Such is the weakness, such the perversity, of the human race that
it is better, no doubt, for it to be subject to all conceivable
superstitions, provided they be not murderous, than to live
without religion. Man has always needed a curb; and, although it
was ridiculous to sacrifice to fauns or naiads, it was much more
reasonable and useful to worship these fantastic images of the deity
than to sink into atheism. A violent atheist would be as great a
plague as a violent superstitious man.
When men have not sound ideas of the divinity, false ideas will take
their place; just as, in ages of impoverishment, when there is not
sound money, people use bad coin. The pagan feared to commit a crime
lest he should be punished by his false gods; the Asiatic fears the
chastisement of his pagoda. Religion is necessary wherever there is a
settled society. The laws take care of known crimes; religion watches
secret crime.
But once men have come to embrace a pure and holy religion,
superstition becomes, not merely useless, but dangerous. We must not
feed on acorns those to whom God offers bread.
Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy--the mad
daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated
the earth.
When, in our ages of barbarism, there were scarcely two feudal lords
who had a New Testament in their homes, it might be pardonable to
press fables on the vulgar; that is to say, on these feudal lords,
their weak-minded wives, and their brutal vassals. They were led to
believe that St. Christopher had carried the infant Jesus across
a river; they were fed with stories of sorcery and diabolical
possession; they readily believed that St. Genou healed gout, and
St. Claire sore eyes. The children believed in the werewolf, and
their parents in the girdle of St. Francis. The number of relics was
incalculable.
The sediment of these superstitions remained among the people even
when religion had been purified. We know that when M. de Noailles,
Bishop of Chalons, removed and threw in the fire the pretended
relic of the sacred navel of Jesus Christ the town of Chalons took
proceedings against him. But his courage was equal to his piety, and
he succeeded in convincing the people that they could worship Jesus
Christ in spirit and truth without having his navel in their church.
The Jansenists contributed not a little gradually to root out from
the mind of the nation the false ideas that dishonoured the Christian
religion. People ceased to believe that it sufficed to pray for
thirty days to the Virgin to obtain all that they wished, and sin
with impunity.
In the end the citizens began to suspect that it was not really St.
Genevieve who gave or withheld rain, but God himself who disposed of
the elements. The monks were astonished to see that their saints no
longer worked miracles. If the writers of the life of St. Francis
Xavier returned to this world, they would not dare to say that the
saint raised nine people from the dead, that he was in two places at
the same time, and that, when his crucifix fell into the sea, a crab
restored it to him.
It is the same with excommunication. Historians tell us that when
King Robert had been excommunicated by Pope Gregory V., for marrying
his godmother, the Princess Bertha, his servants threw out of the
window the meat served up to the king, and Queen Bertha was delivered
of a goose in punishment of the incestuous marriage. I doubt if
in our time the waiters of the king of France would, if he were
excommunicated, throw his dinner out of the window, and whether the
queen would give birth to a gosling.
There remain, it is true, a few bigoted fanatics in the suburbs; but
the disease, like vermin, attacks only the lowest of the populace.
Every day reason penetrates farther into France, into the shops of
merchants as well as the mansions of lords. We must cultivate the
fruits of reason, the more willingly since it is now impossible to
prevent them from developing. France, enlightened by Pascal, Nicole,
Arnaud, Bossuet, Descartes, Gassendi, Bayle, Fontenelle, etc., cannot
be ruled as it was ruled in earlier times.
If the masters of error--the grand masters--so long paid and honoured
for brutalising the human species, ordered us to-day to believe
that the seed must die in order to germinate; that the earth stands
motionless on its foundations--that it does not travel round the sun;
that the tides are not a natural effect of gravitation; that the
rainbow is not due to the refraction and reflection of light, etc.,
and based their decrees on ill-understood passages of Scripture, we
know how they would be regarded by educated men. Would it be too
much to call them fools? And if these masters employed force and
persecution to secure the ascendancy of their insolent ignorance,
would it be improper to speak of them as wild beasts?
The more the superstitions of the monks are despised, the more
the bishops and priests are respected; while they do good, the
monkish superstitions from Rome do nothing but evil. And of all
these superstitions, is not the most dangerous that of hating one’s
neighbour on account of his opinions? And is it not evident that it
would be even more reasonable to worship the sacred navel, the sacred
prepuce, and the milk and dress of the Virgin Mary, than to detest
and persecute one’s brother?