perceive the fall of Adam, prepared by the Almighty himself anterior
to the creation of the world. Was it necessary that the Divinity
should entertain a great desire that man might sin, since he would
thereby have an opportunity of providing the means of making him
sinful? In effect, it was the Devil who, in process of time, covered
with the skin of a serpent, solicited the mother of the human race to
disobey God, and involve her husband in her rebellion. But the
difficulty is not removed by these inventions. If Satan, in the time
he was an angel, lived in innocence, and merited the good will of his
Maker, how came God to suffer him to entertain ideas of pride,
ambition, and rebellion? How came this angel of light so blind as not
to see the folly of such an enterprise? Did he not know that his
Creator was all-powerful? Who was it that tempted Satan? What reason
had the Divinity for selecting him to be the object of his fury, the
destroyer of his projects, the enemy of his power? If pride be a sin,
if the idea itself of rebellion is the greatest of crimes, _sin was,
then, anterior to sin_, and Lucifer offended God, even in his state of
purity; for, in fine, a being pure, innocent, agreeable to his God,
who had all the perfections of which a creature could be susceptible,
ought to be exempt from ambition, pride, and folly. We ought, also, to
say as much for our first parent, who, notwithstanding his wisdom, his
innocence, and the knowledge infused into him by God himself, could
not prevent himself from falling into the temptation of a demon.
Hence, in every shift, the priests invariably make God the author of
sin. It was God who tempted Lucifer before the creation of the world;
Lucifer, in his turn, became the tempter of man and the cause of all
the evil our race suffers. It appears, therefore, that God created
both angels and men to give them an opportunity of sinning.
It is easy to perceive the absurdity of this system, to save which the
theologians have invented another still more absurd, that it might
become the foundation of all their religious revelations, and by means
of which they idly imagine they can fully justify the divine
providence. The system of truth supposes the _free will_ of man--that
he is his own master, capable of doing good or ill, and of directing
his own plans. At the words _free will_, I already perceive, Madam,
that you tremble, and doubtless anticipate a metaphysical
dissertation. Rest assured of the contrary; for I flatter myself that
the question will be simplified and rendered clear, I shall not merely
say for you, but for all your sex who are not resolved to be wilfully
blind.
To say that man is a free agent is to detract from the power of the
Supreme Being; it is to pretend that God is not the master of his own
will; it is to advance that a weak creature can, when it pleases him,
revolt against his Creator, derange his projects, disturb the order
which he loves, render his labors useless, afflict him with chagrin,
cause him sorrow, act with effect against him, and arouse his anger
and his passions. Thus, at the first glance, you perceive that this
principle gives rise to a crowd of absurdities. If God is the friend
of order, every thing performed by his creatures would necessarily
conduce to the maintenance of this order, because otherwise the divine
will would fail to have its effect. If God has plans, they must of
necessity be always executed; if man can afflict his God, man is the
master of this God's happiness, and the league he has formed with the
Devil is potent enough to thwart the plans of the Divinity. In a word,
if man is free to sin, God is no longer Omnipotent.
In reply, we are told that God, without detriment to his Omnipotence,
might make man a free agent, and that this liberty is a benefit by
which God places man in a situation where he may merit the heavenly
bounty; but, on the other hand, this liberty likewise exposes him to
encounter God's hatred, to offend him, and to be overwhelmed by
infinite sufferings. From this I conclude that this liberty is _not_ a
benefit, and that it evidently is inconsistent with divine goodness.
This goodness would be more real if men had always sufficient
resolution to do what is pleasing to God, conformably to order, and
conducive to the happiness of their fellow-creatures. If men, in
virtue of their liberty, do things contrary to the will of God, God,
who is supposed to have the prescience of foreseeing all, ought to
have taken measures to prevent men from abusing their liberty; if he
foresaw they would sin, he ought to have given them the means of
avoiding it; if he could not prevent them from doing ill, he has
consented to the ill they have done; if he has consented, he should
not be offended; if he is offended, or if he punish them for the evil
they have done with his permission, he is unjust and cruel; if he
suffer them to rush on to their destruction, he is bound afterwards to
take them to himself; and he cannot with reason find fault with them
for the abuse of their liberty, in being deceived or seduced by the
objects which he himself had placed in their way to seduce them, to
tempt them, and to determine their wills to do evil.[4]
[4] See what Bayle says, _Dict. Crit._, art. _Origene_, Rem. E., art.
