Part 30

(17.) All our health, all our strength, and our entire intellect are not more than sufficient in thinking of mankind or of our smallest interest; yet propriety and custom seem to require of us only to think of God when we are so situated that we have barely so much reason left as to enable us to say we are not totally without any.

(18.) A great man falls in a swoon, as it was thought, but is discovered to be dead,[859] another great man wastes away gradually, and daily loses something of himself before he expires; such lessons are dreadful, but useless. These circumstances, though so remarkable and so different from each other, are not noticed, affect nobody, and are no more heeded than the fall of a leaf, or the fading of a flower; people only want their posts vacant through their deaths, or they inquire if they have been filled up, and who are their successors.

(19.) Is there so much goodness, fidelity, and justice among men, that we should place unlimited confidence in them, and not, at least, wish for a God to exist to whom we might appeal from their injustice, and who might protect us against their persecutions and treacheries.

(20.) If freethinkers are dazzled and confounded by the grandeur and sublimity of religion, they are no longer freethinkers, but shallow geniuses and little minds;[860] if, on the contrary, they are repelled by its humbleness and simplicity, we must allow them to be real freethinkers, far stronger-minded than so many great men, enlightened and highly cultivated, who nevertheless were confirmed believers, such as the Leos, the Basils, the Jeromes, the Augustines.[861]

(21.) Certain people who have never read the fathers or doctors of the Church are frightened at their very names, and declare their writings dull, dry, pious, cold, and perhaps pedantic. But how astonished would all these people be who have formed such an untrue idea of the Fathers, if they found in their writings a better style, more delicacy, polish, and intelligence, a greater warmth of expression and strength of reasoning, sharper traits and more natural charms than are to be met with in most of the modern books read by connoisseurs, which increase the reputation and conceit of their authors. What a satisfaction to love religion and to see men of great talent and solid learning believe in it, assert its truth, and explain it! And whether you consider extent of knowledge, depth and penetration, the principles of pure philosophy, their application and development, the correctness of the conclusions arrived at, nobleness of expression, beauty of morals and sentiments, no profane author can be compared to Saint Augustine, except Plato and Cicero.

(22.) Man who is born a liar cannot relish the plainness and simplicity of truth; he is altogether hankering after appearance[862] and ornament. He has not made truth, for it comes from Heaven ready-made, as it were, in all its perfection, and man loves nothing but his own productions, Fable and Fiction. Observe the common people; they will invent a tale, add to it, and exaggerate it through coarseness or folly; ask even the most honest man if he always speaks the truth, if he does not sometimes discover that, either through vanity or levity, he has disguised the truth; and if to embellish a story he does not often add some circumstance to set it off? An accident happened to-day, and almost, as it were, under our eyes; a hundred people have seen it, and all relate it in as many different ways; and yet another person may come, and if you will only listen to him, he shall tell it in a way in which it has not yet been told. How then can I believe facts which are so old and took place several centuries ago? What reliance can I place on the gravest historians, and what becomes of history itself. Was Cæsar ever murdered in the midst of the senate? and has there ever been such a person as Cæsar? “Why do you draw such an inference?” youʼll say; “why express such doubts and ask such questions?” You laugh, you do not think my question worthy of an answer, and I imagine you are quite right. But suppose the book which gives us an account of Cæsar was not a profane history, written by men who are liars, and had not been discovered by chance among certain manuscripts, some true, and others suspicious; but that, on the contrary, it had been inspired, and bore all the evidence of being holy and divine; that for nearly two thousand years it had been kept by a large society of men, who all this while would not allow the least alteration to be made in it, and held it as part of their creed to preserve it in all its purity; that these men, by their own principles, were indispensably compelled to believe religiously all the transactions related in this volume, whenever mention was made of Cæsar and his dictatorship; own it, Lucilius, would you then question whether there ever was such a man as Cæsar?

(23.) All kinds of music are not suited to praise God and to be heard in the sanctuary; all methods of philosophy are not fit for discoursing worthily of God, His power, the principles of His operations, and His mysteries. The more abstracted and ideal this philosophy is, the more vain and useless is it in explaining these things, which merely require common sense to be understood up to a certain point, and which cannot be explained farther. To pretend to give an account of the very essence of God, of His perfections, and, if I dare say so, of His actions, is indeed going beyond the ancient philosophers, beyond the apostles themselves, and the first teachers of the Gospel, but it is not arguing so much to the point as they did; for people may dig for a long time, and deeply, without discovering the sources of truth. If once people set aside such words as goodness, mercy, justice, and omnipotence, which are apt to form in their minds such lovely and majestic ideas of the divinity, let them afterwards strain their imagination as much as possible, they will find nothing but dry, barren, and senseless expressions; they must admit wild and empty thoughts, contrary to all ordinary ideas, or, at least, subtle and ingenious thoughts, by which their religion will be weakened according as they improve in the knowledge of these new metaphysics.[863]

(24.) What excesses will a man not commit through his zeal for a religion, of the truth of which he is not entirely convinced, and which he practises so badly?

