WHETHER IT IS OF SERVICE
TO INDULGE THE PEOPLE IN
SUPERSTITION.
Such is the weakness and perversity of the human race that it is
undoubtedly more eligible for them to be subject to every possible
kind of superstition, provided it is not of a bloody nature, than
to live without religion. Man has always stood in need of a curb;
and though it was certainly very ridiculous to sacrifice to fauns,
satyrs, and naïads, yet it was more reasonable and advantageous to
adore even those fantastic images of the deity than to be given up to
atheism. An atheist of any capacity, and invested with power, would
be as dreadful a scourge to the rest of mankind as the most bloody
enthusiast.
When men have not true notions of the Deity, false ideas must supply
their place, like as in troublesome and calamitous times we are
obliged to trade with base money when good is not to be procured.
The heathens were afraid of committing crimes, lest they should be
punished by their false gods. The Malabar dreads the anger of his
pagods. Wherever there is a fixed community, religion is necessary;
the laws are a curb upon open crimes, and religion upon private ones.
But when once men have embraced a pure and holy religion,
superstition then becomes not only needless, but very hurtful. Those
whom God has been pleased to nourish with bread ought not to be fed
upon acorns.
Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy, the
foolish daughter of a wise mother. These two daughters, however, have
for a long time governed this world with uncontrollable sway.
In those dark and barbarous times amongst us, when there were hardly
two feudal lords who had a New Testament in their houses, it might
be pardonable to present the common people with fables; I mean those
feudal lords, their ignorant wives, and brutish vassals. They were
then made to believe that St. Christopher carried the child Jesus
on his shoulders from one side of the river to the other; they were
entertained with stories of witches and witchcraft; they readily
believed that St. Genou cured the gout, and St. Claire sore eyes. The
children believed in hobgoblins, and their fathers in St. Francis’
girdle; and relics swarmed out of number.
The common people have continued to be infected with the rust of
these superstitions, even after religion became more enlightened. It
is well known that when M. de Noailles, bishop of Châlons, ordered
the pretended relic of the holy navel to be taken away and thrown
into the fire, the whole city of Châlons joined in a prosecution
against him; but he, who had resolution equal to his piety, soon
brought the people of his diocese to believe that one may adore Jesus
Christ in spirit and in truth, without having his navel in a church.
Those whom we call Jansenists were not a little instrumental in
rooting out by degrees, from the minds of the greatest part of the
nation, the many absurd notions which were the disgrace of our holy
religion. And it no longer continued to be thought sufficient to
repeat the prayer of thirty days to the Blessed Virgin, to obtain
whatever one should ask, and sin with impunity.
At length the lower kind of people began to imagine that it was not
St. Geneviève who gave rain or caused it to cease, but God Himself,
who disposed the elements according to His good will and pleasure.
The monks have been astonished to find their saints no longer perform
miracles; and if the writers of the life of St. Francis Xavier were
to come again into the world they would not venture to assert that
their saint raised nine people from the dead; that he was at one and
the same time both on the sea and on shore; or that a crab brought
him his crucifix, which he had dropped out of his hand into the water.
It has happened much the same with regard to excommunications. Our
French historians tell us that when King Robert was excommunicated
by Pope Gregory V. for having married the Princess Bertha, who
was his godmother, his domestics threw all the victuals that came
from his table out of the windows, and that his queen Bertha was
delivered of a goose as a punishment for this incestuous alliance.
It is not likely that the pages of the presence to a king of France
nowadays would throw his dinner into the streets if he should be
excommunicated, nor would it be very readily believed that the queen
was brought to bed of a bird.
If there are some few convulsionists yet to be met with in an obscure
corner of the town it is a kind of lousy disease that infects only
the dregs of the people. Reason is every day making her way into
the tradesman’s counting house, as well as into the palaces of our
nobility. It behooves us then to cultivate the fruits of this reason,
more especially as it is impossible to prevent them from sprouting
forth. France, after having been enlightened by a Pascal, a Nicole,
an Arnaud, a Bossuet, a Descartes, a Gassendi, a Bayle, a Fontenelle,
and other bright geniuses like them, is no longer to be governed as
in the times of Garasse and Menot.
If the masters of error, I mean the great masters who were so long
a time prayed to and reverenced for brutalizing the human species,
were at present to enjoin us to believe that the seed must rot in the
earth before it can sprout; that this earth continues immovable on
its basis without revolving about the sun; that the tides are not
the natural effect of gravitation; that the rainbow is not formed by
the refraction and reflection of the rays of light, etc., and were
they to bring certain passages of Scripture badly understood and
worse interpreted to authenticate their ordinances, how would they
be looked upon by every person of common capacity? Would fools be
thought too harsh a name to be imposed on them? But if they should
have recourse to compulsion and persecution to establish their
insolent ignorance, would not madmen and butchers be deemed a proper
appellation?
The more that monkish superstition becomes contemptible, the more
bishops are respected and the clergy in general esteemed. They do
good in their professions, whereas the monkish superstition of
foreign climates occasioned a great deal of mischief. But of all
superstitions, that of hating our neighbor on account of his opinion
is surely the most dangerous! And will it not be granted me that
there would be more sense and reason in adoring the holy navel, the
holy prepuce, and the milk and the robe of the Blessed Virgin, than
to detest and persecute our brother?