_Unjust Accusation.--Justification of Vanini._
Formerly, whoever was possessed of a secret in any art was in danger of
passing for a sorcerer; every new sect was charged with murdering
infants in its mysteries; and every philosopher who departed from the
jargon of the schools was accused of atheism by knaves and fanatics, and
condemned by blockheads.
Anaxagorus dares to assert that the sun is not conducted by Apollo,
mounted in a chariot and four; he is condemned as an atheist, and
compelled to fly.
Aristotle is accused of atheism by a priest, and not being powerful
enough to punish his accuser, he retires to Chalcis. But the death of
Socrates is the greatest blot on the page of Grecian history.
Aristophanes--he whom commentators admire because he was a Greek,
forgetting that Socrates was also a Greek--Aristophanes was the first
who accustomed the Athenians to regard Socrates as an atheist.
This comic poet, who is neither comic nor poetical, would not, among us,
have been permitted to exhibit his farces at the fair of St. Lawrence.
He appears to me to be much lower and more despicable than Plutarch
represents him. Let us see what the wise Plutarch says of this buffoon:
"The language of Aristophanes bespeaks his miserable quackery; it is
made up of the lowest and most disgusting puns; he is not even pleasing
to the people; and to men of judgment and honor he is insupportable; his
arrogance is intolerable, and all good men detest his malignity."
This, then, is the jack-pudding whom Madame Dacier, an admirer of
Socrates, ventures to admire! Such was the man who, indirectly, prepared
the poison by which infamous judges put to death the most virtuous man
in Greece.
The tanners, cobblers, and seamstresses of Athens applauded a farce in
which Socrates was represented lifted in the air in a hamper, announcing
that there was no God, and boasting of having stolen a cloak while he
was teaching philosophy. A whole people, whose government sanctioned
such infamous licences, well deserved what has happened to them, to
become slaves to the Romans, and, subsequently, to the Turks. The
Russians, whom the Greeks of old would have called barbarians, would
neither have poisoned Socrates, nor have condemned Alcibiades to death.
We pass over the ages between the Roman commonwealth and our own times.
The Romans, much more wise than the Greeks, never persecuted a
philosopher for his opinions. Not so the barbarous nations which
succeeded the Roman Empire. No sooner did the Emperor Frederick II.
begin to quarrel with the popes, than he was accused of being an
atheist, and being the author of the book of "The Three Impostors,"
conjointly with his chancellor De Vincis.
Does our high-chancellor, de l'Hôpital, declare against persecution? He
is immediately charged with atheism--_"Homo doctus, sed vetus atheus."_
There was a Jesuit, as much beneath Aristophanes as Aristophanes is
beneath Homer--a wretch, whose name has become ridiculous even among
fanatics--the Jesuit Garasse, who found atheists everywhere. He bestows
the name upon all who are the objects of his virulence. He calls
Theodore Beza an atheist. It was he, too, that led the public into error
concerning Vanini.
The unfortunate end of Vanini does not excite our pity and indignation
like that of Socrates, because Vanini was only a foreign pedant, without
merit; however, Vanini was not, as was pretended, an atheist; he was
quite the contrary.
He was a poor Neapolitan priest, a theologian and preacher by trade, an
outrageous disputer on quiddities and universals, and _"utrum chimæra
bombinans in vacuo possit comedere secundas intentiones."_ But there was
nothing in him tending to atheism. His notion of God is that of the
soundest and most approved theology: "God is the beginning and the end,
the father of both, without need of either, eternal without time, in no
one place, yet present everywhere. To him there is neither past nor
future; he is within and without everything; he has created all, and
governs all; he is immutable, infinite without parts; his power is his
will." This is not very philosophical, but it is the most approved
theology.
Vanini prided himself on reviving Plato's fine idea, adopted by
Averroës, that God had created a chain of beings from the smallest to
the greatest, the last link of which was attached to his eternal throne;
an idea more sublime than true, but as distant from atheism as being
from nothing.
He travelled to seek his fortune and to dispute; but, unfortunately,
disputation leads not to fortune; a man makes himself as many
irreconcilable enemies as he finds men of learning or of pedantry to
argue against. Vanini's ill-fortune had no other source. His heat and
rudeness in disputation procured him the hatred of some theologians; and
having quarrelled with one Franconi, this Franconi, the friend of his
enemies, charged him with being an atheist and teaching atheism.
Franconi, aided by some witnesses, had the barbarity, when confronted
with the accused, to maintain what he had advanced. Vanini, on the
stool, being asked what he thought of the existence of a God, answered
that he, with the Church, adored a God in three persons. Taking a straw
from the ground, "This," said he, "is sufficient to prove that there is
a creator." He then delivered a very fine discourse on vegetation and
motion, and the necessity of a Supreme Being, without whom there could
be neither motion nor vegetation.
The president Grammont, who was then at Toulouse, repeats this discourse
in his history of France, now so little known; and the same Grammont,
through some unaccountable prejudice, asserts that Vanini said all this
"through vanity, or through fear, rather than from inward conviction."
On what could this atrocious, rash judgment of the president be founded?
It is evident, from Vanini's answer, that he could not but be acquitted
of the charge of atheism. But what followed? This unfortunate foreign
priest also dabbled in medicine. There was found in his house a large
live toad, which he kept in a vessel of water; he was forthwith accused
of being a sorcerer. It was maintained that this toad was the god which
he adored. An impious meaning was attributed to several passages of his
books, a thing which is both common and easy, by taking objections for
answers, giving some bad sense to a loose phrase, and perverting an
innocent expression. At last, the faction which oppressed him forced
from his judges the sentence which condemned him to die.
In order to justify this execution it was necessary to charge the
unfortunate man with the most enormous of crimes. The grey friar--the
_very_ grey friar Marsenne, was so besotted as to publish that "Vanini
set out from Naples, with twelve of his apostles, to convert the whole
world to atheism." What a pitiful tale! How should a poor priest have
twelve men in his pay? How should he persuade twelve Neapolitans to
travel at great expense, in order to spread this revolting doctrine at
the peril of their lives? Would a king himself have it in his power to
pay twelve preachers of atheism? No one before Father Marsenne had
advanced so enormous an absurdity. But after him it was repeated; the
journals and historical dictionaries caught it, and the world, which
loves the extraordinary, has believed the fable without examination.
Even Bayle, in his miscellaneous thoughts (_Pensées Diverses_), speaks
of Vanini as of an atheist. He cites his example in support of his
paradox, that "a society of atheists might exist." He assures us that
Vanini was a man of very regular morals, and that he was a martyr to
his philosophical opinions. On both these points he is equally mistaken.
Vanini informs us in his "Dialogues," written in imitation of Erasmus,
that he had a mistress named Isabel. He was as free in his writings as
in his conduct; but he was not an atheist.
A century after his death, the learned Lacroze, and he who took the name
of Philaletes, endeavored to justify him. But as no one cares anything
about the memory of an unfortunate Neapolitan, scarcely any one has read
these apologies.
The Jesuit Hardouin, more learned and no less rash than Garasse, in his
book entitled _"Athei Detecti"_ charges the Descartes, the Arnaulds, the
Pascals, the Malebranches, with atheism. Happily, Vanini's fate was not
theirs.