(25.) That same religion which men will defend so zealously and with so much warmth against those of a different persuasion, they themselves corrupt, by joining to it their own peculiar ideas; they add or take from it numberless things, which are often very material, according as it best suits their convenience, and remain steadfastly and firmly attached to the form they have given it themselves. So that, though it may be commonly said of a nation that it has but one manner of worship and one religion, it truly and really has many religions, for almost every individual has one of his own.

(26.) Two sorts of men flourish in courts and reign there by turns, freethinkers and hypocrites; the first gaily, openly, without art or disguise, the second cunningly and by intrigue. These latter are a hundred times more enamoured of fortune than the first, and are excessively jealous of it; they wish to sway it, to be the sole possessors of it, share it among themselves, and exclude everybody else. Dignities, posts, offices, benefices, pensions, honours, everything belongs to them and to none but them; the rest of mankind are unworthy of these things, and they wonder how others, who are not their creatures, can be so impudent as to expect them. A company of persons in masks enter a ball-room; when it is their turn they dance, they dance with each other, dance again and continue to dance, but only among themselves and with no other person, however worthy of their regard; people grow annoyed and tired with looking on whilst these masked persons dance because they are not dancing themselves; some among them murmur, but the wisest make up their mind and go home.[864]

(27.) There are two sorts of freethinkers; those who are really so, or at least believe themselves so, and the hypocrites or pretended pious people, who are unwilling to be thought freethinkers; the latter are the best.

A man who pretends to be pious either does not believe there is a God, or makes a jest of Him; let us say of him politely, that he does not believe there is a God.

(28.) If every religion stands in respectful fear of God, what shall we think of those persons who dare affront Him in His representative on earth, the Prince?

(29.) Were we assured that the secret intention of the ambassadors who came lately from Siam was to persuade the most Christian king to renounce Christianity, and admit their Talapoins[865] into his kingdom to creep into our houses to convert to their religion our wives, our children, and ourselves, by their books as well as by their conversations, to allow them to erect pagodas in the midst of our towns to worship their brazen images, with what derision, what strange scorn, should we hear such an absurd story told? And yet we sail six thousand leagues to bring over to Christianity the Indies, the kingdoms of Siam, China, and Japan, and seriously to make to all these nations certain proposals, which, in their eyes, must appear as foolish and ridiculous. Yet they tolerate our friars and priests, and sometimes listen to them, allow them to build churches, and perform all their missionary duties. From whence proceeds such a behaviour, so different in them and us? May it not be caused by the force of truth?

(30.) It is not proper for all men to profess to give alms and to have the common beggars of the parish daily crowding at their doors, and not allow one to go home empty-handed. Who is not aware that there is a more concealed wretchedness, which may be relieved, either immediately and out of a manʼs own pocket, or at least by the intercession of others? In the same manner all persons are not qualified for the pulpit, nor fit to expound the Word of God in public, either as missionaries, or teachers; but what man does not, some time or other, meet a freethinker, whom he might attempt to reclaim and bring back to the fold by gentle and insinuating converse about the submission due to the teachings of the church? Should a man make but one convert in the whole course of his life, he cannot be said to have lived in vain, or to have been a useless burden on this earth.

(31.) There are two worlds: one we dwell in but a short time, and which we must leave never to return; another, to which we must shortly go, there to abide for ever. Interest, authority, friends, a great reputation, and riches are most useful in the first; an indifference to all these things is most useful for the next. It is a mere question of choice.

(32.) A man who lives a day lives an age; always the same sun, the same earth, the same world, the same sensations; to-day will precisely be like to-morrow; we ought to feel some curiosity to die, for then we are no longer a body, but only a spirit. However, man, though so impatiently hunting after novelties, is not anxious to die; restless and tired of everything, he is not tired of life, and would, perhaps, be satisfied to live for ever. What he sees of death makes a deeper impression on him than what he knows of it; sickness, pain, and the grave, make him dislike the knowledge of another world; and the strongest religious motives are needed to convert him.

