securely enjoy truth and happiness. And had man never been other than
corrupt he would have no idea of virtue or blessedness. But wretched
as we are, and even more than if there were no greatness in our
condition, we have an idea of happiness and cannot attain it, we feel
an image of truth and possess a lie only, alike incapable of absolute
ignorance and of certain knowledge, so manifest is it that we once
were in a degree of perfection from which we have unhappily fallen!
Yet it is an astonishing thing that the mystery most removed from
our knowledge, that of the transmission of sin, should be a thing
without which we can have no knowledge of ourselves. For it is
certain that nothing more shocks our reason than to say that the sin
of the first man rendered those culpable, who, being so distant from
the source, seem incapable of participation in it. This transfusion
does not only seem to us impossible, but even most unjust, for there
is nothing so repugnant to the rules of our miserable justice as to
damn eternally an infant incapable of will, for a sin in which he
seems to have so scanty a share, that it was committed six thousand
years before he was in being. Certainly nothing shocks us more
rudely than this doctrine, and yet without this mystery, the most
incomprehensible of all, we are incomprehensible to ourselves. The
tangle of our condition takes its plies and folds in this abyss, so
that man is more inconceivable without the mystery than the mystery
is inconceivable to man.
Whence it appears that God, willing to render the difficulty of our
being unintelligible to us, has concealed the knot so high, or rather
so low, that we cannot reach it; so that it is not by the arrogant
exertion of our reason, but by the simple submission of reason, that
we can truly know ourselves.
These foundations solidly established on the inviolable authority
of Religion make us understand that there are two truths of faith
equally constant--the one, that man in his state at creation or in
that of grace is elevated above the whole of nature, made like unto
God and sharer of his divinity--the other, that in the state of
corruption and sin he has fallen from his former state and is made
like unto the brutes. These two propositions are equally fixed and
certain. The Scripture declares this plainly to us when it says in
some places: _Deliciæ meæ esse cum filiis hominum. Effundam spiritum
meum super omnen carnem. Dii estis, etc.;_ and in other places,
_Omnis caro fænum. Homo assimilatus est jumentis insipientibus et
similis factus est illis. Dixi in corde meo de filiis hominum_....
Eccles. iii.
By which it clearly appears that man by grace is made like unto God,
and a sharer in his divinity, and that without grace he is like the
brute beasts, etc.
_Scepticism._--I shall here write my thoughts without order, yet
not perhaps in undesigned confusion, that is true order, which will
always denote my object by its very disorder.
I should do too much honour to my subject if I treated it with order,
because I wish to show that it is incapable of it.
_Scepticism._--All things here are true in part, and false in part.
Essential truth is not thus, it is altogether pure and true. This
mixture dishonours and annihilates it. Nothing is purely true, and
therefore nothing is true, understanding by that pure truth. You will
say it is true that homicide is an evil, yes, for we know well what
is evil and false. But what can be named as good? Chastity? I say no,
for then the world would come to an end. Marriage? No, a celibate
life is better. Not to kill? No, for lawlessness would be horrible,
and the wicked would kill all the good. To kill then? No, for that
destroys nature. Goodness and truth are therefore only partial, and
mixed with what is evil and false.
Were we to dream the same thing every night, this would affect us as
much as the objects we see every day, and were an artisan sure to
dream every night, for twelve hours at a stretch, that he was a king,
I think he would be almost as happy as a king who should dream every
night for twelve hours at a stretch that he was an artisan.
Should we dream every night that we were pursued by enemies, and
harassed by these painful phantoms, or that we were passing all our
days in various occupations, as in travelling, we should suffer
almost as much as if the dream were real, and should fear to sleep,
as now we fear to wake when we expect in truth to enter on such
misfortunes. And, in fact, it would bring about nearly the same
troubles as the reality.
But since dreams are all different, and each single dream is
diversified, what we see in them affects us much less than what we
see when awake, because that is continuous, not indeed so continuous
and level as never to change, but the change is less abrupt, except
occasionally, as when we travel, and then we say, "I think I am
dreaming," for life is but a little less inconstant dream.
