes, which will be the admiration of posterity,
did, in that respect, no great injury to the kingdom, and showed
themselves good calculators rather than bad subjects. Add to this,
that they were the only persons who understood the Greek language,
or had any knowledge of antiquity; let us own likewise, without
dissimulation, that with all their errors, we are indebted to them
for the opening of our understandings, which had been long buried
beneath the most barbarous obscurity.

But as they denied the doctrine of purgatory, concerning which no
one ought to have the least doubt, and which, moreover, brought in
a comfortable revenue to the monks; as they paid no reverence to
relics which every one ought to reverence, and which brought in still
greater profits; and lastly, as they attacked the most respectable
tenets,[7] their adversaries made them no other reply than by
committing them to the stake. The king, who styled himself their
protector, and who kept a body of them in pay in Germany, marched at
the head of a procession through Paris, which was concluded by the
execution of a number of these unhappy wretches, in the following
manner:

They were suspended at the end of a long beam, which played upon
a pole erected for that purpose, and underneath them was kindled a
large fire, into which they were alternately lowered and then raised
up again, by which they experienced the most excruciating torments,
till a lingering death at last put an end to the longest and most
dreadful punishment that cruelty ever invented.

A short time before the death of Francis I., the members of the
Parliament of Provence, whom the clergy had incensed against the
inhabitants of Mirandol and Cabrière, applied to the king for a body
of troops to attend the execution of nineteen persons of that country
who had been condemned by them; with the assistance of this armed
force they massacred about six thousand souls, without sparing sex
or age, and reduced thirty villages to ashes. The people who were
the objects of these executions, and who had, till then, been in a
manner unknown, were doubtless to blame for having been born Vaudois,
but this was their only crime. They had been settled for upwards
of three hundred years in deserts and on mountains, which they had
rendered fertile by incredible labor, and led a pastoral and quiet
life, the perfect image of the innocence which we find attributed to
the first ages of the world. They had no acquaintance with the towns
or villages round about them, except that obtained by carrying the
produce of their grounds thither to sell. Totally ignorant of all
military operations, they made no defence, but were slaughtered like
timorous animals, whom we drive into a net and then knock them on the
head.[8]

After the death of Francis I., a prince who, it must be confessed,
was more remarkable for his gallantries and his misfortunes than for
his cruelty, the execution of a thousand heretics, and in particular
that of Dubourg, a counsellor of the parliament, together with the
massacre of Vassy, made the persecuted fly to arms. Their sect
multiplied in proportion with the fires lighted for them, and the
swords of executioners drawn against them, patience gave way to rage,
and they followed the example of their enemies in cruelty. Nine civil
wars filled France with carnage, and a peace, more fatal than war
itself, produced the day of St. Bartholomew, which stands without
example in the annals of crime.

Henry III. and Henry IV. fell victims to the league, the one by the
hand of a Dominican friar, and the other by that of a monster who had
been a brother of the mendicant order. There are those who pretend
that humanity, indulgence, and liberty of conscience are horrible
things; I would ask such persons seriously, if they could have
produced calamities comparable to those I have just related?


 CHAPTER IV.
 WHETHER TOLERATION IS DANGEROUS, AND
 AMONG WHAT NATIONS IT IS PRACTISED.

Some people will have it, that if we were to make use of humanity
and indulgence towards our mistaken brethren who pray to God in bad
French, it would be putting arms into their hands, and we should see
revived the bloody days of Jarnac, Moncontour, Coutras, Dreux, St.
Denis, and others. I know not how this may be, as I have not the
gift of prophecy, but I really cannot discover the congruity of this
reasoning, “that because these men took up arms against me when I
oppressed them, they will do the same if I show them favor.”

And here I would willingly take the liberty to entreat those who have
the reins of government in hand, or are destined to fill the highest
stations, for once to examine maturely whether there is any reason
to apprehend that indulgence would occasion the same rebellions as
cruelty and oppression, and whether what has happened under certain
circumstances would happen under others of a different nature, or
whether times, opinions, and manners are always the same?

The Huguenots, it cannot be denied, have formerly given in to all
the rage of enthusiasm, and have been polluted with blood as well
as ourselves, but can it be said that the present generation is as
barbarous as the former? Have not time and reason, which have lately
made so great progress, together with good books, and that natural
softness introduced from society, found their way among those who
have the guidance of these people? And do we not clearly perceive
that almost all Europe has undergone a change within the last century?

The hands of government have everywhere been strengthened, while the
minds of the people have been softened and civilized; the general
police, supported by numerous standing armies, leave us no longer any
cause to fear the return of those times of anarchy, when Protestant
boors and Catholic peasants were hastily called together from the
labors of agriculture to wield the sword against each others’ lives.

_Alia tempora, aliæ curæ._ It would be highly absurd in the present
days to decimate the body of the Sorbonne because it formerly
petitioned for burning the _Pucelle d’Orléans_ because it declared
Henry III. to have lost his right to the throne, and because it
excommunicated and proscribed the illustrious Henry IV. We certainly
should not think of prosecuting the other public bodies of the
nation, who committed the like excesses in those times of error and
madness; it would not only be very unjust, but as ridiculous as if we
were to oblige all the inhabitants of Marseilles to undergo a course
of physic because they had the plague in 1720.

[Illustration: THE MAID OF ORLEANS AT THE STAKE]

Should we at present go and sack Rome, as the troops of Charles
the Fifth did, because Pope Sixtus the Fifth, in the year 1585,
granted a nine years’ indulgence to all Frenchmen who would take up
arms against their sovereign? No, surely it is enough if we prevent
the court of Rome from ever being guilty of such excesses in the
future.

The rage inspired by a spirit of controversy, and the abuse made
of the Christian religion from want of properly understanding it,
has occasioned as much bloodshed, and produced as many calamities
in Germany, England, and even in Holland, as in France; and yet,
at present, the difference in religion occasions no disturbances
in those countries; but the Jew, the Catholic, the Lutheran, the
Calvinist, the Anabaptist, the Socinian, the Moravian, and a
multitude of other sects live in brotherly harmony together, and
contribute equally to the good of society.

In Holland they no longer fear that the disputations of a Gomar[9]
concerning predestination should bring the head of a grand
pensionary to the block, nor in London that the quarrels between
the Presbyterians and the Episcopals about a form of prayer and
a surplice should again spill the blood of their kings upon a
scaffold.[10] Ireland, now populous and rich, will not any more
behold its Catholic inhabitants sacrificing, as an acceptable
offering, the lives of their Protestant brethren, by burying them
alive, hanging up mothers upon gibbets, and tying their daughters
round their necks to see them expire together; ripping up women with
child, taking the half-formed infant from the womb, and throwing it
to swine or dogs to be devoured; putting a dagger into the hands of
their manacled prisoners, and forcing them to plunge it into the
breasts of their fathers, their mothers, their wives, or children,
thereby hoping to make them guilty of parricide, and damn their souls
while they destroyed their bodies; all which we find related by
Rapin, who served as an officer in the English service in Ireland,
and who lived very near the time of those transactions, and confirmed
by most of the English historians. No! such cruelties as these were
never to be paralleled, so they doubtless will never be imitated.
Philosophy, the sister of religion, has herself snatched the poniard
from the hands of superstition, so long bathed in blood; and the
human understanding, recovered from its delirium, stands amazed at
the shocking brutalities into which it has been hurried by enthusiasm.

We ourselves know that in France there is a rich and populous
province where the Protestant religion prevails much more than that
of the Church of Rome. The University of Alsace consists almost
entirely of Lutherans, and they are likewise in possession of most
of the civil posts in that province; and yet the public peace has
never once been disturbed by any quarrels about religion since that
province has belonged to our kings. And what is the reason? Because
no one is persecuted there on account of his religion. Seek not to
lay a restraint upon the mind, and you may always be sure that the
mind will be yours.

I do not mean by this to insinuate that those who are of a different
faith to the prince under whose government they live should have
an equal share in the places of profits and honor with those who
are of the established religion of the state. In England the
Roman Catholics, who are in general looked upon to be friends to
the Pretender, are excluded from all civil posts, and are even
double-taxed; but then, in every other respect, they enjoy the
prerogatives of citizens.

Some of our bishops in France have been suspected of thinking
that their honor and interest is concerned in not suffering any
Protestants within their diocese, and that this is the principal
obstacle to allowing of toleration amongst us; but this I cannot
believe. The episcopal body in France is composed of persons of
quality, who think and act in a manner suitable to their high
birth; and as envy itself must confess that they are generous and
charitable, they therefore certainly cannot think that those whom
they thus drive out of their diocese would become converts in any
other country, but great honor would redound from the conversion
of them at home; nor would the prelate be any loser by it in his
temporals, seeing that the greater the number of the inhabitants, the
greater is the value of the land.

A certain Polish bishop had a farmer who was an Anabaptist, and a
receiver of his rents who was a Socinian. Some person proposed to
the bishop to prosecute the latter in the spiritual court for not
believing in transubstantiation, and to turn the other out of his
farm because he would not have his son christened till he was fifteen
years of age; the prelate very prudently replied that though he made
no doubt of their being eternally damned in the next world, yet he
found them extremely necessary to him in this.

Let us now for a while quit our own little sphere, and take a survey
of the rest of the globe. The Grand Seignior peaceably rules over
subjects of twenty different religions; upwards of two hundred
thousand Greeks live unmolested within the walls of Constantinople;
the mufti himself nominates the Greek patriarch, and presents him
to the Emperor, and, at the same time, allows the residence of a
Latin patriarch. The Sultan appoints Latin bishops for some of the
Greek isles. The form used on this occasion is as follows:[11] “I
command such a one to go and reside as bishop in the Isle of Chios,
according to the ancient custom and idle ceremonies of those people.”
The Ottoman Empire swarms with Jacobins, Nestorians, Monothelites,
Cophti, Christians of St. John, Guebres, and Banians; and the Turkish
annals do not furnish us with one single instance of a rebellion
occasioned by any of these different sects.

Go into India, Persia, and Tartary, and you will meet with the same
toleration and the same tranquillity. Peter the Great encouraged all
kinds of religions throughout his vast empire; trade and agriculture
have been gainers by it, and no injury ever happened therefrom to the
body politic.

We do not find that the Chinese government, during the course of
four thousand years that it has existed, has ever adopted any other
religion than that of the Noachides, which consists in the simple
worship of one God; and yet it tolerates the superstitions of Fo, and
that of a multitude of bonzes; which might be productive of dangerous
consequences did not the wisdom of the tribunals keep them within
proper bounds.

It is true that the great Yong-T-Chin, the most wise and magnanimous
of all the emperors of China, drove the Jesuits out of his kingdom;
but this was not because that prince himself was non-tolerant, but,
on the contrary, because the Jesuits were so.

They themselves, in their letters, have given us the speech the
emperor made to them on that occasion: “I know,” said he, “that
your religion admits not of toleration; I know how you have behaved
in the Manilas and in Japan; you deceived my father, but think
not to deceive me in the same manner.” And if we read the whole
of the conversation which he deigned to hold with them, we must
confess him to be the wisest and most clement of all princes. How
could he indeed, with any consistency, keep in his kingdom European
philosophers, who, under the pretence of teaching the use of
thermometers and eolipiles, had found means to debauch a prince of
the blood? But what would this emperor have said had he read our
histories, and had he been acquainted with the times of the League
and the Gunpowder Plot?

It was sufficient for him to be informed of the outrageous and
indecent disputes between those Jesuits, Dominicans, Capuchins, and
secular priests who were sent as missionaries into his dominions from
one extremity of the globe to preach the truth; instead of which
they employed their time in mutually pronouncing damnation against
one another. The emperor, then, did no more than send away a set of
foreigners who were disturbers of the public peace. But with what
infinite goodness did he dismiss them! and with what paternal care
did he provide for their accommodation in their journey, and to
prevent their meeting with any insult on their way! This very act
of banishment might serve as an example of toleration and humanity.
[12] The Japanese were the most tolerant of all nations; twelve
different religions were peaceably established in their empire; when
the Jesuits came, they made the thirteenth; and, in a very little
time after their arrival, they would not suffer any other than their
own. Everyone knows the consequence of these proceedings; a civil
war, as calamitous as that of the League, soon spread destruction and
carnage through the empire; till at length the Christian religion was
itself swallowed up in the torrents of blood it had set aflowing, and
the Japanese forever shut the entrance of their country against all
foreigners, looking upon us as no better than savage beasts, such
as those from which the English have happily cleared their island.
Colbert, the minister, who knew the necessity we were in of the
commodities of Japan, which wants nothing from us, labored in vain to
settle a trade with that empire; he found those people inflexible.

Thus, then, everything on our continent shows us that we ought
neither to preach nor to exercise non-toleration.

Let us now cast our eyes on the other hemisphere. Behold Carolina!
whose laws were framed by the wise Locke; there every master of a
family, who has only seven souls under his roof, may establish what
religion he pleases, provided all those seven persons concur with him
therein; and yet this great indulgence has not, hitherto, been the
occasion of any disorders. God forbid that I should mention this as
an example to every master of a family to set up a particular worship
in his house; I have only introduced it to show that the utmost
lengths to which toleration can be carried have never yet given rise
even to the slightest dissensions.

And what shall we say of those pacific primitive Christians, who
have, by way of derision, been called Quakers; and who, though some
of their customs may perhaps be ridiculous, are yet remarkable for
the virtue and sobriety of their lives, and for having in vain
endeavored to preach peace and good-will to the rest of mankind?
There are at least a hundred thousand of them in Pennsylvania;
discord and controversy are unknown in that happy spot where they
have settled; the very name of their principal city, Philadelphia, is
a continual memento to them that all men are brethren, and is at once
an example and reproach to those nations which have not yet adopted
toleration.

To conclude, toleration has never yet excited civil wars, whereas its
opposite has filled the earth with slaughter and desolation. Let any
one then judge which of the two is more entitled to our esteem, or
which we should applaud; the mother who would deliver her son into
the hand of the executioner, or she who would resign all right to him
to save his life.

In all that I have said I have had only the interest of nations in
view, and, as I pay all due respect to the doctrines of the Church,
I have in this article only considered the physical and moral
advantages of society. I therefore hope that every impartial reader
will properly weigh these truths, that he will view them in their
proper light, and rectify what may be amiss. Those who read with
attention, and reciprocally communicate their thoughts, will always
have the start of the author.[13]


 CHAPTER V.
 IN WHAT CASES TOLERATION MAY BE ADMITTED.

Let me for once suppose that a minister equally noble and discerning,
that a prelate equally wise and humane, or a prince who is sensible
that his interest consists in the increased number of his subjects,
and his glory in their happiness, may deign to cast their eyes on
this random and defective production. In this case his own consummate
knowledge will naturally lead him to ask himself, “What hazard shall
I run by seeing the land beautiful and enriched by a greater number
of industrious laborers, the aids augmented, and the state rendered
more flourishing?”

Germany, by this time, would have been a desert, covered with the
unburied bodies of many different sects, slaughtered by one another,
had not the Peace of Westphalia happily procured a liberty of
conscience.

We have Jews in Bordeaux, in Mentz, and in Alsace; we have Lutherans,
Molinists, and Jansenists amongst us; can we not then admit
Protestants likewise under proper restrictions, nearly like those
under which the Roman Catholics are permitted in England? The greater
the number of different sects, the less danger is to be apprehended
from any one in particular; they become weaker in proportion as
they are more numerous, and are easily kept in subjection by those
just laws which prohibit riotous assemblies, mutual insults, and
seditions, and which the legislative power will always properly
support in their full vigor.

We know that there are several heads of families, who have acquired
great fortunes in foreign countries, who would be glad to return to
their native country. These require only the protection of the law
of nature, to have their marriages remain valid and their children
secured in the enjoyment of their present property, and the right
of succeeding to the inheritance of their fathers, together with
protection for their persons. They ask no public places of worship;
they aim not at the possession of civil employment, nor do they
aspire to dignities either in Church or State; for no Roman Catholics
can enjoy any of these, either in England or in any other Protestant
country.[14] In this case, therefore, there is no occasion for
granting great privileges, or delivering strongholds into the hands
of a faction, but only to suffer a quiet set of people to breathe
their native air; to soften the rigor of some edicts, which in
former times might perhaps have been necessary, but at present are no
longer so. It is not for us to direct the ministry what it has to do;
it is sufficient if we presume to plead the cause of an unfortunate
and distressed people.

Many and easy are the methods to render these people useful to the
state, and to prevent them from ever becoming dangerous; the wisdom
of the legislature supported by the military force, will certainly
find out these methods, which other nations have employed with so
much success.

It is certain that there is still a number of enthusiasts among the
lower kind of Calvinists; but, on the other hand, it is no less
certain that there is still a greater number among the lower kind
of bigoted Roman Catholics. The dregs of the madmen of St. Médard
are passed over unnoticed in the nation, while the greatest pains
are taken to exterminate the Calvinist prophets. The most certain
means to lessen the number of the mad of both sorts, if any still
remain, is to leave them entirely to the care of reason, which will
infallibly enlighten the understanding in the long run, though
she may be slow in her operations. Reason goes mildly to work,
she persuades with humanity, she inspires mutual indulgence and
forbearance, she stifles the voice of discord, establishes the rule
of virtue and sobriety, and disposes those to pay a ready obedience
to the laws who might start from the hand of power when exerted
to enforce them. Besides, are we to hold for nothing that contempt
and ridicule which enthusiasm everywhere meets with in the present
enlightened age from persons of rank and education? This very
contempt is the most powerful barrier that can be opposed to the
extravagancies of all sectaries. Past times are as though they never
had been. We should always direct our views from the point where we
ourselves at present are, and from that to which other nations have
attained.

There has been a time in which it was thought a duty to issue edicts
against all such as taught a doctrine contrary to the categories of
Aristotle, or who opposed the abhorrence of a vacuum, quiddities, or
the whole or the part of a thing. There are above a hundred volumes
in Europe containing the writings of civilians against magic, and
the manner of distinguishing real sorcerers from pretended ones.
The excommunication of grasshoppers and other insects hurtful to
the fruits of the earth was formerly much in use, and is still to
be found in several rituals; that custom is now laid aside, and
Aristotle, with his sorcerers, and the grasshoppers are left to
themselves. Innumerable are the examples of these grave follies,
which formerly were deemed of great importance; others have succeeded
from time to time, but as soon as they have had their effect, and
people begin to grow weary of them, they pass away and are no more
heard of. If any one were, at present, to take it into his head
to turn Eutychian, Nestorian, or Manichæan, what would be the
consequence? We should laugh at him in the same manner as at a person
who should appear dressed after the ancient fashion, with a great
ruff and slashed sleeves.

The first thing that opened the eyes of our nation was when the
Jesuits Letellier and Doucin drew up the bull Unigenitus, and sent
it to the Court of Rome, imagining they lived still in those times
of ignorance in which people adopted, without examination, the most
absurd assertions. They even dared to proscribe a proposition, which
is universally true in all cases and in all times, “that the dread
of an unjust excommunication ought not to hinder any one from doing
his duty.” This was, in fact, proscribing reason, the liberties of
the Gallican church, and the very foundation of all morality; it was
saying to mankind: “God commands you never to do your duty when you
are apprehensive of suffering any injustice.” Never was so gross
an insult offered to common sense, and yet this never occurred to
these correspondents of the Church of Rome. Nay, they even persuaded
that court that this bull was necessary, that the nation desired it.
Accordingly it was signed, sealed, and sent back to France; and every
one knows the consequences; assuredly, had they been foreseen, this
bull would have been mitigated. Very warm disputes ensued upon it;
but, however, by the great prudence and goodness of the king, they
were at length appeased.

It is much the same with regard to most of those points in which the
Protestants and we at present differ; some of them are of little
or no consequence; others again are more serious; but even in
these latter, the rage of disputation is so far subsided that the
Protestants nowadays no longer preach upon controversial points in
any of their churches.

Let us then seize this period of disgust or satiety for such matters,
or, rather, indeed, of the prevalence of reason, as an epoch for
restoring the public tranquillity, of which it seems to be a pleasing
earnest. Controversy, that epidemical malady, is now in its decline,
and requires nothing more than a gentle regimen. In a word, it is
the interest of the state that these wandering sects, who have so
long lived as aliens to their father’s house, on their returning
in a submissive and peaceable manner, should meet with a favorable
reception; humanity seems to demand this, reason advises it, and good
policy can have nothing to apprehend from it.


 CHAPTER VI.
 IF NON-TOLERATION IS AGREEABLE TO
 THE LAW OF NATURE AND OF SOCIETY.

The law of nature is that which nature points out to all mankind.
You have brought up a child, that child owes you a respect as its
parent, and gratitude as its benefactor. You have a right over the
productions of the earth which you have raised by the labor of your
own hands; you have given and received a promise; that promise ought
to be kept.

The law of society can have no other foundation in any case than on
the law of nature. “Do not that to another which thou wouldst not he
should do unto thee,” is the great and universal principle of both
throughout the earth; now, agreeably to this principle, can one man
say to another: “Believe that which I believe, and which thou thyself
canst not believe, or thou shalt die?” And yet this is what is every
day said in Portugal, in Spain, and in Goa. In some other countries,
indeed, they now content themselves with saying, “Believe as I do,
or I will hold thee in abhorrence; believe like me, or I will do
thee all the evil I can; wretch, thou art not of my religion, and
therefore thou hast no religion at all, and oughtest to be held in
execration by thy neighbors, thy city, and thy province.”

If the law of society directs such a conduct, the Japanese ought
then to hold the Chinese in detestation; the latter the Siamese, who
should persecute the inhabitants of the Ganges; and they fall upon
those of India; the Mogul should put to death the first Malabar he
found in his kingdom; the Malabar should poniard the Persian; the
Persian massacre the Turk; and, all together, should fall upon us
Christians, who have so many ages been cutting one another’s throats.

The law of persecution then is equally absurd and barbarous; it is
the law of tigers; nay, it is even still more savage, for tigers
destroy only for the sake of food, whereas we have butchered one
another on account of a sentence or a paragraph.


 CHAPTER VII.
 IF NON-TOLERATION WAS
 KNOWN AMONG THE GREEKS.

The several nations with which history has made us in part
acquainted, all considered their different religions as ties by which
they were united; it was the association of human kind. There was a
kind of law of hospitality among the gods, the same as among men. If
a stranger arrived in any town, the first thing he did was to pay his
adoration to the gods of the country, even though they were the gods
of his enemies. The Trojans offered up prayers even to those gods who
fought for the Greeks.

Alexander made a journey into the deserts of Libya, purposely to
consult the god Ammon, to whom the Greeks gave the name of Zeus and
the Latins that of Jupiter, though both countries had their Jupiter
and their Zeus among themselves. When they sat down before any town
or city, they offered up sacrifices and prayers to the gods of that
city or town, to render them propitious to their undertaking. Thus,
even in the midst of war, religion united mankind; and though it
might sometimes prompt them to exercise the most inhuman cruelties,
at other times it frequently softened their fury.

I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that not one of all the
civilized nations of antiquity ever laid a restraint upon liberty
of thinking. They all had a particular religion; but they seem to
have acted in this respect toward men in the same manner as they did
toward their gods; they all acknowledged one Supreme Being, though
they associated him with an infinite number of inferior deities;
in like manner, though they had but one faith, yet they admitted a
multitude of particular systems.

The Greeks, for example, though a very religious people, were not
offended with the Epicureans, who denied Providence and the existence
of the soul, not to mention divers other sects, whose tenets were
all of them repugnant to the pure ideas we ought to entertain of a
Creator, and yet were all of them tolerated.

Socrates, who came the nearest to the knowledge of the true God,
is said to have suffered on that account, and died a martyr to
the Deity; he was the only one whom the Greeks ever put to death
on account of opinion. If this was really the cause of his being
condemned, it does very little honor to persecution, since he was put
to death for being the only one who gave true glory to God, whilst
those who taught notions the most unworthy of the Deity were held
in high honor; therefore, I think, the enemies of toleration should
be cautious how they lay a stress upon the infamous example of his
judges.

Moreover, it is evident from history that he fell a victim to the
revenge of an enraged party. He had made himself many inveterate
enemies among the sophists, orators, and poets, who taught in the
public schools, and even among the preceptors who had the care of the
children of distinction. He himself acknowledges in his discourse
handed down to us by Plato, that he went from house to house to
convince these preceptors that they were a set of ignorant fellows,
a conduct certainly unworthy of one who had been declared by an
oracle the wisest of mankind. A priest and one of the members of the
Areopagus were let loose upon him, who accused him I cannot precisely
say of what, as his apology to me seems very vague; from which,
however, we learn in general that he was charged with inspiring
the youth of the nation with notions contrary to the religion and
government of the country, an accusation which the slanderers of all
times and places have constantly made use of; but a court of justice
requires positive facts, and that the charge should be circumstantial
and well supported, none of which are to be found in the proceedings
against Socrates. All we know is that he had at first two hundred and
twenty voices for him; therefore there must have been two hundred
and twenty out of the five hundred judges who were philosophers, a
great many more, I believe, than are to be found anywhere else. At
length, however, the majority were for the hemlock potion. But here
let us not forget, that when the Athenians came to their reason,
they held both his accusers and judges in detestation; made Melitus,
who had been the principal author of the sentence pronounced against
him, pay for that act of injustice with his life; banished all the
others concerned in it, and erected a temple to Socrates. Never
was philosophy so nobly avenged, so highly honored. This affair of
Socrates then is, in fact, the most powerful argument that can be
alleged against persecution. The Athenians had an altar dedicated to
the strange gods, gods they could never know. What stronger proof
then can there be, not only of their extreme indulgence towards all
nations, but even of their respect for the religion of those nations?