_Pauliciens_, Rem. E., F., M., and tom. iij. of the _Reponses aux
Questions d'un Provincial_.
What would you say of a father who should give to his children, in the
infancy of age, and when they were without experience, the liberty of
satisfying their disordered appetites, till they should convince
themselves of their evil tendency? Would not such a parent be in the
right to feel uneasy at the abuse which they should make of their
liberty which he had given them? Would it not be accounted malice in
this parent, who should have foreseen what was to happen, not to have
furnished his children with the capacity of directing their own
conduct so as to avoid the evils they might be assailed with? Would it
not show in him the height of madness were he to punish them for the
evil which he had done, and the chagrin which they occasioned him?
Would it not be to himself that we should ascribe the sottishness and
wickedness of his children?
You see, then, the points of view under which this system of men's
free will shows us the Deity. This free will becomes a present the
most dangerous, since it puts man in the condition of doing evil that
is truly frightful. We may thence conclude that this system, far from
justifying God, makes him capable of malice, imprudence, and
injustice. But this is to overturn all our ideas of a being perfectly,
nay, infinitely wise and good, consenting to punish his creatures for
sins which he gave them the power of committing, or, which is the
same, suffering the Devil to inspire them with evil. All the
subtilties of theology have really only a tendency to destroy the very
notions itself inculcates concerning the Divinity. This theology is
evidently the tub of the Danaides.
It is a fact, however, that our theologians have imagined expedients
to support their ruinous suppositions. You have often heard mention
made of _predestination_ and _grace_--terrible words, which constantly
excite disputes among us, for which reason would be forced to blush if
Christians did not make it a duty to renounce reason, and which
contests are attended with consequences very dangerous to society. But
let not this surprise you; these false and obscure principles have
even among the theologians produced dissensions; and their quarrels
would be indifferent if they did not attach more importance to them
than they really deserve.
But to proceed. The system of predestination supposes that God, in his
eternal secrets, has resolved that some men should be elected, and,
being thus his favorites, receive special grace. By this grace they
are supposed to be made agreeable to God, and meet for eternal
happiness. But then an infinite number of others are destined to
perdition, and receive not the grace necessary to eternal salvation.
These contradictory and opposite propositions make it pretty evident
that the system is absurd. It makes God, a being infinitely perfect
and good, a partial tyrant, who has created a vast number of human
beings to be the sport of his caprice and the victims of his
vengeance. It supposes that God will punish his creatures for not
having received that grace which he did not deign to give them; it
presents this God to us under traits so revolting that the theologians
are forced to avow that the whole is a profound mystery, into which
the human mind cannot penetrate. But if man is not made to lift his
inquisitive eye on this frightful mystery, that is to say, on this
astonishing absurdity, which our teachers have idly endeavored to
square to their views of Deity, or to reconcile the atrocious
injustice of their God with his infinite goodness, by what right do
they wish us to adore this mystery which they would compel us to
believe, and to subscribe to an opinion that saps the divine goodness
to its very foundation? How do they reason upon a dogma, and quarrel
with acrimony about a system of which even themselves can comprehend
nothing?
The more you examine religion, the more occasion you will have to be
convinced that those things which our divines call _mysteries_ are
nothing else but the difficulties with which they are themselves
embarrassed, when they are unable to avoid the absurdities into which
their own false principles necessarily involve them. Nevertheless,
this word is not enough to impose upon us; the reverend doctors do not
themselves understand the things about which they incessantly speak.
They invent words from an inability to explain things, and they give
the name of _mysteries_ to what they comprehend no better than
ourselves.
