Chapter 11
For want of having studied or known the true principles of administration, the objects and rights of social life, the real interests of men and their reciprocal duties, princes, in almost every country, have become licentious, absolute, and perverse; and their subjects abject, wicked, and unhappy. It was to avoid the trouble of studying these important objects, that recourse was had to chimeras, which, far from remedying any thing, have hitherto only multiplied the evils of mankind, and diverted them from whatever is most essential to their happiness.
Does not the unjust and cruel manner in which so many nations are governed, manifestly furnish one of the strongest proofs, not only of the small effect produced by the fear of another life, but also of the non-existence of a Providence, busied with the fate of the human race? If there existed a good God, should we not be forced to admit, that in this life he strangely neglects the greater part of mankind? It would seem, that this God has created nations only to be the sport of the passions and follies of his representatives upon earth.
146.
By reading history with attention, we shall perceive that Christianity, at first weak and servile, established itself among the savage and free nations of Europe only intimating to their chiefs, that its religious principles favoured despotism and rendered them absolute. Consequently, we see barbarous princes suddenly converted; that is, we see them adopt, without examination, a system so favourable to their ambition, and use every art to induce their subjects to embrace it. If the ministers of this religion have since often derogated from their favourite principles, it is because the theory influences the conduct of the ministers of the Lord, only when it suits their temporal interests.
Christianity boasts of procuring men a happiness unknown to preceding ages. It is true, the Greeks knew not the _divine rights_ of tyrants or of the usurpers of the rights of their country. Under paganism, it never entered the head of any man to suppose, that it was against the will of heaven for a nation to defend themselves against a ferocious beast, who had the audacity to lay waste their possessions. The religion of the Christians was the first that screened tyrants from danger, by laying down as a principle that the people must renounce the legitimate defence of themselves. Thus Christian nations are deprived of the first law of nature, which orders man to resist evil, and to disarm whoever is preparing to destroy him! If the ministers of the church have often permitted the people to revolt for the interest of heaven, they have never permitted them to revolt for their own deliverance from real evils or known violences.
From heaven came the chains, that were used for fettering the minds of mortals. Why is the Mahometan every where a slave? Because his prophet enslaved him in the name of the Deity, as Moses had before subdued the Jews. In all parts of the earth, we see, that the first legislators were the first sovereigns and the first priests of the savages, to whom they gave laws.
Religion seems invented solely to exalt princes above their nations, and rivet the fetters of slavery. As soon as the people are too unhappy here below, priests are ready to silence them by threatening them with the anger of God. They are made to fix their eyes upon heaven, lest they should perceive the true causes of their misfortunes, and apply the remedies which nature presents.
147.
By dint of repeating to men, that the earth is not their true country; that the present life is only a passage; that they are not made to be happy in this world; that their sovereigns hold their authority from God alone, and are accountable only to him for the abuse of it; that it is not lawful to resist them, etc., priests have eternized the misgovernment of kings and the misery of the people; the interests of nations have been basely sacrificed to their chiefs. The more we consider the dogmas and principles of religion, the more we shall be convinced, that their sole object is the advantage of tyrants and priests, without regard to that of societies.
To mask the impotence of its deaf gods, religion has persuaded mortals, that iniquities always kindle the wrath of heaven. People impute to themselves alone the disasters that daily befal them. If nations sometimes feel the strokes of convulsed nature, their bad governments are but too often the immediate and permanent causes, from whence proceed the continual calamities which they are forced to endure. Are not the ambition, negligence, vices, and oppressions of kings and nobles, generally the causes of scarcity, beggary, wars, pestilences, corrupt morals, and all the multiplied scourges which desolate the earth?
In fixing men's eyes continually upon heaven; in persuading them, that all their misfortunes are effects of divine anger; in providing none but ineffectual and futile means to put an end to their sufferings, we might justly conclude, that the only object of priests was to divert nations from thinking about the true sources of their misery, and thus to render it eternal. The ministers of religion conduct themselves almost like those indigent mothers, who, for want of bread, sing their starved children to sleep, or give them playthings to divert their thoughts from afflicting hunger.
Blinded by error from their very infancy, restrained by the invisible bonds of opinion, overcome by panic terrors, their faculties blunted by ignorance, how should the people know the true causes of their wretchedness? They imagine that they can avert it by invoking the gods. Alas! do they not see, that it is, in the name of these gods, that they are ordered to present their throats to the sword of their merciless tyrants, in whom they might find the obvious cause of the evils under which they groan, and for whom they cease not to implore, in vain, the assistance of heaven?
