advantages of man above the other animals, you will soon see how
evanescent is this fictitious superiority which he has arrogated to
himself. We find that all the productions of nature are submitted to
the same laws; that all beings are only born to die; they produce
their like to destroy themselves; that all sentient beings are
compelled to undergo pleasures and pains; they appear and they
disappear; they are and they cease to be; they evince under one form
that they will quit it to produce another. Such are the continual
vicissitudes to which every thing that exists is evidently subjected,
and from which man is not exempt, any more than the other beings and
productions that he appropriates to his use as _lord of the creation_.
Even our globe itself undergoes change; the seas change their place;
the mountains are gathered in heaps or levelled into plains; every
thing that breathes is destroyed at last, and man alone pretends to an
eternal duration.
It is unnecessary to tell me that we degrade man when we compare him
with the beasts, deprived of souls and intelligence; this is no
levelling doctrine, but one which places him exactly where nature
places him, but from which his puerile vanity has unfortunately driven
him. All beings are equals; under various and different forms they act
differently; they are governed in their appetites and passions by laws
which are invariably the same for all of the same species; every thing
which is composed of parts will be dissolved; every thing which has
life must part with it at death; all men are equally compelled to
submit to this fate; they are equal at death, although during life
their power, their talents, and especially their virtues, establish a
marked difference, which, though real, is only momentary. What will
they be after death? They will be exactly what they were ten years
before they were born.
Banish, then, Eugenia, from your mind forever the terrors which death
has hitherto filled you with. It is for the wretched a safe haven
against the misfortunes of this life. If it appears a cruel
alternative to those who enjoy the good things of this world, why do
they not console themselves with the idea of what they do actually
enjoy? Let them call reason to their aid; it will calm the inquietudes
of their imagination, but too greatly alarmed; it will disperse the
clouds which religion spreads over their minds; it will teach them
that this death, so terrible in apprehension, is really nothing, and
that it will neither be accompanied with remembrance of past pleasures
nor of sorrow now no more.
Live, then, happy and tranquil, amiable Eugenia! Preserve carefully an
existence so interesting and so necessary to all those with whom you
live. Allow not your health to be injured, nor trouble your quiet with
melancholy ideas. Without being teased by the prospect of an event
which has no right to disturb your repose, cultivate virtue, which has
always been your favorite, so necessary to your internal peace, and
which has rendered you so dear to all those who have the happiness of
being your friends. Let your rank, your credit, your riches, your
talents be employed to make others happy, to support the oppressed, to
succor the unfortunate, to dry up the tears of those whom you may have
an opportunity of comforting! Let your mind be occupied about such
agreeable and profitable employments as are likely to please you!
Call in the aid of your reason to dissipate the phantoms which alarm
you, to efface the prejudices which you have imbibed in early life! In
a word, comfort yourself, and remember that in practising virtue, as
you do, you cannot become an object of hatred to God, who, if he has
reserved in eternity rigorous punishments for the social virtues, will
be the strangest, the most cruel, and the most insensible of beings!
You demand of me, perhaps, "In destroying the idea of another world,
what is to become of the remorse, those chastisements so useful to
mankind, and so well calculated to restrain them within the bounds of
propriety?" I reply, that remorse will always subsist as long as we
shall be capable of feeling its pangs, even when we cease to fear the
distant and uncertain vengeance of the Divinity. In the commission of
crimes, in allowing one's self to be the sport of passion, in injuring
our species, in refusing to do them good, in stifling pity, every man
whose reason is not totally deranged perceives clearly that he will
render himself odious to others, that he ought to fear their enmity.
