You perish miserably in the shade of superb colonnades. Your noble
and faded paintings, and your dozen gems of ancient sculpture, bring
you neither a good dinner nor a good bed. The opulence is for your
masters: the indigence is for you. The lot of a slave among the
ancient Romans was a hundred times better than yours. _He_ might
acquire a large fortune; _you_ are born serfs, you die serfs, and
the only oil you have is that of the Last Anointing. Slaves in body
and in soul, your tyrants do not even allow you to read, in your own
tongue, the book on which they say your religion is founded.

Awake, Romans, at the call of liberty, truth, and nature. The cry
rings over Europe. You must hear it. Break the chains that bind your
generous hands--the chains forged by tyranny in the den of imposture.

                       THE SERMON OF THE FIFTY

Fifty cultivated, pious, and reasonable persons have, for a year
past, met every Sunday in a large commercial town. They have prayers,
and then a member of the society gives a discourse. They afterwards
dine, and a collection for the poor is made after dinner. Each
presides in turn, and it is the duty of the president to offer the
prayer and give the sermon. Here are one of the prayers and one of
the sermons.

If the seed of these words fall on good soil, it will assuredly bear
fruit.

                               PRAYER

God of all the globes and stars, the one prayer that it is meet
to offer to you is submission. How can we ask anything of him who
arranged and enchained all things from the beginning? Yet if it is
permitted to expose our needs to a father, preserve in our hearts
this feeling of submission and a pure religion. Keep from us all
superstition. Since there are those who insult you with unworthy
sacrifices, abolish those infamous mysteries. Since there are those
who dishonour the divinity with absurd fables, may those fables
perish for ever. If the days of the prince and the magistrate were
not numbered from all eternity, give them length of days. Preserve
the purity of our ways, the friendship of our brethren for each
other, their goodwill towards all men, their obedience to the laws,
and their wisdom in private life. Let them live and die in the
worship of one God, the rewarder of good, the punisher of evil; a God
that could not be born or die, nor have associates, but who has too
many rebellious children in this world.

                               SERMON

My brethren, religion is the secret voice of God speaking to men.
It ought to unite men, not divide them; hence every religion that
belongs to one people only is false. Ours is, in principle, that of
the whole universe; for we worship a supreme being as all nations do,
we practise the justice which all nations teach, and we reject all
the untruths with which the nations reproach each other. At one with
them in the principle which unites them, we differ from them in the
things about which they are in conflict.

The point on which all men of all times agree must be the centre of
truth, and the points on which they all differ must be standards
of falsehood. Religion must conform to morality, and, like it, be
universal; hence every religion whose dogmas offend against morality
is certainly false. It is under this twofold aspect of perversity
and falseness that we will, in this discourse, examine the books of
the Hebrews and of those who have succeeded them. Let us first see
if these books conform to morality; we shall then see if they have
any shade of probability. The first two points will deal with the Old
Testament; the third will discuss the New.

                            _First Point_

You know, my brethren, what horror fell on us when we read together
the writings of the Hebrews, confining our attention to those
features which offend against purity, charity, good faith, justice,
and reason--features which one not only finds in every chapter, but,
unhappily, one finds consecrated in them.

First, to say nothing of the extravagant injustice which they
venture to ascribe to the supreme being, in endowing a serpent with
speech in order to seduce a woman and her innocent posterity, let
us run over in succession all the historical horrors which outrage
nature and good sense. One of the patriarchs, Lot, the nephew of
Abraham, receives in his house two angels disguised as pilgrims; the
inhabitants of Sodom entertain impure desires of these angels; Lot,
who had two daughters promised in marriage, offers to abandon them
to the people instead of the two strangers. These young women must
have been strangely familiar with evil ways, since the first thing
they do after the destruction of their town by a rain of fire, and
after their mother has been changed into a pillar of salt, is to
intoxicate their father on two consecutive nights, in order to sleep
with him in succession. It is an imitation of the ancient Arabic
legend of Cyniras and Myrrha. But in this more decent legend Myrrha
is punished for her crime, while the daughters of Lot are rewarded
with what is, in Jewish eyes, the greatest and dearest blessing: they
become the mothers of a numerous posterity.