Ye credulous people! In your misfortunes, redouble your prayers, offerings, and sacrifices; throng to your temples; fast in sack-cloth and ashes; bathe yourselves in your own tears; and above all, completely ruin yourselves to enrich your gods! You will only enrich their priests. The gods of heaven will be propitious, only when the gods of the earth shall acknowledge themselves, men, like you, and shall devote to your welfare the attention you deserve.
148.
Negligent, ambitious, and perverse Princes are the real causes of public misfortunes. Useless, unjust Wars depopulate the earth. Encroaching and despotic Governments absorb the benefits of nature. The rapacity of Courts discourages agriculture, extinguishes industry, produces want, pestilence and misery. Heaven is neither cruel nor propitious to the prayers of the people; it is their proud chiefs, who have almost always hearts of stone.
It is destructive to the morals of princes, to persuade them that they have God alone to fear, when they injure their subjects, or neglect their happiness. Sovereigns! It is not the gods, but your people, that you offend, when you do evil. It is your people and yourselves that you injure, when you govern unjustly.
In history, nothing is more common than to see Religious Tyrants; nothing more rare than to find equitable, vigilant, enlightened princes. A monarch may be pious, punctual in a servile discharge of the duties of his religion, very submissive and liberal to his priests, and yet at the same time be destitute of every virtue and talent necessary for governing. To princes, Religion is only an instrument destined to keep the people more completely under the yoke. By the excellent principles of religious morality, a tyrant who, during a long reign, has done nothing but oppress his subjects, wresting, from them the fruits of their labour, sacrificing them without mercy to his insatiable ambition,--a conqueror, who has usurped the provinces of others, slaughtered whole nations, and who, during his whole life, has been a scourge to mankind,--imagines his conscience may rest, when, to expiate so many crimes, he has wept at the feet of a priest, who generally has the base complaisance to console and encourage a robber, whom the most hideous despair would too lightly punish for the misery he has caused upon earth.
149.
A sovereign, sincerely devout, is commonly dangerous to the state. Credulity always supposes a contracted mind; devotion generally absorbs the attention, which a prince should pay to the government of his people. Obsequious to the suggestions of his priests, he becomes the sport of their caprices, the favourer of their quarrels, and the instrument and accomplice of their follies, which he imagines to be of the greatest importance. Among the most fatal presents, which religion has made the world, ought to be reckoned those devout and zealous monarchs, who, under an idea of working for the welfare of their subjects, have made it a sacred duty to torment, persecute, and destroy those, who thought differently from themselves. A bigot, at the head of an empire, is one of the greatest scourges. A single fanatical or knavish priest, listened to by a credulous and powerful prince, suffices to put a state in disorder.
In almost all countries, priests and pious persons are intrusted with forming the minds and hearts of young princes, destined to govern nations. What qualifications have instructors of this stamp! By what interests can they be animated? Full of prejudices themselves, they will teach their pupil to regard superstition, as most important and sacred; its chimerical duties, as most indispensable, intolerance and persecution, as the true foundation of his future authority. They will endeavour to make him a party leader, a turbulent fanatic, a tyrant; they will early stifle his reason, and forewarn him against the use of it; they will prevent truth from reaching his ears; they will exasperate him against true talents, and prejudice him in favour of contemptible ones; in short, they will make him a weak devotee, who will have no idea either of justice or injustice, nor of true glory, nor of true greatness, and who will be destitute of the knowledge and virtues necessary to the government of a great nation. Such is the plan of the education of a child, destined one day to create the happiness or misery of millions of men!
150.
Priests have ever shewn themselves the friends of despotism, and the enemies of public liberty: their trade requires abject and submissive slaves, who have never the audacity to reason. In an absolute government, who ever gains an ascendancy over the mind of a weak and stupid prince, becomes master of the state. Instead of conducting the people to salvation, priests have always conducted them to servitude.
In consideration of the supernatural titles, which religion has forged for the worst of princes, the latter have commonly united with priests, who, sure of governing by opinion the sovereign himself, have undertaken to bind the hands of the people and to hold them under the yoke. But the tyrant, covered with the shield of religion, in vain flatters himself that he is secure from every stroke of fate; opinion is a weak rampart against the despair of the people. Besides, the priest is a friend of the tyrant only while he finds his account in tyranny; he preaches sedition, and demolishes the idol he has made, when he finds it no longer sufficiently conformable to the interest of God, whom he makes to speak at his will, and who never speaks except according to his interests.
It will no doubt be said, that sovereigns, knowing all the advantages which religion procures them, are truly interested in supporting it with all their strength. If religious opinions are useful to tyrants, it is very evident, that they are useful to those, who govern by the laws of reason and equity. Is there then any advantage in exercising tyranny? Are princes truly interested in being tyrants? Does not tyranny deprive them of true power, of the love of the people, and of all safety? Ought not every reasonable prince to perceive, that the despot is a madman, and an enemy to himself? Should not every enlightened prince beware of flatterers, whose object is to lull him to sleep upon the brink of the precipice which they form beneath him?