(33.) If Providence had left it to our choice to die or to live for ever, we should carefully consider how dismal it is for a man to see no end to his poverty, servitude, annoyance, or sickness; or, at best to enjoy riches, grandeur, pleasures, and health, only in time to behold them invariably change to their opposite conditions; and thus to be tossed to and fro between happiness and misery, and, therefore, we should be greatly perplexed; but Nature has settled it for us, and saves us the trouble of making a choice, as it has imposed on us the necessity of dying, which is, moreover, alleviated by religion.

(34.) If my religion be false, it is a snare which I must own is as well laid as can be imagined, so that it is impossible not to run into it and be caught. What dignity! what splendour in its mysteries! what a sequence and connection in all the several parts of its doctrine! how superb are its reasonings! how pure and innocent is its morality! how irresistible and overwhelming is the testimony of so many millions of the wisest and most thoughtful men then in existence, who during three centuries came one after another, and whom a feeling of the same truth so constantly supported in exiles, dungeons, torture, and even in death itself. Take any history, open it, and commence with the beginning of the world, with its creation; was there ever anything like it? Could the whole power of God Himself contrive anything better to deceive me? How can I avoid it? Whither should I run, or throw myself? I do not say to find anything better, but anything to be compared to it? If I must perish, it is in this way I will perish! I should feel more inclined to deny the existence of a God than to connect Him with such a plausible and complete deceit. But I have examined it thoroughly, and yet feel I cannot be an atheist; I am, therefore, forced back and irresistibly drawn to my religion, and this is my final resolution.

(35.) Religion is either true or false; if a fiction, a religious man, a Carthusian friar or a hermit, only lose threescore years, but run no other risk. But if based on truth itself, then a vicious man must feel most wretched; and I tremble at the very thought of the evils he prepares for himself; my mind cannot conceive them, and words fail me to express my feelings. Even if the truth of religion could be proved with less certainty than it can, man could not do better than be virtuous.

(36.) Those persons who dare deny the existence of a Supreme Being hardly deserve that a man should try and prove it to them; or, at least, that he should argue more seriously with them than I have done hitherto; they are so ignorant that they are unable to understand the clearest principles, and the truest and most natural inferences; yet I am willing to offer for their perusal the following lines, provided they do not imagine that it is all that can be said upon a subject of which the truth is so obvious.

Forty years ago I did not exist,[866] neither was it in my power ever to exist, any more than it is in my power to cease from existing, though I exist at present. My existence, therefore, had its beginning, and is now continued through the influence of something which exists without me, will subsist after me, and is better and more powerful than I am. Now, if that something is not God, I should like to know what it is.[867]

I exist; but perhaps this existence of mine proceeds from the power of a universal nature, which has been ever the same, such as we behold it, from all eternity.[868] But this nature is either only spiritual, and then it is God, or it is material, and, consequently, could not create that part of my being which is spiritual; or else it is composed of spirit and matter; and then, that part of nature which people say is spirit, is what I call God.

Again, perhaps you will add that what I call my spiritual being is nothing but a part of matter, subsisting through the force of a universal nature, which also is matter, which always was and ever will be such as we see it now, and which is not God.[869] But, at least, you must grant that what I call my spiritual being, let it be what it will, is something which thinks, and that if it is matter, it is cogitative matter; for no one will persuade me that, whilst I am thus arguing, there is not something within me which thinks. Now if this something owes its being and its preservation to a universal nature which always was and ever will be, and which it acknowledges as its primary cause, it necessarily follows that this universal nature either thinks, or is more noble and perfect than that which thinks; and if such a nature is matter, then we must come to the conclusion that it is a universal thinking matter, or one which is nobler and more perfect than that which does think.

I proceed further, and say, that such a supposed matter, if it be not chimerical but real, may be perceived by some of our senses, and that, if it cannot be discovered in itself, it may be known, at least, in the multiple arrangement of its different parts, through which all bodies are constituted, or differ. Therefore matter is itself all these different bodies; now since, according to our supposition, matter is a being which thinks, or is better than that which thinks, it follows that it is such in some of these bodies at least, and, consequently, that it thinks in stones, in minerals, in the earth, in the sea, in myself, who am but a body, as well as in all its other component parts; I am then beholden for this something, which thinks within me, and which I call my spiritual being, to all these gross, earthly, and corporeal parts, which all together make up this universal matter, or this visible world, which is an absurdity.