_Instinct, reason._--We have an incapacity of proof which no
dogmatism can overcome. We have an idea of truth, which no scepticism
can overcome.
Nothing more strengthens scepticism than that some are not sceptics;
were all so, they would be in the wrong.
This sect draw their strength from their enemies more than from their
friends, for the weakness of man appears much more in those who are
not, than in those who are conscious of it.
_Against scepticism._--We suppose that we all conceive of things in
the same way, but it is a gratuitous supposition, of which we have
no proof. I see indeed that the same words are applied on the same
occasions, and that every time two men see a body change its place,
they both express their view of the same object by the same word,
both saying that it has moved, and from this sameness of application
we have a strong conviction of a sameness of idea; but this, though
it may be enough to justify us in wagering the affirmative, is not
finally or completely convincing, since we know that we often draw
the same conclusions from different premisses.
This is enough, at any rate, to confuse the matter, not that it
wholly extinguishes the natural light which assures us of these
things; the academicians would have won, but this obscures it, and
troubles the dogmatists to the glory of the sceptical cabal, which
consists in this ambiguous ambiguity, and in a certain doubtful haze,
from which our doubts cannot take away all the light, nor our natural
light banish all the darkness.
_Good sense._--They are obliged to say, "You do not act in good
faith; we are not asleep," etc. How I like to see this proud reason
humiliated and suppliant. For this is not the language of a man whose
right is disputed, and who defends it with the mailed power of his
hand. He does not trifle by saying that men are not acting in good
faith, but he punishes this bad faith with might.
It may be that there are true demonstrations, but it is not certain.
Thus this proves nothing but that it is not certain that all is
uncertain, to the glory of scepticism.
_Ex senatus consultis et plebiscitis scelera exercentur._
_Nihil tam absurde dici potest quod non dicatur ab aliquo
philosophorum. Quibusdam destinatis sententiis consecrati quæ non
probant coguntur defendere._
_Ut omnium rerum sic litterarum quoque intemperantiâ laboramus._
_Id maxime quemque decet quod est cujusque suum maxime._
_Hos natura modos primum dedit._
_Paucis opus est litteris ad bonam mentem._
_Si quando turpe non sit, tamen non est non turpe quum id a
multitudine laudetur._
_Mihi sic usus est, tibi ut opus est facto, fac._
The falsity of those philosophers who do not discuss the immortality
of the soul. The falsity of their dilemma in Montaigne.
It is beyond doubt that the mortality or immortality of the soul must
make an entire difference in morals; yet philosophers have treated
morality independently of the question. They discuss to pass the time.
Plato, to dispose towards Christianity.
The soul is immaterial. Philosophers have subdued their passions.
What matter could do that?
Atheists should say things which are perfectly clear, but it is not
perfectly clear that the soul is material.
Atheism is a mark of strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.
_Against those philosophers who believe in God without Jesus
Christ._--They believe that God alone is worthy to be loved and
admired, and they have desired to be loved and admired of men, and
know not their own corruption. If they feel themselves full of
feelings of love and adoration, and if they find therein their chief
joy, let them think themselves good, and welcome! But if they find
themselves averse from him, if they have no inclination but the wish
to establish themselves in the esteem of men, and if their whole
perfection consists not in constraining, but yet in causing men to
find their happiness in loving them, I say that such a perfection is
horrible. What! they have known God, and have not desired solely that
men should love him, but that men should stop short at loving them.
They have wished to be the object of the voluntary joy of men.
All the principles of sceptics, stoics, atheists, etc. are true; but
their conclusions are false, because the opposite principles are also
true.
But perhaps the subject goes beyond the reach of reason. We will
therefore examine what she has to say on questions within her powers.
If there be anything to which her own interest must have made her
apply herself most seriously, it is the search after her sovereign
good. Let us see then in what these strong and clearsighted souls
have placed it, and whether they agree.
