To take away from man his free will, is, we are told, to make of him a
pure machine, an automaton without liberty; there would exist in him
neither merit nor virtue What is merit in man?
It is a certain manner of acting which renders him estimable in the eyes
of his fellow beings. What is virtue? It is the disposition that causes
us to do good to others. What can there be contemptible in automatic
machines capable of producing such desirable effects? Marcus Aurelius
was a very useful spring to the vast machine of the Roman Empire. By
what right will a machine despise another machine, whose springs would
facilitate its own play? Good people are springs which assist society in
its tendency to happiness; wicked men are badly-formed springs, which
disturb the order, the progress, and harmony of society. If for its own
interests society loves and rewards the good, she hates, despises, and
removes the wicked, as useless or dangerous motors.
LXXXIV.--GOD HIMSELF, IF THERE WAS A GOD, WOULD NOT BE FREE; HENCE THE
USELESSNESS OF ALL RELIGION.
The world is a necessary agent; all the beings which compose it are
united to each other, and can not do otherwise than they do, so long as
they are moved by the same causes and possessed of the same qualities.
If they lose these qualities, they will act necessarily in a different
way. God Himself (admitting His existence a moment) can not be regarded
as a free agent; if there existed a God, His manner of acting would
necessarily be determined by the qualities inherent in His nature;
nothing would be able to alter or to oppose His wishes. This considered,
neither our actions nor our prayers nor our sacrifices could suspend or
change His invariable progress and His immutable designs, from which we
are compelled to conclude that all religion would be entirely useless.
LXXXV.--EVEN ACCORDING TO THEOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES, MAN IS NOT FREE ONE
INSTANT.
If theologians were not constantly contradicting each other, they would
know, from their own hypotheses, that man can not be called free for an
instant. Is not man supposed to be in a continual dependence upon God?
Is one free, when one could not have existed or can not live without
God, and when one ceases to exist at the pleasure of His supreme will?
If God created man of nothing, if the preservation of man is a continual
creation, if God can not lose sight of His creature for an instant, if
all that happens to him is a result of the Divine will, if man is
nothing of himself, if all the events which he experiences are the
effects of Divine decrees, if he can not do any good without assistance
from above, how can it be pretended that man enjoys liberty during one
moment of his life? If God did not save him in the moment when he sins,
how could man sin? If God preserves him, God, therefore, forces him to
live in order to sin.
LXXXVI.--ALL EVIL, ALL DISORDER, ALL SIN, CAN BE ATTRIBUTED BUT TO GOD;
AND CONSEQUENTLY, HE HAS NO RIGHT TO PUNISH OR REWARD.
Divinity is continually compared to a king, the majority of whose
subjects revolt against Him and it is pretended that He has the right to
reward His faithful subjects, and to punish those who revolt against
Him. This comparison is not just in any of its parts. God presides over
a machine, of which He has made all the springs; these springs act
according to the way in which God has formed them; it is the fault of
His inaptitude if these springs do not contribute to the harmony of the
machine in which the workman desired to place them. God is a creating
King, who created all kinds of subjects for Himself; who formed them
according to His pleasure, and whose wishes can never find any
resistance. If God in His empire has rebellious subjects, it is God who
resolved to have rebellious subjects. If the sins of men disturb the
order of the world, it is God who desired this order to be disturbed.
Nobody dares to doubt Divine justice; however, under the empire of a
just God, we find nothing but injustice and violence. Power decides the
fate of nations. Equity seems to be banished from the earth; a small
number of men enjoy with impunity the repose, the fortunes, the liberty,
and the life of all the others. Everything is in disorder in a world
governed by a God of whom it is said that disorder displeases Him
exceedingly.
LXXXVII.--MEN'S PRAYERS TO GOD PROVE SUFFICIENTLY THAT THEY ARE NOT
SATISFIED WITH THE DIVINE ECONOMY.
