Emile Part 22

"Yes, my child," said he, embracing me, "I will tell you all I think; I will not open my heart to you by halves; but the desire you express was necessary before I could cast aside all reserve. So far I have told you nothing but what I thought would be of service to you, nothing but what I was quite convinced of. The inquiry which remains to be made is very difficult. It seems to me full of perplexity, mystery, and darkness; I bring to it only doubt and distrust. I make up my mind with trembling, and I tell you my doubts rather than my convictions. If your own opinions were more settled I should hesitate to show you mine; but in your present condition, to think like me would be gain. [Footnote: I think the worthy clergyman might say this at the present time to the general public.] Moreover, give to my words only the authority of reason; I know not whether I am mistaken. It is difficult in discussion to avoid a.s.suming sometimes a dogmatic tone; but remember in this respect that all my a.s.sertions are but reasons to doubt me. Seek truth for yourself, for my own part I only promise you sincerity.

"In my exposition you find nothing but natural religion; strange that we should need more! How shall I become aware of this need? What guilt can be mine so long as I serve G.o.d according to the knowledge he has given to my mind, and the feelings he has put into my heart? What purity of morals, what dogma useful to man and worthy of its author, can I derive from a positive doctrine which cannot be derived without the aid of this doctrine by the right use of my faculties? Show me what you can add to the duties of the natural law, for the glory of G.o.d, for the good of mankind, and for my own welfare; and what virtue you will get from the new form of religion which does not result from mine. The grandest ideas of the Divine nature come to us from reason only. Behold the spectacle of nature; listen to the inner voice. Has not G.o.d spoken it all to our eyes, to our conscience, to our reason? What more can man tell us? Their revelations do but degrade G.o.d, by investing him with pa.s.sions like our own. Far from throwing light upon the ideas of the Supreme Being, special doctrines seem to me to confuse these ideas; far from enn.o.bling them, they degrade them; to the inconceivable mysteries which surround the Almighty, they add absurd contradictions, they make man proud, intolerant, and cruel; instead of bringing peace upon earth, they bring fire and sword. I ask myself what is the use of it all, and I find no answer. I see nothing but the crimes of men and the misery of mankind.

"They tell me a revelation was required to teach men how G.o.d would be served; as a proof of this they point to the many strange rites which men have inst.i.tuted, and they do not perceive that this very diversity springs from the fanciful nature of the revelations. As soon as the nations took to making G.o.d speak, every one made him speak in his own fashion, and made him say what he himself wanted. Had they listened only to what G.o.d says in the heart of man, there would have been but one religion upon earth.

"One form of worship was required; just so, but was this a matter of such importance as to require all the power of the G.o.dhead to establish it? Do not let us confuse the outward forms of religion with religion itself. The service G.o.d requires is of the heart; and when the heart is sincere that is ever the same. It is a strange sort of conceit which fancies that G.o.d takes such an interest in the shape of the priest's vestments, the form of words he utters, the gestures he makes before the altar and all his genuflections. Oh, my friend, stand upright, you will still be too near the earth. G.o.d desires to be worshipped in spirit and in truth; this duty belongs to every religion, every country, every individual. As to the form of worship, if order demands uniformity, that is only a matter of discipline and needs no revelation.

"These thoughts did not come to me to begin with. Carried away by the prejudices of my education, and by that dangerous vanity which always strives to lift man out of his proper sphere, when I could not raise my feeble thoughts up to the great Being, I tried to bring him down to my own level. I tried to reduce the distance he has placed between his nature and mine. I desired more immediate relations, more individual instruction; not content to make G.o.d in the image of man that I might be favoured above my fellows, I desired supernatural knowledge; I required a special form of worship; I wanted G.o.d to tell me what he had not told others, or what others had not understood like myself.