151.
If sacerdotal flatteries succeed in perverting princes and making them tyrants; tyrants, on their part, necessarily corrupt both the great and the humble. Under an unjust ruler, void of goodness and virtue, who knows no law but his caprice, a nation must necessarily be depraved. Will this ruler wish to have, about his person, honest, enlightened, and virtuous men? No. He wants none but flatterers, approvers, imitators, slaves, base and servile souls, who conform themselves to his inclinations. His court will propagate the contagion of vice among the lower ranks. All will gradually become corrupted in a state, whose chief is corrupt. It was long since said, that "Princes seem to command others to do whatever they do themselves."
Religion, far from being a restraint upon sovereigns, enables them to indulge without fear or remorse, in acts of licentiousness as injurious to themselves, as to the nations whom they govern. It is never with impunity, that men are deceived. Tell a sovereign, that he is a god; he will very soon believe that he owes nothing to any one. Provided he is feared, he will care very little about being loved: he will observe neither rules, nor relations with his subjects, nor duties towards them. Tell this prince, that he is _accountable for his actions to God alone_, and he will soon act as if he were accountable to no one.
152.
An enlightened sovereign is he, who knows his true interests; who knows, that they are connected with the interests of his nation; that a prince cannot be great, powerful, beloved, or respected, while he commands only unhappy slaves; that equity, beneficence, and vigilance will give him more real authority over his people, than the fabulous titles, said to be derived from heaven. He will see, that Religion is useful only to priests, that it is useless to society and often troubles it, and that it ought to be restrained in order to be prevented from doing injury. Finally, he will perceive, that, to reign with glory, he must have good laws and inculcate virtue, and not found his power upon impostures and fallacies.
153.
The ministers of religion have taken great care to make of their God, a formidable, capricious, and fickle tyrant. Such a God was necessary to their variable interests. A God, who should be just and good, without mixture of caprice or perversity; a God, who had constantly the qualities of an honest man, or of a kind sovereign, would by no means suit his ministers. It is useful to priests, that men should tremble before their God, in order that they may apply to them to obtain relief from their fears. "No man is a hero before his valet de chambre." It is not surprising, that a God, dressed up by his priests so as to be terrible to others, should rarely impose upon them, or should have but very little influence upon their conduct. Hence, in every country, their conduct is very much the same. Under pretext of the glory of their God, they every where prey upon ignorance, degrade the mind, discourage industry, and sow discord. Ambition and avarice have at all times been the ruling passions of the priesthood. The priest every where rises superior to sovereigns and laws; we see him every where occupied with the interests of his pride, of his cupidity, and of his despotic, revengeful humour. In the room of useful and social virtues, he everywhere substitutes expiations, sacrifices, ceremonies, mysterious practices, in a word, inventions lucrative to himself and ruinous to others.
The mind is confounded and the reason is amazed upon viewing the ridiculous customs and pitiful means, which the ministers of the gods have invented in every country to purify souls, and render heaven favourable. Here they cut off part of a child's prepuce, to secure for him divine benevolence; there, they pour water upon his head, to cleanse him of crimes, which he could not as yet have committed. In one place, they command him to plunge into a river, whose waters have the power of washing away all stains; in another, he is forbidden to eat certain food, the use of which will not fail to excite the celestial wrath; in other countries, they enjoin upon sinful man to come periodically and confess his faults to a priest, who is often a greater sinner than himself, etc., etc., etc.
154.
What should we say of a set of empirics, who, resorting every day to a public place, should extol the goodness of their remedies, and vend them as infallible, while they themselves were full of the infirmities, which they pretend to cure? Should we have much confidence in the recipes of these quacks, though they stun us with crying, "take our remedies, their effects are infallible; they cure every body; except us." What should we afterwards think, should those quacks spend their lives in complaining, that their remedies never produced the desired effect upon the sick, who take them? In fine, what idea should we form of the stupidity of the vulgar, who, notwithstanding these confessions, should not cease to pay dearly for remedies, the inefficacy of which every thing tends to prove? Priests resemble these alchymists, who boldly tell us, they have the secret of making gold, while they have scarcely clothes to cover their nakedness.
The ministers of religion incessantly declaim against the corruption of the age, and loudly complain of the little effect of their lessons, while at the same time they assure us, that religion is the _universal remedy_, the true _panacea_ against the wickedness of mankind. These priests are very sick themselves, yet men continue to frequent their shops, and to have faith in their divine antidotes, which, by their own confession, never effect a cure!
