takes pen, ink, and paper, and resolves within himself to write a book,
but without any other talent for writing but the need he has of fifty
_pistoles_.[848] In vain I say to him: “Dioscorus, take a saw, or else
go to the lathe, make a spoke of a wheel, and you will be sure to earn
your living.”[849] “But I never served an apprenticeship to these
trades.” “Why then, copy, transcribe, become a reader for the press,
but do not write.” Yet Dioscorus will write and get it printed too. And
because he must not send paper to the press with nothing written on it,
he sets himself to scribble whatever he pleases, and likes to write
such stuff as this: “That the Seine runs through the city of Paris;
that a week has seven days; or that it threatens to rain,”[850] and as
there is nothing in such phrases against religion or the government,
and as they will only harm the public by vitiating their taste, and
accustoming them to dull and insipid things, he obtains permission
to get his book printed;[851] and to the shame of the age, and as a
mortification to good authors, a second edition of it appears. Just
so, another wiseacre resolves within himself that he will preach, and
he preaches; he is without any talent, or has not the least vocation
for it, but he wants a good living.
[Illustration: BOSSUET]
(24.) A worldly and profane clergyman does but declaim when he preaches.
On the contrary, there are some holy men whose character carries
persuasion with it; they make their appearance in the pulpit, and every
one who comes to listen to them is already moved, and, as it were,
carried away by their mere presence; the sermon afterwards completes
their conversion.
(25.) The bishop of Meaux (Bossuet) and Father Bourdaloue recall to my
mind Demosthenes and Cicero. As both of them are absolute masters of
pulpit eloquence, they have had the fate of other great models; one
of them has made many wretched cavillers, and the other many wretched
imitators.
(26.) The eloquence of the pulpit, with respect to what is merely human
and depending on the genius of the orator, is not easily perceptible,
is known but to few, and attained with difficulty. It must be very
difficult to please and to persuade at the same time; for a man is
obliged to keep to beaten paths, to say what has been said, and what
is foreseen he would say. The subjects he has to treat of are grand,
but worn and trite; the principles are invariable, but every one of
his audience perceives the inferences at the first glance. Some of
the subjects are sublime; but who can treat of the sublime? There are
mysteries to be explained, but they are better explained in a lecture
at college than in a harangue. The morals, too, of the pulpit, though
they comprehend matter as vast and diversified as the manners and
morals of men, turn all upon the same pivot, exhibit the same imagery,
and are restrained to much narrower limits than satire is; after the
usual invective against honour, riches, and pleasures, there remains
nothing more for the orator to do but to finish his discourse and
dismiss his audience. There may sometimes be tears, and people may be
moved; but let the calling and talent of the preacher be considered,
and perhaps it will be found that the subject lends itself to a sermon,
or that it is chiefly a feeling of self-interest which produces this
agitation; and that it is not so much true eloquence as the strong
lungs of the missionary which shake us and produce within us these
emotions. In short, the preacher is not provided, as the lawyer is,
with always fresh matters of fact, with various transactions and
unheard-of adventures; his business is not to start doubtful questions,
and improve probable conjectures—all subjects which elevate talent,
give it force and breadth, and instead of putting a restraint on
eloquence, only fix and direct it. The preacher, on the contrary, has
to draw his discourse from a source known to all and used by everybody;
if he deviates from these commonplaces, he ceases to be popular,
becomes abstruse and a declaimer, and no longer preaches the Gospel.
All he needs is a noble simplicity, which is difficult to attain,
rarely found, and above the reach of ordinary men; their talent,
imagination, learning, and memory, so far from assisting them, often
prevent their acquiring it.