He will blush, then, if he thinks he has rendered himself hateful and
detestable in their eyes. He knows the continual need he has of their
esteem and assistance. Experience proves to him that vices the most
concealed are injurious to himself. He lives in perpetual fear lest
some mishap should unfold his weaknesses and secret faults. It is from
all these ideas that we are to look for regret and remorse, even in
those who do not believe in the chimeras of another world. With regard
to those whose reason is deranged, those who are enervated by their
passions, or perhaps linked to vice by the chains of habit, even with
the prospect of hell open before them, they will neither live less
vicious nor less wicked. An avenging God will never inflict on any man
such a total want of reason as may make him regardless of public
opinion, trample decency under foot, brave the laws, and expose
himself to derision and human chastisements. Every man of sense easily
understands that in this world the esteem and affection of others are
necessary for his happiness, and that life is but a burden to those
who by their vices injure themselves, and render themselves
reprehensible in the eyes of society.
The true means, Madam, of living happy in this world is to do good to
your fellow-creatures; to labor for the happiness of your species is
to have virtue, and with virtue we can peaceably and without remorse
approach the term which nature has fixed equally for all beings--a
term that your youth causes you now to see only at a distance--a term
that you ought not to accelerate by your fears--a term, in fine, that
the cares and desires of all those who know you will seek to put off
till, full of days and contented with the part you have played in the
scene of the world, you shall yourself desire to gently reenter the
bosom of nature.
I am, &c.
LETTER VI.
Of the Mysteries, Sacraments, and Religious Ceremonies of
Christianity.
The reflections, Madam, which I have already offered you in these
letters ought, I conceive, to have sufficed to undeceive you, in a
great measure, of the lugubrious and afflicting notions with which you
have been inspired by religious prejudices. However, to fulfil the
task which you have imposed on me, and to assist you in freeing
yourself from the unfavorable ideas you may have imbibed from a system
replete with irrelevancies and contradictions, I shall continue to
examine the strange mysteries with which Christianity is garnished.
They are founded on ideas so odd and so contrary to reason, that if
from infancy we had not been familiarized with them, we should blush
at our species in having for one instant believed and adopted them.
The Christians, scarcely content with the crowd of enigmas with which
the books of the Jews are filled, have besides fancied they must add
to them a great many incomprehensible mysteries, for which they have
the most profound veneration. Their impenetrable obscurity appears to
be a sufficient motive among them for adding these. Their priests,
encouraged by their credulity, which nothing can outdo, seem to be
studious to multiply the articles of their faith, and the number of
inconceivable objects which they have said must be received with
submission, and adored even if not understood.
The first of these mysteries is the _Trinity_, which supposes that one
God, self-existent, who is a pure spirit, is, nevertheless, composed
of three Divinities, which have obtained the names of _persons_. These
three Gods, who are designated under the respective names of the
_Father_, the _Son_, and the _Holy Ghost_, are, nevertheless, but one
God only. These three persons are equal in power, in wisdom, in
perfections; yet the second is subordinate to the first, in
consequence of which he was compelled to become a man, and be the
victim of the wrath of his Father. This is what the priests call the
mystery of the _incarnation_. Notwithstanding his innocence, his
perfection, his purity, the Son of God became the object of the
vengeance of a just God, who is the same as the Son in question, but
who would not consent to appease himself but by the death of his own
Son, who is a portion of himself. The Son of God, not content with
becoming man, died without having sinned, for the salvation of men who
had sinned. God preferred to the punishment of imperfect beings, whom
he did not choose to amend, the punishment of his only Son, full of
divine perfections. The death of God became necessary to reclaim the
human kind from the slavery of Satan, who without that would not have
quitted his prey, and who has been found sufficiently powerful against
the Omnipotent to oblige him to sacrifice his Son. This is what the
priests designate by the name of the mystery of _redemption_.
