There is scarcely a man who does not fear more what he sees than what he
does not see; the judgments of men, of which he experiences the effects,
than the judgments of God, of whom he has but floating ideas. The desire
to please the world, the current of custom, the fear of being ridiculed,
and of "WHAT WILL THEY SAY?" have more power than all religious
opinions. A warrior with the fear of dishonor, does he not hazard his
life in battles every day, even at the risk of incurring eternal
damnation?
The most religious persons sometimes show more respect for a servant
than for God. A man that firmly believes that God sees everything, knows
everything, is everywhere, will, when he is alone, commit actions which
he never would do in the presence of the meanest of mortals. Those even
who claim to be the most firmly convinced of the existence of a God, act
every instant as if they did not believe anything about it.
CXLIII.--RELIGION IS CERTAINLY NOT A POWERFUL CHECK UPON THE PASSIONS OF
KINGS, WHO ARE ALMOST ALWAYS CRUEL AND FANTASTIC TYRANTS BY THE EXAMPLE
OF THIS SAME GOD, OF WHOM THEY CLAIM TO BE THE REPRESENTATIVES; THEY USE
RELIGION BUT TO BRUTALIZE THEIR SLAVES SO MUCH THE MORE, TO LULL THEM TO
SLEEP IN THEIR FETTERS, AND TO PREY UPON THEM WITH THE GREATER FACILITY.
"Let us tolerate at least," we are told, "the idea of a God, which alone
can be a restraint upon the passions of kings." But, in good faith, can
we admire the marvelous effects which the fear of this God produces
generally upon the mind of the princes who claim to be His images? What
idea can we form of the original, if we judge it by its duplicates?
Sovereigns, it is true, call, themselves the representatives of God, His
lieutenants upon earth. But does the fear of a more powerful master than
themselves make them attend to the welfare of the peoples that
Providence has confided to their care? The idea of an invisible Judge,
to whom alone they pretend to be accountable for their actions, should
inspire them with terror! But does this terror render them more
equitable, more humane, less avaricious of the blood and the goods of
their subjects, more moderate in their pleasures, more attentive to
their duties? Finally, does this God, by whom we are assured that kings
reign, prevent them from vexing in a thousand ways the peoples of whom
they ought to be the leaders, the protectors, and fathers? Let us open
our eyes, let us turn our regards upon all the earth, and we shall see,
almost everywhere, men governed by tyrants, who make use of religion but
to brutalize their slaves, whom they oppress by the weight of their
vices, or whom they sacrifice without mercy to their fatal
extravagances. Far from being a restraint to the passions of kings,
religion, by its very principles, gives them a loose rein. It transforms
them into Divinities, whose caprices the nations never dare to resist.
At the same time that it unchains princes and breaks for them the ties
of the social pact, it enchains the minds and the hands of their
oppressed subjects. Is it surprising, then, that the gods of the earth
believe that all is permitted to them, and consider their subjects as
vile instruments of their caprices or of their ambition?
Religion, in every country, has made of the Monarch of Nature a cruel,
fantastic, partial tyrant, whose caprice is the rule. The God-monarch is
but too well imitated by His representatives upon the earth. Everywhere
religion seems invented but to lull to sleep the people in fetters, in
order to furnish their masters the facility of devouring them, or to
render them miserable with impunity.
CXLIV.--ORIGIN OF THE MOST ABSURD, THE MOST RIDICULOUS, AND THE MOST
ODIOUS USURPATION, CALLED THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS. WISE COUNSELS TO
KINGS.
In order to guard themselves against the enterprises of a haughty
Pontiff who desired to reign over kings, and in order to protect their
persons from the attacks of the credulous people excited by their
priests, several princes of Europe pretended to have received their
crowns and their rights from God alone, and that they should account to
Him only for their actions. Civil power in its battles against spiritual
power, having at length gained the advantage, and the priests being
compelled to yield, recognized the Divine right of kings and preached it
to the people, reserving to themselves the right to change opinions and
to preach revolution, every time that the divine rights of kings did not
agree with the divine rights of the clergy. It was always at the expense
of the people that peace was restored between the kings and the priests,
but the latter maintained their pretensions notwithstanding all
treaties.