Although men incessantly admire the wisdom the goodness, the justice,
the beautiful order of Providence, they are, in fact, never contented
with it. The prayers which they continually offer to Heaven, prove to us
that they are not at all satisfied with God's administration. Praying to
God, asking a favor of Him, is to mistrust His vigilant care; to pray
God to avert or to suppress an evil, is to endeavor to put obstacles in
the way of His justice; to implore the assistance of God in our
calamities, means to appeal to the very author of these calamities in
order to represent to Him our welfare; that He ought to rectify in our
favor His plan, which is not beneficial to our interests. The optimist,
or the one who thinks that everything is good in the world, and who
repeats to us incessantly that we live in the best world possible, if he
were consistent, ought never to pray; still less should he expect
another world where men will be happier. Can there be a better world
than the best possible of all worlds? Some of the theologians have
treated the optimists as impious for having claimed that God could not
have made a better world than the one in which we live; according to
these doctors it is limiting the Divine power and insulting it. But do
not theologians see that it is less offensive for God, to pretend that
He did His best in creating the world, than to say that He, having the
power to produce a better one, had the malice to make a very bad one? If
the optimist, by his system, does wrong to the Divine power, the
theologian, who treats him as impious, is himself a reprobate, who
wounds the Divine goodness under pretext of taking interest in God.
LXXXVIII.--THE REPARATION OF THE INIQUITIES AND THE MISERIES OF THIS
WORLD IN ANOTHER WORLD, IS AN IDLE CONJECTURE AND AN ABSURD SUPPOSITION.
When we complain of the evils of which this world is the theater, we are
referred to another world; we are told that there God will repair all
the iniquities and the miseries which He permits for a time here below.
However, if leaving His eternal justice to sleep for a time, God could
consent to evil during the period of the existence of our globe, what
assurance have we that during the existence of another globe, Divine
justice will not likewise sleep during the misfortunes of its
inhabitants? They console us in our troubles by saying, that God is
patient, and that His justice, although often very slow, is not the less
certain. But do you not see, that patience can not be suited to a being
just, immutable, and omnipotent? Can God tolerate injustice for an
instant? To temporize with an evil that one knows of, evinces either
uncertainty, weakness, or collusion; to tolerate evil which one has the
power to prevent, is to consent that evil should be committed.
LXXXIX.--THEOLOGY JUSTIFIES THE EVIL AND INJUSTICE PERMITTED BY ITS GOD,
ONLY BY CONCEDING TO THIS GOD THE RIGHT OF THE STRONGEST, THAT IS TO
SAY, THE VIOLATION OF ALL RIGHTS, OR IN COMMANDING FROM MEN A STUPID
DEVOTION.
I hear a multitude of theologians tell me on all sides, that God is
infinitely just, but that His justice is not that of men! Of what kind,
or of what nature is this Divine justice then? What idea can I form of a
justice which so often resembles human injustice? Is it not confounding
all our ideas of justice and of injustice, to tell us that what is
equitable in God is iniquitous in His creatures? How can we take as a
model a being whose Divine perfections are precisely contrary to human
perfections? God, you say, is the sovereign arbiter of our destinies;
His supreme power, that nothing can limit, authorizes Him to do as He
pleases with His works; a worm, such as man, has not the right to murmur
against Him. This arrogant tone is literally borrowed from the language
which the ministers of tyrants hold, when they silence those who suffer
by their violences; it can not, then, be the language of the ministers
of a God of whose equity they boast. It can not impose upon a being who
reasons. Ministers of a just God! I tell you then, that the greatest
power is not able to confer even upon your God Himself the right to be
unjust to the vilest of His creatures. A despot is not a God. A God who
arrogates to Himself the right to do evil, is a tyrant; a tyrant is not
a model for men. He ought to be an execrable object in their eyes. Is it
not strange that, in order to justify Divinity, they made of Him the
most unjust of beings? As soon as we complain of His conduct, they think
to silence us by claiming that God is the Master; which signifies that
God, being the strongest, He is not subjected to ordinary rules. But the
right of the strongest is the violation of all rights; it can pass as a
right but in the eyes of a savage conqueror, who, in the intoxication of
his fury, imagines he has the right to do as he pleases with the
unfortunate ones whom he has conquered; this barbarous right can appear
legitimate only to slaves, who are blind enough to think that everything
is allowed to tyrants, who are too strong for them to resist.