A barristerʼs profession is laborious, toilsome, and requires a
vast amount of knowledge as well as great readiness of invention. A
barrister is not, like a preacher, provided with a certain number
of speeches, composed at leisure, learned by heart, uttered with
authority, without any fear of contradiction, and which, with a few
alterations, may serve more than once; his pleadings are grave, and
delivered before judges who may silence him, and against adversaries
who interrupt him; his replies have to be sharp and to the point;
and in one and the same day he has to plead in several courts causes
quite dissimilar. His house neither affords him shelter nor rest, nor
protects him against his clients; it is open to all comers, who crowd
upon him with their difficult or doubtful cases; he is not put to bed,
nor is the perspiration wiped from his face, nor are refreshments
offered to him; people of all qualities and sexes do not crowd his
rooms to congratulate him upon the beauty and elegance of his style, or
to remind him of a certain passage where he ran the risk of stopping
short, or of some scruples he felt for having spoken with less warmth
than usual; all the repose a barrister has after a long speech is
immediately to set to work upon writings still longer; he only varies
his labours and fatigues; I may venture to say he is in his profession
what the first apostles were in theirs.
Having thus distinguished the eloquence of the bar from the profession
of a barrister, and the eloquence of the pulpit from the calling of a
preacher, it will appear, I believe, that it is easier to preach than
to plead, but more difficult to preach well than to plead well.
(27.) What a vast advantage has a speech over a written composition.
Men are imposed upon by voice and gesture, and by all that is conducive
to enhance the performance. Any little prepossession in favour of
the speaker raises their admiration, and then they do their best to
comprehend him; they commend his performance before he has begun,
but they soon fall off asleep, doze all the time he is preaching, and
only wake to applaud him. An author has no such passionate admirers;
his works are read at leisure in the country or in the solitude of
the study; no public meetings are held to applaud him, nor do people
intrigue to sacrifice all his rivals to him and to have him raised to
the prelacy. However excellent his book may be, it is read with the
intention of finding it but middling; it is perused, discussed, and
compared to other works; a book is not composed of transient sounds
lost in the air and forgotten; what is printed remains; sometimes it
is expected a month or two before it is published, and people are
impatient to damn it, whilst the greatest pleasure many will find in
it will be their own criticisms; it vexes them to meet on each page
passages which ought to please; often they are even afraid of being
amused by it, and they throw the book away merely because it is good.
Everybody does not pretend to be a preacher; the elocution, the figures
of speech, the gift of memory, the gown or the calling of a preacher,
are things people do not always venture on, or like to take on
themselves, whilst every one imagines he thinks well and writes still
better than he thinks, which renders him less indulgent to the person
who thinks and writes as well as himself; in a word, the preacher of
sermons will sooner obtain a bishopric than the most judicious writer a
small living, and whilst new favours are still heaped on the first, the
more deserving author may consider himself very fortunate if he gets
some of the leavings of the preacher.
(28.) If it happens that the wicked hate and persecute you, good men
advise you to humble yourself before God, and to beware of the pride
you may feel in having displeased people of a similar character; so
when certain men who admire everything middling, blame a work you have
written, or a speech you have made in public, whether at the bar, in
the pulpit, or elsewhere, humble yourself, for of all the temptations
of pride there cannot be a greater and more enticing one.
(29.) A preacher, methinks, should select for every one of his sermons
some capital truth, whether to terrify or to instruct, handle it
thoroughly and analyse it, whilst omitting all fine-spun decisions
so worn, trite, and different from one another; I would not have him
suppose a thing which is notoriously false, namely, that great or
fashionable people understand the religion they profess as well as
its duties; so that he will be afraid of remonstrating with persons
of their culture and subtle understandings. Let him employ the time
others waste in composing a set, formal discourse, in making himself
so completely master of his subject that his style and expressions may
be original and natural; let him, after some necessary preparations,
abandon himself to his own genius and to the emotions with which a
great subject will inspire him; and then, he may be able to do without
those excessive efforts of memory, which destroy all graceful gestures,
and look more as if he had learned something by heart for a wager, than
as if he were treating a matter of great importance; let him, on the
contrary, kindled by a noble enthusiasm, persuade all minds, alarm all
souls, and fill the heart of his hearers with another fear than that of
seeing him stop short in the middle of his sermon.