Many tyrants and wicked princes, whose conscience reproaches them for
their negligence or their perversity, far from fearing their God, rather
like to bargain with this invisible Judge, who never refuses anything,
or with His priests, who are accommodating to the masters of the earth
rather than to their subjects. The people, when reduced to despair,
consider the divine rights of their chiefs as an abuse. When men become
exasperated, the divine rights of tyrants are compelled to yield to the
natural rights of their subjects; they have better market with the gods
than with men. Kings are responsible for their actions but to God, the
priests but to themselves; there is reason to believe that both of them
have more faith in the indulgence of Heaven than in that of earth. It is
much easier to escape the judgments of the gods, who can be appeased at
little expense, than the judgments of men whose patience is exhausted.
If you take away from the sovereigns the fear of an invisible power,
what restraint will you oppose to their misconduct? Let them learn how
to govern, how to be just, how to respect the rights of the people, to
recognize the benefactions of the nations from whom they obtain their
grandeur and power; let them learn to fear men, to submit to the laws of
equity, that no one can violate without danger; let these laws restrain
equally the powerful and the weak, the great and the small, the
sovereign and the subjects.
The fear of the Gods, religion, the terrors of another life--these are
the metaphysical and supernatural barriers which are opposed to the
furious passions of princes! Are these barriers sufficient? We leave it
to experience to solve the question! To oppose religion to the
wickedness of tyrants, is to wish that vague speculations should be more
powerful than inclinations which conspire to fortify them in it from day
to day.
CXLV.--RELIGION IS FATAL TO POLITICS; IT FORMS BUT LICENTIOUS AND
PERVERSE DESPOTS, AS WELL AS ABJECT AND UNHAPPY SUBJECTS.
We are told constantly of the immense advantages which religion secures
to politics; but if we reflect a moment, we will see without trouble
that religious opinions blind and lead astray equally the rulers and the
people, and never enlighten them either in regard to their true duties
or their real interests. Religion but too often forms licentious,
immoral tyrants, obeyed by slaves who are obliged to conform to their
views. From lack of the knowledge of the true principles of
administration, the aim and the rights of social life, the real
interests of men, and the duties which unite them, the princes are
become, in almost every land, licentious, absolute, and perverse; and
their subjects abject unhappy, and wicked. It was to avoid the trouble
of studying these important subjects, that they felt themselves obliged
to have recourse to chimeras, which so far, instead of being a remedy,
have but increased the evils of the human race and withdrawn their
attention from the most interesting things. Does not the unjust and
cruel manner in which so many nations are governed here below, furnish
the most visible proofs, not only of the non-effect produced by the fear
of another life, but of the non-existence of a Providence interested in
the fate of the human race? If there existed a good God, would we not be
forced to admit that He strangely neglects the majority of men in this
life? It would appear that this God created the nations but to be toys
for the passions and follies of His representatives upon earth.
CXLVI.--CHRISTIANITY EXTENDED ITSELF BUT BY ENCOURAGING DESPOTISM, OF
WHICH IT, LIKE ALL RELIGION, IS THE STRONGEST SUPPORT.
If we read history with some attention, we shall see that Christianity,
fawning at first, insinuated itself among the savage and free nations of
Europe but by showing their chiefs that its principles would favor
despotism and place absolute power in their hands. We see, consequently,
barbarous kings converting themselves with a miraculous promptitude;
that is to say, adopting without examination a system so favorable to
their ambition, and exerting themselves to have it adopted by their
subjects. If the ministers of this religion have since often moderated
their servile principles, it is because the theory has no influence upon
the conduct of the Lord's ministers, except when it suits their temporal
interests.
Christianity boasts of having brought to men a happiness unknown to
preceding centuries. It is true that the Grecians have not known the
Divine right of tyrants or usurpers over their native country. Under the
reign of Paganism it never entered the brain of anybody that Heaven did
not want a nation to defend itself against a ferocious beast which
insolently ravaged it. The Christian religion, devised for the benefit
of tyrants, was established on the principle that the nations should
renounce the legitimate defense of themselves. Thus Christian nations
are deprived of the first law of nature, which decrees that man should
resist evil and disarm all who attempt to destroy him. If the ministers
of the Church have often permitted nations to revolt for Heaven's cause,
they never allowed them to revolt against real evils or known violences.
It is from Heaven that the chains have come to fetter the minds of
mortals. Why is the Mohammedan everywhere a slave? It is because his
Prophet subdued him in the name of the Deity, just as Moses before him
subjugated the Jews. In all parts of the world we see that priests were
the first law-givers and the first sovereigns of the savages whom they
governed. Religion seems to have been invented but to exalt princes
above their nations, and to deliver the people to their discretion. As
soon as the latter find themselves unhappy here below, they are silenced
by menacing them with God's wrath; their eyes are fixed on Heaven, in
order to prevent them from perceiving the real causes of their
sufferings and from applying the remedies which nature offers them.