By a foolish simplicity, or rather by a plain contradiction of terms, do
we not see devotees exclaim, amidst the greatest calamities, that the
good Lord is the Master? Well, illogical reasoners, you believe in good
faith that the good Lord sends you the pestilence; that your good Lord
gives war; that the good Lord is the cause of famine; in a word, that
the good Lord, without ceasing to be good, has the will and the right to
do you the greatest evils you can endure! Cease to call your Lord good
when He does you harm; do not say that He is just; say that He is the
strongest, and that it is impossible for you to avert the blows which
His caprice inflicts upon you. God, you say, punishes us for our highest
good; but what real benefit can result to a nation in being exterminated
by contagion, murdered by wars, corrupted by the examples of perverse
masters, continually pressed by the iron scepter of merciless tyrants,
subjected to the scourge of a bad government, which often for centuries
causes nations to suffer its destructive effects? The eyes of faith must
be strange eyes, if we see by their means any advantage in the most
dreadful miseries and in the most durable evils, in the vices and
follies by which our kind is so cruelly afflicted!
XC.--REDEMPTION, AND THE CONTINUAL EXTERMINATIONS ATTRIBUTED TO JEHOVAH
IN THE BIBLE, ARE SO MANY ABSURD AND RIDICULOUS INVENTIONS WHICH
PRESUPPOSE AN UNJUST AND BARBAROUS GOD.
What strange ideas of the Divine justice must the Christians have who
believe that their God, with the view of reconciling Himself with
mankind, guilty without knowledge of the fault of their parents,
sacrificed His own innocent and sinless Son! What would we say of a
king, whose subjects having revolted against him, in order to appease
himself could find no other expedient than to put to death the heir to
his crown, who had taken no part in the general rebellion? It is, the
Christian will say, through kindness for His subjects, incapable of
satisfying themselves of His Divine justice, that God consented to the
cruel death of His Son. But the kindness of a father to strangers does
not give him the right to be unjust and cruel to his son. All the
qualities that theology gives to its God annul each other. The exercise
of one of His perfections is always at the expense of another.
Has the Jew any more rational ideas than the Christian of Divine
justice? A king, by his pride, kindles the wrath of Heaven. Jehovah
sends pestilence upon His innocent people; seventy thousand subjects are
exterminated to expiate the fault of a monarch that the kindness of God
resolved to spare.
XCI.--HOW CAN WE DISCOVER A TENDER, GENEROUS, AND EQUITABLE FATHER IN A
BEING WHO HAS CREATED HIS CHILDREN BUT TO MAKE THEM UNHAPPY?
In spite of the injustice with which all religions are pleased to
blacken the Divinity, men can not consent to accuse Him of iniquity;
they fear that He, like the tyrants of this world, will be offended by
the truth, and redouble the weight of His malice and tyranny upon them.
They listen, then, to their priests, who tell them that their God is a
tender Father; that this God is an equitable Monarch, whose object in
this world is to assure Himself of the love, obedience, and respect of
His subjects; who gives them the liberty to act, in order to give them
occasion to deserve His favors and to acquire eternal happiness, which
He does not owe them in any way. In what way can we recognize the
tenderness of a Father who created the majority of His children but for
the purpose of dragging out a life of pain, anxiety, and bitterness upon
this earth? Is there any more fatal boon than this pretended liberty
which, it is said, men can abuse, and thereby expose themselves to the
risk of eternal misery?
XCII.--THE LIFE OF MORTALS, ALL WHICH TAKES PLACE HERE BELOW, TESTIFIES
AGAINST MAN'S LIBERTY AND AGAINST THE JUSTICE AND GOODNESS OF A
PRETENDED GOD.
In calling mortals into life, what a cruel and dangerous game does the
Divinity force them to play! Thrust into the world without their wish,
provided with a temperament of which they are not the masters, animated
by passions and desires inherent in their nature, exposed to snares
which they have not the skill to avoid, led away by events which they
could neither foresee nor prevent, the unfortunate beings are obliged to
follow a career which conducts them to horrible tortures.
Travelers assert that in some part of Asia reigns a sultan full of
phantasies, and very absolute in his will. By a strange mania this
prince spends his time sitting before a table, on which are placed six
dice and a dice-box. One end of the table is covered with a pile of
gold, for the purpose of exciting the cupidity of the courtiers and of
the people by whom the sultan is surrounded. He, knowing the weak point
of his subjects, speaks to them in this way: "Slaves! I wish you well;
my aim is to enrich you and render you all happy. Do you see these
treasures? Well, they are for you! try to win them; let each one in turn
take this box and these dice; whoever shall have the good luck to raffle
six, will be master of this treasure; but I warn you that he who has not
the luck to throw the required number, will be precipitated forever into
an obscure cell, where my justice exacts that he shall be burned by a
slow fire." Upon this threat of the monarch, they regarded each other in
consternation; no one willing to take a risk so dangerous. "What!" said
the angry sultan, "no one wants to play? Oh, this does not suit me! My
glory demands that you play. You will raffle then; I wish it; obey
without replying!" It is well to observe that the despot's dice are
prepared in such a way, that upon a hundred thousand throws there is but
one that wins; thus the generous monarch has the pleasure to see his
prison well filled, and his treasures seldom carried away. Mortals! this
Sultan is your God; His treasures are heaven; His cell is hell; and you
hold the dice!
