morality agreeable to nature, reasonable to all, constant in its
operation, effective in its exercise in benefiting all, in
contributing to the happiness of society, collectively and
individually, in distinction to the mysticism preached up by priests.
We shall find in our reason and in our nature the surest guides,
superior to the clergy, who only teach us to benefit themselves. We
shall thus enjoy a morality as durable as the race of man. We shall
have precepts founded on the necessity of things, that will punish
those transgressing them, and rewarding those who obey them. Every
man who shall prove himself to be just, useful, beneficent, will be an
object of love to his fellow-citizens; every man who shall prove
himself unjust, useless, and wicked will become an object of hatred to
himself as well as to others; he will be forced to tremble at the
violation of the laws; he will be compelled to do that which is good
to gain the good will of mankind and preserve the regard of those who
have the power of obliging him to be a useful member of the state.
Thus, Madam, if it should be demanded of you what you would substitute
for the benefit of society, in place of visionary reveries, I reply, a
sensible morality, a good education, profitable habits, self-evident
principles of duty, wise laws, which even the wicked cannot
misunderstand, but which may correct their evil purposes, and
recompenses that may tend to the promotion of virtue. The education of
the present day tends only to make youth the slaves of superstition;
the virtues which it inculcates on them are only those of fanaticism,
to render the mind subject to the priests for the remainder of life;
the motives to duty are only fictitious and imaginary; the rewards and
punishments which it exhibits in an obscure glimmering, produce no
other effect than to make useless enthusiasts and dangerous fanatics.
The principles on which enthusiasm establishes morality are changing
and ruinous; those on which the morality of reason is established are
fixed, and cannot be overturned. Seeing, then, that man, a reasonable
being, should be chiefly occupied about his preservation and
happiness--that he should love virtue--that he should be sensible of
its advantages--that he should fear the consequences of crime--is it
to be wondered I should insist so much on the practice of virtue as
his chief good? Men ought to hate crime because it leads to misery.
Society, to exist, must receive the united virtue of its members,
obedience to good laws, the activity and intelligence of citizens to
defend its privileges and its rights. Laws are good when they invite
the members of society to labor for reciprocal good offices. Laws are
just when they recompense or punish in proportion to the good or evil
which is done to society. Laws supported by a visible authority should
be founded on present motives; and thus they would have more force
than those of religion, which are founded on uncertain motives,
imaginary and removed from this world, and which experience proves
cannot suffice to curb the passions of bad men, nor show them their
duty by the fear of punishments after death.
If in place of stifling human reason, as is too much done, its
perfectibility were studied; if in place of deluging the world with
visionary notions, truth were inculcated; if in place of pleading a
supernatural morality, a morality agreeable to humanity and resulting
from experience were preached, we should no longer be the dupes of
imaginary theories, nor of terrifying fables as the bases of virtue.
Every one would then perceive that it is to the practice of virtue, to
the faithful observation of the duties of morality, that the happiness
of individuals and of society is to be traced. Is he a husband? He
will perceive that his essential happiness is to show kindness,
attachment, and tenderness to the companion of his life, destined by
his own choice to share his pleasures and endure his misfortunes. And,
on the other hand, she, by consulting her true interests, will
perceive that they consist in rendering homage to her husband, in
interdicting every thought that could alienate her affections,
diminish her esteem and confidence in him. Fathers and mothers will
perceive that their children are destined to be one day their
consolation and support in old age, and that by consequence they have
the greatest interest in inspiring them in early life with sentiments
of which they may themselves reap the benefit when age or misfortune
may require the fruits of those advantages that result from a good
education. Their children early taught to reflect on these things,
will find their interest to lie in meriting the kindness of their
parents, and in giving them proofs that the virtues they are taught
will be communicated to their posterity. The master will perceive
that, to be served with affection, he owes good will, kindness, and
indulgence to those at whose hands he would reap advantages, and by
whose labor he would increase his prosperity; and servants will
discover how much their happiness depends on fidelity, industry, and
good temper in their situations. Friends will find the advantages of a
kindred heart for friendship, and the reciprocity of good offices. The
members of the same family will perceive the necessity of preserving
that union which nature has established among them, to render mutual
benefits in prosperity or in adversity. Societies, if they reflect on
the end of their association, will perceive that to secure it they
must observe good faith and punctuality in their engagements. The
citizen, when he consults his reason, will perceive how much it is
necessary, for the good of the nation to which he belongs, that he
should exert himself to advance its prosperity, or, in its
misfortunes, to retrieve its glory. By consequence every one in his
sphere, and using his faculties for this great end, will find his own
advantage in restraining the bad as dangerous, and opposing enemies to
the state as enemies to himself.