(30.) A man who has not yet arrived to such perfection as to forget
himself in the dispensation of Holy Writ, should not be discouraged by
the austere rules which are prescribed, which may deprive him of the
means of showing his intelligence and of attaining the honours to which
he aspires. What more useful, more exalted talent can there be than
preaching like an apostle; and who would better deserve a bishopric?
Was Fénelon unworthy of that dignity, and could he have escaped his
princeʼs choice but for another choice?[852]
[Illustration]
XVI.
OF FREETHINKERS.[853]
(1.) Do freethinkers know that it is only ironically they are called
strong-minded?[854] What greater proof of their weakness of mind
can they give than their uncertainty about the very principles of
their existence, life, senses, knowledge, and what will be their end?
What can be more discouraging to a man than to doubt if his soul be
material, like a stone or a reptile, and subject to corruption like the
vilest creatures? And does it not prove much more strength of mind and
grandeur to be able to conceive the idea of a Being superior to all
other beings, by whom and for whom all things were made; of a Being
absolutely perfect and pure, without beginning or end, of whom our soul
is the image, and of whom, if I may say so, it is a part, because it is
spiritual and immortal?
(2.) The docile and the weak are susceptible of receiving impressions;
the first receive good ones, for they are convinced and faithful,
whilst the second receive bad ones, as they are stubborn and corrupted.
A docile mind admits thus true religion, and a feeble mind either
admits none or a false one. Now a freethinker either has no religion at
all, or creates one for himself; therefore a strong-minded freethinker
is in reality feeble-minded.[855]
(3.) I call those men worldly, earthly, or coarse, whose hearts and
minds are wholly fixed on this earth, that small part of the universe
they are placed in; who value and love nothing beyond it; whose minds
are as cramped as that narrow spot of ground they call their estate, of
which the extent is measured, the acres are numbered, and the limits
well known. I am not astonished that men who lean, as it were, on an
atom, should stumble at the smallest efforts they make for discovering
the truth; that, being so short-sighted, they do not reach beyond the
heavens and the stars, to contemplate God Himself; that, not being
able to perceive the excellency of what is spiritual, or the dignity
of the soul, they should be still less sensible of the difficulty of
satisfying it; how very inferior the entire world is in comparison to
it; how necessary is to it an all-perfect Being, which is God; and
how absolutely it needs a religion to find out that God, and to be
assured of His reality. I can easily understand that incredulity or
indifference are but natural to such men, that they make use of God and
religion only as a piece of policy, as far as they may be conducive to
the order and decorum of this world, the only thing in their opinion
worth thinking of.
(4.) Some men give the finishing-stroke to the spoiling of their
judgment by their long travels, and thus lose the little religion which
remained to them.[856] They meet daily new forms of worship, different
manners and morals, and various ceremonies; they are not unlike those
people who wander from shop to shop, and have not quite made up their
mind what they are going to buy; the variety puzzles them, and as each
thing pleases their fancy more or less, they are unable to come to a
decision, and leave without buying anything.
(5.) There are some men who delay becoming religious and pious till the
time everybody openly avows himself irreligious and a freethinker,[857]
for, as this has then become vulgar, they will be distinguished from
the crowd. In so serious and important a matter singularity pleases
them; only in trifling things, of no consequence, they follow the
fashion and do what others do; for all I know, they may consider it
somewhat courageous and daring to run the risk of what may happen
to them in the next world. Moreover, when men are of a certain rank,
possess a certain freedom of thought, and have certain views, they
should not dream of believing what learned men and the common people
believe.
(6.) A man in health questions whether there is a God, and he also
doubts whether it be a sin to have intercourse with a woman, who is at
liberty to refuse;[858] but when he falls ill, or when his mistress is
with child, she is discarded, and he believes in God.
(7.) People should examine themselves thoroughly before openly
declaring themselves freethinkers, so that, according to their own
principles, they at least may die as they have lived; or if they find
they are not strong-minded enough to proceed so far, to resolve to
live as they would wish to die.
(8.) Jesting in a dying man is out of place; and if it is on certain
subjects, it is dreadful. To please our survivors with a jest at the
expense of our own eternal happiness, is a very miserable business.