All the religions in the world are founded upon predestination, and
all the pretended revelations among men, as has been already pointed
out to you, inculcate this odious dogma, which makes Providence an
unjust mother-in-law, who shows a blind preference for some of her
children to the prejudice of all the others. They make God a tyrant,
who punishes the inevitable faults to which he has impelled them, or
into which he has allowed them to be seduced. This dogma, which served
as the foundation of Paganism, is now the grand pivot of the Christian
religion, whose God should excite no less hatred than the most wicked
divinities of idolatrous people. With such notions, is it not
astonishing that this God should appear, to those who meditate on his
attributes, an object sufficiently terrible to agitate the
imagination, and to lead some to indulge in dangerous follies?
The dogma of another life serves also to exculpate the Deity from
these apparent injustices or aberrations, with which he might
naturally be accused. It is pretended that it has pleased him to
distinguish his friends on earth, seeing he has amply provided for
their future happiness in an abode prepared for their souls. But, as I
believe I have already hinted, these proofs that God makes some good,
and leaves others wicked, either evince injustice on his part, at
least temporary, or they contradict his omnipotence. If God can do all
things, if he is privy to all the thoughts and actions of men, what
need has he of any proofs? If he has resolved to give them grace
necessary to save them, has he not assured them they will not perish?
If he is unjust and cruel, this God is not immutable, and belies his
character; at least for a time he derogates from the perfections which
we should expect to find in him. What would you think of a king, who,
during a particular time, would discover to his favorites traits the
most frightful, in order that they might incur his disgrace, and who
should afterwards insist on their believing him a very good and
amiable man, to obtain his favor again? Would not such a prince be
pronounced wicked, fanciful, and tyrannical? Nevertheless, this
supposed prince might be pardoned by some, if for his own interest,
and the better to assure himself of the attachment of his friends, he
might give them some smiles of his favor. It is not so God, who knows
all, who can do all, who has nothing to fear from the dispositions of
his creatures. From all these reasonings, we may see that the Deity,
whom the priests have conjured up, plays a great game, very
ridiculous, very unjust, on the supposition that he tries his
servants, and that he allows them to suffer in this world, to prepare
them for another. The theologians have not failed to discover motives
in this conduct of God which they can as readily justify; but these
pretended motives are borrowed from the omnipotence of this being, by
his absolute power over his creatures, to whom he is not obliged to
render an account of his actions; but especially in this theology,
which professes to justify God, do we not see it make him a despot and
tyrant more hateful than any of his creatures?
I am, &c.
LETTER V.
Of the Immortality of the Soul, and of the Dogma of another Life.
We, have now, Madam, come to the examination of the dogma of a future
life, in which it is supposed that the Divinity, after causing men to
pass through the temptations, the trials, and the difficulties of
this life, for the purpose of satisfying himself whether they are
worthy of his love or his hatred, will bestow the recompenses or
inflict the chastisements which they deserved. This dogma, which is
one of the capital points of the Christian religion, is founded on a
great many hypotheses or suppositions, which we have already glanced
at, and which we have shown to be absurd and incompatible with the
notions which the same religion gives us of the Deity. In effect, it
supposes us capable of offending or pleasing the Author of Nature, of
influencing his humor, or exciting his passions; afflicting,
tormenting, resisting, and thwarting the plans of Deity. It supposes,
moreover, the free-will of man--a system which we have seen
incompatible with the goodness, justice, and omnipotence of the Deity.
It supposes, further, that God has occasion of proving his creatures,
and making them, if I may so speak, pass a novitiate to know what they
are worth when he shall square accounts with them. It supposes in God,
who has created men for happiness only, the inability to put, by one
grand effort, all men in the road, whence they may infallibly arrive
at permanent felicity. It supposes that man will survive himself, or
that the same being, after death, will continue to think, to feel, and
act as he did in this life. In a word, it supposes the immortality of
the soul--an opinion unknown to the Jewish lawgiver, who is totally
silent on this topic to the people to whom God had manifested himself;
an opinion which even in the time of Jesus Christ one sect at
Jerusalem admitted, while another sect rejected; an opinion about
which the Messiah, who came to instruct them, deigned to fix the ideas
of those who might deceive themselves in this respect; an opinion
which appears to have been engendered in Egypt, or in India, anterior
to the Jewish religion, but which was unknown among the Hebrews till
they took occasion to instruct themselves in the Pagan philosophy of
the Greeks, and doctrines of Plato.