One says that the sovereign good consists in virtue, another in
pleasure, another in the knowledge of nature, another in truth:
_Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas_, another in total
ignorance, another in indolence, others in neglect of appearances,
another in the lack of wonder, _nihil mirari prope res una quæ possit
facere et servare beatum_, the true sceptics in their indifference,
doubt and perpetual suspense, and others, more wise, think they can
find a better way. And this is all we get from them!
We must needs see if this fine philosophy has gained nothing certain
from a research so lengthy and so wide, at least perhaps the soul has
learned to know herself. We will hear the rulers of the world on this
matter. What have they thought of her substance?
Have they been more happy in fixing her seat?
What have they discovered about her origin, duration and departure?
_Search for the true good._--Ordinary men place their good in fortune
and external goods, or at least in amusement. Philosophers have shown
the vanity of all this, and have placed it where best they could.
Philosophers reckon two hundred and eighty-eight sovereign goods.
_The sovereign good. Dispute about the sovereign good._--_Ut
sis contentus temetipso et ex te nascentibus bonis._ There is a
contradiction, for finally they advise suicide. Ah! happy life
indeed, from which we are to free ourselves as from the plague.
It is well to be weary and harassed by the useless search after the
true good, that we may stretch our arms to the Redeemer.
_Conversation._--Great words: Religion. I deny it.
_Conversation._--Scepticism aids Religion.
_Philosophers._--We are full of matters which take us out of
ourselves.
Our instinct suggests that we must seek our happiness outside
ourselves; our passions hurry us abroad, even when there are no
objects to excite them. The objects outside us tempt and call us,
even when we do not think of them. And thus it is in vain for
philosophers to say, "Enter into yourselves, and you will find your
good there;" we believe them not, and those who believe them are the
most empty and the most foolish.
This civil war between reason and passion divides those who desire
peace into two sects, the one, of those who would renounce their
passions and become gods, the other, of those who would renounce
their reason and become brute beasts.--Des Barreaux.--But neither
has succeeded, and reason still exists, to condemn the baseness
and injustice of the passions, and to trouble the repose of those
who give themselves over to their sway, and the passions are still
vigorous in those who desire to renounce them.
_The Stoics._--They conclude that what has been done once may be done
always, and that because the desire of glory gives some degree of
power to those possessed by it, others can easily do the same.
These are the movements of fever, which health cannot imitate.
Epictetus concludes that since there are consistent Christians all
men can easily be so.
The three kinds of lust have made three sects, and philosophers have
done no other thing than follow one of the three lusts.
What the Stoics propose is so difficult and so idle.
The Stoics lay down that all who are not at the highest degree of
wisdom are equally frivolous and vicious, as those who are in two
inches under water....
_Philosophers._--A fine thing to cry to a man who does not know
himself, that of himself he should come to God. And a fine thing also
to say to a man who knows himself.
_THOUGHTS ON MAHOMET AND ON CHINA._
Jesus Christ.
Heathens. | Mahomet.
\ | /
\ | /
\ Ignorance /
of God.
_The foundation of our faith._--The heathen religion has no
foundation at the present day. We are told that it once had such a
foundation by the voice of the oracles, but what are the books which
certify this? Are they worthy of credence on account of the virtue of
their writers, have they been kept with such care that we may feel
certain none have tampered with them?
The Mahomedan religion has for its foundation the Koran and Mahomet.
But was this prophet, who was to be the last hope of the world,
foretold? What mark has he that every other man has not who chooses
to call himself prophet? What miracles does he himself tell us that
he wrought? What mystery has he taught? Even according to his own
tradition, what was the morality, what the happiness he offered?
The Jewish religion must be differently regarded in the tradition of
the sacred books and in the tradition of the people. Its morality
and happiness are ridiculous in the tradition of the people, but
admirable in that of their saints. The foundation is admirable, it
is the most ancient book in the world, and the most authentic, and
whereas Mahomet, in order to ensure the lasting existence of his
book forbade men to read it, Moses with the same object commanded
everyone to read his. And it is the same with all religions, for the
Christianity of the sacred books is quite different to that of the
casuists.