A very worthy person, who is neither an enemy to reason, learning,
or probity, nor to his country, in undertaking to justify the affair
of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, quotes the war of the Phocians,
by them called the sacred war, as if that war had been entered into
on the score of religion, or a particular point in divinity, whereas
it is well known that it was caused by a dispute about a particular
spot of ground, the constant cause of all wars. A few corn-grounds
can certainly never be a symbol of belief; it is as certain that none
of the Greek cities ever made war on one another for the sake of
opinion. After all, what would this modest and humane writer drive
at? Would he have us undertake a sacred war!


 CHAPTER VIII.
 WHETHER THE ROMANS
 ENCOURAGED TOLERATION.

Among the ancient Romans, from the days of Romulus to those in which
the Christians began to dispute with the priests of the empire, we
do not find a single instance of any person being persecuted on
account of his sentiments. Cicero doubted everything, Lucretius
denied everything, and yet neither the one nor the other underwent
the least reproach from their fellow-citizens; nay, so far did this
licence go, that Pliny, the naturalist, begins his book by denying
the existence of a God, and saying, that if there be one, it must be
the sun. Cicero, in speaking of hell, says: _Non est una tam excors
quæ credat_ (“There is not even an old woman so silly as to believe
it”). Juvenal says: _Nec pueri credunt_ (“Nor do the children believe
it”). And the following maxim was publicly repeated in the Roman
theatre: _Post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil_ (“Naught after
death; even death itself is naught”). While we abhor these maxims,
let us pardon them in a people who were never enlightened by the holy
truths of the Gospel; and, while we own them to be false and impious,
let us, however, confess that the Romans were great friends to
toleration, seeing that such tenets never excited any commotions.

_Deorum offensa diis curæ_, was the grand principle of the senate and
people of Rome, that illustrious nation employing their attention
wholly to conquer, govern and civilize the universe. They were our
legislators as well as our conquerors; and even Cæsar, who reduced
us to his subjection, and gave us laws and games, never attempted to
compel us to quit our Druids for him, though supreme pontiff of a
nation whose subjects we were now become.

The Romans themselves did not profess all kinds of religion,
therefore they did not give public sanction to all, but they
permitted them. Under Numa nothing material was the object of their
worship. They had neither statues nor pictures; in process of time,
however, some were erected to the _Dii Majorum Gentium_, with which
the Greeks brought them into acquaintance. That law in the twelve
tables, _Deos peregrinos ne colunto_, was confined to the allowing
no public worship to be paid, except to the superior and inferior
deities, approved by the senate. The Egyptian goddess Isis had a
temple in Rome at the time of Tiberius, who demolished it because
its priests, having been bribed by Mundus, suffered him to lie with
a lady called Paulina in the temple itself, under the name and form
of the god Anubis. Indeed this story is to be found only in Josephus,
who did not live at that time, and was moreover a credulous and
exaggerating writer; and there is very little probability that
in so enlightened an age as that of Tiberius, a lady of the first
distinction in Rome could be so weak as to believe that a god
cohabited with her.

But whether this anecdote be true or false, this one thing is
certain, that the Egyptian idolatry was in the possession of a temple
in Rome with the public consent. The Jews had also lived as traders
in that city ever since the Punic war; they had their synagogues
there in the time of Augustus, and almost always continued to have
them in the same manner as they now have in modern Rome. Can we
desire a stronger instance that the Romans looked upon toleration as
the most sacred of all the laws of nations?

We are told that as soon as the Christian religion began to make its
appearance, its followers were persecuted by these very Romans who
persecuted no one. This fact, however, appears to me to be evidently
false, and I desire no better authority than that of St. Paul
himself. In the Acts of the Apostles[15] we are told that St. Paul,
being accused by the Jews of attempting to overturn the Mosaic law by
that of Jesus Christ, St. James proposed to him to shave his head and
go into the temple with four Jews and purify himself with them, “That
all men may know,” says he, “that those things whereof they were
informed concerning thee, are nothing, but that thou thyself dost
keep the law of Moses.”

Accordingly, we find that St. Paul, though a Christian, submitted
to perform these Jewish ceremonies for the space of seven days; but
before the expiration of this time, the Jews of Asia, who knew him
again, seeing him in the temple, not only with Jews but Gentiles
also, cried out that he had polluted the holy place, and laid hands
upon him, drew him out of the temple, and carried him before the
Governor Felix; they afterwards accused him at the judgment-seat of
Festus, whither the Jews came in crowds demanding his death. But
Festus answered them: “It is not the manner of the Romans to deliver
any man to die, before that he which is accused have the accusers
face to face, and have licence to answer for himself.”[16]

These words of the Roman magistrate are the more remarkable as he
appears to have been no favorer of St. Paul, but rather to have held
him in contempt, for, imposed upon by the false lights of his own
reason, he took him for a person beside himself; nay, he expressly
says to him, “Much learning hath made thee mad.”[17] Festus then was
entirely guided by the equity of the Roman law in taking under his
protection a stranger for whom he could have no regard.

Here then we have the word of God itself declaring that the Romans
were a just people, and no persecutors. Besides, it was not the
Romans who laid violent hands on St. Paul, but the Jews. St. James,
the brother of Jesus, was stoned to death by order of a Sadducee Jew,
and not by that of a Roman judge. It was the Jews alone who put St.
Stephen to death;[18] and though St. Paul held the clothes of those
who stoned him, he certainly did not act then as a Roman citizen.

The primitive Christians had certainly no cause of complaint against
the Romans; the Jews, from whom they at that time began to separate
themselves, were their only enemies. Every one knows the implacable
hatred all sectaries bore to those who quit their sect. There
doubtless were several tumults in the synagogues in Rome. Suetonius,
in his life of Claudius, has these words, _Judæos impulsore Christo
assidue tumultuantes Roma expulit_. He is wrong in saying that it
was at the instigation of Christ they raised commotions in Rome; but
he could not be acquainted with all the circumstances relating to
a people who were held in such contempt in Rome as the Jews were;
and, however mistaken he may have been in this particular, yet he is
right as to the occasion of these commotions. Suetonius wrote in the
reign of Adrian in the second century, when the Christians were not
distinguished from the Jews by the Romans; therefore this passage
of Suetonius is a proof that the Romans, so far from oppressing the
primitive Christians, chastised the Jews who persecuted them, being
desirous that the Jewish synagogue in Rome should show the same
indulgence to its dissenting brethren as it received itself from
the Roman Senate; and we find from Dion Cassius and Ulpian, that
the Jews who were thus banished from Rome returned soon after, and
even attained to several honors and dignities, notwithstanding the
laws which excluded them therefrom.[19] Can it be believed, that
after the destruction of Jerusalem, the emperors would have loaded
the Jews with their favors, and have persecuted and put to death the
Christians, whom they looked upon as a sect of the Jews?

Nero is said to have been a great persecutor of the Christians. But
Tacitus tells us that they were accused of having set fire to the
city of Rome, and were thereupon given up to the resentment of the
populace. But had religion anything to do with this charge? No,
certainly. We might as well say that the Chinese, whom the Dutch
murdered a few years ago in Batavia, were slaughtered on account of
their religion. And nothing but a strong desire to deceive ourselves
can possibly make us attribute to persecution the sufferings of a
few half-Jews and half-Christians under Nero.[20]



Several Christians afterwards suffered martyrdom; it is not easy
to say on what particular account they were condemned, but I can
venture to assert that none suffered under the first Cæsars merely on
the account of religion, for they tolerated all beliefs; therefore,
why should they seek out and persecute an obscure people, who had a
worship peculiar to themselves, at the time they licensed all others?

The Emperors Titus, Trajan, Antoninus, and Decius were not
barbarians; how then can we imagine that they would have deprived
the Christians alone of that liberty with which they indulged every
other nation, or that they would even have troubled them for having
concealed mysteries, while the worshippers of Isis, Mithra, and the
Goddess of Assyria, whose rites were all of them equally unknown
to the Romans, were suffered to perform them without hindrance?
Certainly, the persecutions the Christians suffered must have arisen
from other causes, and from some private pique, enforced by reasons
of state.

For instance, when St. Laurence refused to deliver to Cornelius
Secularius, the Roman prefect, the money belonging to the Christians
which he had in his custody, was it not very natural for the prefect
and the emperor to be incensed at this refusal? They did not know
that St. Laurence had distributed this money among the poor, in acts
of charity and benevolence; therefore they considered him only as a
refractory person, and punished him accordingly.[21]

Again, let us consider the martyrdom of St. Polyeuctes. Can he be
said to have suffered on account of religion only? He enters a
temple, where the people are employed in offering thanksgivings to
their gods on account of the victory gained by the Emperor Decius;
he insults the priests and overturns and breaks in pieces the altar
and statues. Is there a country in the world where so gross an
insult would have been passed over? The Christian who publicly tore
the edict of the Emperor Diocletian, and by that act brought on the
great persecution against his brethren in the two last years of this
prince’s reign, had not, surely, a zeal according to knowledge, but
was the unhappy cause of all the disasters that befell his party.
This inconsiderate zeal, which was often breaking forth, and was
condemned even by several of the Fathers of the Church, was probably
the occasion of all those persecutions we read of.

Certainly, I would not make a comparison between the first
sacramentarians and the primitive Christians, as error should never
be ranked in the same class with truth, but it is well known that
Farrel, the predecessor of Calvin, did the very same thing at Arles
which St. Polyeuctes had done before him in Armenia. The townsmen
were carrying the statue of St. Anthony, the hermit, in procession
through the streets; Farrel and some of his followers in a fit of
zeal fell upon the monks who were carrying the image, beat them, made
them take to their heels, and, having seized upon St. Anthony, threw
him into the river. Assuredly Farrel deserved death for this flagrant
outrage upon the public peace, but he had the good luck to escape by
flight. Now, had he only told those monks in the open streets that he
did not believe that a raven had brought half a loaf to St. Anthony,
nor that this hermit had had conversation with centaurs and satyrs,
he would have deserved a severe reprimand for troubling the public
peace; but if the night after the procession he had quietly examined
the story in his own room, no one could have found any fault with him
for it.

But, indeed, can we suppose that the Romans, after permitting the
infamous Antinous to be ranked among their demi-gods, would have
massacred and thrown to wild beasts those against whom they had no
other cause of reproach than having peaceably worshipped a just
Deity? Or would those very Romans, who worshipped a supreme and
all-powerful God,[22] master of all the subordinate deities, and
distinguished by the title of _Deus optimus maximus_, would they, I
say, have persecuted such who professed to worship only one God?

There appears little reason to believe that there ever was an
inquisition instituted against the Christians under the Roman
emperors; I mean, that they were ever judicially examined on the
subject of their faith; neither do we find that Jew, Syrian, Egyptian
bards, Druids, or philosophers were ever troubled on this account.
The primitive martyrs then were men who opposed the worship of false
gods. But, however wise or pious they might be in rejecting the
belief of such absurd fictions, if, not content with worshipping the
true God in spirit and in truth, they offered a violent and public
outrage to the received religion of the government under which they
lived, however absurd that religion might be, impartiality obliges us
to confess that they themselves were the first persecutors.

Tertullian, in his Apology,[23] says that the Christians were
looked upon as a turbulent and seditious sect. This accusation is
doubtless unjust; but it serves to prove that the civil power did
not set itself against the Christians purely on account of their
religion. In another place,[24] he says that the Christians refused
to adorn the doors of their houses with laurel branches on the days
of public rejoicing for the victories of the emperors. Now this
blamable particularity might not, without some reason, be taken for
disaffection to the government.

The first judicial act of severity we find exercised against
the Christians was that of Domitian; but this extended only to
banishment, which did not last above a year, for, says the author
above quoted, _Facile cœptum repressit restitutis quos ipse
relegaverat_. Lactantius, so remarkable for his passionate and
pompous style, acknowledges that from the time of Domitian to that
of Decius the Church continued in a peaceable and flourishing
condition. This long tranquillity, says he,[25] was interrupted by
that execrable animal Decius, who began to oppress the Church: _Post
multos annos extitit execrabile animal Decius qui vexaret ecclesiam_.

I shall not here enter into a discussion of the opinion of the
learned Mr. Dodwell concerning the small number of martyrs; but
if the Romans had been such violent persecutors of the Christian
religion, if their senate had condemned so many of its innocent
votaries to perish by the most unheard-of tortures, plunging them
alive in boiling oil, and exposing their wives and daughters naked
to the wild beasts in the circus, how happened it that they suffered
all the first bishops of Rome to live unmolested? St. Ireneus reckons
only one martyr among all these bishops, namely, Telesphorus, who
suffered in the year 139 of our vulgar era; nor have we any positive
proof of this Telesphorus being put to death. Zephirinus governed the
flock in Rome for eighteen years successively, and died peaceably in
the year 219. It is true that in the ancient martyrologies we find
almost all the first popes ranked as martyrs, but the word martyr is
there taken only in its original and true signification, which is a
witness and not a sufferer.

Moreover, we can hardly reconcile this rage of persecution with
the liberty granted the Christians, of assembling no less than
fifty-six councils in the course of the first three centuries, as is
acknowledged by all ecclesiastical writers.

That there were persecutions, is doubtless; but if they had been as
violent as represented, it is hardly probable that Tertullian, who
wrote with so much energy against the established religion, would
have been suffered to die peaceably in his bed. It is certain that
none of the emperors ever read his “Apology,” as an obscure work
composed in Africa can hardly be supposed to have come into the hands
of the governors of the world; but then, it might have been shown to
their proconsuls in Africa, and have drawn down their resentment upon
the author; nevertheless, we do not find that he suffered martyrdom.

Origen taught the Christian religion publicly in Alexandria, and yet
was not put to death for it. And this very Origen himself, who spoke
with so much freedom both to the heathens and the Christians, and
who, while he taught Jesus to the one, denied the triple Godhead to
the other, expressly acknowledges, in his third book against Celsus,
that “There were very few who suffered martyrdom, and those at a
great distance of time from one another; notwithstanding,” says he,
“that the Christians leave nothing undone to make their religion
generally embraced, running from city to city, and from town to town,
to make converts.”

It must be confessed that these continual peregrinations might
readily give cause to the priests, who were their enemies, to accuse
them of a design to raise disturbances; and yet we find that these
missions were tolerated even among the Egyptians, who have ever
been a turbulent, factious, and mean people, and who tore a Roman
to death for having killed a cat; in a word, a nation at all times
contemptible, whatever may have been said to the contrary by the
admirers of pyramids.[26]

What person could do more to call down upon him the resentment of
both ecclesiastical and civil power than St. Gregory Thaumaturgos,
the disciple of Origen? This same St. Gregory had a vision during
the night-time, in which an old man appeared to him sent from God,
accompanied by a woman shining with glory; the first of these was
St. John the Evangelist, and the other the Holy Virgin. St. John
dictated to him a creed, which Gregory afterwards went about to
preach. In his way he passed through Neo-Cæsarea, where the rain
obliged him to stay all night, and he took up his lodging near a
temple famous for its oracles. Here he made several signs of the
cross. The high priest coming the next morning into the temple was
surprised to find that the oracle did not give its answer as usual,
upon which he invoked the spirits of the place, who appearing, told
him that they could no longer inhabit that mansion, as St. Gregory
had passed a night there and had made signs of the cross, upon
which the high priest caused Gregory to be seized, who gave him to
understand that he could drive out or cause to enter the familiar
spirits wherever he pleased. “If so,” said the high priest, “pray
send them back here again.” Then St. Gregory, tearing a leaf from a
little book he held in his hand, wrote these words upon it: “Gregory
to Satan: I command thee to enter again into this temple.” The paper
being laid upon the altar, the demons, in obedience to the saint’s
mandate, gave their oracles that day as usual, after which they
remained silent.

This story is related by St. Gregory of Nyssa in his life of St.
Gregory Thaumaturgos. Certainly, the idolatrous priests had great
reason to be offended with St. Gregory, and might have delivered him
over to the secular power as one who was their greatest enemy, and
yet we do not find that they offered him any hurt.

The history of St. Cyprian informs us that he was the first bishop
of Carthage who suffered martyrdom; this was A. D. 258, consequently
no bishop of Carthage had been put to death on account of religion
for a great length of time. The history of this saint does not inform
us what charge was brought against him, who were his enemies, or how
he incurred the displeasure of the proconsul of Africa. We find St.
Cyprian thus writing to Cornelius, bishop of Rome: “There has been
a tumult of the people lately at Carthage, in which it was twice
proposed to throw me to the lions.” It might possibly happen that
the blind resentment of the people of Carthage did at length cause
Cyprian to be put to death, for, certainly, he was never condemned
to suffer for his religion by the Emperor Gallus, who lived at so
great a distance, and, moreover, permitted Cornelius to exercise his
episcopal function under his very eye.

So many and various are the hidden causes that are frequently blended
with the apparent one, in the persecution of an individual, that it
is hardly possible for posterity to discover the true source of the
misfortunes that befell even the most considerable personages, much
less that of the sufferings of a private person, hardly known to any
but those of his own sect.

And here let it be observed that neither St. Gregory Thaumaturgos
nor St. Denis, bishop of Alexandria, who were both contemporaries of
St. Cyprian, suffered the slightest persecution. How then happened
it that, being certainly as well known as the bishop of Carthage,
they were suffered to live unmolested, while he was delivered over
to punishment? May we not fairly infer that the one fell a victim to
personal and powerful enemies, either in consequence of a malicious
accusation, or from reasons of state, which frequently interfere in
religious matters, while the other had the good fortune to escape the
designs of wicked men?

We cannot, with any degree of probability, suppose that the charge
of being a Christian was the only cause of St. Ignatius being put to
death, under the just and merciful Trajan, since we find that several
of his own religion were suffered to accompany and minister comfort
to him on his way to Rome.[27] There had been frequent seditions
in Antioch, a city remarkable for the turbulent disposition of
its inhabitants; here Ignatius privately acted as bishop over the
Christians. It might happen that some of these disturbances, being
maliciously imputed to the innocent Christians, had occasioned the
government to take cognizance of them, and that the judge might have
been mistaken, as it often happens.

St. Simeon, for example, was accused before King Sapor of being a
spy to the Romans. The history of his martyrdom tells us that Sapor
proposed to him to worship the sun, whereas every one knows that the
Persians paid no divine honors to that planet, but only considered
it as an emblem of the good principle, the Orasmades, or Sovereign
Creator, whom they all adored.

Any one of the least tolerating spirit cannot help his indignation
from rising against those writers who accused Diocletian of
persecuting the Christians after his accession to the empire. Here
we need only refer to Eusebius of Cæsarea, whose testimony certainly
cannot be rejected. The favorite, the panegyrist of Constantine, and
the declared enemy of the emperors his predecessors, is certainly
entitled to our credit when he justifies those very emperors. The
following are his own words:[28]

“The emperors had for a long time given the Christians great marks of
their favor and benevolence; they had entrusted them with the care
of whole provinces; many of them lived within the imperial palace;
and some of the emperors even married Christian women; Diocletian, in
particular, espoused Prisca, whose daughter was wife to Maximianus
Galerius,” etc.

Let this authentic testimony make us cautious how we fall too readily
into calumny; and from this let any impartial person judge, if the
persecution raised by Galerius, after nineteen years of continued
clemency and favor to the Christians, must not have been occasioned
by some intrigues with which we are at present unacquainted.

From this also we may perceive the absurdity of that fabulous story
of the Theban legion, said to have been all massacred for their
religion. Can anything be more ridiculous than to make this legion
be brought from Asia by the great St. Bernard? It is altogether
impossible that this legion should have been sent for from Asia to
quiet a tumult in Gaul, a year after that tumult was suppressed,
and not less so that six thousand foot and seven hundred horse
should have suffered themselves to be all murdered in a place where
two hundred men only might have kept off a whole army. The account
of this pretended butchery is introduced with all the marks of
imposture: “When the earth groaned under the tyranny of Diocletian,
heaven was peopled with martyrs.” Now, this event, such as it is
related, is supposed to have happened in 286, the very time in which
Diocletian most favored the Christians, and that the Roman Empire
was in a state of the greatest tranquillity. But to cut short this
matter at once, no such legion as the Theban ever existed; the Romans
were too haughty and too wise to form a corps of those Egyptians, who
served only as slaves in Rome, _Vernæ Canopi_; we may as well suppose
them to have had a Jewish legion. We have the names of two and thirty
legions that formed the principal military force of the Roman Empire,
and it is very certain the Theban legion is not to be found among
them. In a word, we may rank this story with the acrostic verses of
the Sibyls, which are said to have foretold the miracles wrought by
Jesus Christ, and with many other like spurious productions, which
false zeal has trumped up to impose upon credulity.


 CHAPTER X.
 THE DANGER OF FALSE LEGENDS AND PERSECUTION.

Mankind has been too long imposed upon by falsehood; it is therefore
time that we should come to the knowledge of the few truths that can
be distinguished from amidst the clouds of fiction which cover Roman
history from the times of Tacitus and Suetonius, and with which the
annals of the other nations of antiquity have almost always been
obscured.

Can any one, for example, believe that the Romans, a grave and
modest people, could have condemned Christian virgins, the children
of persons of the first quality, to common prostitution? This is
assuredly very inconsistent with the noble austerity of that nation
from whom we received our laws, and who punished so rigorously the
least transgression of chastity in their vestals. These shameful
stories may indeed be found in the _Actes Sincères_ of Ruinart. But
should we believe those acts before the “Acts of the Apostles”? The
_Actes Sincères_ tell us from Bollandus that there were in the city
of Ancira seven Christian virgins, each of them upwards of seventy,
whom the governor, Theodectes, ordered to be deflowered by the
young men of the place; but these poor maidens having escaped this
disaster—as indeed there was great reason they should—he compelled
them to assist stark naked at the mysteries of Diana, at which, by
the way, no one ever assisted but in a veil. St. Theodotus, who,
though indeed nothing more than an innkeeper, was not the less pious
for that, besought God devoutly that he would be pleased to take away
the lives of these holy maidens lest they should yield to temptation.
God heard his prayer. The governor ordered them all to be thrown into
a lake with stones about their necks; immediately after which they
appeared to Theodotus, and begged of him, “that he would not suffer
their bodies to be devoured by the fishes.” These, it seems, were
their own words.

Hereupon the innkeeper saint and some of his companions went in the
night-time to the side of the lake, which was guarded by a party of
soldiers, a heavenly torch going all the way before, to light them.
When they came to the place where the guards were posted, they saw
a heavenly horseman armed cap-a-pie, with a lance in his hand, who
fell upon the soldiers and dispersed them, while St. Theodotus drew
the dead bodies of the virgins out of the water. He was afterwards
carried before the governor, who ordered his head to be struck off,
without the heavenly horseman interfering to prevent it. However
disposed we may be to pay all due reverence to the true martyrs of
our holy religion, we must confess it is very hard to believe the
story of Bollandus and Ruinart.

Need I add to this the legend of young St. Romanus? Eusebius tells
us, that having been condemned to be burnt, he was accordingly thrown
into the fire, when some Jews, who were present, made a mock of
Jesus Christ, who suffered his followers to be burnt when God had
delivered Shadrac, Meshach, and Abednego out of the fiery furnace.
No sooner had the Jews uttered this blasphemy than they beheld St.
Romanus walking triumphant and unhurt forth from the flaming pile;
this being reported to the emperor, he gave orders for his being
pardoned, telling the judge that he would not have an affair upon
his hands with God—a strange expression for Diocletian! The judge,
however, notwithstanding the emperor’s clemency, ordered St. Romanus
to have his tongue cut out; and, though he had executioners at hand,
commanded the operation to be performed by a surgeon. Young Romanus,
who had from his birth labored under an impediment of speech, no
sooner lost his tongue than he spoke distinctly, and with great
volubility. Upon this, the surgeon received a severe reprimand; when,
in order to show that he had performed his operation, _secundum
artem_, he laid hold of a man who was going by, from whom he cut just
the same portion of tongue as he had done from St. Romanus, on which
the patient instantly died, for, adds our author very learnedly,
“Anatomy teaches us that a man cannot live without his tongue.” If
Eusebius did really write such stuff, and it has not been added by
some other hand, what degree of credit can we give to his history?

We have the relation of the martyrdom of St. Felicitas and her seven
children, who are said to have been condemned to death by the wise
and pious Antoninus, but without giving us the author’s name, who,
most probably, possessed of more zeal than veracity, had a mind to
imitate the history of the Maccabees. He begins his relation in the
following manner: “St. Felicitas was by birth a Roman, and lived in
the reign of Antoninus.” It is clear by these words that the author
did not live at the same time with St. Felicitas. He says that they
were judged before the prætor in the Campus Martius, whereas the
Roman prefect’s tribunal was not in the Campus Martius, but in the
Capitol, for, although the Comitia had been held there formerly, yet
at this time it was used only as a place for reviewing the soldiers,
for chariot races, and for military games. This alone is sufficient
to detect the fiction.

The author adds furthermore, that after sentence was passed, the
emperor committed the care of seeing it executed to different judges,
a circumstance which is entirely repugnant to the usual forms in
those times, and in every other.

We also read of St. Hippolytus, who is said to have been drawn in
pieces by horses, as was Hippolytus, the son of Theseus. But a
punishment of this kind was not known among the ancient Romans; and
this fabulous story took its rise wholly from the similitude of names.