XCIII.--IT IS NOT TRUE THAT WE OWE ANY GRATITUDE TO WHAT WE CALL
PROVIDENCE.
We are constantly told that we owe an infinite gratitude to Providence
for the countless blessings It is pleased to lavish upon us. They boast
above all that our existence is a blessing. But, alas! how many mortals
are really satisfied with their mode of existence? If life has its
sweets, how much of bitterness is mingled with it? Is not one bitter
trouble sufficient to blight all of a sudden the most peaceful and happy
life? Is there a great number of men who, if it depended upon them,
would wish to begin, at the same sacrifice, the painful career into
which, without their consent, destiny has thrown them? You say that
existence itself is a great blessing. But is not this existence
continually troubled by griefs, fears, and often cruel and undeserved
maladies. This existence, menaced on so many sides, can we not be
deprived of it at any moment? Who is there, after having lived for some
time, who has not been deprived of a beloved wife, a beloved child, a
consoling friend, whose loss fills his mind constantly? There are very
few mortals who have not been compelled to drink from the cup of
bitterness; there are but few who have not often wished to die. Finally,
it did not depend upon us to exist or not to exist. Would the bird be
under such great obligations to the bird-catcher for having caught it in
his net and for having put it into his cage, in order to eat it after
being amused with it?
XCIV.--TO PRETEND THAT MAN IS THE BELOVED CHILD OF PROVIDENCE, GOD'S
FAVORITE, THE ONLY OBJECT OF HIS LABORS, THE KING OF NATURE, IS FOLLY.
In spite of the infirmities, the troubles, the miseries to which man is
compelled to submit in this world; in spite of the danger which his
alarmed imagination creates in regard to another, he is still foolish
enough to believe himself to be God's favorite, the only aim of all His
works. He imagines that the entire universe was made for him; he calls
himself arrogantly the king of nature, and ranks himself far above other
animals. Poor mortal! upon what can you establish your high pretensions?
It is, you say, upon your soul, upon your reason, upon your sublime
faculties, which place you in a condition to exercise an absolute
authority over the beings which surround you. But weak sovereign of this
world, art thou sure one instant of the duration of thy reign? The least
atoms of matter which you despise, are they not sufficient to deprive
you of your throne and life? Finally, does not the king of animals
terminate always by becoming food for the worms?
You speak of your soul. But do you know what your soul is? Do you not
see that this soul is but the assemblage of your organs, from which life
results? Would you refuse a soul to other animals who live, who think,
who judge, who compare, who seek pleasure, and avoid pain even as you
do, and who often possess organs which are better than your own? You
boast of your intellectual faculties, but these faculties which render
you so proud, do they make you any happier than other creatures? Do you
often make use of this reason which you glory in, and which religion
commands you not to listen to? Those animals which you disdain because
they are weaker or less cunning than yourself, are they subject to
troubles, to mental anxieties, to a thousand frivolous passions, to a
thousand imaginary needs, of which your heart is continually the prey?
Are they, like you, tormented by the past, alarmed for the future?
Limited solely to the present, what you call their instinct, and what I
call their intelligence, is it not sufficient to preserve and to defend
them and to provide for their needs? This instinct, of which you speak
with disdain, does it not often serve them much better than your
wonderful faculties? Their peaceable ignorance, is it not more
advantageous than these extravagant meditations and these futile
investigations which render you miserable, and for which you are driven
to murdering beings of your own noble kind? Finally, these animals, have
they, like mortals, a troubled imagination which makes them fear not
only death, but even eternal torments? Augustus, having heard that
Herod, king of Judea, had murdered his sons, cried out: "It would be
better to be Herod's pig than his son!" We can say as much of men; this
beloved child of Providence runs much greater risks than all other
animals. After having suffered a great deal in this world, do we not
believe ourselves in danger of suffering for eternity in another?