Our religion is so divine that another divine religion is only the
foundation of it.
_The difference between Jesus Christ and Mahomet._--Mahomet was not
foretold; Jesus Christ was foretold.
Mahomet that he slew; Jesus Christ that he caused his own to be slain.
Mahomet forbade reading; the apostles ordered it.
In fact the two systems are so contrary that if Mahomet took the way,
humanly speaking, to succeed, Jesus Christ took, humanly speaking,
the way to perish. And instead of concluding from Mahomet's success
that Jesus Christ might well have succeeded, we should rather say
that since Mahomet succeeded, Jesus Christ ought to have perished.
The Psalms are chanted throughout all the world.
Who renders testimony to Mahomet? Himself. Jesus Christ wills that
his testimony to himself should be of no avail.
The quality of witnesses demands that they should exist always and
everywhere, and the wretch stands alone.
_The falsity of other religions._--Mahomet had no authority. His
reasons ought to be most cogent, having nothing but their own force.
What does he say then in order to make us believe him?
Any man can do what Mahomet did, for he wrought no miracles, he was
confirmed by no prophecies. No man can do what Jesus Christ did.
_Against Mahomet._--The Koran is not more of Mahomet than the Gospel
is of Saint Matthew, for it is cited by many authors from age to age.
Even its very enemies, Celsus and Porphyry, never disavowed it.
The Koran says that Saint Matthew was an honest man. Therefore
Mahomet was a false prophet for calling honest men wicked, or for
not admitting what they have said of Jesus Christ.
It is not by the obscurities in Mahomet which may be interpreted in
a mysterious sense, that I would have him judged, but in what he
speaks clearly, as of his paradise, and the rest, he is ridiculous.
And because what is clear is so absurd, it is not just to take his
obscurities for mysteries.
It is not the same with the Scripture. It may be admitted that in it
are obscurities as strange as those of Mahomet, but much is admirably
clear, and prophecies are manifestly fulfilled. The cases are not the
same. We must not confound and compare things which only resemble
each other in their obscurity, and not in that clearness, which
should induce us to reverence the obscurities.
Suppose two persons tell foolish stories, one whose words have a
two-fold sense, understood only by his own followers, the other which
has only the one sense, a stranger not being in the secret, who hears
them both speak in this manner, would pass on them a like judgment.
But if afterwards in the rest of their conversation one speak with
the tongue of angels, and the other mere wearisome common-places, he
will judge that the one spoke in mysteries and not the other; the
one having sufficiently shown that he was incapable of absurdity,
and capable of being mysterious, the other that he is incapable of
mystery, and capable of absurdity.
The Old Testament is a cipher.
_History of China._--I believe those histories only, whose witnesses
let themselves be slaughtered.
It is not a question of seeing this in bulk. I say there is in it a
something to blind and something to enlighten.
In this one word I destroy all your reasoning. "But China obscures,"
you say, and I answer, "China obscures, but there is light to be
found; seek it."
Thus all that you say makes for one of these designs, and not at all
against the other. So this serves, and does no harm.
We must then look at this in detail, the papers must be laid on the
table.
Against the history of China, the historians of Mexico. The five
suns, of which the last is but eight hundred years old.
_OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE._
I see the Christian Religion founded on an earlier Religion, and this
is what I find of positive fact.
I do not here speak of the miracles of Moses, of Jesus Christ, and
of the Apostles, because they do not at first seem convincing, and
because I only wish here to adduce in evidence all those foundations
of the Christian Religion which are beyond a doubt, and on which
doubt cannot be cast by any person soever. It is certain that we see
in many places in the world a peculiar people, separated from all
other peoples of the world, which is called the Jewish people.
I see then a mass of religions in many countries, and in all times,
but they neither please me by their morality, nor convince me by
their proofs. Thus I should equally have refused the religion of
Mahomet and of China, of the ancient Romans and of the Egyptians, for
the sole reason, that none having more marks of truth than another,
nor any thing which necessarily decides me, reason cannot incline to
one rather than the other.