In a word, every man who will reflect for himself will be compelled to
acknowledge the necessity of virtue for the happiness of the world. It
is so obvious that justice is the basis of all society; that good will
and good offices necessarily procure for men affection and respect;
that every man who respects himself ought to seek the esteem of
others; that it is necessary to merit the good opinion of society;
that he ought to be jealous of his reputation; that a weak being, who
is every instant exposed to misfortunes, ought to know what are his
duties, and how he should practise them for the benefit of himself
and the assembly of which he is a member.
If we reflect for one moment on the effects of the passions, we shall
perceive the necessity of repressing them, if we would spare ourselves
vain regrets and useless sorrows, which certainly always afflict those
who obey not the laws. Thus, a single reflection will suffice to show
the impropriety of anger, the dreadful consequences of revenge,
calumny, and backbiting. Every one must perceive that in giving a free
course to unbridled desires, he becomes the enemy of society, and then
it is the part of the laws to restrain him who renounces his reason
and despises the motives that ought to guide him.
If it is objected that man is not a free agent, and therefore is
unable to restrain his passions, and that consequently the law ought
not to punish him, I reply that the community are impelled by the same
necessity to hate what is injurious, and for their own conservation
and happiness have the right to restrain an unhappily organized
individual who is impelled to injure himself and others. The
inevitable faults of men necessarily excite the hatred of those who
suffer from them.
If the man who consults his reason has real and powerful motives for
doing good to others and abstaining from injuring them, he has present
motives equally urgent to restrain him from the commission of vice.
Experience may suffice to show him that if he becomes sooner or later
the victim of his excesses, he ceases to be the friend of virtue, and
exists only to serve vice, which will infallibly punish him. This
being allowed, prudence, or the desire of preserving one's self free
from the contamination of evil, ought to inculcate to every man his
path of duty; and, unless blinded by his passions, he must perceive
how much moderation in his pleasures, temperance, chastity, contribute
to happiness; that those who transgress in these respects are
necessarily the victims of ill health, and too often pass a life both
infirm and unfortunate, which terminates soon in death.
How is it possible, then, Madam, from visionary theories to arrive at
these conclusions, and establish from supernatural phantasms the
principles of private and public virtue? Shall we launch into unknown
regions to ascertain our duty and to keep our station in society? Is
it not sufficient if we wish to be happy that we should endeavor to
preserve ourselves in those maxims which reason approves, and on which
virtue is founded? Every man who would perish, who would render his
existence miserable, whoever would sacrifice permanent happiness for
present pleasure, is a fool, who reflects not on the interests that
are dearest to him.
If there are any principles so clear as the morality of humanity has
been and is still proved to be, they are such as men ought to observe.