Whatever might be the origin of this doctrine, it was eagerly adopted
by the Christians, who judged it very convenient to their system of
religion, all the parts of which are founded on the marvellous, and
which made it a crime to admit any truths agreeable to reason and
common sense. Thus, without going back to the inventors of this
inconceivable dogma, let us examine dispassionately what this opinion
really is; let us endeavor to penetrate to the principles on which it
is supported; let us adopt it, if we shall find it an idea conformable
to reason; let us reject it, if it shall appear destitute of proof,
and at variance with common sense, even though it had been received as
an established truth in all antiquity, though it may have been adopted
by many millions of mankind.
Those who maintain the opinion of the soul's immortality, regard
it--that is, the soul--as a being distinct from the body, as a
substance, or essence, totally different from the corporeal frame, and
they designate it by the name of _spirit_. If we ask them what a
spirit is, they tell us it is not matter; and if we ask them what they
understand by that which is not matter, which is the only thing of
which we cannot form an idea, they tell us it is a spirit. In general,
it is easy to see that men the most savage, as well as the most subtle
thinkers, make use of the word _spirit_ to designate all the causes of
which they cannot form clear notions; hence the word spirit hath been
used to designate a being of which none can form any idea.
Notwithstanding, the divines pretend that this unknown being, entirely
different from the body, of a substance which has nothing conformable
with itself, is, nevertheless, capable of setting the body in motion;
and this, doubtless, is a mystery very inconceivable. We have noticed
the alliance between this spiritual substance and the material body,
whose functions it regulates. As the divines have supposed that matter
could neither think, nor will, nor perceive, they have believed that
it might conceive much better those operations attributed to a being
of which they had ideas less clear than they can form of matter. In
consequence, they have imagined many gratuitous suppositions to
explain the union of the soul with the body. In fine, in the
impossibility of overcoming the insurmountable barriers which oppose
them, the priests have made man twofold, by supposing that he contains
something distinct from himself; they have cut through all
difficulties by saying that this union is a great mystery, which man
cannot understand; and they have everlasting recourse to the
omnipotence of God, to his supreme will, to the miracles which he has
always wrought; and those last are never-failing, final resources,
which the theologians reserve for every case wherein they can find no
other mode of escaping gracefully from the argument of their
adversaries.
You see, then, to what we reduce all the jargon of the metaphysicians,
all the profound reveries which for so many ages have been so
industriously hawked about in defence of the soul of man; an
immaterial substance, of which no living being can form an idea; a
spirit, that is to say, a being totally different from any thing we
know. All the theological verbiage ends here, by telling us, in a
round of pompous terms,--fooleries that impose on the ignorant,--that
we do not know what essence the soul is of; but we call it a spirit
because of its nature, and because we feel ourselves agitated by some
unknown agent; we cannot comprehend the mechanism of the soul; yet can
we feel ourselves moved, as it were, by an effect of the power of God,
whose essence is far removed from ours, and more concealed from us
than the human soul itself. By the aid of this language, from which
you cannot possibly learn any thing, you will be as wise, Madam, as
all the theologians in the world.
If you would desire to form ideas the most precise of yourself, banish
from you the prejudices of a vain theology, which only consists in
repeating words without attaching any new ideas to them, and which
are insufficient to distinguish the soul from the body, which appear
only capable of multiplying beings without reason, of rendering more
incomprehensible and more obscure, notions less distinct than we
already have of ourselves. These notions should be at least the most
simple and the most exact, if we consult our nature, experience, and
reason. They prove that man knows nothing but by his material sensible
organs, that he sees only by his eyes, that he feels by his touch,
that he hears by his ears; and that when either of these organs is
actually deranged, or has been previously wanting, or imperfect, man
can have none of the ideas that organ is capable of furnishing him
with,--neither thoughts, memory, reflection, judgment, desire, nor
will. Experience shows us that corporeal and material beings are alone
capable of being moved and acted upon, and that without those organs
we have enumerated the soul thinks not, feels not, wills not, nor is
moved. Every thing shows us that the soul undergoes always the same
vicissitudes as the body; it grows to maturity, gains strength,
becomes weak, and puts on old age, like the body; in fine, every thing
we can understand of it goes to prove that it perishes with the body.