"Considering the point I had now reached as the common centre from which all believers set out on the quest for a more enlightened form of religion, I merely found in natural religion the elements of all religion. I beheld the mult.i.tude of diverse sects which hold sway upon earth, each of which accuses the other of falsehood and error; which of these, I asked, is the right? Every one replied, 'My own;' every one said, 'I alone and those who agree with me think rightly, all the others are mistaken.' And how do you know that your sect is in the right? Because G.o.d said so. And how do you know G.o.d said so? [Footnote: "All men," said a wise and good priest, "maintain that they hold and believe their religion (and all use the same jargon), not of man, nor of any creature, but of G.o.d. But to speak truly, without pretence or flattery, none of them do so; whatever they may say, religions are taught by human hands and means; take, for example, the way in which religions have been received by the world, the way in which they are still received every day by individuals; the nation, the country, the locality gives the religion; we belong to the religion of the place where we are born and brought up; we are baptised or circ.u.mcised, we are Christians, Jews, Mohametans before we know that we are men; we do not pick and choose our religion for see how ill the life and conduct agree with the religion, see for what slight and human causes men go against the teaching of their religion."-Charron, De la Sagesse.-It seems clear that the honest creed of the holy theologian of Condom would not have differed greatly from that of the Savoyard priest.] And who told you that G.o.d said it? My pastor, who knows all about it. My pastor tells me what to believe and I believe it; he a.s.sures me that any one who says anything else is mistaken, and I give not heed to them.

"What! thought I, is not truth one; can that which is true for me be false for you? If those who follow the right path and those who go astray have the same method, what merit or what blame can be a.s.signed to one more than to the other? Their choice is the result of chance; it is unjust to hold them responsible for it, to reward or punish them for being born in one country or another. To dare to say that G.o.d judges us in this manner is an outrage on his justice.

"Either all religions are good and pleasing to G.o.d, or if there is one which he prescribes for men, if they will be punished for despising it, he will have distinguished it by plain and certain signs by which it can be known as the only true religion; these signs are alike in every time and place, equally plain to all men, great or small, learned or unlearned, Europeans, Indians, Africans, savages. If there were but one religion upon earth, and if all beyond its pale were condemned to eternal punishment, and if there were in any corner of the world one single honest man who was not convinced by this evidence, the G.o.d of that religion would be the most unjust and cruel of tyrants.

"Let us therefore seek honestly after truth; let us yield nothing to the claims of birth, to the authority of parents and pastors, but let us summon to the bar of conscience and of reason all that they have taught us from our childhood. In vain do they exclaim, 'Submit your reason;' a deceiver might say as much; I must have reasons for submitting my reason.

"All the theology I can get for myself by observation of the universe and by the use of my faculties is contained in what I have already told you. To know more one must have recourse to strange means. These means cannot be the authority of men, for every man is of the same species as myself, and all that a man knows by nature I am capable of knowing, and another may be deceived as much as I; when I believe what he says, it is not because he says it but because he proves its truth. The witness of man is therefore nothing more than the witness of my own reason, and it adds nothing to the natural means which G.o.d has given me for the knowledge of truth.

"Apostle of truth, what have you to tell me of which I am not the sole judge? G.o.d himself has spoken; give heed to his revelation. That is another matter. G.o.d has spoken, these are indeed words which demand attention. To whom has he spoken? He has spoken to men. Why then have I heard nothing? He has instructed others to make known his words to you. I understand; it is men who come and tell me what G.o.d has said. I would rather have heard the words of G.o.d himself; it would have been as easy for him and I should have been secure from fraud. He protects you from fraud by showing that his envoys come from him. How does he show this? By miracles. Where are these miracles? In the books. And who wrote the books? Men. And who saw the miracles? The men who bear witness to them. What! Nothing but human testimony! Nothing but men who tell me what others told them! How many men between G.o.d and me! Let us see, however, let us examine, compare, and verify. Oh! if G.o.d had but deigned to free me from all this labour, I would have served him with all my heart.

"Consider, my friend, the terrible controversy in which I am now engaged; what vast learning is required to go back to the remotest antiquity, to examine, weigh, confront prophecies, revelations, facts, all the monuments of faith set forth throughout the world, to a.s.sign their date, place, authorship, and occasion. What exactness of critical judgment is needed to distinguish genuine doc.u.ments from forgeries, to compare objections with their answers, translations with their originals; to decide as to the impartiality of witnesses, their common-sense, their knowledge; to make sure that nothing has been omitted, nothing added, nothing transposed, altered, or falsified; to point out any remaining contradictions, to determine what weight should be given to the silence of our adversaries with regard to the charges brought against them; how far were they aware of those charges; did they think them sufficiently serious to require an answer; were books sufficiently well known for our books to reach them; have we been honest enough to allow their books to circulate among ourselves and to leave their strongest objections unaltered?