And here we may make one observation, that in the multitude of
martyrologies, composed wholly by the Christians themselves, we
almost always read of a great number of them coming of their own
accord into the prison of their condemned brother, following him
to execution, saving the blood as it flows from him, burying his
dead body and performing miracles with his relics. Now, if the
persecution was levelled only at the religion, would not the authors
of it have destroyed those who thus openly declared themselves
Christians, administered comfort and assistance to their brethren
under sentence, and were moreover, charged with working enchantments
with their inanimate remains? Would they not have treated them as
we have treated several different sects of Protestants, whom we
have butchered and burnt by hundreds, without distinction of age or
sex? Is there amongst all the authenticated accounts of the ancient
persecutions a single instance like that of St. Bartholomew, and
the massacre in Ireland? Is there one that comes near to the annual
festival, which is still celebrated at Toulouse, and which for its
cruelty deserves to be forever abolished, where the inhabitants of a
whole city go in procession to return thanks to God, and felicitate
one another, for having, two hundred years ago, massacred upwards of
four thousand of their fellow subjects?

With horror I say it, but it is an undoubted truth, that we, who
call ourselves Christians, have been persecutors, executioners, and
assassins! And of whom? Of our own brethren. It is we who have razed
a hundred towns to their foundations with the crucifix or Bible in
our hands, and who have continually persevered in shedding torrents
of blood, and lighting the fires of persecution, from the reign of
Constantine to the time of the religious horrors of the cannibals
who inhabited the Cévennes; horrors which, praised be God, no longer
exist.

Indeed, we still see at times some miserable wretches of the more
distant provinces sent to the gallows on account of religion.
Since the year 1745 eight persons have been hanged of those called
predicants or ministers of the gospel, whose only crime was that of
having prayed to God for their king in bad French, and giving a drop
of wine, and a morsel of leavened bread, to a few ignorant peasants.
Nothing of all this is known in Paris, where pleasure engrosses the
whole attention, and where they are ignorant of everything that
passes, not only in foreign kingdoms, but even in the more distant
parts of their own. The trials in these cases frequently take up less
time than is used to condemn a deserter. The king wants only to be
informed of this, and he would certainly extend his mercy on such
occasions.

We do not find that the Roman Catholic priests are treated in this
manner in any Protestant country: there are above a hundred of
them,[29] both in England and Ireland, publicly known to be such, and
who have yet been suffered to live peaceably and unmolested, even
during the last war.

Shall we then always be the last to adopt the wholesome sentiments
of other nations? They have corrected their errors, when shall we
correct ours? It has required sixty years to make us receive the
demonstrations of the great Newton: we have but just begun to dare
to save the lives of our children by inoculation, and it is but of
very late date that we have put in practice the true principles
of agriculture; when shall we begin to put in practice the true
principles of humanity, or with what face can we reproach the
heathens with having made so many martyrs, when we ourselves are
guilty of the same cruelties in the like circumstances?

Let it be allowed that the Romans put to death a number of Christians
on account of their religion only: if so, the Romans were highly
blamable; but shall we commit the same injustice, and while we
reproach them for their persecutions, be persecutors ourselves?

If there should be any one so destitute of honesty, or so blinded
with enthusiasm, as to ask me here, why I thus undertake to lay open
our errors and faults, and to destroy the credit of all our false
miracles and fictitious legends, which serve to keep alive the zeal
and piety of many persons; and should such a person tell me that some
errors are absolutely necessary; that, like ulcers, they give a vent
to the humors of the body, and by being taken away would compass its
destruction, thus would I answer him:

“All those false miracles by which you shake the credit due to real
ones, the numberless absurd legends with which you clog the truths
of the Gospel, serve only to extinguish the pure flame of religion
in our hearts.” There are too many persons, who, desirous of being
instructed, but not having the time for acquiring instruction, say:
“The teachers of my religion have deceived me, therefore there is no
religion: it is better to throw myself into the arms of Nature than
those of Error; and I had rather place my dependence on her law than
in the inventions of men.” Others again unhappily go still greater
lengths; they perceive that imposture has put a bridle in their
mouths, and therefore will not submit even to the necessary curb of
truth; they incline towards atheism, and run into depravity because
others have been impostors and persecutors.

Such are undeniably the consequences of pious frauds and
superstitious fopperies. Mankind in general reason but by halves:
it is certainly a very vicious way of arguing to say, that because
the golden legend of Voraginus, and the “Flower of Saints” of the
Jesuit Ribadeneira, abound in nothing but absurdities, therefore
there is no God: that the Catholics have massacred a great number
of Huguenots, and the Huguenots in their turn have murdered a great
number of Catholics, therefore there is no God: that certain bad men
have made use of confession, the holy communion, and all the other
sacraments, as a means for perpetrating the most atrocious crimes,
and therefore there is no God. For my part, I, on the contrary,
should conclude from thence that there is a God, who after this
transitory life, in which we have wandered so far from the true
knowledge of Him, and have seen so many crimes committed under the
sanction of His holy name, will at length deign to comfort us for the
many dreadful calamities we have suffered in this life; for if we
consider the many religious wars, and the forty papal schisms, which
have almost all of them been bloody; if we reflect upon the multitude
of impostures, which have almost all proved fatal; the irreconcilable
animosities excited by differences in opinions, and the numberless
evils occasioned by false zeal, I cannot but believe that men have
for a long time had their hell in this world.


 CHAPTER XI.
 ILL CONSEQUENCES OF NON-TOLERATION.

What! it may then be demanded, shall every one be allowed to believe
only his own reason, and to think that his reason, whether true or
false, should be the guide of his actions? Yes, certainly, provided
he does not disturb the peace of the community; for man has it not in
his power to believe or disbelieve;[30] but he has it in his power
to pay a proper respect to the established customs of his country;
and if we say that it is a crime not to believe in the established
religion, we ourselves condemn the primitive Christians, our
forefathers, and justify those whom we accuse of having put them to
death.

It may be replied, that the difference here is very great, because
all other religions are of men, whereas the Catholic, Apostolic,
and Roman Church is of God alone. But let me seriously ask, whether
the divine origin of our religion is a reason for establishing it
by hatred, rage, banishment, confiscation of goods, imprisonment,
tortures, and murder, and by solemn acts of thanksgiving to the Deity
for such outrages? The more assured we are of the divine authority of
the Christian religion, the less does it become weak man to enforce
the observance of it: if it is truly of God, God will support it
without man’s assistance. Persecution never makes any but hypocrites
or rebels; a shocking alternative! Besides, ought we to endeavor to
establish, by the bloody hand of the executioner, the religion of
that God who fell by such hands, and who, while on earth, taught only
mercy and forbearance?

And here let us consider a while, the dreadful consequences of the
right of non-toleration; if it were permitted us to strip of his
possessions, to throw into prison, or to take away the life of a
fellow-creature, who, born under a certain degree of latitude, did
not profess the generally received religion of that latitude, what
is there which would exempt the principal persons of the state from
falling under the like punishments? Religion equally binds the
monarch and the beggar. Accordingly, we know that upwards of fifty
doctors or monks have maintained this execrable doctrine: that it
was lawful to depose, or even to kill, such princes as did not agree
with the established church; and we also know, that the several
parliaments of the kingdom have on every occasion condemned these
abominable decisions of still more abominable divines.[31]

The blood of Henry the Great was still reeking on the sword of his
murderer, when the Parliament of Paris issued an arret to establish
the independence of the crown as a fundamental law; whilst Cardinal
Duperron, who owed his elevation to that prince, opposed this decree
in an assembly of the states, and got it suppressed. The following
expression, made use of on this occasion by Duperron, is to be found
in all the historical tracts of these times: “Should a prince,” says
he, “turn Arian, it would be necessary to depose him.”

But here I must beg the cardinal’s pardon; for let us for a while
adopt his chimerical supposition, and say, that one of our kings
having read the “History of the Councils and of the Fathers,” and
being struck with these words, “My Father is greater than I,” and
taking them in too literal a sense, should be divided between the
Council of Nice and that of Constantinople, and adopt the opinion of
Eusebius of Nicomedia: yet I should not be the less obliged to obey
my king, nor think the oath of allegiance I had taken to him less
binding; and if you, Mr. Cardinal, should dare to oppose him, and
I were one of your judges, I should, without scruple, declare you
guilty of high treason.

Duperron carried this dispute much further; but I shall cut it very
short, by saying with every good citizen, that I should not look upon
myself as bound to obey Henry IV. because he was king; but because he
held the crown by the incontestable right of birth, and as the just
reward of his virtue and magnanimity.

Permit me then to say, that every individual is entitled by the same
right to enjoy the inheritance of his father, and that he in no wise
deserves to be deprived of it, or to be sent to the gallows, because
he may perhaps be of the opinion of Ratram against Paschasius
Ratberg, or of Berengarius against Scotus.

We are very sensible that there are many of our tenets which have
not been always clearly explained: Jesus Christ not having expressly
told us in what manner the Holy Ghost really proceeds, both the Latin
church and the Greek believed that it proceeded only from the Father;
but afterwards an article was added to the Creed in which it is said
to proceed from the Son also. Now, I desire to know whether the day
after this new article was added a person who might abide by the old
Creed would have been deserving of death? And is there less cruelty
or injustice in punishing at this day a person who may possibly think
as they did two or three centuries ago? Or was there any crime in
believing in the time of Honorius I. that Christ had not two wills?

It is but very lately that the belief of the immaculate conception
has been established: the Dominicans have not received it as yet. Now
will any one tell me the precise point of time when the Dominicans
will begin to deserve punishment in this world, and in that which is
to come?

If any one can set us an example for our conduct, it is certainly the
Apostles and the Evangelists. There was sufficient matter to excite
a violent schism between St. Peter and St. Paul. The latter, in his
Epistle to the Galatians,[32] says: “That he withstood Peter to the
face, because he was to be blamed; for before that certain men came
from James, he did eat with the Gentiles: but when they were come,
he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the
circumcision, insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with his
dissimulation.” “But,” adds he, “when I saw that they walked not
uprightly, according to the truth of the Gospel, I said unto Peter
before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of
Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to
live as do the Jews?”

Here now was a subject for a violent dispute. The question was,
whether the new Christians followed the manners of the Jews or not.
St. Paul at that very time sacrificed in the Temple of Jerusalem; and
we know that the first fifteen bishops of Jerusalem were circumcised
Jews; and that they observed the Sabbath, and abstained from the
meats forbidden by the Jewish law. Should a bishop of Spain or
Portugal at this time be circumcised, or observe the Sabbath, he
would assuredly burn at an _auto da fé_: and yet this fundamental
point did not occasion the least animosity between the Apostles, or
between the primitive Christians.

If the Evangelists had resembled our modern writers, what an immense
field was there for disputation between them. St. Matthew reckons
only eight and twenty generations from David to Jesus. St. Luke
reckons forty-one; and these generations are absolutely different.
Yet no dissension appears to have arisen between the disciples
on account of these apparent contradictions, which have been so
admirably well reconciled by the Fathers of the Church; but they
still continued in brotherly love, peace, and charity with one
another. What more noble lesson can we have of indulgence in our
disputes, and of humility in regard to those things which we do not
understand?

St. Paul, in his Epistle to certain Jews of Rome who had been
converted to Christianity, employs all the latter part of his third
chapter in telling them that by faith alone they will be glorified,
and that no man is justified by good works only. St. James, on the
contrary, in the second chapter of his Epistle to the twelve tribes
dispersed over the earth, is continually preaching up to them, that
without good works no man can be saved. This has occasioned the
separation of two great communions amongst us; but it caused no
division among the Apostles.

If the persecuting of those who differ from us in opinion is a holy
action, it must be confessed that he who had murdered the greatest
number of heretics would be the most glorious saint in heaven. If
so, what a pitiful figure would a man who had only stripped his
brethren of all they had, and thrown them to rot in a dungeon, make,
in comparison with the zealot who had butchered his hundreds on the
famous day of St. Bartholomew? This may be proved as follows:

The successor of St. Peter and his consistory cannot err; they
approved, they celebrated, they consecrated the action of St.
Bartholomew; consequently that action was holy and meritorious;
and, by a like deduction, he who of two murderers, equal in piety,
had ripped up the bellies of eighty Huguenot women big with child
would be entitled to double the portion of glory of another who had
butchered but twelve; in this manner, by the same argument also, the
enthusiasts of the Cévennes have reason to believe that they will
be exalted in glory in proportion to the number of Catholic women,
priests and monks whom they may have knocked on the head: but surely
these are strange claims to eternal happiness.


 CHAPTER XII.
 IF NON-TOLERATION WAS PART OF THE DIVINE LAW
 AMONG THE JEWS, AND WHETHER IT WAS ALWAYS
 PUT IN PRACTICE.

By the divine law, I take to be understood those rules and precepts
which have been given to us by God Himself. For example, he ordained
that the Jews should eat a lamb dressed with bitter herbs, and
standing with a staff in their hand, in remembrance of the Passover;
that the consecration of the high-priest should be performed by
touching the tip of his right ear, his right hand, and his right foot
with blood; that the scapegoat should be charged with the sins of the
people: he also forbade the eating of all shellfish, swine, hares,
hedgehogs, owls, the heron, and the lapwing.[33]

He also instituted their several feasts and ceremonies; and all those
things which appeared arbitrary to other nations, and subjected to
positive law and custom, when commanded by God Himself, became a
divine law to the Jews, in like manner as whatever Jesus Christ the
Son of Mary and the Son of God has commanded us is to us a divine law.

But here let us not presume to inquire wherefore it has pleased God
to substitute a new law in the room of that given to Moses, and
wherefore He commanded Moses more things than he did the patriarch
Abraham, and Abraham more than Noah.[34] In this he seems, with
infinite condescension, to have accommodated himself to times and
the state of population amongst the inhabitants of the earth; and in
this gradation, to have shown his paternal love: but these are depths
too profound for our weak faculties to measure; I shall therefore
confine myself to my subject, and proceed to examine the state of
non-toleration among the Jews.

It is certain, that in Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy we
find several very rigorous laws and severe punishments in relation
to religious worship. Several able commentators have been greatly
puzzled to reconcile these books of Moses with several passages in
the prophets Jeremiah and Amos, and with the famous discourse of
St. Stephen, as related in the Acts of the Apostles. Amos says that
the Jews constantly worshipped in the wilderness, Moloch and Chiun,
gods whom they had made to themselves.[35] And Jeremiah expressly
says, that God commanded not their fathers concerning burnt-offerings
or sacrifices in the day that he brought them out of the land of
Egypt.[36] And St. Stephen, in his discourse to the Jews previously
mentioned, says: “They worshipped the host of heaven, and that they
neither offered sacrifices nor slew beasts, for the space of forty
years in the wilderness, but took up the tabernacle of Moloch and the
star of their god Remphan.”[37]

Other critics again infer from the worship of so many strange gods
here mentioned, that the Israelites were indulged with having these
gods by Moses; and in support of their opinion they quote the
following words in Deuteronomy: “When ye shall enter into the land
of Canaan, ye shall not do after all the things that we do here this
day, every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes.”[38][39]

And as a further proof, they say that there is no mention made of
any religious act of the people of Israel while in the wilderness;
neither the celebration of the Passover, nor of the Feast of the
Tabernacles, nor of any public form of worship being established, nor
even the practice of circumcision, the seal of the covenant made by
God with Abraham.

They likewise refer to the history of Joshua, where this great
conqueror thus addresses the Jews: “If it seem evil unto you to
serve the Lord, choose you this day whom you will serve; whether
the gods which your fathers served in Mesopotamia or the gods of
the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell:” and the people said, “Nay,
but we will serve the Lord our God (Adonai).” And Joshua said unto
the people, “Ye have chosen, now therefore put away the strange
gods which are among you.” Hence, say they, it is evident that the
Israelites had other gods besides the Lord (Adonai) under Moses.

It is altogether needless to take up the reader’s time with an
attempt to refute the opinions of those critics who think that
the Pentateuch was not written by Moses. This subject has been
sufficiently discussed long ago; and, even admitting that some few
parts of it were written in the times of the Judges, the Kings, or
the Prophets, it would not make the whole less inspired or divine.
It is sufficient, in my opinion, if the Holy Scripture proves to
us, that, notwithstanding the extraordinary punishments which the
Jews called down upon themselves by their idolatrous worship of the
golden calf, they continued for a long time to enjoy perfect liberty
of conscience; and it is even probable, that Moses, after having
massacred the twenty-three thousand, in the first transports of his
rage against his brother and them for having erected this idol,
finding that nothing was to be gained by such severity in matters of
religion, was glad to wink at the fondness the people expressed for
strange gods.

And indeed he himself appears soon after to have transgressed the
very law which he had given:[40] for, notwithstanding his having
forbidden all molten or graven images, we find him erecting the
brazen serpent. And this law was again dispensed with by Solomon
in the building of his temple; where that prince caused twelve
brazen bulls to be placed as supporters to the great Laver; as also
cherubim in the ark, which had two heads, one of an eagle and the
other of a calf; and it was probable from this latter head, badly
made, and found in the temple by the Roman soldiers at the time
of their plundering of it, that the Jews were so long reported to
have worshipped an ass. Moreover, notwithstanding the repeated
prohibitions against the worship of false gods, Solomon, though
giving way to the grossest idolatry, lived and died in peace.
Jeroboam, to whom God himself gave ten parts out of twelve of the
kingdom, set up two golden calves, and yet reigned two and twenty
years, having united in his person the twofold dignity of monarch and
of high-priest. The petty people of Judæa erected altars and images
to strange gods under Rehoboam. Pious King Aza suffered the high
places to remain undemolished. And lastly, Uriah, the high-priest,
erected a brazen altar, which had been sent to him by the king of
Syria, in the temple, in the place of the altar of burnt-offerings.
In a word, we do not anywhere find the least constraint in point of
religion among the Jews; it is true, indeed, that they frequently
destroyed and murdered one another; but that was from motives of
political concern, and not about the modes of belief. It is true,
that among the prophets we find some making heaven a party in their
vengeance. Elias, for instance, calls down fire from heaven to
consume the priests of Baal. And Elisha sent bears to devour two and
forty little children for calling him baldhead. But these miracles
are very rare in their kind, and it would moreover be somewhat
inhuman to desire to imitate them. We are also told that the Jews
were a most ignorant and cruel people; and that in their war with
the Midianites[41] they were commanded by Moses to kill all the
male children and all the child-bearing women, and to divide the
spoil.[42] They found in the enemy’s camp 675,000 sheep, 72,000
oxen, 61,000 asses, and 32,000 young maidens, and they took all the
spoil and slew the captives. Several commentators will have it, that
thirty-two of the young women were sacrificed to the Lord. “The
Lord’s tribute was thirty and two persons.”[43]

It is evident that the Jews offered human sacrifices to God; witness
that of Jephthah’s daughter,[44] and of King Agag hewed in pieces by
the prophet Samuel.[45] And we find the prophet Ezekiel promising
them, by way of encouragement, that they should feast upon human
flesh: “Ye shall eat of the flesh of the horse, and of his rider,
and ye shall drink the blood of the princes of the earth.”[46] But
although the history of this people does not furnish us with one
single act of generosity, magnanimity, or humanity, yet amidst so
long and dismal a night of barbarism, there is continually breaking
forth a cheering ray of universal toleration.

Jephthah, who was inspired of God, and who sacrificed to him his
daughter, says to the chief of the Amorites, “Wilt not thou possess
that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess? so whomsoever the
Lord our God shall drive from before us, them will we possess.”[47]
This declaration is express, and might be carried to a great length;
however, it is at least an evident proof that God permitted the
worship of Chemosh. For the words of the Holy Scripture are not
“_Thou thinkest_ thou hast a right to possess that which thy god
Chemosh giveth thee to possess,” but expressly, “_Thou hast_ a right
to possess,” etc., for that is the true interpretation of the Hebrew
words _Otho thirasch_.

The story of Micah and the Levite, related in the seventeenth
and eighteenth chapters of the Book of Judges, is a still more
incontestable proof of this extensive toleration and liberty of
conscience allowed among the Jews. The mother of Micah having lost
eleven hundred shekels of silver, and her son having restored them to
her, she dedicated or vowed them unto the Lord, and made images with
them, and she built a small chapel and hired a Levite to officiate
therein for ten shekels of silver by the year, and a suit of apparel
and his victuals. Then said Micah: “Now know I that the Lord will do
me good, seeing that I have a Levite to be my priest.”[48]

In a short time after, six hundred men of the tribe of Dan, who
were in search of some town which they might seize upon as an
inheritance to dwell in, came to the house of Micah, where they
found the Levite officiating; and having no priest of their own with
them, and thinking that on that account God would not prosper their
undertaking, they seized upon the carved image, the ephod, and the
teraphim belonging to Micah, and also the Levite, whom they took
with them in spite of all the remonstrances of the latter, and the
outcries of Micah and his mother. After this, full of assurance of
success, they went and fell upon the city of Laish, and smote all
the inhabitants with the edge of the sword, and burnt the city to
the ground, as was their usual custom; they then built them another
city, and called its name Dan,[49] in remembrance of their victory;
and they set up Micah’s graven image; and what is more remarkable,
Jonathan, the grandson of Moses, was a priest of the temple, wherein
the God of Israel and the idol of Micah were both worshipped at the
same time.[50]

After the death of Gideon, the Israelites worshipped Baal-Perith
for upwards of twenty years, and abandoned the worship of the true
God, without any punishment being inflicted upon them for it, either
by their chiefs, their judges, or their priests. This, I must
confess, was a very heinous crime; but then, if even this idolatry
was tolerated, how great must have been the differences of the true
worship?

There are some persons, who, in support of non-toleration, bring us
the authority of God Himself; who, having suffered His ark to fall
into the hands of the Philistines in the day of battle, punished
them only by afflicting them with an inward distemper, resembling
the hæmorrhoids or piles, by breaking in pieces the statue of their
god Dagon, and by sending a number of rats to devour the fruits of
their lands. But when the Philistines, in order to appease his wrath,
sent back the ark drawn by two cows that gave milk to their calves,
and made an offering to the Lord of five golden rats, and the like
number of golden hæmorrhoids, the Lord smote seventy of the Elders of
Israel, and fifty thousand of the people, for having looked upon the
ark. To this it may be answered, that the judgment of God was not, on
this occasion, directed against any particular belief, any difference
in worship, or idolatry.

If God had meant to punish idolatry, He would have destroyed all the
Philistines who had attempted to seize upon His ark, and who were
worshippers of the idol Dagon; whereas, we find Him smiting with
death fifty thousand and seventy of His own people, for having looked
upon His ark, which they ought not to have looked upon. So much did
the laws and manners of those times and the Jewish dispensation
differ from everything that we know, and so inscrutable are the ways
of God to us! “The rigorous punishment,” says the learned Doctor
Calmet, “inflicted on such a multitude of persons on this occasion,
will appear excessive only to those who do not comprehend how greatly
God would have Himself feared and respected among His chosen people,
and who judge of the ways and designs of Providence only by the weak
lights of their own reason.”

Here then God punished the Israelites, not for any strange worship,
but for a profanation of His own; an indiscreet curiosity, a
disobedience of His precepts, and perhaps an inward rebellious
spirit. It is true, that such punishments appertain alone to the God
of the Hebrews, and we cannot too often repeat, that those times and
manners were altogether different from ours.

Again, we find, some ages after, when the idolatrous Naaman asked of
Elijah if he might be allowed to follow his king up to the temple of
Rimmon, and bow down himself there with him; this very Elijah,[51]
who had before caused the little children to be devoured by bears
only for mocking him, answered this idolater, “Go in peace.”

But this is not all; we find the Lord commanding Jeremiah to make
him bonds and yokes, saying: “Put them upon thy neck,[52] and send
them to the king of Edom, and to the king of Moab, and to the king of
the Ammonites, and to the king of Tyrus, and to the king of Zidon,”
and he did so, bidding the messenger say to them in the name of the
Lord: “I have given all your lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar,
king of Babylon, my servant.”[53] Here then we have God declaring an
idolatrous prince his servant and favorite.

The same prophet having been cast into the dungeon by order of the
Jewish king Zedekiah, and afterwards released by him, advises him in
the name of God to submit himself to the king of Babylon, saying:
“If thou wilt assuredly go forth unto the king of Babylon’s princes,
thy soul shall live.” God therefore takes part with an idolatrous
king, and delivers into his hands His holy ark, the looking upon
which only had cost the lives of fifty thousand and seventy Jews;
and not only so, but also delivers up to him the Holy of Holies,
together with the rest of the temple, the building of which had cost
a hundred and eight thousand talents of gold, one million seventeen
thousand talents of silver, and ten thousand drachmas of gold, that
had been left by David and his great officers for building the house
of the Lord; which, exclusive of the sums expended for that purpose
by King Solomon, amounts to the sum of nineteen milliards, sixty-two
millions, or thereabouts, of the present currency. Never, surely,
was idolatry so nobly rewarded. I am sensible that this account
is exaggerated, and that it seems to be an error of the copyist.
But if we reduce the sum to one half, to a fourth, or even to an
eighth part, it will still be amazing. But Herodotus’s account of
the treasures which he himself saw in the temple of Ephesus is not
less surprising. In fine, all the riches of the earth are as nothing
in the sight of God; and the title of _my servant_, with which he
dignified Nebuchadnezzar, is the true and invaluable treasure.

Nor does God show less favor to Kir, or Koresh whom we call Cyrus,
and whom He calls His _Christ_, His _anointed_, though he never
was anointed according to the general acceptation of that word,
and was moreover a follower of the religion of Zoroaster, and a
usurper in the opinion of the rest of mankind; yet him He calls His
_shepherd_;[54] and we have not in the whole sacred writings so great
an instance of divine predilection.