It is assuredly sufficient to expose such opinions to demonstrate
their absurdity. It is evident, if there exists only a single God,
there cannot be three. We may, it is true, contemplate the Deity after
the manner of Plato, who, before the birth of Christianity, exhibited
him under three different points of view, that is to say, as all-wise,
as all-powerful, as full of reason, and as infinite in goodness; but
it was verily the excess of delirium to personify these three divine
qualities, or transform them into real beings. We can readily imagine
these moral attributes to be united in the same God, but it is
egregious folly to fashion them into three different Gods; nor will it
remedy this metaphysical polytheism to assert that these three are
one. Besides, this revery never entered the head of the Hebrew
legislator. The Eternal, in revealing himself to Moses, did not
announce himself as triple. There is not one syllable in the Old
Testament about this Trinity, although a notion so _bizarre_, so
marvellous, and so little consonant with our ideas of a divine being,
deserved to have been formally announced, especially as it is the
foundation and corner stone of the Christian religion, which was from
all eternity an object of the divine solicitude, and on the
establishment of which, if we may credit our sapient priests, God
seems to have entertained serious thoughts long before the creation of
the world.
Nevertheless, the second person, or the second God of the Trinity, is
revealed in flesh; the Son of God is made man. But how could the pure
Spirit who presides over the universe beget a son? How could this son,
who before his incarnation was only a pure spirit, combine that
ethereal essence with a material body, and envelop himself with it?
How could the divine nature amalgamate itself with the imperfect
nature of man, and how could an immense and infinite being, as the
Deity is represented, be formed in the womb of a virgin? After what
manner could a pure spirit fecundate this favorite virgin? Did the Son
of God enjoy in the womb of his mother the faculties of omnipotence,
or was he like other children during his infancy,--weak, liable to
infirmities, sickness, and intellectual imbecility, so conspicuous in
the years of childhood; and if so, what, during this period, became of
the divine wisdom and power? In fine, how could God suffer and die?
How could a just God consent that a God exempt from all sin should
endure the chastisements which are due to sinners? Why did he not
appease himself without immolating a victim so precious and so
innocent? What would you think of that sovereign who, in the event of
his subjects rebelling against him, should forgive them all, or a
select number of them, by putting to death his only and beloved son,
who had not rebelled?
The priests tell us that it was out of tenderness for the human kind
that God wished to accomplish this sacrifice. But I still ask if it
would not have been more simple, more conformable to all our ideas of
Deity, for God to pardon the iniquities of the human race, or to have
prevented them committing transgressions, by placing them in a
condition in which, by their own will, they should never have sinned?
According to the entire system of the Christian religion, it is
evident that God did only create the world to have an opportunity of
immolating his Son for the rebellious beings he might have formed and
preserved immaculate. The fall of the rebellious angels had no visible
end to serve but to effect and hasten the fall of Adam. It appears
from this system that God permitted the first man to sin that he might
have the pleasure of showing his goodness in sacrificing his "only
begotten Son" to reclaim men from the thraldom of Satan. He intrusted
to Satan as much power as might enable him to work the ruin of our
race, with the view of afterwards changing the projects of the great
mass of mankind, by making one God to die, and thereby destroy the
power of the Devil on the earth.
But has God succeeded in these projects to the end he proposed? Are
men entirely rescued from the dominion of Satan? Are they not still
the slaves of sin? Do they find themselves in the happy impossibility
of kindling the divine wrath? Has the blood of the Son of God washed
away the sins of the whole world? Do those who are reclaimed, those to
whom he has made himself known, those who believe, offend not against
heaven? Has the Deity, who ought, without doubt, to be perfectly
satisfied with so memorable a sacrifice, remitted to them the
punishment of sin? Is it not necessary to do something more for them?
And since the death of his Son, do we find the Christians exempt from
disease and from death? Nothing of all this has happened. The measures
taken from all eternity by the wisdom and prescience of a God who
should find against his plans no obstacles have been overthrown. The
death of God himself has been of no utility to the world. All the
divine projects have militated against the free-will of man, but they
have not destroyed the power of Satan. Man continues to sin and to
die; the Devil keeps possession of the field of battle; and it is for
a very small number of the elect that the Deity consented to die.