"When the authenticity of all these doc.u.ments is accepted, we must now pa.s.s to the evidence of their authors' mission; we must know the laws of chance, and probability, to decide which prophecy cannot be fulfilled without a miracle; we must know the spirit of the original languages, to distinguish between prophecy and figures of speech; we must know what facts are in accordance with nature and what facts are not, so that we may say how far a clever man may deceive the eyes of the simple and may even astonish the learned; we must discover what are the characteristics of a prodigy and how its authenticity may be established, not only so far as to gain credence, but so that doubt may be deserving of punishment; we must compare the evidence for true and false miracles, and find sure tests to distinguish between them; lastly we must say why G.o.d chose as a witness to his words means which themselves require so much evidence on their behalf, as if he were playing with human credulity, and avoiding of set purpose the true means of persuasion.

"a.s.suming that the divine majesty condescends so far as to make a man the channel of his sacred will, is it reasonable, is it fair, to demand that the whole of mankind should obey the voice of this minister without making him known as such? Is it just to give him as his sole credentials certain private signs, performed in the presence of a few obscure persons, signs which everybody else can only know by hearsay? If one were to believe all the miracles that the uneducated and credulous profess to have seen in every country upon earth, every sect would be in the right; there would be more miracles than ordinary events; and it would be the greatest miracle if there were no miracles wherever there were persecuted fanatics. The unchangeable order of nature is the chief witness to the wise hand that guides it; if there were many exceptions, I should hardly know what to think; for my own part I have too great a faith in G.o.d to believe in so many miracles which are so little worthy of him.

"Let a man come and say to us: Mortals, I proclaim to you the will of the Most Highest; accept my words as those of him who has sent me; I bid the sun to change his course, the stars to range themselves in a fresh order, the high places to become smooth, the floods to rise up, the earth to change her face. By these miracles who will not recognise the master of nature? She does not obey impostors, their miracles are wrought in holes and corners, in deserts, within closed doors, where they find easy dupes among a small company of spectators already disposed to believe them. Who will venture to tell me how many eye-witnesses are required to make a miracle credible! What use are your miracles, performed if proof of your doctrine, if they themselves require so much proof! You might as well have let them alone.

"There still remains the most important inquiry of all with regard to the doctrine proclaimed; for since those who tell us G.o.d works miracles in this world, profess that the devil sometimes imitates them, when we have found the best attested miracles we have got very little further; and since the magicians of Pharaoh dared in the presence of Moses to counterfeit the very signs he wrought at G.o.d's command, why should they not, behind his back, claim a like authority? So when we have proved our doctrine by means of miracles, we must prove our miracles by means of doctrine, [Footnote: This is expressly stated in many pa.s.sages of Scripture, among others in Deuteronomy xiii., where it is said that when a prophet preaching strange G.o.ds confirms his words by means of miracles and what he foretells comes to pa.s.s, far from giving heed to him, this prophet must be put to death. If then the heathen put the apostles to death when they preached a strange G.o.d and confirmed their words by miracles which came to pa.s.s I cannot see what grounds we have for complaint which they could not at once turn against us. Now, what should be done in such a case? There is only one course; to return to argument and let the miracles alone. It would have been better not to have had recourse to them at all. That is plain common-sense which can only be obscured by great subtlety of distinction. Subtleties in Christianity! So Jesus Christ was mistaken when he promised the kingdom of heaven to the simple, he was mistaken when he began his finest discourse with the praise of the poor in spirit, if so much wit is needed to understand his teaching and to get others to believe in him. When you have convinced me that submission is my duty, all will be well; but to convince me of this, come down to my level; adapt your arguments to a lowly mind, or I shall not recognise you as a true disciple of your master, and it is not his doctrine that you are teaching me.] for fear lest we should take the devil's doings for the handiwork of G.o.d. What think you of this dilemma?

"This doctrine, if it comes from G.o.d, should bear the sacred stamp of the G.o.dhead; not only should it illumine the troubled thoughts which reason imprints on our minds, but it should also offer us a form of worship, a morality, and rules of conduct in accordance with the attributes by means of which we alone conceive of G.o.d's essence. If then it teaches us what is absurd and unreasonable, if it inspires us with feelings of aversion for our fellows and terror for ourselves, if it paints us a G.o.d, angry, jealous, revengeful, partial, hating men, a G.o.d of war and battles, ever ready to strike and to destroy, ever speaking of punishment and torment, boasting even of the punishment of the innocent, my heart would not be drawn towards this terrible G.o.d, I would take good care not to quit the realm of natural religion to embrace such a religion as that; for you see plainly I must choose between them. Your G.o.d is not ours. He who begins by selecting a chosen people, and proscribing the rest of mankind, is not our common father; he who consigns to eternal punishment the greater part of his creatures, is not the merciful and gracious G.o.d revealed to me by my reason.