We are told by the prophet Malachi, that, “from the rising of the
sun even unto the going down of the same, the name of God shall be
great among the Gentiles; and in every place a pure offering shall be
offered unto his name.”[55] God takes as much care of the idolatrous
Ninevites as of His chosen Jews. Melchizedek, though no Jew, was
the high-priest of the living God. Balaam, though an idolater, was
His prophet. The Holy Scripture then teaches us, that God not only
tolerated every other religion, but also extended His fatherly care
to them all. And shall we, after this, dare to be persecutors?



Thus, then, under Moses, the Judges, and the Kings, we find
numberless instances of toleration. Moreover, we are told by Moses,
that “God will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children,
unto the third and fourth generation.” This threat was necessary to
a people to whom God had not revealed the immortality of the soul,
and the rewards and punishment of a future state. These truths are
not to be found in any part of the decalogue, nor in the Levitic or
Deuteronomic law. They were the tenets of the Persians, Babylonians,
Egyptians, Greeks, and Cretans, but made no part of the Jewish
religion. Moses does not say, “Honor thy father and thy mother,
that thou mayest inherit _eternal_ life,” but “that thy days may be
long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee”; that is, in
this life; and the punishments with which he threatens them regard
only the present mortal state; such as being smitten with the scab
and with the itch, with blasting and with mildew; that they shall
betroth a wife, and another man shall lie with her; that they shall
build houses, and others shall dwell therein; that they shall plant
vineyards, and shall not gather the grapes thereof; that they shall
eat the fruit of their own bodies, the flesh of their sons and of
their daughters, and be obliged to bow down before the stranger
that is within their gates;[56] but he never tells them that their
souls are immortal, and shall taste of felicity or punishment after
death. God, who conducted His people Himself, punished or rewarded
them immediately according to their good or evil deeds. Everything
relating to them was temporal, and this the learned Bishop Warburton
brings as a proof of the divine origin of the Jewish law;[57]
“inasmuch,” says he, “as God being their King, and exercising
justice immediately upon them, according to their transgression or
obedience, found it not necessary to reveal to them a doctrine which
He reserved for after-times, when He should no longer so directly
govern His people.” Those who through ignorance pretend that Moses
taught the immortality of the soul, deprive the New Testament of
one of its principal advantages over the Old. It is certain that
the law of Moses taught only temporal punishments, extending to the
fourth generation; and yet, notwithstanding the positive declaration
of God delivered in this law, Ezekiel preached the very contrary to
the Jews, telling them, “The son shall not bear the iniquities of
the father;”[58][59] and in another place he goes so far as to make
God say that “He had given them statutes that were not good, and
judgments whereby they should not live.”[60]

Notwithstanding these contradictions, the book of Ezekiel was not
the less admitted into the number of those inspired writers: It is
true, that according to St. Jerome, the synagogue did not permit the
reading of it till after thirteen years of age; but that was for fear
their youth should make a bad use of the too lively description, in
the sixteenth and twenty-third chapters, of the whoredoms of Aholah
and Aholibah.

But when the immortality of the soul came to be a received
doctrine,[61] which was probably about the beginning of the
Babylonish captivity, the sect of Sadducees still continued to
believe that there were no rewards or punishments after death, and
that the faculties of the soul perished with us in like manner
as those of the body. They also denied the existence of angels.
In a word, they differed much more from the other Jews than the
Protestants do from the Catholics; nevertheless, they lived in
peaceable communion with their brethren; and some of their sect were
admitted to the high-priesthood.

The Pharisees held fatality or predestination,[62] and believed in
the Metempsychosis;[63] the Essenians thought that the souls of
the just went into some happy islands,[64] and those of the wicked
into a kind of Tartarus, or hell. They offered no sacrifices, and
assembled together in particular synagogues of their own. In a word,
if we examine closely into the Jewish economy, we shall be surprised
to find the most extensive toleration prevailing amidst the most
shocking barbarities. This is indeed a contradiction, but almost all
people have been governed by contradictions. Happy are those whose
manners are mild, while their laws are bloody!



Let us now see whether Christ established sanguinary laws, whether He
enjoined non-toleration, instituted the horrors of the inquisition,
or the butchery of an _auto da fé_.

There are, unless I am much mistaken, very few passages in the New
Testament from which the spirit of persecution can have inferred that
tyranny and constraint in religious matters are permitted: one is
the parable wherein the kingdom of heaven is likened unto a certain
king who made a marriage for his son, and sent forth his servants to
invite guests to the wedding, saying, “Tell them which were bidden,
my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready; come
unto the marriage.”[65] But those who were bidden made light of the
invitation, one going to his farm and another to his business, and
the rest of them took the king’s servants and slew them. Upon which
he sent forth his armies and destroyed those murderers and burnt up
their city. After this he sent out into the highways to invite all
that could be found to come to the marriage; but one of the guests
happening to sit down to table without a wedding garment, the king
ordered him to be bound hand and foot and cast into outer darkness.

But it is clear that this allegory relates only to the kingdom of
heaven; therefore, assuredly no man can assume a right from thence
to fetter or imprison his neighbor who should come to dine with
him without being properly dressed; nor do I believe that history
furnishes us with any instance of a prince causing one of his
courtiers to be hanged upon such an occasion; and there is little
reason to apprehend that when the emperor sent his pages to any of
the princes of the empire to invite them to an entertainment those
princes would fall upon the pages and kill them.

The invitation to the marriage feast is a type of the preaching of
the gospel, and the murder of the king’s servants is figurative of
the persecution of those who preach wisdom and virtue.

The other parable is that of a private person who made a great
supper, to which he invited many of his friends,[66] and when he was
ready to sit down to table sent his servants to tell them that all
things were ready; but one excused himself by saying that he had
bought a piece of ground and must needs go and see it, an excuse
which was not admissible, as no one goes to visit their lands in the
night-time; another said he had bought five yoke of oxen and was
going to prove them; he was as much to blame as the other, since
no one would go to prove oxen at supper-time; the third said he
had married a wife and could not come; this last was certainly a
very good excuse. The master of the house being very angry at this
disappointment, told his servants to go into the streets and lanes
of the city and bring in the poor, and the maimed, the halt and the
blind; this being done, and finding that there was yet room, he said
unto his servant, “Go out into the highways and hedges and compel
them (that you find) to come in.”

It is true that we are not expressly told that this parable is a type
of the kingdom of heaven, and the words “compel them to come in” have
been perverted to very bad purposes; but it is very evident that
one single servant could not _forcibly_ compel every person he met
to come and sup with his master; besides, the company of people so
compelled would not have made the supper very agreeable. “Compel them
to come in,” therefore, means nothing more, according to commentators
of the best reputation, than pray, desire, press them to come in;
therefore, what connection, for heaven’s sake, can prayers and
invitations have with persecution?

But to take things in a literal sense, is it necessary to be maimed,
halt, and blind, or to be compelled by force to enter into the bosom
of the Church? Christ says in the same parable: “When thou makest a
dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, nor thy
rich kinsmen”; but did any one ever infer from this that we should
never dine or sup with our friends or kinsmen if they happen to be
worth money?

Our Saviour, after this parable of the feast, says: “If any man come
to me, and hate not his father and mother, his wife and children,
his brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be
my disciple,” etc. But is there any person living so unnatural as to
conclude from this that he ought to hate his father and mother and
his nearest relations? And is it not evident to one of the meanest
capacity that the true interpretation of these words is: hesitate not
between me and your dearest affections?

The following passage in the eighth chapter of St. Matthew is also
quoted: “Whosoever heareth not the word of God shall be like to
an heathen, and like one who sitteth at the receipt of custom”;
but certainly this is not saying that we ought to persecute all
unbelievers and custom-house officers; they are frequently cursed
indeed, but they are not delivered up to the arm of secular power.
And so far from depriving the latter of any part of the prerogatives
of citizens, they are indulged with the greatest privileges; and
though their profession is the only one condemned in Scripture, it
is of all others the most protected and favored by every government.
Why then should we not show some indulgence to our brethren who
are unbelievers, while we load with benefits our brethren the
tax-gatherers?

Another passage which has been grossly abused is that in St. Matthew
and St. Mark, where we are told that Jesus being hungry in the
morning, and coming to a fig tree which had no leaves—for it was not
the time of figs—Jesus cursed the tree and it immediately dried up.

This miracle has been explained in several different ways, but not
one of them appears to authorize persecution. Though a fig tree
could not be expected to bear fruit in the beginning of March, yet
we find it blasted; but is that a reason why we should blast our
brethren with affliction in all seasons of the year? When we meet
with anything in holy writing that may occasion doubts in our vain
and inquisitive minds, we should pay it all due reverence, but let us
not make use of it to countenance cruelty and persecution.

The spirit of persecution which perverts everything has also strained
in its own vindication the story of Christ driving the buyers and
sellers out of the temple, and that of his sending a legion of
devils out of the body of the man possessed with an evil spirit
into two thousand unclean animals; but cannot any one perceive that
these two instances were no other than acts of justice, which God
Himself deigned to execute for a contravention of His law? It was
a disrespect shown to the house of the Lord to change His dwelling
into a market for buyers and sellers. And although the Sanhedrim and
its priests might permit this traffic for the greater convenience of
their sacrifices, yet the God to whom these sacrifices were offered
might, doubtless, though under a human shape, overturn this profane
practice. In the same manner might He punish those who brought into
the country whole troops of those animals which were prohibited by
the law of which He Himself deigned to be an observer. These two
examples, then, have not the least connection with persecution for
religion’s sake; and the spirit of non-toleration must certainly be
founded upon very false principles when it everywhere seeks such idle
pretexts.

Christ, in almost every other part of His gospel, both by His words
and actions, preaches mildness, forbearance and indulgence. Witness
the father who receives his prodigal son, and the workman who comes
at the last hour and yet is paid as much as the others; witness the
charitable Samaritan, and Christ Himself, who excuses His disciples
for not fasting, who pardons the woman who had sinned, and only
recommends fidelity for the future to the woman caught in adultery.
He even condescends to partake of the innocent mirth of those who
have met at the marriage feast in Cana, and who being already warmed
with wine and wanting still more, Christ is pleased to perform a
miracle in their favor by changing their water into wine. He is not
even incensed against Judas, whom He knew to be about to betray Him;
He commands Peter never to make use of the sword, and reprimands
the sons of Zebedee, who, after the example of Elias, wanted to
call down fire from heaven to consume a town in which they had been
refused a lodging. In a word, He Himself died a victim to malice
and persecution; and, if one might dare to compare God with a mortal
and sacred things with profane, His death, humanly speaking, had a
great resemblance to that of Socrates. The Greek philosopher suffered
for the hatred of the sophists, the priests and the heads of the
people; the Christian Law-giver, by that of the Scribes, Pharisees
and priests. Socrates might have avoided death, but would not;
Christ offered Himself a voluntary sacrifice. The Greek philosopher
not only pardoned his false accusers and iniquitous judges, he even
desired them to treat his children as they had done himself, should
they, like him, one day be happy enough to deserve their hatred. The
Christian Law-giver, infinitely superior to the heathen, besought
His Father to forgive His enemies. If Christ seemed to fear death,
and if the agonies He was in at its approach drew from Him sweat
mixed with blood, which is the most violent and rare of all symptoms,
it was because He condescended to submit to every weakness of the
human frame, which He had taken upon Him; His body trembled, but His
soul was unshaken. By His example we may learn that true fortitude
and greatness consist in supporting those evils at which our nature
shrinks. It is the height of courage to meet death at the same time
that we fear it.

Socrates accused the sophists of ignorance and convicted them of
falsehood; Jesus, in His godlike character, accused the Scribes and
Pharisees of being hypocrites, blind guides and fools, and a race of
vipers and serpents.

Socrates was not accused of attempting to found a new sect, nor was
Christ charged with endeavoring to introduce a new one. We are told
in St. Matthew that the great men and the priests and all the council
sought false witness against Jesus to put Him to death.

Now, if they were obliged to seek for false witnesses, they could
not charge Him with having preached openly against the law; besides,
it was evident that He complied in every respect with the Mosaic law
from His birth to His death. He was circumcised the eighth day like
other Jewish children; He was baptized in Jordan, agreeable to a
ceremony held sacred among the Jews and among all the other people
of the east. All impurities of the law were cleansed by baptism; it
was in this manner their priests were consecrated at the solemn feast
of the expiation, every one plunged himself in the water, and all
new-made proselytes underwent the same ceremony.

Moreover, Jesus observed all the points of the law; He feasted every
Sabbath day, and He abstained from forbidden meats; He kept all
the festivals, and even before His death He celebrated that of the
Passover; He was not accused of embracing any new opinion, nor of
observing any strange rites. Born an Israelite, He always lived as an
Israelite.

He was accused, indeed, by two witnesses of having said that He
could destroy the Temple and build it up again in three days; a
speech altogether unintelligible to the carnal Jews, but which did
not amount to an accusation of seeking to found a new sect.

When He was examined before the high priest, this latter said to him:
“I command you, in the name of the living God, to tell us if Thou
art Christ, the Son of God.” We are not told what the high priest
meant by the Son of God. This expression was sometimes made use of to
signify a just or upright man,[67] in the same manner as the words
son of Belial, to signify a wicked person. The carnal Jews had no
idea of the sacred mystery of the Son of God, God Himself coming upon
earth.

Jesus answered the high priest, “thou hast said; nevertheless, I say
unto you, hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right
hand of the power of God, and coming in the clouds of heaven.”[68]

This answer was looked upon by the whole assembly as a blasphemy.
But the Sanhedrim having no longer the power of life and death, they
falsely accused Jesus before the Roman governor of the province of
being a disturber of the public peace, and one who, said they, should
not pay tribute to Cæsar; and, moreover, called Himself King of the
Jews. It is therefore incontestably evident that he was accused of a
crime against the state.

Pilate being informed that He was a Galilean, sent Him immediately to
Herod, the tetrarch of Galilee. This latter, thinking it impossible
that a person of Jesus’ appearance should pretend to be the head
of a party, or aspire to royalty, treated Him with great contempt,
and sent Him back again to Pilate, who had the infamous weakness to
condemn Him to death as the only means to appease the tumult raised
against himself; more especially as he had lately experienced the
revolt of the Jews, as we are told by Josephus. On this occasion
Pilate did not show the same generosity which the governor Festus did
afterwards.

I now desire to know whether toleration or non-toleration appears to
be of divine prescription? Let those who would resemble Christ be
martyrs and not executioners.


 CHAPTER XV.
 TESTIMONIES AGAINST PERSECUTION.

It is an impious act to deprive men of liberty in matters of
religion, or prevent them from making choice of a God. No God nor man
would be pleased with a forced service.—_Apologetic_, chap. xxiv.

Were violence to be used in defence of the faith, the bishops would
oppose it.—_St. Hilarius_, lib. i.

Religion when forced ceases to be religion; we should persuade and
not compel. Religion cannot be commanded.—_Lactantius_, lib. iii.

It is detestable heresy to endeavor to bring over by violence,
bodily punishments, or imprisonments, those we cannot convince by
reasoning.—_St. Athanasius_, lib. i.

Nothing is more contradictory to true religion than constraint.—_St.
Justin, Martyr_, lib. v.

Is it for us to persecute those whom God tolerates? said St.
Augustine, before his dispute with the Donatists had soured his
disposition.

Let no violence be done to the Jews.—_The 56th Canon of the 4th
Council of Toledo._

Advise but compel not.—_St. Bernard’s Letters._

We do not pretend to overcome error by violence.—_Speech of the
Clergy of France to Louis XIV._

We have always disapproved of rigorous measures.—_Assembly of the
Clergy, August 11, 1560._

We know that faith may yield to persuasion, but it never will be
controlled.—_Fléchier, Bishop of Nîmes, Letter, 19._

We ought to abstain even from reproachful speeches.—_Bishop of
Belley’s Pastoral Letters._

Remember that the diseases of the soul are not to be cured by
restraint and violence.—_Cardinal Camus’ Pastoral Instructions for
the Year 1688._

Indulge every one with civil toleration—_Archbishop Fénelon to the
Duke of Burgundy._

Compulsion in religion proves the spirit which dictates it to be an
enemy to truth.—_Dirois, a Doctor of the Sorbonne_, b. vi. chap. iv.

Compulsion may make hypocrites, but never can persuade.—_Tillemont’s
Hist. Eccles._ tom. vi.

We have thought it conformable to equity and right reason to walk
in the paths of the ancient church which never used violence to
establish or extend religion.—_Remonstrance of the Parliament of
Paris to Henry II._

Experience teaches us that violence is more likely to irritate than
to cure a distemper which is seated in the mind.—_De Thou’s Epistle
Dedicatory to Henry IV._

Faith is not inspired by the edge of the sword.—_Cerisier, in the
Reigns of Henry IV. and Louis XIII._

It is a barbarous zeal which pretends to force any religion upon
the mind, as if persuasion could be produced by constraint.—
_Boulainvillier’s State of France._

It is with religion as with love; command can do nothing, constraint
still less; nothing is so independent as love and belief.—_Amelot de
la Houssaye on Cardinal Ossat’s Letters._

If Providence has been so kind to you as to give you a knowledge
of the truth, receive it as an instance of His great goodness; but
should those who enjoy the inheritance of their father hate those who
do not?—_Spirit of Laws_, book xxv.

One might compose an immense volume of such passages. All our
histories, discourses, sermons, moral treatises and catechisms of
the present time abound with and inculcate this holy doctrine of
indulgence. What fatality, what false reason, then, leads us to
contradict by our practice the theory we are every day teaching? When
our actions give the lie to our morals it must certainly proceed from
our thinking it to our interest to practise the contrary of what we
teach; but what advantage can arise from persecuting those who do not
think in the same manner as we do, and thereby making ourselves hated
by them? Once more, then, let me repeat it; there is the highest
absurdity in persecution. It may be replied that those who found it
to their interest to lay a restraint upon the consciences of others
are not absurd in so doing. To such men I address the following
chapter.


 CHAPTER XVI.
 A CONVERSATION BETWEEN
 A DYING MAN AND ONE IN
 GOOD HEALTH.

An inhabitant of a country village lying at the point of death was
visited by a person in good health, who came to insult him in his
last moments, with the following speech:

“Wretch that thou art, think as I do this instant, sign this writing
immediately, confess that five propositions are to be found in a
book that neither thou nor I have ever read; adopt immediately the
opinion of Lanfranc against Berengarius, and of St. Thomas against
St. Bonaventura; join with the Council of Nice against the Council of
Frankfort, and explain to me out of hand how the words ‘My Father is
greater than I’ signify exactly ‘I am as great as He.’ Tell me also
in what manner the Father communicates all His attributes to the Son,
excepting the fatherhood, or I will have thy body thrown to the fowls
of the air, thy children deprived of their inheritance, thy wife of
her dowry and thy family turned out to beg their bread, which shall
be refused them by those who are like myself.”

DYING MAN.—I scarcely understand what you say; your threats strike
my ears confusedly, they trouble my mind and render my last moments
terrifying. In the name of God have pity on me!

CRUEL MAN.—Pity! I can have none for thee, unless thou art exactly of
my opinion.

DYING MAN.—Alas! you must be sensible that in these, my last moments,
my senses are all impaired, the doors of my understanding are shut,
my ideas are lost in confusion and I have hardly any sentiments
remaining. Am I then in a condition to dispute?

CRUEL MAN.—Well, then, if thou canst not believe as I would have
thee, only say that you do, and that will content me.

DYING MAN.—How! Would you have me perjure myself to please you, when
I am going in an instant to appear before the judgment seat of that
God who is the avenger of perjury?

CRUEL MAN.—No matter; thou wilt have the pleasure to be interred
in holy ground, and thy wife and children will have wherewithal to
maintain them after thy death. Die a hypocrite; hypocrisy is a very
good thing; I have heard say it is the homage which vice pays to
virtue. A little hypocrisy, friend, can’t cost you much.

DYING MAN.—Surely you must either not acknowledge a God, or hold Him
very cheap, since you require me to tell a lie with my last breath,
when you yourself must soon appear in judgment before Him and answer
for that lie.

CRUEL MAN.—Insolent wretch! Dost thou say that I do not acknowledge a
God?

DYING MAN.—Pardon me, brother; I rather fear you do not know Him. The
God whom I adore lends me at this time an increase of strength to
tell you with my dying words that if you believe in Him you ought to
behave toward me with charity. He has given me my wife and children;
do not you make them perish with misery. As for my body, do with it
as seems good to you; I leave it at your disposal; but let me conjure
you to believe in God.

CRUEL MAN.—Come, come; truce with your reasoning, and do as I bid
you; I will have it so. I command you to do it.

DYING MAN.—But what advantage can you have in thus tormenting me?

CRUEL MAN.—What advantage? Why, if I can make you sign, it will be
worth a good canonship to me.

DYING MAN.—Ah! brother; my last moment approaches; I am expiring, but
I will pray to God to touch your heart that you may be converted.

CRUEL MAN.—The devil take the impertinent puppy; he has not signed
after all! Well, I’ll e’en sign for him; it is but a little forgery.

The following letter is a confirmation of the above doctrine:


 CHAPTER XVII.
 A LETTER FROM A BENEFICED PRIEST
 TO FATHER LETELLIER, THE JESUIT,
 DATED THE 6th OF MAY, 1714.

Reverend Father: The following is in obedience to the orders I
received from your reverence to lay before you the most effectual
means for delivering Jesus and His company from their enemies.

I believe there may be remaining at this time in the kingdom not more
than five hundred thousand Huguenots; some say a million, others a
million and a half; but let the number be what it will, the following
is my advice, which, however, as in duty bound, I submit with all
humility to your reverence’s judgment.

In the first place, then, it will be very easy to seize in one day
all the preachers, and to hang them all at one time and in one place,
which will be not only a very edifying, but also a very entertaining
exhibition to the people.

Secondly, I would have all the fathers and mothers who are heretics
murdered in their beds, because the killing of them in the streets
might occasion some little disturbance; besides, by that means,
several of them might escape, which is above all to be prevented.
This execution is a necessary corollary of our principles; for if
we ought to kill a heretic, as so many of our great divines have
incontestably proved, it is evident that we ought to kill them all
without exception.

Thirdly, I would, the very next day, marry all the daughters to good
Catholics, inasmuch as it would not be politic to depopulate the
state so much after the late war; but as for the boys of fourteen
and fifteen years of age, who have already imbibed bad principles,
which we cannot hope to root out, ’tis my opinion that they should
be all castrated to prevent the race from ever being reproduced. As
for the other younger lads, they may be brought up in our colleges,
where they may be whipped till they have learned by heart the works
of Sanchez and Molinos.

Fourthly, I think under correction, the same method ought to be taken
with all the Lutherans of Alsace, for I remember, in the year 1704,
to have seen two old women of that country laugh on the day of our
defeat at Blenheim.

Fifthly, What relates to the Jansenists will perhaps appear a little
more difficult. I believe their numbers may amount to about six
millions, a little more or less; but this ought not to give any
alarm to a person of your reverence’s disposition. I reckon among
the Jansenists all the parliaments who have so unworthily maintained
the liberties of the Gallican church. I leave it to your reverence
to weigh with your usual prudence the most effectual methods for
reducing these turbulent spirits. The Gunpowder Plot failed of the
desired success through the weakness of one of the conspirators,
who wanted to save the life of his friend; but, as your reverence
has no friend, the same inconvenience is not to be apprehended. You
may very easily blow up all the parliaments in the kingdom with the
composition called Pulvis Pyrius, invented by the monk Schwarz. By
my calculation it will require upon an average thirty-six barrels of
powder for each of the parliaments; now, if we multiply thirty-six,
the number of barrels, by twelve, the number of parliaments, it will
make four hundred and thirty-two barrels, which, at a hundred crowns
per barrel, will amount to not quite a hundred and thirty thousand
livres—a mere trifle for the reverend father-general.

The parliaments thus disposed of, you may bestow their places upon
your congregationists, who are perfectly well versed in the laws of
the realm.

Sixthly, It will be a very easy matter to poison the Cardinal de
Noailles, who is a very simple, unsuspecting man.

Your reverence may take the same steps for conversion with several of
the refractory prelates; and their bishoprics, by a brief from the
pope, may be put into the hands of the Jesuits; thus all the bishops
that remain, being staunch to the good cause, and they making a
proper choice of curates, I, with your reverence’s permission, would
give the following advice:

Seventhly and lastly, As the Jansenists are said to take the
sacrament one time in the year at least, which is at Easter, it would
not be amiss to season the consecrated wafers with a little of that
drug which was used to do justice upon the Emperor Henry VII. Some
nice caviller may perhaps tell me that in this operation we may run
some risk of poisoning the Molinists at the same time. There is some
weight in this objection; but then it should be considered that there
is no project without its inconveniences, nor any system but what
threatens destruction in some part. And if we were to be stopped by
these little difficulties we should never attain our end in anything;
besides, as here we have in view the obtaining the greatest of all
possible advantages, we should not suffer ourselves to be shocked,
though it brings with it some bad consequences, especially as those
consequences are of little or no consideration.

And, after all, we shall have nothing to reproach ourselves with,
since it is proved that the Reformed, as they call themselves, and
the Jansenists, have all of them their portion in hell; therefore, we
only put them in possession of their inheritance a little sooner.

It is as evident that heaven belongs of right to the Molinists;
therefore by destroying them by mistake, and without any evil
intention, we hasten their happiness; and are in both cases the
ministers of Providence.

As to those who may be a little shocked at the number to be thus made
away with, your reverence may remark to them that from the first
flourishing days of the church to the year 1707—that is to say, in
about fourteen hundred years—religion has occasioned the massacre
of upwards of fifty millions of persons; whereas by my proposal not
above six millions and a half will be put to death by the halter, the
dagger, or poison.