But while I consider this vacillating and strange variety of morals
and beliefs at different times, I find in one corner of the world a
peculiar people, separated from all other nations upon earth, the
oldest of all, and whose histories are earlier by many ages than the
most ancient in our possession.
I find then this great and numerous people, sprung from a single
man, who adore one God, and guide themselves by a law, given them
as they say, by his own hand. They maintain that to them alone in
the world God has revealed his mysteries, that all men are corrupt
and under the wrath of God, are all abandoned to their senses and
imagination, whence arise the strange errors and continual changes
among them, both of religions and of manners, whereas this nation
remains unshaken in its conduct: but that God will not leave other
nations in darkness for ever, that there will come a Saviour for
all, that they are in the world to announce his coming, that they
were expressly formed to be the forerunners and heralds of this
great advent, and to call on all nations to join with them in the
expectation of this Redeemer.
_Advantages of the Jewish people._--In this search the Jewish people
at first attracts my attention by a number of wonderful and singular
things which appear among them.
I see first that they are a people wholly composed of brethren, and
whereas all others are formed by the assemblage of an infinity of
families, this, though so prodigiously fruitful, has sprung from one
man only, and being thus all one flesh, and members one of another,
they form a powerful state consisting of one family, a fact without
example.
This family or nation is the most ancient known to men, a fact which
seems to invest it with a peculiar veneration, especially in regard
to our present enquiry, because if God has during all time revealed
himself to men, these are they from whom we must learn the tradition.
This people is not peculiar only by their antiquity, but also
remarkable by their duration, which has been unbroken from their
origin till now. For while the nations of Greece and Italy, of
Lacedæmon, Athens and Rome, and others who came after, have long been
extinct, these still remain, and in spite of the endeavours of many
powerful princes who have a hundred times striven to destroy them,
as their historians testify, and as we can easily understand by the
natural order of things during so long a space of years, they have
nevertheless been preserved, and extending from the earliest times
to the latest, their history comprehends in its duration all our
histories.
The Law by which this people is governed is at once the most ancient
law in the world, the most perfect, and the only one which has
been kept without interruption in a state. This is what Josephus
excellently shows, against Apion, as does Philo the Jew in many
places, where they point out that it is so ancient that the very name
of _law_ was only known by the men of old more than a thousand years
afterwards, so that Homer, who has treated the history of so many
States, has not once used the word. And it is easy to judge of the
perfection of the Law by simply reading it, for it plainly provides
for all things with so great wisdom, equity and judgment, that the
most ancient legislators, Greek and Roman, having had some glimpse
of it, have borrowed from it their principal laws, as appears by
those called Of the Twelve Tables, and by the other proofs given by
Josephus.
Yet this law is at the same time severe and rigorous beyond all
others in respect to their religious worship, constraining the
people, in order to keep them in their duty, to a thousand peculiar
and painful observances, on pain of death. Whence it is a most
astonishing fact, that it has been constantly preserved during many
ages by a people so rebellious and impatient, while all other states
have changed their laws from time to time, although they are far more
lenient.
The book containing this law, the first of all laws, is itself the
most ancient book in the world, those of Homer, Hesiod and others
dating from six or seven hundred years later.
_Falsity of other religions._--They have no witnesses; this people
has them. God challenges other religions to produce such marks. Is.
xliii. 9,--xliv. 8.
This is fact. While all philosophers separate into different sects,
there is found in one corner of the world, a people, the most ancient
in the world, declaring that all the world is in error, that God has
revealed to them the truth, that they will abide always on the earth.
In fact, all other sects come to an end, this one still endures,
and has done so for four thousand years. They assert that they hold
from their ancestors that man has fallen from communion with God, is
entirely separated from God, but that he has promised to redeem them,
that their doctrine shall always exist on the earth;
That their law has a twofold sense, that during sixteen hundred years
they have had people whom they believed prophets foretelling both the
time and the manner;