"Reason tells me that dogmas should be plain, clear, and striking in their simplicity. If there is something lacking in natural religion, it is with respect to the obscurity in which it leaves the great truths it teaches; revelation should teach us these truths in a way which the mind of man can understand; it should bring them within his reach, make him comprehend them, so that he may believe them. Faith is confirmed and strengthened by understanding; the best religion is of necessity the simplest. He who hides beneath mysteries and contradictions the religion that he preaches to me, teaches me at the same time to distrust that religion. The G.o.d whom I adore is not the G.o.d of darkness, he has not given me understanding in order to forbid me to use it; to tell me to submit my reason is to insult the giver of reason. The minister of truth does not tyrannise over my reason, he enlightens it.

"We have set aside all human authority, and without it I do not see how any man can convince another by preaching a doctrine contrary to reason. Let them fight it out, and let us see what they have to say with that harshness of speech which is common to both.

"INSPIRATION: Reason tells you that the whole is greater than the part; but I tell you, in G.o.d's name, that the part is greater than the whole.

"REASON: And who are you to dare to tell me that G.o.d contradicts himself? And which shall I choose to believe. G.o.d who teaches me, through my reason, the eternal truth, or you who, in his name, proclaim an absurdity?

"INSPIRATION: Believe me, for my teaching is more positive; and I will prove to you beyond all manner of doubt that he has sent me.

"REASON: What! you will convince me that G.o.d has sent you to bear witness against himself? What sort of proofs will you adduce to convince me that G.o.d speaks more surely by your mouth than through the understanding he has given me?

"INSPIRATION: The understanding he has given you! Petty, conceited creature! As if you were the first impious person who had been led astray through his reason corrupted by sin.

"REASON: Man of G.o.d, you would not be the first scoundrel who a.s.serts his arrogance as a proof of his mission.

"INSPIRATION: What! do even philosophers call names?

"REASON: Sometimes, when the saints set them the example.

"INSPIRATION: Oh, but I have a right to do it, for I am speaking on G.o.d's behalf.

"REASON: You would do well to show your credentials before you make use of your privileges.

"INSPIRATION: My credentials are authentic, earth and heaven will bear witness on my behalf. Follow my arguments carefully, if you please.

"REASON: Your arguments! You forget what you are saying. When you teach me that my reason misleads me, do you not refute what it might have said on your behalf? He who denies the right of reason, must convince me without recourse to her aid. For suppose you have convinced me by reason, how am I to know that it is not my reason, corrupted by sin, which makes me accept what you say? besides, what proof, what demonstration, can you advance, more self-evident than the axiom it is to destroy? It is more credible that a good syllogism is a lie, than that the part is greater than the whole.

"INSPIRATION: What a difference! There is no answer to my evidence; it is of a supernatural kind.

"REASON: Supernatural! What do you mean by the word? I do not understand it.

"INSPIRATION: I mean changes in the order of nature, prophecies, signs, and wonders of every kind.

"REASON: Signs and wonders! I have never seen anything of the kind.

"INSPIRATION: Others have seen them for you. Clouds of witnesses-the witness of whole nations....

"REASON: Is the witness of nations supernatural?

"INSPIRATION: No; but when it is unanimous, it is incontestable.

"REASON: There is nothing so incontestable as the principles of reason, and one cannot accept an absurdity on human evidence. Once more, let us see your supernatural evidence, for the consent of mankind is not supernatural.

"INSPIRATION: Oh, hardened heart, grace does not speak to you.

"REASON: That is not my fault; for by your own showing, one must have already received grace before one is able to ask for it. Begin by speaking to me in its stead.

"INSPIRATION: But that is just what I am doing, and you will not listen. But what do you say to prophecy?

"REASON: In the first place, I say I have no more heard a prophet than I have seen a miracle. In the next, I say that no prophet could claim authority over me.

"INSPIRATION: Follower of the devil! Why should not the words of the prophets have authority over you?