They are not obscure notions, mysticism, contradictions, which have
made of a science the most obvious and best demonstrated, an
unintelligible science, mysterious and uncertain to those for whom it
is designed. In the hands of the priests, morality has become an
enigma; they have founded our duties on the attributes of a Deity whom
the mind of man cannot comprehend, in place of founding them on the
character of man himself. They have thrown in among them the
foundations of an edifice which is made for this earth. They have
desired to regulate our manners agreeably to equivocal oracles which
every instant contradict themselves, and which too often render their
devotees useless to society and to themselves. They have pretended to
render their morality more sacred by inviting us to look for
recompenses and punishments removed beyond this life, but which they
announce in the name of the Divinity. In fine, they have made man a
being who may not even strive at perfection, by a preordination of
some to bliss, and consequent damnation of others, whose insensibility
is the result of this selection.
Need we not, then, wonder that this supernatural morality should be so
contrary to the nature and the mind of man? It is in vain that it aims
at the annihilation of human nature, which is so much stronger, so
much more powerful, than imagination. In despite of all the subtile
and marvellous speculations of the priests, man continues always to
love himself, to desire his well being, and to flee misfortune and
sorrow. He has then always been actuated by the same passions. When
these passions have been moderate, and have tended to the public
good, they are legitimate, and we approve those actions which are
their effects. When these passions have been disordered, hurtful to
society, or to the individual, he condemns them; they punish him; he
is dissatisfied with his conduct which others cannot approve. Man
always loves his pleasures, because in their enjoyment he fulfils the
end of his existence; if he exceeds their just bounds he renders
himself miserable.
The morality of the clergy, on the other hand, appears calculated to
keep nature always at variance with herself, for it is almost always
without effect even on the priesthood. Their chimeras serve but to
torture weak minds, and to set the passions at war with nature and
their dogmas. When this morality professes to restrain the wicked, to
curb the passions of men, it operates in opposition to the established
laws of natural religion; for by preserving all its rigor, it becomes
impracticable; and it meets with real devotees only in some few
fanatics who have renounced nature, and who would be singular, even if
their oddities were injurious to society. This morality, adopted for
the most part by devotees, without eradicating their habits or their
natural defects, keeps them always in a state of opposition even with
themselves. Their life is a round of faults and of scruples, of sins
and remorse, of crimes and expiations, of pleasures which they enjoy,
but for which they again reproach themselves for having tasted. In a
word, the morality of superstition necessarily carries with it into
the heart and the family of its devotees inward distress and
affliction; it makes of enthusiasts and fanatics scrupulous devotees;
it makes a great many insensible and miserable; it renders none
perfect, few good; and those only tolerable whom nature, education,
and habit had moulded for happiness.
It is our temperament which decides our condition; the acquisition of
moderate passions, of honest habits, sensible opinions, laudable
examples, and practical virtues, is a difficult task, but not
impossible when undertaken with reason for one's guide. It is
difficult to be virtuous and happy with a temperament so ardent as to
sway the passions to its will. One must in calmness consult reason as
to his duty. Nature, in giving us lively passions and a susceptible
imagination, has made us capable of suffering the instant we
transgress her bounds. She then renders us necessary to ourselves, and
we cannot proceed to consult our real interest if we continue in
indulgence that she forbids. The passions which reason cannot restrain
are not to be bridled by religion. It is in vain that we hope to
derive succors from religion if we despise and refuse what nature
offers us. Religion leaves men just such as nature and habit have made
them; and if it produce any changes on some few, I believe I have
proved that those changes are not always for the better.
Congratulate yourself, then, Madam, on being born with good
dispositions, of having received honest principles, which shall carry
you through life in the practice of virtue, and in the love of a fine
and exalted taste for the rational pleasures of our nature. Continue
to be the happiness of your family, which esteems and honors you.
Continue to diffuse around you the blessings you enjoy; continue to
perform only those actions which are esteemed by all the world, and
all men will respect you. Respect yourself, and others will respect
you. These are the legitimate sentiments of virtue and of happiness.