You do indeed smile, Madam, at my being obliged seriously to combat
such chimeras. If they have something of the marvellous in them, it is
quite adapted to the heads of children, not of men, and ought not to
be admitted by reasonable beings. All the notions we can form of those
things must be mysterious; yet there is no subject more demonstrable,
according to those whose interest it is to have it believed, though
they are as incapable as ourselves to comprehend the matter. For the
priests to say that they believe such absurdities, is to be guilty of
manifest falsehood; because a proposition to be believed must
necessarily be understood. To believe what they do not comprehend is
to adhere sottishly to the absurdities of others; to believe things
which are not comprehended by those who gossip about them is the
height of folly; to believe blindly the mysteries of the Christian
religion is to admit contradictions of which they who declare them are
not convinced. In fine, is it necessary to abandon one's reason among
absurdities that have been received without examination from ancient
priests, who were either the dupes of more knowing men, or themselves
the impostors who fabricated the tales in question?
If you ask of me how men have not long ago been shocked by such absurd
and unintelligible reveries, I shall proceed, in my turn, to explain
to you this secret of the church, this mystery of our priests. It is
not necessary, in doing this, to pay any attention to those general
dispositions of man, especially when he is ignorant and incapable of
reasoning. All men are curious, inquisitive; their curiosity spurs
them on to inquiry, and their imagination busies itself to clothe with
mystery every thing the fancy conjures up as important to happiness.
The vulgar mistake even what they have the means of knowing, or, which
is the same thing, what they are least practised in they are dazzled
with; they proclaim it, accordingly, marvellous, prodigious,
extraordinary; it is a phenomenon. They neither admire nor respect
much what is always visible to their eyes; but whatever strikes their
imagination, whatever gives scope to the mind, becomes itself the
fruitful source of other ideas far more extravagant. The priests have
had the art to prevail on the people to believe in their secret
correspondence with the Deity; they have been thence much respected,
and in all countries their professed intercourse with an unseen
Divinity has given room for their announcement of things the most
marvellous and mysterious.
Besides, the Divinity being a being whose impenetrable essence is
veiled from mortal sight, it has been commonly admitted by the
ignorant, that what could not be seen by mortal eye must necessarily
be divine. Hence _sacred_, _mysterious_, and _divine_, are synonymous
terms; and these imposing words have sufficed to place the human race
on their knees to adore what seeks not their inflated devotion.
The three mysteries which I have examined are received unanimously by
all sects of Christians; but there are others on which the theologians
are not agreed. In fine, we see men, who, after they have admitted,
without repugnance, a certain number of absurdities, stop all of a
sudden in the way, and refuse to admit more. The Christian Protestants
are in this case. They reject, with disdain, the mysteries for which
the Church of Rome shows the greatest respect; and yet, in the matter
of mysteries, it is indeed difficult to designate the point where the
mind ought to stop.
Seeing, then, that our doctors, better advised, undoubtedly, than
those of the Protestants, have adroitly multiplied mysteries, one is
naturally led to conclude, they despaired of governing the mind of
man, if there was any thing in their religion that was clear,
intelligible, and natural. More mysterious than the priests of Egypt
itself, they have found means to change every thing into mystery; the
very movements of the body, usages the most indifferent, ceremonies
the most frivolous, have become, in the powerful hands of the priests,
sublime and divine mysteries. In the Roman religion all is magic, all
is prodigy, all is supernatural. In the decisions of our theologians,
the side which they espouse is almost always that which is the most
abhorrent to reason, the most calculated to confound and overthrow
common sense. In consequence, our priests are by far the most rich,
powerful, and considerable. The continual want which we have of their
aid to obtain from Heaven that grace which it is their province to
bring down for us, places us in continual dependence on those
marvellous men who have received their commission to treat with the
Deity, and become the ambassadors between Heaven and us.