"REASON: Because three things are required, three things which will never happen: firstly, I must have heard the prophecy; secondly, I must have seen its fulfilment; and thirdly, it must be clearly proved that the fulfilment of the prophecy could not by any possibility have been a mere coincidence; for even if it was as precise, as plain, and clear as an axiom of geometry, since the clearness of a chance prediction does not make its fulfilment impossible, this fulfilment when it does take place does not, strictly speaking, prove what was foretold.

"See what your so-called supernatural proofs, your miracles, your prophecies come to: believe all this upon the word of another. Submit to the authority of men the authority of G.o.d which speaks to my reason. If the eternal truths which my mind conceives of could suffer any shock, there would be no sort of certainty for me; and far from being sure that you speak to me on G.o.d's behalf, I should not even be sure that there is a G.o.d.

"My child, here are difficulties enough, but these are not all. Among so many religions, mutually excluding and proscribing each other, one only is true, if indeed any one of them is true. To recognise the true religion we must inquire into, not one, but all; and in any question whatsoever we have no right to condemn unheard. [Footnote: On the other hand, Plutarch relates that the Stoics maintained, among other strange paradoxes, that it was no use hearing both sides; for, said they, the first either proves his point or he does not prove it; if he has proved it, there is an end of it, and the other should be condemned: if he has not proved it, he himself is in the wrong and judgment should be given against him. I consider the method of those who accept an exclusive revelation very much like that of these Stoics. When each of them claims to be the sole guardian of truth, we must hear them all before we can choose between them without injustice.] The objections must be compared with the evidence; we must know what accusation each brings against the other, and what answers they receive. The plainer any feeling appears to us, the more we must try to discover why so many other people refuse to accept it. We should be simple, indeed, if we thought it enough to hear the doctors on our own side, in order to acquaint ourselves with the arguments of the other. Where can you find theologians who pride themselves on their honesty? Where are those who, to refute the arguments of their opponents, do not begin by making out that they are of little importance? A man may make a good show among his own friends, and be very proud of his arguments, who would cut a very poor figure with those same arguments among those who are on the other side. Would you find out for yourself from books? What learning you will need! What languages you must learn; what libraries you must ransack; what an amount of reading must be got through! Who will guide me in such a choice? It will be hard to find the best books on the opposite side in any one country, and all the harder to find those on all sides; when found they would be easily answered. The absent are always in the wrong, and bad arguments boldly a.s.serted easily efface good arguments put forward with scorn. Besides books are often very misleading, and scarcely express the opinions of their authors. If you think you can judge the Catholic faith from the writings of Bossuet, you will find yourself greatly mistaken when you have lived among us. You will see that the doctrines with which Protestants are answered are quite different from those of the pulpit. To judge a religion rightly, you must not study it in the books of its partisans, you must learn it in their lives; this is quite another matter. Each religion has its own traditions, meaning, customs, prejudices, which form the spirit of its creed, and must be taken in connection with it.

"How many great nations neither print books of their own nor read ours! How shall they judge of our opinions, or we of theirs? We laugh at them, they despise us; and if our travellers turn them into ridicule, they need only travel among us to pay us back in our own coin. Are there not, in every country, men of common-sense, honesty, and good faith, lovers of truth, who only seek to know what truth is that they may profess it? Yet every one finds truth in his own religion, and thinks the religion of other nations absurd; so all these foreign religions are not so absurd as they seem to us, or else the reason we find for our own proves nothing.

"We have three princ.i.p.al forms of religion in Europe. One accepts one revelation, another two, and another three. Each hates the others, showers curses on them, accuses them of blindness, obstinacy, hardness of heart, and falsehood. What fair-minded man will dare to decide between them without first carefully weighing their evidence, without listening attentively to their arguments? That which accepts only one revelation is the oldest and seems the best established; that which accepts three is the newest and seems the most consistent; that which accepts two revelations and rejects the third may perhaps be the best, but prejudice is certainly against it; its inconsistency is glaring.

"In all three revelations the sacred books are written in languages unknown to the people who believe in them. The Jews no longer understand Hebrew, the Christians understand neither Hebrew nor Greek; the Turks and Persians do not understand Arabic, and the Arabs of our time do not speak the language of Mahomet. Is not it a very foolish way of teaching, to teach people in an unknown tongue? These books are translated, you say. What an answer! How am I to know that the translations are correct, or how am I to make sure that such a thing as a correct translation is possible? If G.o.d has gone so far as to speak to men, why should he require an interpreter?