CXLVII.--THE ONLY AIM OF RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLES IS TO PERPETUATE THE
TYRANNY OF KINGS AND TO SACRIFICE THE NATIONS TO THEM.
By incessantly repeating to men that the earth is not their true
country; that the present life is but a passage; that they were not made
to be happy in this world; that their sovereigns hold their authority
but from God, and are responsible to Him alone for the misuse of it;
that it is never permitted to them to resist, the priesthood succeeded
in perpetuating the misconduct of the kings and the misfortunes of the
people; the interests of the nations have been cowardly sacrificed to
their chiefs. The more we consider the dogmas and the principles of
religion, the more we shall be convinced that their only aim is to give
advantage to tyrants and priests; not having the least regard for the
good of society. In order to mask the powerlessness of these deaf Gods,
religion has succeeded in making mortals believe that it is always
iniquity which excites the wrath of Heaven. The people blame themselves
for the disasters and the adversities which they endure continually. If
disturbed nature sometimes causes the people to feel its blows, their
bad governments are but too often the immediate and permanent causes
from which spring the continual calamities that they are obliged to
endure. Is it not the ambition of kings and of the great, their
negligence, their vices, their oppression, to which are generally due
sterility, mendacity, wars, contagions, bad morals, and all the
multiplied scourges which desolate the earth?
In continually directing the eyes of men toward Heaven, making them
believe that all their evils are due to Divine wrath, in furnishing them
but inefficient and futile means of lessening their troubles, it would
appear that the only object of the priests is to prevent the nations
from dreaming of the true sources of their miseries, and to perpetuate
them. The ministers of religion act like those indigent mothers, who, in
need of bread, put their hungry children to sleep by songs, or who
present them toys to make them forget the want which torments them.
Blinded from childhood by error, held by the invincible ties of opinion,
crushed by panic terrors, stupefied at the bosom of ignorance, how could
the people understand the true causes of their troubles? They think to
remedy them by invoking the gods. Alas! do they not see that it is it
the name of these gods that they are ordered to present their throat to
the sword of their pitiless tyrants, in whom they would find the most
visible cause of the evils under which they groan, and for which they
uselessly implore the assistance of Heaven? Credulous people! in your
adversities redouble your prayers, your offerings, your sacrifices;
besiege your temples, strangle countless victims, fast in sackcloth and
in ashes, drink your own tears; finally, exhaust yourselves to enrich
your gods: you will do nothing but enrich their priests; the gods of
Heaven will not be propitious to you, except when the gods of the earth
will recognize that they are men like yourselves, and will give to your
welfare the care which is your due.
CXLVIII.--HOW FATAL IT IS TO PERSUADE KINGS THAT THEY HAVE ONLY GOD TO
FEAR IF THEY INJURE THE PEOPLE.
Negligent, ambitious, and perverse princes are the real causes of public
adversities, of useless and unjust wars continually depopulating the
earth, of greedy and despotic governments, destroying the benefactions
of nature for men. The rapacity of the courts discourages agriculture,
blots out industry, causes famine, contagion, misery; Heaven is neither
cruel nor favorable to the wishes of the people; it is their haughty
chiefs, who always have a heart of brass.
It is a notion destructive to wholesome politics and to the morals of
princes, to persuade them that God alone is to be feared by them, when
they injure their subjects or when they neglect to render them happy.
Sovereigns! It is not the Gods, but your people whom you offend when you
do evil. It is to these people, and by retroaction, to yourselves, that
you do harm when you govern unjustly.
Nothing is more common in history than to see religious tyrants; nothing
more rare than to find equitable, vigilant, enlightened princes. A
monarch can be pious, very strict in fulfilling servilely the duties of
his religion, very submissive to his priests, liberal in their behalf,
and at the same time destitute of all the virtues and talents necessary
for governing. Religion for the princes is but an instrument intended to
keep the people more firmly under the yoke. According to the beautiful
principles of religious morality, a tyrant who, during a long reign,
will have done nothing but oppress his subjects, rob them of the fruits
of their labor, sacrifice them without pity to his insatiable ambition;
a conqueror who will have usurped the provinces of others, who will have
slaughtered whole nations, who will have been all his life a real
scourge of the human race, imagines that his conscience can be
tranquillized, if, in order to expiate so many crimes, he will have wept
at the feet of a priest, who will have the cowardly complaisance to
console and reassure a brigand, whom the most frightful despair would
punish too little for the evil which he has done upon earth.