Labor for your own happiness, and you will promote that of your
family, who will love you in proportion to the good you do it. Allow
me to congratulate myself if, in all I have said, I have in any
measure swept from your mind those clouds of fanaticism which obscure
the reason; and to felicitate you on your having escaped from vague
theories of imagination. Abjure superstition, which is calculated only
to make you miserable; let the morality of humanity be your uniform
religion; that your happiness may be constant, let reason be your
guide; that virtue may be the idol of your soul, cultivate and love
only what is virtuous and good in the world; and if there be a God who
is interested in the happiness of his creatures, if there be a God
full of justice and goodness, he will not be angry with you for having
consulted your reason; if there be another life, your happiness in it
cannot be doubtful, if God rewards every one according to the good
done here.
I am, with respect, &c.
LETTER XII.
Of the small Consequence to be attached to Men's Speculations, and
the Indulgence which should be extended to them.
Permit me, Madam, to felicitate you on the happy change which you say
has taken place in your opinions. Convinced by reasons as simple as
obvious, your mind has become sensible of the futility of those
notions which have for a long time agitated it; and the inefficacy of
those pretended succors which religious men boasted they could
furnish, is now apparent to you. You perceive the evident dangers
which result from a system that serves only to render men enemies to
individual and general happiness. I see with pleasure that reason has
not lost its authority over your mind, and that it is sufficient to
show you the truth that you may embrace it. You may congratulate
yourself on this, which proves the solidity of your judgment. For it
is glorious to give one's self up to reason, and to be the votary of
common sense. Prejudice so arms mankind that the world is full of
people who slight their judgment; nay, who resist the most obvious
pleas of their understanding. Their eyes, long shut to the light of
truth, are unable to bear its rays; but they can endure the
glimmerings of superstition, which plunges them in still darker
obscurity.
I am not, however, astonished at the embarrassment you have hitherto
felt, nor at your cautious examination of my opinions, which are
better understood the more thoroughly they are examined and compared
with those they oppose. It is impossible to annihilate at once
deep-rooted prejudices. The mind of man appears to waver in a void
when those ideas are attacked on which it has long rested. It finds
itself in a new world, wherein all is unknown. Every system of opinion
is but the effect of habit. The mind has as great difficulty to
disengage itself from its custom of thinking, and reflect on new
ideas, as the body has to remain quiescent after it has long been
accustomed to exercise. Should you, for instance, propose to your
friend to leave off snuff, as a practice neither healthful nor
agreeable in company, he will not probably listen to you, or if he
should, it will be with extreme pain that he can bring himself to
renounce a habit long familiarized to him.
It is precisely the same with all our prejudices; those of religion
have the most powerful hold of us. From infancy we have been
familiarized with them; habit has made them a sort of want we cannot
dispense with: our mode of thinking is formed, and familiar to us; our
mind is accustomed to engage itself with certain classes of objects;
and our imagination fancies that it wanders in chaos when it is not
fed with those chimeras to which it had been long accustomed. Phantoms
the most horrible are even clear to it; objects the most familiar to
it, if viewed with the calm eye of reason, are disagreeable and
revolting.
Religion, or rather its superstitions, in consequence of the
marvellous and bizarre notions it engenders, gives the mind continual
exercise; and its votaries fancy they are doomed to a dangerous
inaction when they are suddenly deprived of the objects on which their
imagination exerted its powers. Yet is this exercise so much the more
necessary as the imagination is by far the most lively faculty of the
mind. Hence, without doubt, it becomes necessary men should replace
stale fooleries by those which are novel. This is, moreover, the true
reason why devotion so often affords consolation in great disgraces,
gives diversion for chagrin, and replaces the strongest passions, when
they have been quenched by excess of pleasure and dissipation. The
marvellous arguments, chimeras multiply as religion furnishes activity
and occupation to the fancy; habit renders them familiar, and even
necessary; terrors themselves even minister food to the imagination;
and religion, the religion of priestcraft, is full of terrors. Active
and unquiet spirits continually require this nourishment; the
imagination requires to be alternately alarmed and consoled; and there
are thousands who cannot accustom themselves to tranquillity and the
sobriety of reason. Many persons also require phantoms to make them
religious, and they find these succors in the dogmas of priestcraft.