It is indeed folly to pretend that man will feel when he has no organs
appropriate for that sentiment; that he will see and hear without eyes
or ears; that he will have ideas without having senses to receive
impressions from physical objects, or to give rise to perceptions in
his understanding; in fine, that he will enjoy or suffer when he has
no longer either nerves or sensibility.
Thus every thing conspires to prove that the soul is the same thing as
the body, viewed relatively to some of its functions, which are more
obscure than others. Every thing serves to convince us that without
the body the soul is nothing, and that all the operations which are
attributed to the soul cannot be exercised any longer when the body is
destroyed. Our body is a machine, which, so long as we live, is
susceptible of producing the effects which have been designated under
different names, one from another; sentiment is one of these effects,
thought is another, reflection a third. This last passes sometimes by
other names, and our brain appears to be the seat of all our organs;
it is that which is the most susceptible. This organic machine once
destroyed or deranged, is no longer capable of producing the same
effects, or of exercising the same functions. It is with our body as
it is with a watch which indicates the hours, and which goes not if
the spring or a pinion be broken.
Cease, Eugenia, cease to torment yourself about the fate which shall
attend you when death will have separated you from all that is dear on
earth. After the dissolution of this life, the soul shall cease to
exist; those devouring flames with which you have been threatened by
the priests will have no effect upon the soul, which can neither be
susceptible then of pleasures nor pains, of agreeable or sorrowful
ideas, of lively or doleful reflections.
It is only by means of the bodily organs that we feel, think, and are
merry or sad, happy or miserable; this body once reduced to dust, we
will have neither perceptions nor sensations, and, by consequence,
neither memory nor ideas; the dispersed particles will no longer have
the same qualities they possessed when united; nor will they any
longer conspire to produce the same effects. In a word, the body being
destroyed, the soul, which is merely a result of all the parts of the
body in action, will cease to be what it is; it will be reduced to
nothing with the life's breath.
Our teachers pretend to understand the soul well; they profess to be
able to distinguish it from the body; in short, they can do nothing
without it; and therefore, to keep up the farce, they have been
compelled to admit the ridiculous dogma of the Persians, known by the
name of the _resurrection_. This system supposes that the particles of
the body which have been scattered at death will be collected at the
last day, to be replaced in their primitive condition. But that this
strange phenomenon may take place, it is necessary that the particles
of our destroyed bodies, of which some, have been converted into
earth, others have passed into plants, others into animals, some of
one species, others of another, even of our own; it is requisite, I
say, that these particles, of which some have been mixed with the
waters of the deep, others have been carried on the wings of the wind,
and which have successively belonged to many different men, should be
reunited to reproduce the individual to whom they formerly belonged.
If you cannot get over this impossibility, the theologians will
explain it to you by saying, very briefly, "Ah! it is a profound
mystery, which we cannot comprehend." They will inform you that the
resurrection is a miracle, a supernatural effect, which is to result
from the divine power. It is thus they overcome all the difficulties
which the good sense of a few opposes to their rhapsodies.
If, perchance, Madam, you do not wish to remain content with these
sublime reasons, against which your good sense will naturally revolt,
the clergy will endeavor to seduce your imagination by vague pictures
of the ineffable delights which will be enjoyed in Paradise by the
souls and bodies of those who have adopted their reveries; they will
aver that you cannot refuse to believe them upon their mere word
without encountering the eternal indignation of a God of pity; and
they will attempt to alarm your fancy by frightful delineations of the
cruel torments which a God of goodness has prepared for the greater
number of his creatures.