Whatever a man may think about a future state, dying is a very serious
affair, and firmness is then more becoming than jesting.
(9.) In all ages there have been people with a certain amount of
cleverness, and well read, who, servilely following men of high rank,
embraced their loose principles, and all their lifetime groaned under
their yoke, against their own knowledge and conscience. Some men only
live for other men, and seem to consider themselves created for this
purpose; they are ashamed to be seen bestowing a thought on their own
salvation, and to appear outwardly such as they are perhaps in their
hearts, and thus they ruin themselves out of deference or complacency.
Are there then on this earth men of such high rank and so very powerful
as to deserve that we should shape our beliefs and our lives according
to their taste and fancy; nay, that we should carry our submission
so far as at our death to leave this world not in the safest way for
ourselves, but in the way most pleasing to them?
(10.) Men who run counter to all the world, and act against principles
universally received, should know more than other men, be clear in
their reasons and convincing in their arguments.
(11.) A sober-minded, cool-headed, chaste, and honourable man, who
affirms there is no God, at least is dispassionate, but such a man is
not to be found.
(12.) I admit I should very much like to see a man really persuaded
there was no God; for then I should at least hear on what unanswerable
arguments his unbelief is founded.
(13.) The impossibility I find myself under of proving there is no God,
is to me a convincing argument for His existence.
(14.) God condemns and punishes those who offend Him, and He is the
only judge in His own cause, which would shock all our ideas if He
Himself were not Justice and Truth—that is, if He were not God.
(15.) I feel there is a God, and I do not feel there is none; this is
sufficient for me, and all other arguments seem to me superfluous; I
therefore conclude that He exists, and this conclusion is inherent
to my nature. I acquired these principles readily in my childhood,
and have kept them since too naturally in my riper years ever to
suspect them of falsehood.—But there are some men who get rid of these
principles.—I question whether there are any, but if there be, it only
proves that monsters exist in this world.
(16.) There is no such thing as an atheist; the great men who are
more or less suspected of being inclined that way, are too lazy to
fatigue their minds with discussions whether there is a God or no;
their indolence renders them careless and indifferent about such an
important matter as well as about the nature of their own souls and the
consequences of true religion; they neither deny nor grant any of these
things; they never think of them.
(17.) All our health, all our strength, and our entire intellect are
not more than sufficient in thinking of mankind or of our smallest
interest; yet propriety and custom seem to require of us only to think
of God when we are so situated that we have barely so much reason left
as to enable us to say we are not totally without any.
(18.) A great man falls in a swoon, as it was thought, but is
discovered to be dead,[859] another great man wastes away gradually,
and daily loses something of himself before he expires; such lessons
are dreadful, but useless. These circumstances, though so remarkable
and so different from each other, are not noticed, affect nobody, and
are no more heeded than the fall of a leaf, or the fading of a flower;
people only want their posts vacant through their deaths, or they
inquire if they have been filled up, and who are their successors.
(19.) Is there so much goodness, fidelity, and justice among men, that
we should place unlimited confidence in them, and not, at least, wish
for a God to exist to whom we might appeal from their injustice, and
who might protect us against their persecutions and treacheries.
(20.) If freethinkers are dazzled and confounded by the grandeur and
sublimity of religion, they are no longer freethinkers, but shallow
geniuses and little minds;[860] if, on the contrary, they are repelled
by its humbleness and simplicity, we must allow them to be real
freethinkers, far stronger-minded than so many great men, enlightened
and highly cultivated, who nevertheless were confirmed believers, such
as the Leos, the Basils, the Jeromes, the Augustines.[861]
(21.) Certain people who have never read the fathers or doctors of the
Church are frightened at their very names, and declare their writings
dull, dry, pious, cold, and perhaps pedantic. But how astonished would
all these people be who have formed such an untrue idea of the Fathers,
if they found in their writings a better style, more delicacy, polish,
and intelligence, a greater warmth of expression and strength of
reasoning, sharper traits and more natural charms than are to be met
with in most of the modern books read by connoisseurs, which increase
the reputation and conceit of their authors. What a satisfaction to
love religion and to see men of great talent and solid learning believe
in it, assert its truth, and explain it! And whether you consider
extent of knowledge, depth and penetration, the principles of pure
philosophy, their application and development, the correctness of the
conclusions arrived at, nobleness of expression, beauty of morals and
sentiments, no profane author can be compared to Saint Augustine,
except Plato and Cicero.