But perhaps it may be objected that my calculation is not just, and
that I have committed an error against the Rule of Three; inasmuch
as, that if in fourteen hundred years there perished fifty millions
of souls on account of some trifling disputes in divinity, that makes
only thirty-five thousand seven hundred and fourteen and some little
fraction in a year, and consequently that by my method an overplus of
six millions sixty-four thousand two hundred and eighty-five and some
fractions are put to death in the current year. But, indeed, this is
a very childish quibble; nay, I’ll even call it impious; for is it
not plain that by my method I save the lives of all the Catholics, so
long as the world shall last? But, in short, there would be no end of
answering every frivolous objection.

I am, with the most profound respect, reverend father, your
reverence’s most humble, most devout, and most humane

 R———,
 Native of Angoulême,
 Prefect of the Congregation.

This glorious scheme, however, could not be carried into execution,
because it required considerable time to make the necessary
dispositions, and that Father Letellier was banished the year
following. But as it is right to examine both sides of an argument,
it will be proper to inquire in what cases it may be lawful to
follow in part the scheme of the reverend father’s correspondent. It
would seem rather too severe to execute it in all its parts; let us
therefore examine in what cases we ought to break upon the wheel,
to hang, or to make galley-slaves of those who differ from us in
opinion. This shall be the subject of the following chapter.


 CHAPTER XVIII.
 THE ONLY CASES IN WHICH
 NON-TOLERATION MAKES
 PART OF THE HUMAN LAW.

For a government not to have a right to punish men for their errors,
it is necessary that those errors should not be crimes; and they
are crimes only when they disturb the public tranquillity; which
they do whenever they inspire enthusiasm. It is necessary therefore
that men should begin by laying aside enthusiasm in order to deserve
toleration.

If a number of young Jesuits, knowing that the church holds all
reprobates and heretics in detestation, and that the opinion of the
Jansenists having been condemned by a bull this sect is consequently
reprobate, thereupon go and set fire to the house of the fathers of
the oratory, because Quesnel, one of that body, was a Jansenist; it
is clear that the government would be obliged to punish those Jesuits.

In like manner, if these latter have been found to teach the most
reprehensible doctrines, and if their institution appears contrary
to the laws of the kingdom, it becomes necessary to abolish their
society, and of Jesuits to make them useful citizens; which, in fact,
so far from being an oppression upon them, as has been pretended, is
a real good done them; for where is the great oppression of being
obliged to wear a short coat instead of a long gown, or to be free
instead of being a slave? In time of peace whole regiments are broken
without complaining. Why, then, should the Jesuits make such an
outcry, when they are broken for the sake of peace?

Were the Franciscans in a transport of holy zeal for the Virgin Mary,
to go and pull down the church of the Dominicans, who hold Mary to
have been born in original sin, the government would then be obliged
to treat the Franciscans much in the same manner it has done the
Jesuits.

The same argument will hold good with regard to the Lutherans and
Calvinists; for let them say, if they please, we follow the dictates
of our consciences; it is more profitable to obey God than man; we
are the only true flock, and therefore ought to cut off all the
wolves. It is evident that in this case they themselves are the
wolves.

One of the most astonishing examples of enthusiasm was in a little
sect in Denmark, founded on one of the best principles in the
world; for these people endeavored to procure the eternal happiness
of all their brethren; but the consequences of this principle were
very singular. As they believed that all the young children who died
without baptism were damned, and that those who had the happiness to
die immediately after receiving that sacrament enter into eternal
happiness, they went forth and murdered all the young children of
both sexes lately baptized, whom they could meet with. By this
action they doubtless procured the little innocents the greatest of
all felicity, by preserving them at once from sin, the miseries of
this life, and hell, and sending them certainly to heaven. But these
people, in the excess of their charitable zeal, did not consider that
it is forbidden to do evil that good may come thereof; that they had
no right over the lives of these infants; that the greatest part
of fathers and mothers are so carnal as to desire rather to keep
their children about them than to see their throats cut, though it
was to send them to heaven; and, lastly, that it is the duty of the
magistrate to punish murder, though committed with a good intent.

It would seem that the Jews had the greatest right of any persons
to rob and murder us; for although the Old Testament abounds with
examples of toleration and indulgence, yet are there several
instances of the contrary, and some very severe laws. God did at
times command his people to kill all idolaters, reserving only
the young women fit for the nuptial state. They look upon us as
idolaters; and notwithstanding that we at present tolerate them, they
might certainly, had they the power in their hands, cut us all off,
excepting our young women.

Moreover, they would be under an indispensable obligation to
exterminate the whole Turkish race. This speaks for itself, for the
Turks are at present in possession of the countries of the Hittites,
the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, etc., all of whom were
laid under a curse, and their country, which was about five and
twenty leagues in extent, was given to the Jews by several successive
covenants; consequently they ought to resume possession of their own,
which the Turks have usurped from them for upwards of a thousand
years. But if the Jews were to reason in this manner nowadays, it is
pretty certain we should make them no other answer than by impaling
them alive.

These are the only cases in which persecution appears reasonable.


 CHAPTER XIX.
 ACCOUNT OF A CONTROVERSIAL
 DISPUTE WHICH HAPPENED IN
 CHINA.

In the beginning of the reign of the great Emperor Cam-hi, a mandarin
of the city of Canton, hearing a great noise and outcry in the house
adjoining that he dwelt in, sent to know if they were murdering
any one; but was told that it was only a Danish almoner, a Dutch
chaplain, and a Jesuit disputing together; upon which he ordered them
to be brought before him, and inquired of them the occasion of their
quarrel?

The Jesuit, who was the first that spoke, said that it was a very
grievous thing to him, who was always in the right, to have to do
with people who were always in the wrong; that he at first began to
reason with them with the greatest coolness; but that, at length, he
could not but own his patience had left him.

The mandarin then represented to all three, with all imaginable
candor, how necessary it was to observe decorum and good manners even
in disputation; he told them that no one ever gave way to heat or
passion in China, and desired to be informed of the nature of their
dispute.

“My lord,” said the Jesuit, “I take you for judge in this affair.
These two gentlemen refuse to submit to the decisions of the Council
of Trent.”

“I am surprised at that,” replied the mandarin. Then turning towards
the two refractory parties: “Gentlemen,” said he, “you ought to
show a deference to the opinion of a great assembly. I do not know
what the Council of Trent is, but a number of persons must always
have opportunities of knowing better than one single man. No one
ought to imagine that he knows more than all others, and that reason
dwells only with him; this is the doctrine of our great Confucius;
therefore, if you would take my advice, abide by what the Council of
Trent has decreed.”

The Dane then began to speak in his turn. “Your excellence,” said he,
“has delivered yourself with great wisdom and prudence; we have all
that respect for great assemblies that we ought; and accordingly we
submit entirely to the opinions of several councils that were held at
the same time with that of Trent.”

“Oh! if that is the case,” said the mandarin, “I ask your pardon;
you may doubtless be in the right. So, then, it seems you and the
Dutchman are of one opinion against the Jesuit.”

“Not in the least,” answered the Dutchman; “this man here,” pointing
to the Dane, “entertains notions almost as extravagant as those of
the Jesuit, who pretends to so much mildness before you. ‘Sblood!
there is no bearing this with patience.”

“I cannot conceive what you mean,” said the mandarin; “are you
not all three Christians? Are you not all three come to teach the
Christian religion in our empire? And ought you not consequently have
all the same tenets?”

“You see how it is, my lord,” said the Jesuit; “these two men here
are mortal enemies of each other; and yet both of them dispute
against me; this makes it clear that they are both in the wrong, and
that reason is on my side.”

“I do not think it is so very clear,” replied the mandarin; “for
it may very well happen that you are all three in the wrong. But I
should be glad to hear your arguments singly.”

The Jesuit then made a long discourse, while the Dutchman and the
Dane at every period shrugged up their shoulders, and the mandarin
could not make anything of what he heard. The Dane now took the lead
in his turn, while his two adversaries looked upon him with manifest
signs of contempt; and the mandarin, when he had finished, remained
as wise as before. The Dutchman had the same success. At length
they began to talk all three together, and broke out into the most
scurrilous revilings. The honest mandarin could hardly get in a word.
At length he dismissed them, saying: “If you expect to have your
doctrine tolerated here, begin by showing an example of it to one
another.”

At leaving the house the Jesuit met with a Dominican missionary, to
whom he related what had passed; and told him that he had gained his
cause; “for you may be assured,” added he, “that truth will always
prevail.” The Dominican replied: “Had I been there, friend, you would
not so easily have gained your cause; for I should have proved you to
be an idolater and a liar.” Upon this, there arose a violent dispute
between them; and the Jesuit and the friar went to fisticuffs. The
mandarin being informed of this scandalous behavior ordered them both
to be sent to prison. A sub-mandarin asked his excellence how long he
would please to have them remain in confinement. “Till they are both
agreed,” said the judge. “Then, my lord,” answered the sub-mandarin,
“they will remain in prison all their days.” “Well, then,” said
the mandarin, “let them stay till they forgive one another.” “That
they will never do,” rejoined the deputy; “I know them very well.”
“Indeed!” said the mandarin; “then let it be till they appear so to
do.”


 CHAPTER XX.
 WHETHER IT IS OF SERVICE
 TO INDULGE THE PEOPLE IN
 SUPERSTITION.

Such is the weakness and perversity of the human race that it is
undoubtedly more eligible for them to be subject to every possible
kind of superstition, provided it is not of a bloody nature, than
to live without religion. Man has always stood in need of a curb;
and though it was certainly very ridiculous to sacrifice to fauns,
satyrs, and naïads, yet it was more reasonable and advantageous to
adore even those fantastic images of the deity than to be given up to
atheism. An atheist of any capacity, and invested with power, would
be as dreadful a scourge to the rest of mankind as the most bloody
enthusiast.

When men have not true notions of the Deity, false ideas must supply
their place, like as in troublesome and calamitous times we are
obliged to trade with base money when good is not to be procured.
The heathens were afraid of committing crimes, lest they should be
punished by their false gods. The Malabar dreads the anger of his
pagods. Wherever there is a fixed community, religion is necessary;
the laws are a curb upon open crimes, and religion upon private ones.

But when once men have embraced a pure and holy religion,
superstition then becomes not only needless, but very hurtful. Those
whom God has been pleased to nourish with bread ought not to be fed
upon acorns.

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy, the
foolish daughter of a wise mother. These two daughters, however, have
for a long time governed this world with uncontrollable sway.

In those dark and barbarous times amongst us, when there were hardly
two feudal lords who had a New Testament in their houses, it might
be pardonable to present the common people with fables; I mean those
feudal lords, their ignorant wives, and brutish vassals. They were
then made to believe that St. Christopher carried the child Jesus
on his shoulders from one side of the river to the other; they were
entertained with stories of witches and witchcraft; they readily
believed that St. Genou cured the gout, and St. Claire sore eyes. The
children believed in hobgoblins, and their fathers in St. Francis’
girdle; and relics swarmed out of number.

The common people have continued to be infected with the rust of
these superstitions, even after religion became more enlightened. It
is well known that when M. de Noailles, bishop of Châlons, ordered
the pretended relic of the holy navel to be taken away and thrown
into the fire, the whole city of Châlons joined in a prosecution
against him; but he, who had resolution equal to his piety, soon
brought the people of his diocese to believe that one may adore Jesus
Christ in spirit and in truth, without having his navel in a church.

Those whom we call Jansenists were not a little instrumental in
rooting out by degrees, from the minds of the greatest part of the
nation, the many absurd notions which were the disgrace of our holy
religion. And it no longer continued to be thought sufficient to
repeat the prayer of thirty days to the Blessed Virgin, to obtain
whatever one should ask, and sin with impunity.

At length the lower kind of people began to imagine that it was not
St. Geneviève who gave rain or caused it to cease, but God Himself,
who disposed the elements according to His good will and pleasure.
The monks have been astonished to find their saints no longer perform
miracles; and if the writers of the life of St. Francis Xavier were
to come again into the world they would not venture to assert that
their saint raised nine people from the dead; that he was at one and
the same time both on the sea and on shore; or that a crab brought
him his crucifix, which he had dropped out of his hand into the water.

It has happened much the same with regard to excommunications. Our
French historians tell us that when King Robert was excommunicated
by Pope Gregory V. for having married the Princess Bertha, who
was his godmother, his domestics threw all the victuals that came
from his table out of the windows, and that his queen Bertha was
delivered of a goose as a punishment for this incestuous alliance.
It is not likely that the pages of the presence to a king of France
nowadays would throw his dinner into the streets if he should be
excommunicated, nor would it be very readily believed that the queen
was brought to bed of a bird.

If there are some few convulsionists yet to be met with in an obscure
corner of the town it is a kind of lousy disease that infects only
the dregs of the people. Reason is every day making her way into
the tradesman’s counting house, as well as into the palaces of our
nobility. It behooves us then to cultivate the fruits of this reason,
more especially as it is impossible to prevent them from sprouting
forth. France, after having been enlightened by a Pascal, a Nicole,
an Arnaud, a Bossuet, a Descartes, a Gassendi, a Bayle, a Fontenelle,
and other bright geniuses like them, is no longer to be governed as
in the times of Garasse and Menot.

If the masters of error, I mean the great masters who were so long
a time prayed to and reverenced for brutalizing the human species,
were at present to enjoin us to believe that the seed must rot in the
earth before it can sprout; that this earth continues immovable on
its basis without revolving about the sun; that the tides are not
the natural effect of gravitation; that the rainbow is not formed by
the refraction and reflection of the rays of light, etc., and were
they to bring certain passages of Scripture badly understood and
worse interpreted to authenticate their ordinances, how would they
be looked upon by every person of common capacity? Would fools be
thought too harsh a name to be imposed on them? But if they should
have recourse to compulsion and persecution to establish their
insolent ignorance, would not madmen and butchers be deemed a proper
appellation?

The more that monkish superstition becomes contemptible, the more
bishops are respected and the clergy in general esteemed. They do
good in their professions, whereas the monkish superstition of
foreign climates occasioned a great deal of mischief. But of all
superstitions, that of hating our neighbor on account of his opinion
is surely the most dangerous! And will it not be granted me that
there would be more sense and reason in adoring the holy navel, the
holy prepuce, and the milk and the robe of the Blessed Virgin, than
to detest and persecute our brother?


 CHAPTER XXI.
 VIRTUE IS BETTER
 THAN LEARNING.

The fewer dogmas, the fewer disputes; and the fewer disputes, the
fewer calamities: if this is not true I am much mistaken.

Religion is instituted to make us happy in this life and the next.
But what is required to make us happy in the life to come? To be
just. And in this? To be merciful and forbearing.

It would be the height of madness to pretend to bring all mankind to
think exactly in the same manner in regard to metaphysics. We might,
with much greater ease, subject the whole universe by force of arms
than subject the minds of all the inhabitants of one single village.

But Euclid found no difficulty in persuading every one of the truths
of geometry. And why? Because there is not one of them which is not a
self-evident corollary on this simple axiom: “Two and two make four.”
But is it not altogether the same with relation to the complicated
maxims in metaphysics and divinity.

Eusebius and Socrates tell us that when Bishop Alexander and Arius
the priest began first to dispute in what manner the Logos or word
proceeded from the Father, the Emperor Constantine wrote to them in
the following terms: “You are great fools to dispute about things
you do not understand.”

If the two contending parties had been wise enough to acknowledge
that the emperor was in the right Christendom would not have been
drenched in blood for upwards of three centuries.

And, indeed, what can be more ridiculous, or rather detestable, than
to address mankind in this manner: “My friends, it is not sufficient
that you are faithful subjects, dutiful children, tender parents,
and upright neighbors; that you live in the continual practice of
virtue; that you are grateful, benevolent, and generous, and worship
the Saviour of the world in peace; it is furthermore required of you
that you should know how a thing may be begotten from all eternity,
without being made from all eternity; and if you cannot distinguish
the homoousian in the hypostasis, we declare to you that you are
damned to all eternity; and in the meantime we shall begin by cutting
your throats”?

If such a decision as this had been presented to Archimedes,
Posidonius, Varro, Cato, or Cicero, what answer do you think they
would have given to it?

Constantine, however, did not persevere in silencing the two parties;
he might easily have summoned the chiefs of the disputes before
him, and have demanded of them by what authority they disturbed the
peace of mankind. “Are you,” he might have said, “possessed of the
genealogy of the heavenly family? What is it to you whether the
Son was made or begotten, provided that you are faithful to Him;
that you preach a sound doctrine, and practise that doctrine if you
can? I have committed many faults in my lifetime, and so have you;
I have been ambitious, so have you; it has cost me many falsehoods
and cruelties to attain to the empire; I have murdered my nearest
relative that stood in my way; but I now repent, and am willing to
make atonement for my crime by restoring peace to the Roman Empire;
do not you prevent me from doing the only good action which can
possibly make my former cruel ones forgotten; but rather assist me to
end my days in peace.” Perhaps Constantine might not, by this speech,
have prevailed over the minds of the disputants, and perhaps he might
rather be pleased with presiding in a council in a long crimson robe,
and his forehead glittering with jewels.

This, however, opened a passage to all those dreadful calamities
which overran the West from Asia. Out of every contested verse there
issued a fury armed with a quibble and a poniard, who inspired
mankind at once with folly and cruelty. The Huns, the Heruli,
the Goths, and Vandals, who came afterwards, did infinitely less
mischief; and the greatest they did was that of afterwards engaging
in the same fatal disputes.


 CHAPTER XXII.
 OF UNIVERSAL TOLERATION.

It does not require any great art or studied elocution to prove that
Christians ought to tolerate one another. Nay, I shall go still
farther and say that we ought to look upon all men as our brethren.
How! call a Turk, a Jew, and a Siamese, my brother? Yes, doubtless;
for are we not all children of the same parent, and the creatures of
the same Creator?

But these people hold us in contempt, and call us idolaters! Well,
then, I should tell them that they were to blame. And I fancy that I
could stagger the headstrong pride of an imaum, or a talapoin, were I
to address them in the following manner:

“This little globe, which is no more than a point, rolls, together
with many other globes, in that immensity of space in which we are
all alike confounded. Man, who is an animal, about five feet high,
is certainly a very inconsiderable part of the creation; but one
of those hardly visible beings says to others of the same kind
inhabiting another spot of the globe: Hearken to me, for the God of
all these worlds has enlightened me. There are about nine hundred
millions of us little insects who inhabit the earth, but my ant-hill
is alone cherished by God, who holds all the rest in horror and
detestation; those who live with me upon my spot will alone be happy,
and all the rest eternally wretched.”

They would here stop me short and ask, “What madman could have made
so ridiculous a speech?” I should then be obliged to answer them, “It
is yourselves.” After which I should endeavor to pacify them, but
perhaps that would not be very easy.

I might next address myself to the Christians and venture to say,
for example, to a Dominican, one of the judges of the inquisition:
“Brother, you know that every province in Italy has a jargon of
its own and that they do not speak in Venice and Bergamo as they
do in Florence. The Academy della Crusca has fixed the standard of
the Italian language; its dictionary is an unerring rule, and Buon
Matei’s grammar is an infallible guide, from neither of which we
ought to depart; but do you think that the president of the academy,
or in his absence Buon Matei, could in conscience order the tongues
of all the Venetians and Bergamese, who persisted in their own
country dialect, to be cut out?”

The inquisitor would, perhaps, make me this reply: “There is a very
wide difference; here the salvation of your soul is concerned; and
it is entirely for your good that the directory of the inquisition
ordains that you shall be seized, upon the deposition of a single
person, though of the most infamous character; that you shall have no
person to plead for you, nor even be acquainted with the name of your
accuser; that the inquisitor shall promise you favor, and afterwards
condemn you; that he shall make you undergo five different kinds of
torture, and that at length you shall be either whipped, sent to the
galleys, or burned at the stake;[69] Father Ivonet, and the doctors,
Chucalon, Zanchinus, Campegius, Royas, Telinus, Gomarus, Diabarus,
and Gemelinus are exactly of this opinion, consequently this pious
practice will not admit of contradiction.”

To all which I should take the liberty of making the following reply:
“Dear brother, you may perhaps be in the right, and I am perfectly
well convinced of the great benefit you intend me; but may I not be
saved without all this?”

It is true that these horrible absurdities do not every day deform
the face of the earth; but they have been very frequent, and one
might easily collect instances enough to make a volume much larger
than that of the Holy Gospels, which condemn such practices. It is
not only very cruel to persecute in this short life those who do not
think in the same manner as we do, but I very much doubt if there
is not an impious boldness in pronouncing them eternally damned. In
my opinion, it little befits such insects of a summer’s day as we
are thus to anticipate the decrees of Providence. I am very far from
opposing that maxim of the Church, that “out of her pale there is no
salvation”; on the contrary, I respect that and every other part of
her doctrine; but, after all, can we be supposed to be intimately
acquainted with the ways of God, or to fathom the whole depth of His
mercy? Is it not permitted us to hope in Him, as well as to fear
Him? Is it not sufficient if we are faithful sons of the Church,
without every individual presuming to wrest the power out of the hand
of God, and determine, before Him, the future destiny of our fellow
creatures?

When we wear mourning for a king of England, Denmark, Sweden, or
Prussia, do we say that we are in mourning for a damned soul that is
burning in hell? There are about forty millions of inhabitants in
Europe who are not members of the Church of Rome; should we say to
every one of them, “Sir, as I look upon you to be infallibly damned,
I shall neither eat, drink, converse, nor have any connections with
you?”

Is there an ambassador of France who, when he is presented to the
grand seignior for an audience, will seriously say to himself,
his sublime highness will infallibly burn to all eternity for
having submitted to be circumcised? If he really thought that the
grand seignior was a mortal enemy to God, and the object of divine
vengeance, could he converse with such a person; nay, indeed, ought
he to be sent to him? But how could we carry on any commerce, or
perform any of the civil duties of society, if we were convinced that
we were conversing with persons destined to eternal damnation?

O ye different worshippers of a God of mercy! if ye have cruel
hearts, if, while you adore that Deity who has placed the whole of
His law in these few words, “Love God and your neighbor,” you have
loaded that pure and holy law with sophistical and unintelligible
disputes, if you have lighted the flames of discord sometimes for a
new word, and at others for a single letter only; if you have annexed
eternal punishment to the omission of some few words, or of certain
ceremonies which other people cannot comprehend, I must say to you
with tears of compassion for mankind: “Transport yourselves with me
to that great instant in which all men are to receive judgment from
the hand of God, who will then do unto every one according to their
works, and with me behold all the dead of past ages appearing in His
presence. Are you very sure that our heavenly Father and Creator
will say to the wise and virtuous Confucius, to the great legislator
Solon, to Pythagoras, Zaleucus, Socrates, Plato, the divine
Antoninus, the good Trajan, to Titus, the delight of human kind,
and to many others who have been the models of human kind: ‘Depart
from me, wretches! into torments that know neither alleviation nor
end; but are, like Himself, everlasting. But you, my well-beloved
servants, John Châtel, Ravaillac, Cartouche, Damiens, etc., who have
died according to the rules prescribed by the Church, enter into the
joy of your Lord, and sit forever at my right hand in majesty and
glory.’”

Methinks I see you start with horror at these words; however, as they
have escaped me, let them pass; I shall say nothing more to you.


 CHAPTER XXIII.
 AN ADDRESS TO THE DEITY.

No longer then do I address myself to men, but to Thee, God of all
beings, of all worlds, and of all ages; if it may be permitted weak
creatures lost in immensity and imperceptible to the rest of the
universe, to presume to petition Thee for aught, who hast given
plenty of all things, and whose decrees are immutable as eternal.
Deign to look with an eye of pity on the errors annexed to our
natures! let not these errors prove the sources of misery to us! Thou
hast not given us hearts to hate, nor hands to kill one another;
grant then that we may mutually aid and assist each other to support
the burden of this painful and transitory life! May the trifling
differences in the garments that cover our frail bodies, in the
mode of expressing our insignificant thoughts, in our ridiculous
customs and our imperfect laws, in our idle opinions, and in our
several conditions and situations, that appear so disproportionate
in our eyes, and all are equal in Thine; in a word, may the slight
variations that are found amongst the atoms called men not be made
use of by us as signals of mutual hatred and persecution! May those
who worship Thee by the light of tapers at noonday bear charitably
with those who content themselves with the light of that glorious
planet Thou hast placed in the midst of the heavens! May those who
dress themselves in a robe of white linen to teach their hearers that
Thou art to be loved and feared, not detest or revile those who teach
the same doctrine in long cloaks of black wool! May it be accounted
the same to adore Thee in a dialect formed from an ancient or a
modern language! May those who, clothed in vestments of crimson or
violet color, rule over a little parcel of that heap of dirt called
the world, and are possessed of a few round fragments of a certain
metal, enjoy without pride or insolence what they call grandeur and
riches, and may others look on them without envy; for Thou knowest,
O God, that there is nothing in all these vanities proper to inspire
envy or pride.

May all men remember that they are brethren! May they alike abhor
that tyranny which seeks to subject the freedom of the will, as they
do the rapine which tears from the arms of industry the fruits of its
peaceful labors! And if the scourge of war is not to be avoided, let
us not mutually hate and destroy each other in the midst of peace;
but rather make use of the few moments of our existence to join in
praising, in a thousand different languages, from one extremity of
the world to the other, Thy goodness, O all-merciful Creator, to whom
we are indebted for that existence!


 CHAPTER XXIV.
 POSTSCRIPT.

While I was employed in writing this treatise, purely with a desire
to make mankind more benevolent and charitable, another author was
using his pen to the very contrary purpose; for every one has his
particular way of thinking. This writer has published a small code
of persecution under the title of “The Harmony of Religion and
Humanity”; but this last word seems to be an error of the press, and
should be read “Inhumanity.”