If, on the contrary, this universal nature, let it be what it will, is not all these bodies, nor any of these bodies, it follows that it is not matter, and cannot be perceived by any of our senses; and if, notwithstanding this, it possesses the faculty of thinking, or is more perfect than that which does think, I still conclude it is spiritual, or something better and more perfect than spiritual. Now if that which thinks within me, and which I call my spiritual being, not finding its principle within itself, and much less in matter, as has been just now demonstrated, is forced to acknowledge this universal nature to be the first cause, the only origin of its existence, then I will not dispute about words; but this first cause, the origin of all spiritual beings, which is itself spiritual, or better than spiritual, is what I call God.

In a word, I think, therefore, there is a God, for that which thinks within me is not derived from myself, since it was no more in my power to bestow it on myself at first as it is now to keep it for one single moment. I did not receive it from a material being superior to me, since it is impossible for matter to be superior to that which thinks; I must, therefore, have received it from a being superior to me, and consequently not material; and that superior being is God.

(37.) From the inconsistency of a cogitative universal nature with anything that is material, must necessarily be inferred, that any particular thinking being cannot admit within itself anything material; for though a universal thinking being does in its idea include infinitely more grandeur, power, independence, and capacity than a particular thinking being, yet it does not imply a greater inconsistency with matter, it being impossible for this inconsistency to be greater in the one case than in the other, because it is, as it were, infinite in both; and it is as impossible for the thinking principle within me to be matter, as it is to conceive that God should be matter; as God, therefore, is a spirit, so my soul is also a spirit.

(38.) I am not aware whether a dog has the faculties of selection, memory, love, fear, imagination, and thought. When, therefore, I am told that those actions in a dog are not the effect of either passion or sentiment, but proceed naturally and necessarily from a mechanical disposition caused by the multiple organization of the material parts of his body, I may, perhaps, acquiesce in this doctrine. But as for me, I think, and certainly know that I think.[870] Now, if we consider any organisation of material parts, namely, any space with all its dimensions, length, breadth, and depth, and which can be divided in all these directions, what proportion is there between such a space and cogitation?

(39.) If all things are matter, and if thought within me, as well as in other men, be no more than an effect of the arrangement of matter, how came any other idea, but that of material things into this world? Is matter able to produce so pure, so simple, so immaterial an idea as we have of spirit? How can matter be the origin of that which rejects and excludes such an idea from its very being? How can it be the cogitative principle in man, that is, that principle which convinces man he is not merely matter?

(40.) There are beings of short duration, because they are made up of things varying much in their nature, and destructive to one another; there are others more lasting, because they are simpler, but they perish at last, being made up of several parts, into which they are divisible. That which thinks within me must naturally be permanent, as it is a pure being, free from all mixture and composition; there is no reason why it should perish; for what can corrupt or divide a simple being, in which are no parts?

(41.) The soul sees colour through the organ of the eye, and hears sounds through the organ of the ear; but it may cease either from seeing or hearing when those senses or those objects are absent, and yet not cease from existing, because it is not exactly the soul that sees or hears; it is only that which thinks. Now, how can it cease from being such? Not for want of organs, since it has been proved it is not matter; nor for want of objects, whilst there is a God and eternal truths; it is therefore incorruptible.

(42.) I cannot conceive the annihilation of a soul which God has filled with the idea of His infinite and all-perfect being.

(43.) Observe, Lucilius,[871] this spot of ground, which for neatness and ornament exceeds all other neighbouring estates; here are plots with the finest lakes and fountains, and endless hedge-rows of trees which shelter you against the north winds; on this side is a thick grove where the sun cannot penetrate; on the other side you have a beautiful view; a little lower, the Yvette or the Lignon,[872] which were running modestly between willows and poplars, have now become a canal quite bricked in; elsewhere long and cool avenues lead to the country, and foreshadow what the mansion will be, which is surrounded by water. Will you say, “This is an effect of chance,” and suppose that all these admirable things met together accidentally? No, certainly; on the contrary, you observe that everything is well planned and arranged, and displays good taste and much intelligence. I agree with you, and take the liberty to add that I suppose it to be the residence of one of those men, who from the very minute they get into office, send for a Le Nôtre[873] to draw plans and take measurements. Yet what is this piece of ground so exquisitely laid out, on which a most skilful artist has employed all his science in order to embellish it, if the whole earth is but an atom suspended in the air, and if you will but listen to what I am going to say?