These reflections will serve to explain to you the continual
variations to which many persons are subject, especially on the
subject of religion. Sensible, like barometers, you behold them
wavering without ceasing; their imagination floats, and is never
fixed; so often as you find them freely given up to the blackness of
superstition, so often may you behold them the slaves of pernicious
prejudices. Whenever they tremble at the feet of their priests, then
are their necks under the yoke. Even people of spirit and
understanding in other affairs are not altogether exempt from these
variations of mental religious temperament; but their judgment is too
frequently the dupe of the imagination. And others, again, timid and
doubting, without spirit, are in perpetual torment.
What do I say? Man is not, and cannot always be, the same. His frame
is exposed to revolutions and perpetual vicissitudes; the thoughts of
his mind necessarily vary with the different degrees of changes to
which his body is exposed. When the body is languid and fatigued, the
mind has not usually much inclination to vigor and gayety. The
debility of the nerves commonly annihilates the energies of the soul,
although it be so remarkably distinguished from the body; persons of a
bilious and melancholy temperament are rarely the subjects of joy;
dissipation importunes some, gayety fatigues others. Exactly after the
same fashion, there are some who love to nourish sombre ideas, and
these religion supplies them. Devotion affects them like the vapors;
superstition is an inveterate malady, for which there is no cure in
medicine. And it is impossible to keep him free from superstition,
whose breast, the slave of fear, was never sensible of courage; nay,
soldiers and sailors, the bravest of men, have too often been the
victims of superstition. It is education alone that operates in
radically curing the human mind of its errors.
Those who think it sufficient, Madam, to render a reason for the
variations which we so frequently remark in the ideas of men,
acknowledge that there is a secret bent of the minds of religious
persons to prejudices, from which we shall almost in vain endeavor to
rescue their understandings. You perceive, at present, what you ought
to think of those secret transitions which our priests would force on
you, as the inspirations of heaven, as divine solicitations, the
effects of grace; though they are, nevertheless, only the effects of
those vicissitudes to which our constitution is liable, and which
affect the robust, as well as the feeble; the man of health, as well
as the valetudinarian.
If we might form a judgment of the correctness of those notions which
our teachers boast of, in respect to our dissolution at death, we
shall find reason to be satisfied, that there is little or no occasion
that we should have our minds disturbed during our last moments. It is
then, say they, that it is necessary to attend to the condition of
man; it is then that man, undeceived as to the things of this life,
acknowledges his errors. But there is, perhaps, no idea in the whole
circle of theology more unreasonable than this, of which the
credulous, in all ages, have been the dupes. Is it not at the time of
a man's dissolution that he is the least capable of judging of his
true interest? His bodily frame racked, it may be, with pain, his mind
is necessarily weakened or chafed; or if he should be free from
excruciating pain, the lassitude and yielding of nature to the
irrevocable decrees of fate at death, unfit a man for reasoning and
judging of the sophisms that are proposed as panaceas for all his
errors. There are, without doubt, as strange notions as those of
religion; but who knows that body and soul sink alike at death?
It is in the case of health that we can promise ourselves to reason
with justness; it is then that the soul, neither troubled by fear, nor
altered by disease, nor led astray by passion, can judge soundly of
what is beneficial to man. The judgments of the dying can have no
weight with men in good health; and they are the veriest impostors who
lend them belief. The truth can alone be known, when both body and
mind are in good health. No man, without evincing an insensible and
ridiculous presumption, can answer for the ideas he is occupied with,
when worn out with sickness and disease; yet have the inhuman priests
the effrontery to persuade the credulous to take as their examples the
words and actions of men necessarily deranged in intellect by the
derangement of their corporeal frame. In short, since the ideas of men
necessarily vary with the different variations of their bodies, the
man who presumes to reason on his death bed with the man in health,
arrogates what ought not to be conceded.