The author of this holy libel takes St. Augustine for his example
and authority, who, after having preached charity and forbearance,
afterwards taught the doctrine of persecution, because he then had
the upper hand and was naturally of a changeable disposition. He also
quotes M. Bossuet, the bishop of Meaux, who persecuted the famous
Fénelon, archbishop of Cambray, whom he accused of having said in
print that God was well worthy to be loved for His own sake.

I will readily grant that Bossuet was a very eloquent writer, and it
must also be confessed that the bishop of Hippo[70] is frequently
inconsistent, and in general more dry and barren than the rest of the
African writers; and I must take the liberty of addressing them both
in the words of Armande, in Molière’s “Learned Ladies”: “If we should
imitate any person, it certainly should be in the most pleasing part
of their character.” I should say to the bishop of Hippo: “My lord,
as you have had two opinions, your lordship will be kind enough to
suffer me to abide by your first, since I really think it the best.”

To the bishop of Meaux I shall say: “My lord, you are certainly a
very great man, and, in my opinion, have to the full as much learning
as St. Augustine, and are far superior to him in eloquence; but
then, my lord, why did you so distress your brother prelate, who had
as much eloquence as yourself, though in another kind, and whose
disposition was more amiable than yours.”

The author of this “Treatise on Inhumanity”—for so I shall call
it—is neither a Bossuet nor an Augustine, but seems admirably well
qualified for an inquisitor; I wish he were at the head of that noble
tribunal in Goa. Besides, he is a politician, and parades it in his
book with several great maxims of state. “If you have to deal with
any considerable number of heretics,” says he, “it will be necessary
to use gentle methods, and try to bring them over by persuasion; but
if they are only a few in number, then make free use of the gibbet
and the galleys; you will find the advantage of it.” This is the good
prelate’s own advice in the 89th and 90th pages of his work.

Heaven be praised, I am an orthodox Catholic, and therefore am in no
danger of what the Huguenots call martyrdom; but if ever this bishop
should come to be prime minister, as he seems to flatter himself in
his libels, I give him my promise that I will set out for England the
very day his commission is signed.

In the meantime, we ought to be thankful to Providence that those
of his principles are always wretched reasoners. This writer has
not scrupled to quote Bayle among the advocates for non-toleration,
which is being equally sensible and honest; for, because Bayle agrees
that it is necessary to punish incendiaries and rogues, our bishop
directly concludes that we ought to persecute with fire and sword
every honest and peaceable person. See page 98.

Almost the whole of his book is no other than a copy of the apology
for St. Bartholomew’s day. It is the apologist himself or his echo.
But be this matter as it will, it is devoutly to be wished that
neither the master nor the pupil may ever be at the head of an
administration.

But if ever such a thing should come to pass, let me beg leave to
present them beforehand with the following hint in regard to a
passage in the ninety-third page of the bishop’s holy libel:

“Is the welfare of the whole nation to be sacrificed to the ease of
only the twentieth part?”

Let us suppose then for once that there are twenty Roman Catholics
in France to one Huguenot, I am by no means for the Huguenots eating
these twenty Catholics; but, at the same time, is there any reason
why the twenty Catholics should eat the Huguenot? Besides, why should
we hinder this latter from marrying? Are there not many bishops,
abbots and monks that have estates in Dauphiny, Gevaudan, Agde and
Carcassonne? And have not most of these farmers to manage those
estates who do not believe in the doctrine of transubstantiation?
Is it not the interest of these bishops and others that the farmers
should have numerous families? And should one be permitted to have
children that takes the sacrament in both kinds? Surely there is
neither justice nor common honesty in this!

“The revocation of the Edict of Nantes,” says my author, “has not
been productive of so great inconveniences as has been generally
alleged.”

I must own if any have added to the number of bad effects that
act produced, they must have greatly exaggerated; but then it is
the common fault of all historians to exaggerate, as it is of all
controversial writers to disguise the greatest part of those evils
with which they are reproachable. But for once let us pin our
faith neither upon the doctors of the Sorbonne nor the preachers
of Amsterdam. Let us take for judges in this matter those who have
had the best opportunities of being acquainted with what they wrote
about; and in the first place I shall cite the Count d’Avaux,
ambassador from France to the States-General during the years 1685,
1686, 1687, and 1688.

In the hundred and eighty-first page of the fifth volume of his
works he says that one man only offered to discover upwards of
twenty millions of livres that the persecuted Huguenots had found
means to send out of France. Louis XIV., in answer to this, writes
to M. d’Avaux: “The accounts which I daily receive of the prodigious
numbers of those who are converted convince me that in a short time
the most obstinate will follow the example of the others.”

This letter of the king’s plainly shows that he was firmly persuaded
of the greatness of his power. He was accustomed to hear said to him
every morning: “Sire, you are the greatest monarch upon earth; you
have but to declare your opinion and the whole world will be proud
to follow it.” Pelisson, who had accumulated a prodigious fortune
in the place of head clerk of the treasury, who had been three
years confined in the Bastille as an accomplice with Fouquet, who,
changing his religion, was from a Calvinist made a Roman, a deacon
and a beneficed priest, who composed hymns for the mass and verses to
Chloe, and who had got the post of comptroller and converter in chief
of the heretics; this very Pelisson, I say, used to produce every
morning a long list of pretended abjurations purchased at the rate
of seven or eight crowns apiece, and made his prince believe that he
could, whenever he pleased, convert the whole Mahometan empire at the
same price. In short, every one was in league to impose upon him;
how then was it possible for him to avoid being deceived?

This very M. d’Avaux also acquaints the court that one Vincent kept
upwards of five hundred workmen employed in the neighborhood of
Angoulême, and that it would be of great prejudice to the nation
should they quit the kingdom. Vol. v., page 194.

The count likewise mentions two regiments at that time actually being
raised by French refugee officers for the service of the prince of
Orange; he observes that the entire crews of three French ships of
war had deserted and entered into the same service, and that besides
the two regiments above mentioned, the prince was forming a company
of cadet refugees, who were to be commanded by two refugee captains.
Page 240. The same ambassador in another letter to M. de Seignelay,
dated the 9th of May, 1686, says that he can no longer conceal the
uneasiness it gives him to see the manufactures of France transported
into Holland, where they will be established, never more to return.

Add to these incontestable evidences the testimonies of the several
intendants of the kingdom in 1698, and then let any one judge whether
the revocation of the Edict of Nantes has not done more harm than
good, notwithstanding the opinion of the worthy author of the
“Harmony of Religion and Inhumanity.”

A Marshal of France well known for his superior abilities some years
ago made use of the following expression: “I know not whether the
practice of dragooning may ever have been necessary, but I am sure it
is very necessary to lay it aside.”

And here I must confess that I was apprehensive. I had gone rather
too far in publishing the letter from a priest to Father Letellier,
in which the use of gunpowder is so humanely proposed. I said to
myself, people will not believe me; they will certainly think this
letter is a forged piece; but luckily my scruples were entirely eased
when in perusing the “Harmony of Religion and Inhumanity,” I came to
the following Christian and charitable passage:

“The entire extirpation of the Protestants in France would not weaken
that kingdom more than a plentiful bleeding would a patient of a
sound constitution.” Page 149.

Here this pious minister of Christ, who, but a few pages before,
says that the Protestants make about a twentieth part of the nation,
is for shedding the blood of that twentieth part, and advises the
operation with as much unconcern as he would the taking away two or
three ounces from the arm of a plethoric person! Heaven preserve us
and him from the other three-twentieths!

Now, if this worthy prelate is for destroying the twentieth part
of the nation at one stroke, might not Father Letellier’s friend
and correspondent as well have proposed the blowing up, stabbing or
poisoning the one-third? Hence then it appears very probable that
such a letter was really written to Letellier.

Our pious author concludes upon the whole that persecution is an
excellent thing; “for,” says he, “we do not find it absolutely
condemned by our Saviour.” Neither has our Saviour expressly
condemned those who may set fire to the four corners of Paris; but is
that a reason for canonizing all incendiaries?

In this manner, while the gentle voice of Nature is everywhere
pleading the cause of charity and benevolence, Enthusiasm, her avowed
enemy, is continually howling against it; and while Peace opens her
calm bosom to all mankind, Persecution is busied in forging weapons
for their destruction. Let it be your care, then, O ye princely
arbiters, who have restored peace to the world, to pass sentence
between the spirit of mutual love and harmony and that of discord and
bloodshed.


 CHAPTER XXV.
 SEQUEL AND CONCLUSION.

[Illustration: WIDOW CALAS PLEADING FOR A REVOCATION OF THE DECREE OF
THE PARLIAMENT OF TOULOUSE]

On the 7th of March, 1763, a council of state being held at
Versailles, at which all the great ministers assisted and the
chancellor sat as president, M. de Crosne, one of the masters of
requests, made a report of the affair of the Calas family with all
the impartiality of a judge, and the precision of one perfectly
well acquainted with the case, and with the plain truth and inspired
eloquence of an orator and a statesman, which is alone suitable to
such an assembly. The gallery was filled with a prodigious number
of persons of all ranks, who impatiently waited the decision of
the council. In a short time a deputation was sent to the king to
acquaint him that the council had come to a unanimous resolution:
that the parliament of Toulouse should transmit to them the whole
account of its proceedings, together with the reasons on which it had
framed the sentence condemning John Calas to be broken on the wheel;
when his majesty was pleased to concur in the decree of the council.

Justice and humanity then still continue to reside amongst mankind!
and principally in the council of a king beloved, and deserving so
to be; who, with his ministers, his chancellor and all the members
of his council, have not disdained to employ their time in weighing
all the circumstances relating to the sufferings of a private family
with as much attention as if it had been the most interesting affair
of war or peace; whilst the judges have shown themselves inspired
by a love of equity and a tender regard to the interests of their
fellow-subjects. All praise be given therefore to that Merciful
Being, the only giver of integrity and every other virtue.

And here we take occasion to declare that we never had the least
acquaintance with the unfortunate man who was condemned on the most
frivolous evidence by the court of justice of Toulouse, in direct
contradiction to the ordinances of our king and the laws of all
nations, nor with his son, Mark Antony, the extraordinary manner of
whose death led the judges into the error they committed; nor with
the mother, whose sufferings call aloud for compassion, nor yet with
her innocent daughter, who, together with her, travelled upwards of
six hundred miles to lay their virtue and distresses at the foot of
the throne.

The God in whose presence we declare this knows that we have been
actuated solely by the love of justice, mercy, and truth, in
delivering our thoughts in the manner we have done on toleration,
in regard to John Calas, who fell a victim to non-toleration and
persecution.

We had not the least intent to offend the eight judges of Toulouse
in saying that they were mistaken, as the council of state itself
supposes them to have been; on the contrary, we have opened a way
for them to vindicate themselves to all Europe by acknowledging that
equivocal circumstances, and the clamor of a headstrong and enraged
populace, had biassed their judgment; and by asking pardon of the
widow and repairing as much as in them lies the ruin they have
brought upon an innocent family, by adding to the number of those who
succor them in their affliction. They have put the father to death
unjustly; let them then be as fathers to his children, provided those
children are willing to accept of this poor token of repentance from
them. It would be infinitely to the honor of the judges to make such
an offer, and to that of the injured family to refuse it.

But it principally behooves the Sieur David, capitol of Toulouse, to
set the example of remorse and penitence, who was the first to raise
this persecution against innocence, and who insulted the hapless
father of a family when expiring on the scaffold. This was indeed an
unparalleled act of cruelty; but as God is willing to show mercy and
forgiveness it is the duty of mortals to pardon in like manner those
who make atonement for their offences.

I have received a letter from a friend in Languedoc, dated the 20th
of February, 1763, of which the following is an extract:

“Your treatise on toleration appears to be full of humanity and
truth; but I am afraid it will rather hurt than serve the Calas
family. It may gall the eight judges who were for the sentence, and
they may apply to the parliament to have your book burnt; besides,
the bigots, of whom you are sensible there is always a considerable
number, will oppose the voice of reason with the clamors of
prejudice,” etc.

My answer was as follows:

“The eight judges of Toulouse may, if they please, have my book
burnt. It will cost them very little trouble, since the “Provincial
Letters,” which had infinitely superior merit to anything of mine,
were condemned to the same fate. Every one, you know, is at liberty
to burn in his own house such books as he does not like.

“My treatise cannot possibly do either hurt or good to the Calas
family, with whom I have not the least acquaintance. The king’s
council is no less resolute than impartial; it judges according
to law and equity of those things which fall properly under its
cognizance; but it will not interfere with a common pamphlet, written
upon a subject altogether foreign from the affair under consideration.

“If a hundred volumes in folio should be written in condemnation or
vindication of the judges of Toulouse, or of toleration, neither the
council nor any other court of justice would look upon these as law
matters.

“I readily agree with you that there are numbers of enthusiasts who
will set up the cry against me, but at the same time I do insist that
I shall have as many sensible readers who will make use of their
reason.

“I hear that the Parliament of Toulouse and some other courts of
justice have a method of proceeding peculiar to themselves. They
admit fourths, thirds, and sixths of a proof; so that with six
hearsays on one side, three on the other, and four-fourths of a
presumption, they frame three complete proofs; and in consequence of
this curious demonstration will condemn you a man to be broken upon
the wheel without mercy. Now, the least acquaintance with the art of
logic or reasoning would point out a different method of proceeding
to them. What we call a half proof can never amount to more than a
suspicion; but there is no such thing in reality as a half proof; for
a thing must either be proved or not proved; there is no medium.

“A million of suspicions put together can no more frame a regular
proof than a million of ciphers can compose an arithmetical number.

“There are fourths of tones or sounds in music, and these are to be
expressed; but there are no fourths in truths, nor in reasoning.

“Two witnesses agreeing in the same deposition, are esteemed to make
a proof; but this is not enough; these two witnesses should be clear
of all passion and prejudice, and, above all, their testimony should
be in every part consonant with reason.

“Suppose four persons of the most respectable appearance were to come
and swear in a court of justice that they saw an infirm old man take
a vigorous young fellow by the collar and toss him out of a window,
to the distance of six or seven feet; certainly such deponents ought
to be sent to a madhouse.

“But the eight judges of Toulouse condemned John Calas upon a much
more improbable accusation; for there was no one appeared to swear
that he had actually seen this feeble old man of seventy seize
a stout young fellow of twenty-eight, and hang him up. Indeed,
certain enthusiastic wretches said that they had been told by other
enthusiasts like themselves that they had been told by some of their
own sect that they had heard that John Calas had by a supernatural
strength overcome his son and hanged him. And thus was the most
absurd of all sentences passed upon the most absurd of all evidence.

“In fine, there is no remedy against such kind of proceedings but
that those who purchase their seats in a court of justice should, for
the future, be obliged to study a little better.”

This treatise on toleration is a petition which humanity with all
submission presents to power and prudence. I have sowed a grain that
may perhaps produce a rich harvest. We may hope everything from time,
from the goodness of the heart of our gracious monarch, the wisdom
of his ministers, and the spirit of sound reason, which begins to
diffuse its salutary influence over all minds.

Nature addresses herself thus to mankind: “I have formed you all
weak and ignorant, to vegetate a few moments on that earth which
you are afterwards to fatten with your carcasses. Let your weakness
then teach you to succor each other, and as you are ignorant, bear
with and endeavor mutually to instruct each other. Even if ye were
all of the same way of thinking, which certainly will never come
to pass, and there should be one single person only found amongst
you who differed from you in belief, you ought to forgive him, for
it is I who make him think in the manner he does. I have given you
hands to cultivate the earth, and a faint glimmering of reason to
conduct yourselves by, and I have planted in your hearts a spirit of
compassion, that you may assist each other under the burden of life.
Do not smother that spark, nor suffer it to be corrupted, for know it
is of divine origin; neither substitute the wretched debates of the
schools in the place of the voice of nature.

“It is I alone who unite you all, in despite of yourselves, by
your mutual wants, even in the midst of those bloody wars that you
undertake for the slightest causes, and that afford a continual scene
of error, chances, and misfortunes. It is I alone who, in a nation,
prevent the fatal effects of the inextinguishable differences that
subsist between the sword and the law, between those two professions
and the clergy, and between even the citizen and the husbandman.
Though ignorant of the limits of their own prerogatives, they are
in spite of themselves obliged to listen to my voice, which speaks
to their hearts. It is I alone who maintain equity in the courts
of judicature, where otherwise everything would be determined by
error and caprice, in the midst of a confused heap of laws, framed
too often at a venture and to supply an immediate call, differing
from each other in every province and town, and almost always
contradictory in the same place. I alone can inspire the love and
knowledge of justice, while the laws inspire only chicanery and
subterfuge. He who listens to me seldom forms a wrong judgment, while
he who seeks only to reconcile contradictory opinions loses himself
in the fruitless labor.

“There is an immense edifice whose foundation I laid with my own
hands. It was at once solid and simple; all mankind might have
entered into it with safety, but they, in seeking to ornament,
overloaded it with useless and fantastic decorations. The building is
continually falling to decay, and they gather up the stones to throw
at one another; while I am incessantly calling out to them, ‘Hold,
madmen! clear away the ruins with which you are surrounded, and which
you yourselves have made; come and live with me in uninterrupted
tranquillity within my mansion, that is not to be shaken.’”


FOOTNOTES TO A TREATISE ON TOLERATION

[2] 12 October, 1761.

[3] After the body was carried to the town-house, indeed, there was
found a little scratch upon the end of the nose, and a small black
and blue spot upon the breast; but these were probably occasioned by
some carelessness in removing the corpse.

[4] I know of but two instances in history of fathers having murdered
their children on the score of religion; the first is the father of
St. Barbara, as she is called; it seems he had ordered two windows
to be made in his bathing-room. St. Barbara in his absence took it
into her head to make a third in honor of the Holy Trinity; she also
with the end of her finger made the sign of the cross upon the marble
pillars, which remained deeply impressed thereon; her father, in a
violent fury to have his room thus marked, runs after her with his
sword in his hand with an intention to kill her; she flies towards a
mountain, which very complaisantly opens upon her approach to give
her a passage. Her father finds himself obliged to go round about,
and at length gets hold of his fugitive daughter, whom he strips
and prepares to scourge; but God envelops her with a white cloud;
however, after all, her father caused her head to be struck off. This
is the story as we find it related in the book called “The Flower of
Saints.”

The second instance is of Prince Hermenegildus, who raised a
rebellion against the king, his father, and gave him battle in the
year 584, but was himself defeated and slain by one of his father’s
generals; however, he has been placed among the martyrs, because his
father was an Arian.

[5] It is necessary for the English reader to understand that in
Paris it is customary for the great lawyers or counsellors employed
in any remarkable case to publish their pleadings on each side. On
this occasion, however, our author observes, “that these publications
were pirated in several towns, by which Mrs. Calas lost the advantage
that was intended her by this act of generosity.”

[6] _Dévot_, or as we call it in English, devotee, comes from the
Latin word _devotus_. The _devoti_ of ancient Rome were such persons
who devoted themselves to death for the safety or good of the
republic, as the Curtii and Decii.

[7] They revived the opinion of Berengarius, concerning the
eucharist; they denied that a body can exist in a thousand different
places at one time, even by all the exertion of divine omnipotence;
they also denied that attributes can subsist without a subject;
they held that it was absolutely impossible that what appears to
be simple bread and wine to the sight, the taste, and the stomach,
can in the very instant of its existence be annihilated or changed
into another substance; in a word, they maintained all those errors
for which Berengarius was formerly condemned. They founded their
belief on several passages of the ancient fathers of the church,
and particularly of St. Justin, who says expressly in his Dialogue
against Typhon, “That the offering of fine flour is the figure of the
eucharist, which Christ has ordered us to make in commemoration of
his passion;

 χαὶ ἡ τῆς σεμιδαλέως, _&c._, τύπος ἦν τοῦ ἄρτου τῆς εὐχαριστίας,
 ὃν είς ἀνάμνμησιν τοῦ πάθους, _&c._ Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς ὁ χύριος ἡμῶν
 παρέδωχε ποιεῖν.”

They revived all that had been advanced in the first ages against
the worship of relics, and brought these words of Vigilantius for
their authority: “What necessity is there for your paying adoration
or even respect to a mass of vile dust? Can it be supposed that the
souls of deceased martyrs retain after their death an affection for
their ashes? The customs of the ancient idolaters are now introduced
into the Church; we begun to light tapers at noonday; we may, indeed,
during our lifetime, mutually pray for each other; but of what
service can such prayers be after death?”

[8] The candid and venerable President de Thou expresses himself thus
concerning these innocent and unfortunate persons: “_Homines esse qui
trecentis circiter abhinc annis asperum & incultum solum vectigale a
dominis acceperint, quod improbo labore & assiduo cultu frugum ferax
& aptum pecori reddiderint; patientissimos eos laboris & inediæ,
a litibus abhorrentes, erga, egenos munificos, tributa principi &
sua jura dominis sedulo & summa fide pendere; Dei cultum assiduis
precibus & morum innocentiam præ se ferre, ceterum raro divorum
templa adire, nisi si quando ad vicina suis finibus oppida mercandi
aut negotiorum causa divertant; quo si quandoque pedem inferant, non
dei, divorumque statuis advolvi, nec cereos eis aut donaria ulla
ponere; non sacerdotes ab eis rogari ut pro se, aut propinquorum
manibus rem divinam faciant, non cruce frontem insigniri uti aliorum
moris est; cum cœlum intonant non se lustrali aqua aspergere, sed
sublatis in cœlum oculis dei opem implorare; non religionis ergo
peregre proficisci, non per vias ante crucium simulacra caput
aperire; sacra alio ritu, & populari lingua celebrare; non denique
Pontifici aut Episcopis honorem deferre, sed quosdam e suo numero
delectos pro antistibus & doctoribus habere. Hæc uti ad Franciscum
relata VI.” Id. Feb. anni &c._

Madame de Cental, who was proprietor of part of the lands thus laid
waste and drenched in the blood of their quondam inhabitants, applied
for redress to Henry II., who referred her to the Parliament of
Paris. The solicitor-general of Provence, whose name was Guerin and
who had been the principal author of these massacres, was condemned
to lose his head, and was the only one who suffered on this occasion
the punishment due to the other accomplices in his guilt, because,
says de Thou, _aulicorum favore destituertur_, he had not friends at
court.

[9] Francis Gomar was a Protestant divine; he maintained, in
contradiction to Arminius, his colleague, that God has, from all
eternity, predestined the greatest part of mankind to burn in
everlasting flames: this infernal doctrine was supported in the
manner most suitable to it, by persecution. The grand pensionary
Barneveldt, who was of the party which opposed Gomar, was beheaded
on the 13th of May, 1619, at the age of seventy-two, “_for having_”
(says his sentence) “_used his uttermost endeavors to vex the Church
of God_.”

[10] A pompous writer, in his apology for the revocation of the Edict
of Nantes, speaking of England, has these words: “These were the
natural fruits of a false religion; there remained only one to be
brought to perfection, which these islanders, justly the contempt of
all nations, have cherished, and adapted to themselves.” Certainly
this author has been a little unfortunate in choosing his time for
representing the English as a people despicable and despised by all
the world; for surely, when a nation gives the most signal proofs of
its bravery and generosity, and when its victorious ensigns wave in
the four parts of the world, no great credit is to be given to the
writer who shall represent it as contemptible and contemned. But we
must observe that it is in a chapter in favor of persecution that we
meet with this extraordinary passage; and none but such as preach
persecution can write thus. This detestable book, which seems the
work of a madman, was composed by a person who has no ecclesiastical
cure; for what real pastor would write in such a manner? The author
has even carried his enthusiastic fury to such a length as to
justify the massacre of St. Bartholomew. It might be supposed that a
production full of such shocking paradoxes would be in the hands of
almost every one, were it only on account of its singularity, and yet
it seems to be hardly known.

[11] See Ricaut.

[12] See Kempfer, and all the accounts of Japan.

[13] M. de la Bourdonnaie, intendant of Rouen, says that the
manufacture of hats at Caudebec and Neufchâtel has greatly fallen off
since the refugees left that county. M. Foucaut, intendant of Caen,
says that trade in general has declined through the whole district;
and M. de Maupeou, intendant of Poitiers, that the manufacture
of druggets is quite lost. M. de Bezons complains that there is
now hardly any trade stirring in Clérac and Nérac. M. Miroménil,
intendant of Touraine, says that the trade of Tours has diminished
near ten millions per annum, and all this through the persecution
raised in that part of the kingdom. (See the Memorials of the
Intendants in the year 1698.) To this, if we add the number of land
and sea officers and common sailors who have been forced to engage
in foreign services, frequently with fatal consequences to their own
country, we shall then see whether or no persecution has been fatal
to the state.

We will not here presume to offer any hints to those ministers whose
conduct and capacity are sufficiently known, and whose greatness of
soul and nobleness of sentiment do honor to their illustrious birth;
they will of themselves readily perceive that the restoration of
our marine will require some indulgence at least to be shown to the
inhabitants of our sea-coasts.

[14] These disabilities no longer exist in Protestant countries.

[15] Chap. xxi., xxii.

[16] Acts xxv.

[17] Acts xxvi.

[18] Though the power of life and death in criminal matters had
been taken from the Jews after the banishment of Archelaus into the
country of the Allobroges and that Judæa had been governed as a
province, nevertheless the Romans frequently winked at the exertion
of a judicial power by these people on any particular occasion that
related merely to those of their own sect, such as, for instance,
when in any sudden tumult they out of zeal stoned to death the person
whom they thought guilty of blasphemy.