155.
Religion, especially with the moderns, has tried to identify itself with Morality, the principles of which it has thereby totally obscured. It has rendered men unsociable by duty, and forced them to be inhuman to everyone who thought differently from themselves. Theological disputes, equally unintelligible to each of the enraged parties, have shaken empires, caused revolutions, been fatal to sovereigns, and desolated all Europe. These contemptible quarrels have not been extinguished even in rivers of blood. Since the extinction of paganism, the people have made it a religious principle to become outrageous, whenever any opinion is advanced which their priests think contrary to _sound doctrine_. The sectaries of a religion, which preaches, in appearance, nothing but charity, concord, and peace, have proved themselves more ferocious than cannibals or savages, whenever their divines excited them to destroy their brethren. There is no crime, which men have not committed under the idea of pleasing the Divinity, or appeasing his wrath.
The idea of a terrible God, whom we paint to ourselves as a despot, must necessarily render his subjects wicked. Fear makes only slaves, and slaves are cowardly, base, cruel, and think every thing lawful, in order to gain the favour or escape the chastisements of the master whom they fear. Liberty of thinking alone can give men humanity and greatness of soul. The notion of a tyrant-god tends only to make them abject, morose, quarrelsome, intolerant slaves.
Every religion, which supposes a God easily provoked, jealous, revengeful, punctilious about his rights or the etiquette with which he is treated;--a God little enough to be hurt by the opinions which men can form of him;--a God unjust enough to require that we have uniform notions of his conduct; a religion which supposes such a God necessarily becomes restless, unsociable, and sanguinary; the worshippers of such a God would never think, that they could, without offence, forbear hating and even destroying every one, who is pointed out to them, as an adversary of this God; they would think, that it would be to betray the cause of their celestial Monarch, to live in friendly intercourse with rebellious fellow-citizens. If we love what God hates, do we not expose ourselves to his implacable hatred?
Infamous persecutors, and devout men-haters! Will you never discern the folly and injustice of your intolerant disposition? Do you not see, that man is no more master of his religious opinions, his belief or unbelief, than of the language, which he learns from infancy? To punish a man for his errors, is it not to punish him for having been educated differently from you? If I am an unbeliever, is it possible for me to banish from my mind the reasons that have shaken my faith? If your God gives men leave to be damned, what have you to meddle with? Are you more prudent and wise, than this God, whose rights you would avenge?
156.
There is no devotee, who does not, according to his temperament, hate, despise, or pity the adherents of a sect, different from his own. The _established_ religion, which is never any other than that of the sovereign and the armies, always makes its superiority felt in a very cruel and injurious manner by the weaker sects. As yet there is no true toleration upon earth; men every where adore a jealous God, of whom each nation believes itself the friend, to the exclusion of all others.
Every sect boasts of adoring alone the true God, the universal God, the Sovereign of all nature. But when we come to examine this Monarch of the world, we find that every society, sect, party, or religious cabal, makes of this powerful God only a pitiful sovereign, whose care and goodness extend only to a small number of his subjects, who pretend that they alone have the happiness to enjoy his favours, and that he is not at all concerned about the others.
The founders of religions, and the priests who support them, evidently proposed to separate the nations, whom they taught, from the other nations; they wished to separate their own flock by distinguishing marks; they gave their followers gods, who were hostile to the other gods; they taught them modes of worship, dogmas and ceremonies apart; and above all, they persuaded them, that the religion of others was impious and abominable. By this unworthy artifice, the ambitious knaves established, their usurpation over the minds of their followers, rendered them unsociable, and made them regard with an evil eye all persons who had not the same mode of worship and the same ideas as they had. Thus it is, that Religion has shut up the heart and for ever banished from it the affection that man ought to have for his fellow-creature. Sociability, indulgence, humanity, those first virtues of all morality, are totally incompatible with religious prejudices.
157.
Every national religion is calculated to make man vain, unsociable, and wicked; the first step towards humanity is to permit every one peaceably to embrace the mode of worship and opinions, which he judges to be right. But this conduct cannot be pleasing to the ministers of religion, who wish to have the right of tyrannizing over men even in their thoughts.
Blind and bigoted princes! You hate and persecute heretics, and order them to execution, because you are told, that these wretches displease God. But do you not say, that your God is full of goodness? How then can you expect to please him by acts of barbarity, which he must necessarily disapprove? Besides, who has informed you, that their opinions displease your God? Your priests? But, who assures you, that your priests are not themselves deceived or wish to deceive you? The same priests? Princes! It is then upon the hazardous word of your priests, that you commit the most atrocious crimes, under the idea of pleasing the Divinity!
158.