(22.) Man who is born a liar cannot relish the plainness and simplicity
of truth; he is altogether hankering after appearance[862] and
ornament. He has not made truth, for it comes from Heaven ready-made,
as it were, in all its perfection, and man loves nothing but his own
productions, Fable and Fiction. Observe the common people; they will
invent a tale, add to it, and exaggerate it through coarseness or
folly; ask even the most honest man if he always speaks the truth, if
he does not sometimes discover that, either through vanity or levity,
he has disguised the truth; and if to embellish a story he does not
often add some circumstance to set it off? An accident happened to-day,
and almost, as it were, under our eyes; a hundred people have seen it,
and all relate it in as many different ways; and yet another person may
come, and if you will only listen to him, he shall tell it in a way in
which it has not yet been told. How then can I believe facts which are
so old and took place several centuries ago? What reliance can I place
on the gravest historians, and what becomes of history itself. Was
Cæsar ever murdered in the midst of the senate? and has there ever been
such a person as Cæsar? “Why do you draw such an inference?” youʼll
say; “why express such doubts and ask such questions?” You laugh, you
do not think my question worthy of an answer, and I imagine you are
quite right. But suppose the book which gives us an account of Cæsar
was not a profane history, written by men who are liars, and had not
been discovered by chance among certain manuscripts, some true, and
others suspicious; but that, on the contrary, it had been inspired, and
bore all the evidence of being holy and divine; that for nearly two
thousand years it had been kept by a large society of men, who all this
while would not allow the least alteration to be made in it, and held
it as part of their creed to preserve it in all its purity; that these
men, by their own principles, were indispensably compelled to believe
religiously all the transactions related in this volume, whenever
mention was made of Cæsar and his dictatorship; own it, Lucilius, would
you then question whether there ever was such a man as Cæsar?
(23.) All kinds of music are not suited to praise God and to be heard
in the sanctuary; all methods of philosophy are not fit for discoursing
worthily of God, His power, the principles of His operations, and His
mysteries. The more abstracted and ideal this philosophy is, the more
vain and useless is it in explaining these things, which merely require
common sense to be understood up to a certain point, and which cannot
be explained farther. To pretend to give an account of the very essence
of God, of His perfections, and, if I dare say so, of His actions,
is indeed going beyond the ancient philosophers, beyond the apostles
themselves, and the first teachers of the Gospel, but it is not arguing
so much to the point as they did; for people may dig for a long time,
and deeply, without discovering the sources of truth. If once people
set aside such words as goodness, mercy, justice, and omnipotence,
which are apt to form in their minds such lovely and majestic ideas
of the divinity, let them afterwards strain their imagination as much
as possible, they will find nothing but dry, barren, and senseless
expressions; they must admit wild and empty thoughts, contrary to
all ordinary ideas, or, at least, subtle and ingenious thoughts, by
which their religion will be weakened according as they improve in the
knowledge of these new metaphysics.[863]
(24.) What excesses will a man not commit through his zeal for a
religion, of the truth of which he is not entirely convinced, and which
he practises so badly?
(25.) That same religion which men will defend so zealously and with so
much warmth against those of a different persuasion, they themselves
corrupt, by joining to it their own peculiar ideas; they add or take
from it numberless things, which are often very material, according
as it best suits their convenience, and remain steadfastly and firmly
attached to the form they have given it themselves. So that, though it
may be commonly said of a nation that it has but one manner of worship
and one religion, it truly and really has many religions, for almost
every individual has one of his own.