[19] Ulpianus I. tit. II. _Eis qui judaicam superstitionem sequuntur,
honores adipisci permiserunt, &c._

[20] Tacitus’ words are: _Quos per flagitia invisos vulgus
Christianos appellabat_.

It is hardly probable that the name of Christian was already known
in Rome. Tacitus wrote in the reigns of the Emperors Vespasian and
Domitian, and he speaks of the Christians in the manner that was
customary in his time. And here I must venture to assert that the
words _Odio humani generis convicti_, may equally well be rendered
agreeably to the style of this writer, _Convicted of being hated by
mankind_, as _Convicted of hating all mankind_.

And indeed, what was the employment of these first missionaries in
Rome? They labored to gain a few proselytes by preaching a pure and
simple moral doctrine; the humility of their hearts, and the modesty
of their manners were equal to the lowliness of their condition and
circumstances. Having been so lately separated from the Jews, they
were hardly known in the world as a different sect; how then could
they be hated by, or convicted of hating all mankind, to whom they
were in a manner unknown?

The Roman Catholics have been accused as the incendiaries of the city
of London in the year 1666, but not till they had first occasioned
civil wars on account of religion; and after several of that faith,
though unworthy to be so, had been legally convicted of the Gunpowder
Plot.

But surely the case of the primitive Christians in the time of Nero
was very different. It is no easy matter to clear up the obscurities
of history. Even Tacitus himself says nothing that can afford a
reason to suspect Nero of having set fire to Rome; and we might, with
a greater appearance of probability, charge Charles II. with having
lighted up the flames that laid London in ashes, to avenge the blood
of his father, that had been so lately shed upon the scaffold to
satisfy a rebellious people who thirsted for that blood. Charles had
at least some excuse for such an action, whereas Nero had neither
excuse, pretence, nor interest for the deed attributed to him.
Reports of this kind have been common in every country among the
populace, and even our own times have furnished us with some equally
false and ridiculous.

Tacitus, who was so well acquainted with the disposition of princes,
could not have been a stranger to that of the common people, who
are ever vain, inconstant, and violent in the opinions they adopt,
incapable of discerning truth from falsehood, and ready to believe,
assert, and forget everything.

Philo says that “Sejanus persecuted the Jews under Tiberius, but
that after the death of Sejanus, the emperor reinstated them in
all their privileges,” one of which was, that of being denizens of
Rome, notwithstanding the contempt they were held in by the Romans.
As such, they had a share in the distribution of corn, and whenever
such distribution happened to be made on the day that was their
Sabbath, the portion allotted them was put by till the next day; this
indulgence might probably be granted them in favor of the great sums
of money with which they furnished the state; for they have purchased
toleration in every country at a pretty high rate, though, it must be
confessed, that they have soon found means to reimburse themselves.

This passage of Philo’s clearly explains one in Tacitus, where he
says that “Four thousand Jews or Egyptians were banished to Sardinia,
where, if they had all perished, through the badness of the climate,
it would have been no great loss.” _Vile damnum._

Before I close this note, I shall observe that Philo speaks of
Tiberius as a wise and just prince. I am very ready to believe that
he was so, only where the being such was agreeable to his interest;
but the good character given him here by Philo makes me at the same
time greatly suspect the truth of those terrible crimes with which
Tacitus and Suetonius reproach him. Nor can I think it likely that
an infirm old man of seventy would have retired into the island of
Caprera to indulge himself in the uninterrupted exercise of a refined
debauchery, which appears to be hardly natural, and was, even in
those days of licentiousness, unknown to the most abandoned of the
Roman youth. Neither Tacitus nor Suetonius was acquainted with that
emperor; but took these stories upon the credit of vulgar reports;
Octavius and Tiberius Cæsar, and their successors, had been detested
for reigning over a free people without their consent. All historians
have taken a delight in bespattering their characters, and the world
has taken them at their words for want of authentic memorials or
chronicles in those times. Besides, as these writers do not quote
any authority for what they advance, who could contradict them? They
blackened whom they pleased, and wantonly directed the judgment of
posterity. The wise and impartial reader will, however, readily
perceive how far the veracity of historians is to be depended on, and
what degree of credit is due to public facts attested by authors of
reputation, born in a learned and enlightened nation, as well as what
bounds to set to our belief of anecdotes, when related by these same
authors, without any authority to support them.

[21] We most certainly have a proper deference for whatever the Holy
Church has made the objects of our reverence; accordingly, we invoke
the blessed martyrs; but at the same time that we pay St. Laurence
all due respect, may we not be permitted to doubt that St. Sixtus
said to him: “You will follow me in three days.” That, during this
short interval, the prefect of Rome made him demand a sum of money
of the Christians; that Laurence had time to assemble all the poor
people in that city; that he walked before the prefect, to show him
the place where they were assembled; that he was afterwards tried
and condemned to the torture; that the prefect ordered the smith to
make a gridiron large enough to broil a man upon; that the principal
magistrate of Rome assisted in person at this strange execution; and
lastly that St. Laurence, while upon the gridiron, called out to him,
“I am done enough on this side, let them turn me on the other, if you
have a mind to eat me.” This same gridiron seems to have very little
of the Roman genius in it; and besides, how happens it that we do not
find a word of this story in any of the heathen writers?

[22] We have only to open Virgil to be convinced that the Romans
acknowledged one Supreme Being, the lord and master of all other
heavenly beings.

         _O! quis res hominumque deumque_
 _Æternis regis imperiis, & fulmine terres,_
 _O pater, o hominum divumque æterna potestas, &c._

And Horace expresses himself still more strongly:

 _Unde nil majus generatur ipso,_
 _Nec viget quidquam simile, aut secundum._

In those mysteries into which almost all the Roman youths were
initiated, nothing else was sung but the unity of God. See the
noble hymn of Orpheus, and the letter of Maximus of Modarum to St.
Augustine, in which he says that “None but fools can possibly deny
a Supreme Being.” Longinus, who was a heathen, writes also to St.
Augustine that “God is one, incomprehensible, ineffable.” Even
Lactantius, who certainly cannot be charged with being too indulgent,
acknowledges in his fifth book that “The Romans subjected all the
other deities to the one supreme God;” _illos subjecit & mancipat
Deo_. Tertullian also in his Apology confesses that “The whole empire
acknowledged one God, ruler of the world, and infinite in power and
majesty:” _Principem mundi perfectæ potentiæ & majestatis_. Again, if
we look into Plato, who taught Cicero his philosophy, we shall there
find him thus express himself: “There is but one God, whom we all
ought to love and adore, and labor to resemble Him in integrity and
holiness.” Epictetus in a dungeon, and Mark Antoninus on a throne,
tell us the same in a hundred different passages of their writings.

[23] Chap. 39.

[24] Chap. 35.

[25] Chap. iii.

[26] This assertion requires to be proved. It cannot be denied that
from the time that history succeeded to fiction, the Egyptians
have constantly appeared to be a people as dastardly as they were
superstitious. Cambyses made the conquest of their country in a
single battle; Alexander gave them laws without striking a stroke,
or without one of their cities daring to wait a siege. The Ptolemies
subdued them with as little trouble, nor did Octavius and Augustus
Cæsar find more difficulty in bringing them under their obedience.
Omar overran all Egypt in one single campaign; the Mamelukes, who
inhabited Colchis and the regions of Mount Caucasus, became their
masters afterwards; and it was these people, and not the Egyptians,
who defeated the army of St. Louis, and took that king prisoner. At
length the Mamelukes having, in process of time, become Egyptians,
that is to say, effeminate, cowardly, lazy, and dissipated, like the
original natives of the climate, they were in three months’ time
brought under the yoke of Selim I., who caused their Soldan to be
hanged, and made their kingdom a province of the Turkish Empire,
and such it will remain till other barbarians may hereafter make
themselves masters of it.

Herodotus relates that in the fabulous ages a king of Egypt called
Sesostris left his country in order to go and make the conquest of
the world; it is evident that such a design could only be worthy of
a Don Quixote; and not to mention that the name Sesostris is not
Egyptian, we may rank this event, like many others of the same date,
among the romances and fairy tales. Nothing is more common among
a conquered people than to tell strange stories of their former
grandeur, just as, in some countries, certain wretched families,
in want of the common necessaries of life, pride themselves upon
being descended from ancient sovereigns. The Egyptian priests told
Herodotus that this king, whom he called Sesostris, went on an
expedition to conquer Colchis, which is much the same as if we were
to say that a king of France set out from Touraine to conquer Norway.

It avails not that these stories are found repeated in a thousand
different writers; it makes them not a whit more probable; it is much
more natural to suppose that the fierce and athletic inhabitants of
Mount Caucasus, of Colchis, and the other parts of Scythia, who so
often made incursions upon and ravaged Asia, might have penetrated as
far as Egypt; and although the priests of Colchis might afterwards
have carried back with them the form of circumcision, yet that is
no kind of proof that they were ever conquered by the Egyptians.
Diodorus Siculus tells us that all the kings who were conquered
by Sesostris came every year from their own kingdoms to bring him
their respective tributes, when Sesostris made them draw the chariot
in which he went in triumph to the temples of his gods. These old
women’s stories we see every day gravely copied by other writers; it
must be confessed that these kings were very complaisant, to come
every year so far to be made hackney horses of.

As to their pyramids, and other monuments of antiquity, they prove
nothing but the pride and bad taste of the Egyptian princes, and
the wretched slavery of a weak people, who employed their strength,
which was their only support, in pleasing the barbarous ostentation
of their masters. The polity of these people, even in those times
which are so much cried up, appears to have been both absurd and
tyrannical; they pretended that the whole universe belonged to their
monarchy. It well became such an abject race to set up for conquerors
of the world!

The profound learning which we find attributed to the Egyptian
priests is also one of the most ridiculous absurdities in ancient
history, that is to say, in fable. People who pretended that in a
revolution of eleven thousand years the sun had risen twice in the
west and set twice in the east in beginning his course anew were
doubtless curious astronomers. The religion of these priests, who
governed the state, was inferior even to that of the most savage
people of America; every one knows that crocodiles, monkeys, cats,
and onions were the objects of their adoration; and there is not
perhaps in the world so absurd a worship, excepting that of the Great
Lama.

Their arts were as mean as their religion; there is not one ancient
Egyptian statue fit to be seen; and whatever they had amongst them
of any merit came from Alexandria in the times of the Ptolemies and
Cæsars and was the work of Grecian artists; nay, they were even
obliged to send to Greece for masters to teach them geometry.

The illustrious Bossuet, in his discourse upon universal history,
dedicated to the son of Louis the Fourteenth, runs wild in his
encomiums upon the merits of the Egyptians; this may dazzle the
understanding of a young prince, but will never satisfy men of
learning. This production is a very fine piece of eloquence, but
a historian should be more of the philosopher than the orator.
The reflections here offered concerning the Egyptians are merely
conjectural; for by what other name can we call anything that is said
concerning antiquity?

[27] Though we do not presume to doubt the suffering of St. Ignatius,
yet, can any man of common understanding, who reads the account of
his martyrdom, prevent some doubts from rising in his mind? The
unknown author of this narrative says: “Trajan thought his glory
would not be complete unless he subjected the God of the Christians
to his obedience.” What a thought! Was Trajan the kind of man who
could desire to triumph over the gods? The emperor is said to have
thus accosted Ignatius when he was brought before him: “Who art thou,
unclean spirit?” It is very unlikely that an emperor would have
discoursed with a prisoner, or have passed sentence upon him himself;
it is not customary for sovereign princes to do so. Trajan might
possibly cause Ignatius to be brought before him, but he would not
say to him, “Who art thou?” since he knew very well who he was. And
as to the term “unclean spirit,” could it possibly have been used by
such a man as Trajan? Is it not evident that this is an expression
used in exorcising, and put by a Christian into the emperor’s mouth?
Good heavens! what a style for Trajan.

Can we imagine that Ignatius answered him that he was called
Theophorus, because he carried Jesus in his heart, and that Trajan
entered into a long conversation with him concerning Christ? They
make Trajan say at the end of this conference: “We command that
Ignatius, who glories in carrying within him the crucified man, be
thrown into prison loaded with chains,” etc. A sophist, a foe to
Christianity, might call Jesus Christ _the crucified man_; but it is
hardly probable that such a term would have been used in a decree.
The punishment of the cross was so common among the Romans that they
could not in their law style think of distinguishing by the words
“crucified man” the object of the Christians’ worship; nor is it in
this manner that the laws or the emperors pronounced sentence.

They afterwards make Ignatius write a long letter to the Christians
of Rome. “I write to you,” says he, “though loaded with chains.”
Certainly, if he was allowed to write to the Christians of Rome,
those Christians were not considered as the objects of persecution;
consequently, Trajan could have no design to subject their God to his
obedience; or, on the other hand, if these Christians were actually
liable to persecution, Ignatius was guilty of very great imprudence
in regard to them, since this was betraying them to their enemies and
making himself an informer against them.

Surely those who had the compiling of these facts should have had
greater regard to probability and the circumstances of the times. The
martyrdom of St. Polycarp also occasions some doubts. It is said that
a voice called to him from heaven, saying: “Courage, Polycarp!” that
this voice was distinctly heard by the Christians, but by no other
of the attendants: we are told also, that when Polycarp was tied to
the stake, and the fire lighted round him, the flames parted asunder,
and a dove flew out from the midst of them; and that this saint, to
whom the fire showed so much respect, exhaled an aromatic odor that
perfumed the whole assembly; nevertheless, he whom the fire dared
not to approach, could not resist the edge of the sword. Surely we
may hope for pardon if we discover more piety than truth in these
relations.

[28] Hist. Ecclesiast. lib. viii.

[29] The Catholic priests are now numbered by thousands in Great
Britain and Ireland.

[30] See Mr. Locke’s excellent letter upon toleration.

[31] The Jesuit Busembaum, and his commentator, the Jesuit La Croix,
tell us, that it “is lawful to kill any prince excommunicated by the
Pope, of whatsoever country, because the whole world belongs to the
Pope; and that whoever accepts of or executes such commission does a
meritorious and charitable act.” It is this maxim which seems to have
been invented in the madhouses of hell, that has almost stirred up
all France against the Jesuits, who are now more than ever reproached
for this doctrine, which they have so often preached, and as often
disavowed. They have endeavored to justify themselves by producing
nearly the same maxims in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas and
several Dominicans.* It is true, indeed, that this St. Thomas,
the angelic Doctor and Interpreter of the Divine Will, advances
that an apostate prince loses his right to the crown, and forfeits
the obedience due to him from his subjects;† that the Church may
condemn him to death; that the Emperor Julian was permitted to reign
only because he was too powerful to be resisted: that we ought to
kill every heretic:‡ that those who deliver a people from the
government of a tyrannical prince, etc., etc. We have, doubtless, a
great respect for the angel of the schools; but if he had preached up
such maxims in France at the time of his brother James Clement, and
the mendicant Ravaillac, his angelical doctorship would have met with
but a scurvy reception.

                    * Peruse, if you can get it, the letter of a
                    layman to a divine on the subject of St. Thomas,
                    a Jesuitical pamphlet published in 1762.

                    † Lib. ii. part ii. question 12.

                    ‡ Ibid. Questions 11 and 12.

It must be confessed that John Gerson, chancellor of the University,
carried the matter yet further than St. Thomas; and John Petit, the
Franciscan, still further than Gerson. Several of the order openly
maintained the detestable maxims of their brother Petit. It must be
acknowledged that this hellish doctrine of king-killing proceeds
wholly from the ridiculous notion which has so long prevailed amongst
all orders of monks, that the Pope is a God upon earth, and can
dispose of the crowns and lives of sovereigns at his pleasure. In
this respect, we are inferior even to those Tartarian idolaters who
held the Grand Lama to be immortal; greedily gather the contents of
his close-stool, dry these precious relics with great care, enclose
them in rich cases, and kiss them with the warmest devotion. For my
part, I confess that I had rather, for the good of my country, and
the sake of public tranquillity, carry those relics constantly about
my neck, than to give my assent to the Pope’s having in any case
whatsoever an authority over the temporals of kings, or even those of
a private person.

[32] Chap. ii. 11–14.

[33] Deut. xiv.

[34] Agreeable to my intention of making some useful notes upon this
treatise, I shall here observe that although God is said to have
made a covenant with Noah, and with all the beasts of the field, yet
he permits him to eat of every thing that has the breath of life,
excepting only the eating of blood, which he positively prohibits;
and moreover adds that “the Lord will take vengeance of every beast
by whom man’s blood shall be shed.”

From these passages and several others of the like tenor, we may
infer, with all the sages of ancient and present times, and with
every person of enlightened conceptions, that beasts are endowed with
some knowledge. We do not find God making a covenant with trees or
with stones that have no sense; but He does with the beasts, whom
it has pleased Him to endow with senses, frequently more exquisite
than our own, and consequently with those ideas that are necessarily
connected with sense. It is for this reason that He prohibits the
barbarous custom of feeding upon their blood, the blood being the
source of life, and consequently of sense. Take away all the blood
from an animal and all his organs will immediately cease from action.
It is therefore with the greatest justice that we find it said in so
many different parts of the Holy Scripture, that the soul, that is to
say, what was called the sensitive soul, is in the blood; an opinion
perfectly agreeable to nature, and as such received by all nations.

It is upon this opinion that we found that pity which we ought to
show to all animals. It is one of the seven precepts of the Noachides
that were adopted by the Jews, that no one shall eat the limb of a
living animal. This precept is a proof that mankind had formerly the
cruelty to mutilate animals in order to feast upon the limbs so cut
off, and to leave the creatures living, in order to feed successively
upon the other parts of their bodies; a custom which we find to
have actually subsisted among some barbarous nations—witness the
sacrifices offered in the island of Chios to _Bacchus Omadios_, or
the eater of raw flesh. God, by permitting the flesh of animals to
serve us for food, seems to recommend them to our humanity. It must
be confessed that there is great cruelty in putting them to torture,
and that nothing but custom could have lessened in us the natural
abhorrence of slaughtering an animal that we have fed with our own
hands. There have in all times been sects who have made a religious
scruple of such practices, as do to this day all the inhabitants of
the Peninsula of the Ganges. The whole sect of Pythagoreans, both in
Greece and Italy, constantly abstained from the eating of flesh. And
Porphyry, in his book upon “Abstinence,” reproaches his disciples
with having quitted their sect only for the sake of indulging an
inhuman appetite.

It is in my opinion a giving up of the light of reason, to pretend
to assert that beasts are no more than mere machines; for is it not
a manifest contradiction to acknowledge that God has given them the
organs of sense, and then to affirm that they have no sense?

Besides, I think one must never have made any observation upon
animals, not to distinguish in them the different cries of want,
suffering, joy, fear, love, anger, and indeed all other affections of
the mind or body; surely, it would be very strange that they should
so well express what they have no sense of!

This remark may furnish abundant matter of reflection to inquisitive
minds, in relation to the power and goodness of the Creator, who has
been pleased to bestow life, sense, ideas, and memory on those beings
whose organs he has formed with His own all-powerful hand. As to us,
we neither know how these organs are formed, how they are unfolded,
in what manner we receive life, nor by what laws sense, ideas,
memory, and will are annexed to that life; and yet in this dark and
ternal state of ignorance inherent to our natures, we are perpetually
disputing with, and persecuting one another, like the bulls of the
field, who fight with their horns, without knowing for what use, or
in what manner those horns were given them.

[35] Amos v. 26.

[36] Jer. vii. 22.

[37] Acts vii. 42.

[38] Deut. xii. 8.

[39] Several writers have too rashly concluded from this passage that
the chapter concerning the golden calf—which is no other than the
Egyptian god Apis—has, as well as many other chapters, been added to
the books of Moses.

Eben-Ezra was the first who undertook to prove that the Pentateuch—or
the five books of Moses—was written in the times of the Kings.
Wollaston, Collins, Tindal, Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, and many
others have asserted that in those ages men had no other way of
committing their thoughts to writing but by engraving them upon
polished stone, brick, lead, or wood; and tell us that in the time
of Moses the Chaldæans and Egyptians had no other way of writing,
and that then they could engrave but in a very abridged manner, and
by hieroglyphics, the substance only of such things as they thought
worthy of being transmitted to posterity, and could never form any
regular histories; then it was next to an impossibility to engrave
books of any considerable bulk in the wilderness, where they were
continually changing their habitation; where they had no person to
furnish them with clothing, to make that clothing for them, or even
to mend their sandals, and where God was obliged to perform a miracle
to preserve the garments of His people entire. They say that it is
hardly probable that there should have been so many engravers among
them, at the time that they were so deficient in the more necessary
arts of life, and did not know even how to make bread; and if we
answer to this, that the pillars of the tabernacle were of brass, and
their chapiters of massy silver they reply, that though the order for
this might have been given in the wilderness, it was not executed
till after they were settled in perfect tranquillity.

They cannot conceive, they say, how the Israelites, who were a poor
and vagabond people, could have asked for a calf of massy gold to
be erected for the object of their adoration, at the foot of the
very mountain where God was then talking with Moses, and in the very
midst of the thunder and lightning, and the sound of the heavenly
trumpet, which were heard and seen by all present. They profess
their astonishment that it should have been only the day before
Moses descended from the mountain, that all the people should have
addressed themselves to his brother Aaron to raise this golden calf;
or how it was possible for Aaron to have cast such an image in one
single day; and still more, how Moses could have reduced it into an
impalpable powder. They say that it is impossible for any artist to
make a statue of gold in less than three months, and that not all the
possible efforts of the chemical art are sufficient to reduce such a
mass into a powder that may be swallowed, and consequently, that the
prevarication of Aaron and this operation of Moses must have been two
miracles.

Deceived by the humanity and goodness of their hearts, they cannot
believe that Moses slaughtered three and twenty thousand souls to
expiate this crime; nor, that so many men would have tamely suffered
themselves to be murdered without a third miracle. Lastly, they think
it very extraordinary that Aaron, who was the most guilty of all,
should have been rewarded for that very crime for which the rest
underwent so dreadful a punishment, by being created high-priest, and
go to offer sacrifice at the high altar, while the bodies of three
and twenty thousand of his slaughtered brethren lay bleeding round
him.

They start the same difficulties concerning the eighty thousand
Israelites who were slain by order of Moses, to atone for the crime
of a single one of them, for being surprised with a Moabite woman;
and seeing that Solomon, and so many other of the Jewish kings did,
without being punished for it, take to themselves strange wives, they
cannot conceive what great crime there could be in an individual
making an alliance with one Moabite woman.

Ruth was a Moabitess, though her family was originally of Bethlehem;
the Scripture always distinguishes her by the name of Ruth the
Moabitess; and yet she went and laid herself by the side of Boaz,
received six measures of barley from him, was afterwards married to
him, and was the grandmother of David. Rahab was not only a stranger,
but also a common prostitute, or a harlot, as she is called in
Scripture; yet she was taken to wife by Solomon, a prince of Judæa;
from whom also David was descended. This Rahab is taken to be a
type of the Christian church by several of the ancient fathers; and
especially by Origen, in his seventh homily on Joshua.

Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, by whom David begat Solomon, was a
Hittite. And if we go farther back, we shall find that the patriarch
Judah married a Canaanitess; and his sons lay with Thamar, who was of
the race of Aaron; and the woman with whom Judah, without knowing it,
committed incest, was not of the Israelitish race.

Thus then was our Lord Jesus Christ pleased to take upon him flesh
in a family descended from five aliens, to show that all nations
should partake of his inheritance. The rabbi Eben-Ezra was, as we
have already observed, the first who undertook to prove that the
Pentateuch was compiled long after the time of Moses; and for his
authority quotes several passages in those books; and amongst others
the following: “The Canaanite then dwelt in that land. The mountain
of Moriah, called the Mountain of God. The bed of Og, king of Bashan,
is still to be seen in Rabah. And the country of Bashan is called
the villages of Jaiar unto this day. Never was there a prophet
seen in Israel like unto Moses. These are the kings who reigned in
Edom, before any king reigned over Israel.” He pretends that these
passages, in which mention is made of events that happened long after
the time of Moses, could never have been written by Moses himself. To
this it is replied, that these passages were added long after by way
of notes by the transcribers.

Newton, whose name ought on every other occasion to be mentioned with
respect, but who, as a man, may have been liable to error, in the
introduction to his commentaries upon Daniel and St. John, ascribes
the five books of Moses, Joshua, and Judges to holy writers of much
later date; and founds his opinion on the thirty-sixth chapter of
Genesis, the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twenty-first
chapters of Judges, the eighth chapter of Samuel, the second chapter
of Chronicles, and the fourth chapter of the book of Ruth; and
indeed, considering that in the thirty-sixth chapter of Genesis
we find mention made of Kings, and that David is spoken of in the
books of Judges and that of Ruth, it should seem that those books
were compiled in the times of the Kings. This is also the opinion
of several divines, at the head of whom is the famous Le Clerc. But
there are very few of those who are followers of this opinion, that
have had the curiosity to fathom these mysteries; a curiosity which
certainly makes no part of the duty of man. For when the learned and
the ignorant, the prince and the peasant, shall, after this short
life, appear together before the throne of Eternal Majesty, every
one of us then will wish to have been just and humane, generous and
compassionate; and no one will pride himself in having known exactly
the year in which the Pentateuch was written, or in having been able
to distinguish the true text from the additional notes in use among
the Scribes. God will not ask us whether we were of the opinion of
the Masorites against the Talmud, or whether we may not have mistaken
a _Caph_ for a _Beth_, a _Yod_ for a _Vau_, or a _Daleth_ for a
_Resh_. No, certainly; but he will judge us according to our deeds,
and not according to our knowledge of the Hebrew language. Let us
therefore abide firmly by the decision of the Church, so far as is
agreeable to the reasonable duty of a believer.