Each of our sacraments envelops a great mystery. They are ceremonies
to which the Divinity, they say, attaches some secret virtue, by
unseen views, of which we can form no ideas. In _baptism_, without
which no man can be saved, the water sprinkled on the head of the
child washes his spiritual soul, and carries away the defilement which
is a consequence of the sin committed in the person of Adam, who
sinned for all men. By the mysterious virtue of this water, and of
some words equally unintelligible, the infant finds itself reconciled
to God, as his first father had made him guilty without his knowledge
and consent. In all this, Madam, you cannot, by possibility,
comprehend the complication of these mysteries, with which no
Christian can dispense, though, assuredly, there is not one believer
who knows what the virtue of the marvellous water consists in, which
is necessary for his regeneration. Nor can you conceive how the
supreme and equitable Governor of the universe could impute faults to
those who have never been guilty of transgressions. Nor can you
comprehend how a wise Deity can attach his favor to a futile ceremony,
which, without changing the nature of the being who has derived an
existence it neither commenced nor was consulted in, must, if
administered in winter, be attended with serious consequences to the
health of the child.
In _Confirmation_, a sacrament or ceremony, which, to have any value,
ought to be administered by a bishop, the laying of the hands on the
head of the young confirmant makes the Holy Spirit descend upon him,
and procures the grace of God to uphold him in the faith. You see,
Madam, that the efficacy of this sacrament is unfortunately lost in my
person; for, although in my youth I had been duly confirmed, I have
not been preserved against smiling at this faith, nor have I been kept
invulnerable in the credence of my priests and forefathers.
In the sacrament of _Penitence_, or confession, a ceremony which
consists in putting a priest in possession of all one's faults, public
or private, you will discover mysteries equally marvellous. In favor
of this submission, to which every good Catholic is necessarily
obliged to submit, a priest, _himself a sinner_, charged with full
powers by the Deity, pardons and remits, in His name, the sins against
which God is enraged. God reconciles himself with every man who
humbles himself before the priest, and in accordance with the orders
of the latter, he opens heaven to the wretch whom he had before
determined to exclude. If this sacrament doth not always procure
grace, very distinguishing to those who use it, it has, at all events,
the advantage of rendering them pliable to the clergy, who, by its
means, find an easy sway in their spiritual empire over the human
mind, an empire that enables them, not unfrequently, to disturb
society, and more often the repose of families, and the very
conscience of the person confessing.
There is among the Catholics another sacrament, which contains the
most strange mysteries. It is that of the _Eucharist_. Our teachers,
under pain of being damned, enjoin us to believe that the Son of God
is compelled by a priest to quit the abodes of glory, and to come and
mask himself under the appearance of bread! This bread becomes
forthwith the body of God--this God multiplies himself in all places,
and at all times, when and where the priests, scattered over the face
of the earth, find it necessary to command his presence in the shape
of bread--yet we see only one and the same God, who receives the
homage and adoration of all those good people who find it very
ridiculous in the Egyptians to adore lupines and onions. But the
Catholics are not simply content with worshipping a bit of bread,
which they consider by the conjurations of a priest as divine; they
eat this bread, and then persuade themselves that they are nourished
by the body or substance of God himself. The Protestants, it is true,
do not admit a mystery so very odd, and regard those who do as real
idolaters. What then? This marvellous dogma is, without doubt, of the
greatest utility to the priests. In the eyes of those who admit it,
they become very important gentlemen, who have the power of disposing
of the Deity, whom they make to descend between their hands; and thus
a Catholic priest is, in fact, the creator of his God!
There is, also, _Extreme Unction_, a sacrament which consists in
anointing with oil those sick persons who are about to depart into the
other world, and which not only soothes their bodily pains, but also
takes away the sins of their souls. If it produces these good effects,
it is an invisible and mysterious method of manifesting obvious
results; for we frequently behold sick persons have their fears of
death allayed, though the operation may but too often accelerate their
dissolution. But our priests are so full of charity, and they interest
themselves so greatly in the salvation of souls, that they like rather
to risk their own health beside the sick bed of persons afflicted with
the most contagious diseases, than lose the opportunity of
administering their salutary ointment.