We will conclude this note with an important passage from Leviticus,
a book composed after the time of the golden calf. The Jews are there
commanded no more to offer their sacrifices to goats with whom they
have gone a-whoring.* We cannot say whether this strange worship
came from Egypt, the country of sorcery and superstition; but there
is reason to believe, that the custom of our pretended magicians of
keeping a Sabbath apart, for adoring a goat, and committing such
detestable uncleanliness with it as is shocking to conception, came
from the ancient Jews, as it is certain that they first taught a
part of Europe the practice of magic. What a detestable people!
Surely such infamous and unnatural practices deserve the punishment
at least equal to that which befell them for worshipping the golden
calf; and yet, we find the lawgiver contents himself with simply
prohibiting those practices. We have quoted this subject only to show
what the Jewish nation was; the sin of bestiality must certainly have
been very common amongst them, since they are the only people we
know among whom there was a necessity for any law to prohibit that
crime, the commission of which was not even suspected by any other
legislators.

                    * Leviticus vii. and xviii. 22.

There is reason to believe that on account of the fatigues and
distresses which the Jews suffered in the deserts of Paran, Horeb,
and Kadash-Barnea, the female species, which is always the weakest,
might have failed amongst them; and it is certain that the Jews were
greatly in want of women, since we find them almost always commanded,
when they conquered any town or village, to the right or left of the
lake Asphaltes, to put all the inhabitants to the sword, excepting
only the young women who were of an age to know man.

The Arabs, who still inhabit a part of these deserts, stipulate to
this day in the treaties which they make with the caravans, that
they shall furnish them with marriageable women; so that it is not
improbable but that the young men of those barren countries might
have carried the depravation of human nature so far as to have
had carnal commerce with goats, as is related of the shepherds of
Calabria.

It is still, however, uncertain whether any monsters were produced
by this unnatural copulation, and whether there is any foundation
for the ancient stories of satyrs, fauns, centaurs, and minotaurs;
history says there is; but natural philosophy has not yet cleared up
to us this monstrous circumstance.

[40] Num. xxi 9.

[41] Midian was not included in the Land of Promise; it is a little
canton of Idumæa, in Arabia Petræa, beginning to the northward of the
torrent of Arron, and ending at the torrent of Zared, in the midst of
rocks on the eastern border of the lake Asphaltes. This country is
inhabited by a small Arabian horde or tribe, and may be about eight
leagues long and about seven in breadth.

[42] Num. xxxi.

[43] Num. xxxi. 40.

[44] It is plain by the text that Jephthah did actually sacrifice his
daughter. Doctor Calmet; in his dissertation upon Jephthah’s vow,
says, that “God did not approve these vows; but when once any one had
made them, he insisted upon their being fulfilled, was it only to
punish those who made them, and to put a check upon them in the doing
it by fear of being obliged to perform them.” This action of Jephthah
is condemned by St. Augustine and almost all the fathers, although
the Scripture says that he was filled with the spirit of God; and St.
Paul in the eleventh chapter of his Epistle to the Hebrews, greatly
praises Jephthah, exalting him even above Samuel and David.

St. Jerome, in his Epistle to Julian, expresses himself thus;
“Jephthah sacrificed his daughter to the Lord, and therefore the
Apostle has placed him among the saints.” Here now is a diversity
in opinions, concerning which it is not permitted us to pronounce a
decision; nay, it is even dangerous to have any opinion of our own.

[45] The death of Agag, king of the Amalekites, may be looked upon as
a real sacrifice. Saul had made this prince a prisoner of war, and
had admitted him to a capitulation notwithstanding that the priest
and the prophet Samuel had charged him to spare no one; saying to him
expressly: “Go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they
have, and spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and
suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”—“And Samuel hewed Agag in
pieces before the Lord at Gilgal.”

“The zeal with which this prophet was animated,” says Calmet, “put a
sword into his hand on this occasion, to revenge the honor of God,
and to confound Saul.”

In this melancholy adventure, we have a vow, a priest, and a victim;
consequently, it is a real sacrifice. We find from history that most
nations, the Chinese excepted, were wont to sacrifice human victims
to the Deity; Plutarch says, that this custom prevailed even among
the Romans at some certain times. Cæsar in his “Commentaries” tells
us that the Germans were going to sacrifice two of his officers,
whom he had sent to confer with their king, Ariovistus, had not
Cæsar delivered them by beating the German army. I have in another
place observed,* that this violation of the laws of nations, and
the offering of human victims, which was rendered more horrible
by its being done by the hands of their women, seems a little to
contradict Tacitus’s panegyric on them in his treatise “_De Moribus
Germanorum_,” which seems rather to have been designed as a satire
upon the Roman people, than to praise the Germans, to whom he was an
utter stranger. And here we may observe by the way, that Tacitus was
fonder of satire than of truth; he labors to throw everything, even
the most indifferent actions, into an odious point of light; and his
malice pleases us as much as his style, because we are naturally fond
of wit and slander.

                    * Additions to General History, part i., of
                    Voltaire.

But to return to the subject of human sacrifices. This custom
prevailed as much among our forefathers as with the Germans; it is
the lowest degree of debasement to which human nature can fall when
left to herself, and is one of the effects of the weakness of mortal
understanding, which reasons thus: We ought to offer to God whatever
we have of most pleasing or valuable; there is nothing more valuable
than our children; therefore we ought to select the youngest and most
beautiful to sacrifice them to the Deity.

Philo says that the Canaanites used to offer their children in
sacrifice, before God had commanded Abraham, as a trial of his faith,
to offer up his only son, Isaac.

Sanchoniathon, as quoted by Eusebius, says that the Phœnicians, when
threatened with any great danger or distress, offered up the most
favorite of their children, and that Ilus sacrificed his son, Jehud,
much about the same time that God made the trial of Abraham’s faith.
It is very difficult to penetrate into the dark recesses of early
antiquity; but it is too melancholy a truth that these horrible
sacrifices were almost everywhere in use; and men have laid them
aside, only in proportion as they have become civilized. So true is
it that civilization is the nurse of humanity.

[46] Ezek. xxxix. 49.

[47] Judges ix. 24.

[48] Judges xvii. last verse.

[49] Judges xviii. 11–29.

[50] Judges xviii. 11–39.

[51] The author evidently confounds Elisha and Elijah.

[52] Those who are unacquainted with the customs of antiquity,
and who judge only from what they see about them, may possibly be
astonished at this odd command; but they should reflect, that at
those times it was the custom in Egypt, and most part of Assyria, to
express things by hieroglyphical figures, signs, and types.

The prophets, who were called seers by the Egyptians and Jews,
not only expressed themselves in allegories, but also represented
by signs those events which they foretold. Thus we find Isaiah,
the chief of the four greater prophets, taking a roll and writing
therein, “Maher-Shalal-Hashbaz,” that is, “Make haste to the spoil”;
and going in unto the prophetess, she conceived and bare a son, whom
the Lord called Maher-Shalal-Hashbaz. This is a type of the evils
which were to be brought upon the Jews by the people of Egypt and
Assyria.

The prophet also says: “Before that the child shall be of an age to
eat butter and honey, to refuse the evil and choose the good, the
land that they abhorred shall be delivered of both her kings; and the
Lord will hiss to the flies of Egypt, and for the bees of Assyr, and
the Lord will shave with a razor that is hired, the beard and the
hair of the feet of the king of Assyria.”*

                    * Isaiah vii. 15–18.

This prophecy of the bees, and of the shaving of the beard, and of
the hair of the feet, can be understood only by those who know that
it was a custom to call the swarms of bees together by the sound of a
flageolet or pipe, or some other rustic instrument; that the greatest
affront that could be done to any man was to cut off his beard; and
that the hair on the private parts was called the hair of the feet,
which was never shaven but in cases of leprosy, or other unclean
disorders. All these figures, which would appear so strange in our
style, signify nothing more than that the Lord will, in the course of
a few years, deliver His people from captivity.

We find the same prophet walking naked and barefoot to show that
the king of Assyria shall lead away the Egyptians and Ethiopians
captives, without their having wherewithal to cover their
nakedness.†

                    † Isaiah xx.

The prophet Ezekiel eats the roll of parchment which God had given
him; afterwards he eats his bread covered with excrement, and
continues to lie on his left side three hundred and ninety days,
and forty days on his right side, to show that the Jews should want
bread, and as a type of the number of years they were to remain in
captivity. He loads himself with chains, as a figure of those that
they are to wear; and he cuts off the hair of his head and of his
beard, and divides them into three parts; the first of these portions
is a type of those who are to perish in the city of Jerusalem; the
second, of such as are to be slain without the walls; and the third,
of those who are to be carried away to Babylon.‡

                    ‡ Ezek. iv. seq.

The prophet Hosea takes to himself a woman who is an adulteress, and
whom he purchases for fifteen pieces of silver, and for an homer
and a half of barley, and says unto her: “Thou shalt abide for me
many days, thou shalt not play the harlot, and thou shalt not be for
another man, for so shall the children of Israel abide many days
without a king, and without a prince, and without an image, and
without an ephod, and without teraphim”;§ in a word, the seers or
prophets scarcely ever foretell anything without using a type or sign
of the thing foretold.

                    § Hosea iii.

Jeremiah therefore only conformed to the usual custom when he bound
himself with cords, and put bonds and yokes upon his neck, as figures
of the approaching slavery of those to whom he sent them, and if we
attend properly to these things, we shall find the times here spoken
of to be like those of an old world, differing in everything from the
new society. The laws, the manner of making war, were all absolutely
different; and if we only open Homer and the first book of Herodotus,
we need nothing more to convince us that there is not the least
resemblance between the people of early antiquity and ourselves;
hence we ought to distrust our own judgment, when we attempt to
compare their manners with ours. Even nature herself is not now the
same she was then; magicians and sorcerers had at that time a power
over her which they no longer possess; they enchanted serpents, they
raised the dead out of their tombs, etc. God sent dreams, and men
interpreted them. The gift of prophecy was common. And we read of
several metamorphoses, such as of Nebuchadnezzar into an ox, of Lot’s
wife into a pillar of salt, and of five whole cities changed in an
instant into a burning lake.

There were likewise several species of men that no longer exist. The
race of giants, Rephaim, Emim, Nephilim, and Enacim, have totally
disappeared. St. Augustine, in his fifth book “_De Civitate Dei_,”
says that he saw a tooth of one of those ancient giants that was
at least a hundred times as large as one of our grinders. Ezekiel
speaks of pygmies (_Gamadim_), not above a cubit high, who fought at
the siege of Tyre; and almost all writers, sacred and profane, have
agreed in the truth of these relations.

In fine, the ancient world was so different from ours that there is
no drawing any rule for our conduct from it; and if in the earliest
ages of antiquity we find mankind mutually persecuting and destroying
one another on account of their different faiths, far be it from
us, who live under the enlightened law of grace, to copy after such
originals.

[53] Jer. xxvii. xxviii.

[54] Isaiah xliv. and xlv.

[55] Malachi i. 1.

[56] Deut. xxviii. 28 and seq.

[57] There is but one passage in the whole Mosaic law from which one
might conclude that Moses was acquainted with the reigning opinion
among the Egyptians, that the soul did not die with the body. This
passage is very particular, and is in the eighteenth chapter of
Deuteronomy: “There shall not be found among you any one that useth
divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch,
or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits (Python), or a
wizard, or a necromancer.” From this passage it appears that by
invoking the souls of the dead this pretended necromancy supposed a
permanency of the soul. It might also happen that the necromancers
of whom Moses speaks, being but ignorant deceivers, might not have a
distinct idea of the magic they operated. They made people believe
that they forced the dead to speak, and by the power of their art
restored the body to the same state as when living; without once
examining whether their ridiculous operations might authorize the
doctrine of the immortality of the soul. The ancient magicians were
never philosophers; they were at best but a set of stupid jugglers,
who played their tricks before as illiterate spectators.

But what is very strange and worthy of observation is that the word
“python” should be found in Deuteronomy so long before that Greek
term was known to the Hebrews; and indeed this word is not to be
found in the Hebrew, of which we have never had a good translation.

There are many insurmountable difficulties in this language; it is a
mixture of Phœnician, Egyptian, Syriac, and Arabic, and has undergone
many alterations to the present time. The Hebrew verbs had only two
moods, the present and the future; the rest were to be guessed at
by the sense. The different vowels were frequently expressed by the
same characters, or rather, indeed, they were not expressed at all;
and the inventors of points have only increased the difficulties they
meant to remove. Every adverb had twenty different significations,
and the same word had frequently several contrary senses. Add to this
that the language was in itself very dry and barren; for the Jews,
not being acquainted with the arts, could not express what they knew
nothing of. In a word, the Hebrew is to the Greek what the language
of a pedant is to that of an academic.

[58] Ezek. xviii. 20.

[59] The opinion of Ezekiel was at length the prevailing one of the
synagogue; not but that there were always some Jews who, though they
believed in a state of eternal punishment, yet believed at the same
time that God punished the sins of the fathers upon the children.
At present, indeed, they are punished even beyond the fiftieth
generation, and yet are in danger of eternal punishment. It may be
asked how the offsprings of those Jews who were not concerned in
putting Christ to death can be temporarily punished in the persons
of their children, who were as innocent as themselves. This temporal
punishment, or rather this manner of living, so different from all
other people, and of trading over the whole earth without having any
country of their own, cannot be considered as a punishment, compared
with what they are to expect hereafter on account of their unbelief,
and which they might avoid by a sincere repentance.

[60] Ezek. xx. 25.

[61] Those who have thought to discover the doctrine of hell and
heaven, such as it is now believed by us, in the Mosaic books, have
been strangely mistaken; their error is owing entirely to an idle
dispute about words: the Vulgate having translated the Hebrew word
_Sheol_, the pit, by the Latin word _infernum_, and this latter
having been rendered in French by _enfer_, hell, they have taken
occasion from this equivocal translation to establish a belief that
the ancient Hebrews had a notion of the _Hades_ and _Tartarus_ of the
Greeks, known to other nations before them by different appellations.

We are told in the sixteenth chapter of Numbers, that the earth
opened her mouth and swallowed up Korah, Dathan, and Abiron, and they
and all that appertained to them went down alive into the pit, or
grave; now certainly there is nothing said in this passage concerning
the souls of these three persons, nor yet of the torments of hell,
nor of eternal punishments.

It is very extraordinary that the authors of the “_Dictionnaire
Encyclopédique_” under the word _hell_ (_enfer_) should say that the
ancient Hebrews believed in its existence. If this be true, there
would be an insurmountable contradiction in the Pentateuch; for why
should Moses have spoken of the punishment after death in one single
passage only, of all his works. On this occasion they quote the
thirty-second chapter of Deuteronomy; but after a mutilated manner.
The whole passage is as follows: “They have moved me to jealousy with
that which is not God, they have provoked me to anger with their
vanities, and I will move them to jealousy with those that are not
a people, I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation. For a
fire is kindled in my anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell;
and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the
foundations of the mountains. I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will
spend mine arrows upon them. They shall be burnt with hunger, and
devoured with burning heat and with bitter destruction; I will also
send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of
the dust.”

But have any or all of these expressions the least relation to the
idea of hell-torments? On the contrary, it seems as if these words
were purposely inserted to prove that our hell was unknown to the
ancient Jews.

The author of this article quotes also the following passage from
the twenty-fourth chapter of Job: “The eye of the adulterer waiteth
for the twilight, saying, no eye shall see me, and disguiseth his
face. In the dark they dig through houses which they had marked for
themselves in the daytime. They know not the light, for the morning
is to them as the shadow of death; if one know them, they are in the
terrors of the shadow of death. He is swift as the waters, their
portion is cursed in the earth, he beholdeth not the way of the
vineyards. Drought and heat consume the snow-waters, so doth the
grave those who have sinned.”

I quote these passages entire, otherwise it will be impossible to
form a true idea of them. But let me ask if there is the least
expression here from which one may conclude that Moses ever taught
the Jews the clear and simple doctrine of eternal rewards and
punishments?

Not to mention that the Book of Job has nothing to do with the Mosaic
law, there is great reason to believe that Job himself was not a
Jew; this is the opinion of St. Jerome in his “Hebrew Questions upon
Genesis.” The word Satan, which occurs in Job, was not known to the
Jews, nor is it anywhere to be found in the five books of Moses. This
name, as well as those of Gabriel and Raphael, were entirely unknown
to the Jews before their captivity in Babylon. It would appear, then,
that Job is very improperly quoted in this place.

But the last chapter of Isaiah is likewise brought in, where it is
said: “And it shall come to pass that from one new moon to another,
and from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship
before me, saith the Lord. And they shall go forth and look upon the
carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me; for their
worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched, and they
shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.”

Certainly, the casting out of these bodies to the view of all
passengers, even to abhorring, and their being eaten by worms, can
never mean that Moses taught the Jews the doctrine of the immortality
of the soul; and the words “the fire shall not be quenched” can as
little signify that the bodies so exposed to public view were to
suffer eternal torments in hell.

How can any one quote a passage in Isaiah to prove that the Jews in
the time of Moses had adopted the doctrine of the immortality of
the soul? According to the Hebrew computation, Isaiah prophesied
about the year of the world 3380. Moses lived about the year 2500;
therefore there was a distance of eight centuries between the one and
the other. Now it is an insult to common sense, a downright mockery,
thus to abuse the licence of quoting, by pretending to prove that a
writer was of this or that opinion from a passage in another writer
who lived eight hundred years after him, and who has not even made
any mention of such opinion. It is beyond contradiction that the
immortality of the soul, and rewards and punishments after death, are
clearly and positively expressed and declared in the New Testament,
and it is equally certain, that nothing concerning them is to be
found in any one part of the five books of Moses.

Notwithstanding that the Jews did afterwards embrace this doctrine,
they were far from having a proper idea of the spirituality of the
soul; they thought, in common with most other nations, that the
soul was an uncompounded aerial light substance that retained the
appearance of the body it had formerly animated; and hence came the
term apparition, manes of the dead. Several fathers of the Church
were of the same opinion. Tertullian, in his twenty-second chapter
“_De Anima_,” expresses himself thus: “_Definimus animam Dei flatu
natam, immortalem, corporalem, effigiatam, substantia simplicem_”;
that is, “We define the soul a substance, formed by the breath of
God; of an immortal, corporeal, figurative, and simple nature.”

St. Irenæus, in the thirty-fourth chapter of his second book,
says: “_Incorporales sunt animæ quantum ad comparationem mortalium
corporum_.” “Souls are incorporeal in comparison of mortal bodies.”
Adding, “Christ has taught us that the soul retains the image of the
body”; “_Caracterem corporum in quo adoptantur_,” etc. Christ does
not appear ever to have taught such a doctrine, and it is difficult
to understand what St. Irenæus means in this passage.

St. Hilarius, in his commentary on St. Matthew, is still more express
and positive; he roundly asserts the soul to have a corporeal
substance, “_Corpoream naturæ suæ substantiam sortiuntur_.”

St. Ambrose on Abraham, book ii. chap. viii., will have it that
there is nothing free from matter, unless it be the substance of the
Blessed Trinity.

These reverend fathers seem to have been very indifferent
philosophers; but there is the greatest reason to believe that their
divinity was in the main very sound, inasmuch as, notwithstanding
their ignorance of the incomprehensible nature of the soul, they
asserted it to be immortal, and endeavored to make it Christian.

We know that the soul is of a spiritual nature, but we do not at all
know what spirit is. We are very imperfectly acquainted with matter;
nor is it possible for us to have a distinct idea of what is not
matter. Hardly capable of understanding what effects our senses have,
we cannot of ourselves know anything of what surpasses the bound of
those senses. We carry some few words of our common language into the
inexplorable depths of metaphysics and divinity, in order to acquire
some slight idea of those things, which we could never conceive or
express; and we use those words as props to support the steps of our
feeble understandings in travelling through those unknown regions.

Thus we make use of the word spirit, which is the same as breath or
air, to express something which is not matter; and this word breath,
air, spirit, inspiring us insensibly with an idea of an uncompounded
and light substance, we still refine upon this as much as possible,
in order to obtain a proper conception of pure and simple
spirituality; but we shall never be able to obtain a distinct notion
of this, we do not even know what we say, when we pronounce the word
substance; in its literal signification, it signifies something
beneath, and thereby shows us that it is incomprehensible; for what
is meant by that which is beneath? The knowledge of the secrets of
God is not to be acquired in this life. Plunged as we are in mortal
obscurity, we fight against one another, and strike at random in the
darkness with which we are surrounded, without precisely knowing for
what we are fighting.

If mankind would consider all this with attention, every reasonable
person will be ready to conclude that we ought to have the greatest
indulgence for the opinions of others, and by our conduct endeavor to
merit the same from them.

The above remarks are not at all foreign to the principal point in
question, which is to know whether men are bound to tolerate one
another; inasmuch as by proving that in all times those of different
opinions have been alike mistaken, it appears to have been the duty
of all mankind in every age to treat each other with kindness and
forbearance.

[62] The doctrine of predestination is of long standing and
universal; we find it in Homer. Jupiter was desirous to save the
life of his son Sarpedon; but destiny had marked him for death, and
Jupiter was obliged to submit. Destiny was, with the philosophers,
either the necessary concatenation of causes and effects necessarily
produced by nature, or that same concatenation ordained by
Providence; the latter of which is most reasonable. We find the
whole system of fatality or predestination, comprised in this line
of Annæus Seneca: “_Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt_.” It has
always been acknowledged that God governs the universe by eternal,
universal and immutable laws; this truth gave rise to the many
unintelligible disputes concerning free-will, which had never been
defined before the great philosopher Locke arose, who has proved it
to be the power of acting. God bestows this power, and man, acting
freely according to the eternal decrees of Providence, is one of the
wheels of the great machine of the universe. Free-will has been a
subject of disputation from all antiquity; but no one until of late
times was ever persecuted on this subject. How horrible, how absurd
is it to have imprisoned and banished on account of this dispute a
Pompone d’Andilly, an Arnauld, a Nicole, a Sacy, and so many others
who were the shining lights of France!

[63] The theological romance of the Metempsychosis came from India,
a part of the world to which we are indebted for many more fables
than is generally believed. We find this doctrine explained by that
beautiful poet Ovid, in the twelfth book of his “_Metamorphoses_.”
It has been received in almost every part of the world, and has
everywhere met with its opposers; nevertheless, we do not find that
any priest among the ancients ever caused a disciple of Pythagoras to
be sent to prison.

[64] Neither the ancient Jews, the Egyptians, nor the Greeks, their
contemporaries, believed that the soul of man went to heaven after
death. The Jews thought that the sun and moon were placed some
leagues above us in the same circle, and that the firmament was a
thick and solid vault, that supported the weight of the waters,
which, however, sometimes ran out through the crevices in this
vault. The ancient Greeks placed the palace of their gods upon Mount
Olympus. And the abode of heroes after death was, in Homer’s time,
thought to be in an island beyond the ocean. This likewise was the
opinion of the Essenians.

After Homer, planets were assigned to the gods; but there was no more
reason for men to place a god in the moon than for the inhabitants
of the moon to place a god in our planet of the earth. Juno and Iris
had no other palaces assigned them but the clouds, where there was
no place to rest the soles of their feet. Among the Sabæans every
deity had its star. But as the stars are little suns, it would be
impossible to live there without partaking of the nature of fire.
Upon the whole, then, it is needless to inquire what the ancients
thought of heaven; since the best answer that can be given is, they
thought nothing about it.

[65] Matthew xxii. 1–13.

[66] St. Luke xiv.

[67] It was indeed very difficult, not to say impossible, for the
Jews to comprehend, without an immediate revelation, the ineyable
mystery of the incarnation of God, the Son of God. In the sixth
chapter of Genesis we find the sons of great men called “the sons of
God.” In like manner the royal Psalmist calls the tall cedars “the
cedars of God.” Samuel says, “The fear of God fell upon the people”;
that is, a violent fear seized them. A great tempest is called the
wind of the Lord, and Saul’s distemper, the melancholy of the Lord.
Nevertheless, the Jews seemed to have clearly understood that our
Saviour called Himself the Son of God in the proper sense of that
word; and if they looked upon this as a blasphemous expression, it
is an additional proof of their ignorance of the incarnation, and
of God, the Son of God, being sent upon earth for the redemption of
mankind.

[68] Matthew xxvi. 61–64.

[69] See that excellent book, entitled, “The Manual of the
Inquisition.”

[70] Now Bona, a town of Constantine in Africa. St. Augustine was
bishop of this see above forty years. It now belongs to Algiers.




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Original printed spelling and grammar are retained, with a few
exceptions noted below. Small caps are changed to all capital
letters. Italics _look like this_. The original page numbers have
been removed. The four illustrations were originally printed full
page, with their captions printed alone on an adjacent page. In
this edition, the captions are combined appropriately with the
illustrations, which are moved to locations near their original
locations, but between paragraphs of text. Scans of the original book
may be found at archive.org—search for “worksofvoltaire04voltiala”.

There were seventy level-one footnotes, some extending over several
pages, and nine level-two footnotes anchored within level-one
footnotes. The level-one footnotes were renumbered, and are moved to
the ends of their two sections—_Dialogue Between Madame de Maintenon
and Mdlle. de l’Enclos_ and _A Treatise on Toleration_. The nested
footnotes remain near their anchors.

Page 229: A matching right double quotation mark was added to the
phrase _“as God being their King, and exercising justice immediately
upon them, according to their transgression or obedience, found it
not necessary to reveal to them a doctrine which He reserved for
after-times, when He should no longer so directly govern His people_.







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