We will not insist on the falsehood of Isaac, the father of the just,
who says that his wife is his sister; whether he was merely repeating
the falsehood of Abraham, or Abraham was really guilty of taking his
sister to wife. But let us dwell for a moment on the patriarch Jacob,
who is offered to us as a model man. He compels his brother, who is
dying of hunger, to give up his birthright for a dish of lentils. He
afterwards deceives his aged father on his death-bed. After deceiving
his father, he deceives and robs his father-in-law Laban. Not content
with wedding two sisters, he lies with all his servants; and God
blesses this licentiousness and trickery. Who are the children of
such a father? His daughter Dinah pleases a prince of Sichem, and
it is probable that she loves the prince, since she lies with him.
The prince asks her in marriage, and she is promised on condition
that he and all his people are circumcised. The prince accepts the
condition; but as soon as he and his people undergo this painful
operation--which, nevertheless, leaves them strong enough to defend
themselves--Jacob’s family murder all the men of Sichem and enslave
their women and children.

We have in our infancy heard the story of Pelopæus. This incestuous
abomination is repeated in Judah, the patriarch and father of the
first tribe. He lies with his daughter-in-law, and then wishes to
have her killed. The book declares that then Joseph, a child of this
vagabond family, is sold into Egypt, and that, foreigner as he is,
he is made first minister as a reward for explaining a dream. What a
first minister he was, compelling a whole nation to enslave itself,
during a time of famine, to obtain food! What magistrate among us
would, in time of famine, dare to propose so abominable a bargain,
and what nation would accept it? Let us not stay to examine how
seventy members of the family of Joseph, who settled in Egypt, could
in two hundred and fifteen years increase to six hundred thousand
fighting men, without counting the women, old men, and children,
which would make a total of more than two millions. Let us not
discuss how it is that the text has four hundred and thirty years,
when the same text has given two hundred and fifteen. The infinite
number of contradictions, which are the seal of imposture, is not
the point which we are considering. Let us likewise pass over the
ridiculous prodigies of Moses and of Pharaoh’s magicians, and all the
miracles wrought to give the Jewish people a wretched bit of poor
country, which they afterwards purchase by blood and crime, instead
of giving them the fertile soil of Egypt, where they were. Let us
confine ourselves to the frightful iniquity of their ways.

Their God had made a thief of Jacob, and he now makes thieves of the
entire people. He orders his people to steal and take away with them
all the gold and silver vessels and utensils of the Egyptians. Behold
these wretches, to the number of six hundred thousand fighting men,
instead of taking up arms like men of spirit, flying like brigands
led by their God. If their God had wished to give them a good
country, he might have given them Egypt. He does not, however; he
leads them into a desert. They might have fled by the shortest route,
yet they go far out of their way to cross the Red Sea dry-foot. After
this fine miracle Moses’ own brother makes them another god, and this
god is a calf. To punish his brother Moses commands certain priests
to kill their sons, brothers, and fathers; and they kill twenty-three
thousand Jews, who let themselves be slain like cattle.

After this butchery it is not surprising to hear that this abominable
people sacrifices human victims to its god, whom it calls Adonai,
borrowing the name of Adonis from the Phœnicians. The twenty-ninth
verse of chapter xxvii. of _Leviticus_ expressly forbids the
redemption of those who are destined for sacrifice, and it is in
virtue of this cannibalistic law that Jephthah, some time afterwards,
offers up his own daughter.

It was not enough to slay twenty-three thousand men for a calf; we
have again twenty-four thousand sacrificed for having intercourse
with idolatrous women. It is, my brethren, a worthy prelude and
example of persecution on the ground of religion.

This people advances in the deserts and rocks of Palestine. Here is
your splendid country, God says to them. Slay all the inhabitants,
kill all the male infants, make an end of their married women, keep
the young girls for yourselves. All this is carried out to the
letter, according to the Hebrew books; and we should shudder at the
account, if the text did not add that the Jews found in the camp
of the Midianites 675,000 sheep, 62,000 cattle, 61,000 asses, and
32,000 girls. Happily, the absurdity undoes the barbarism. Once
more, however, I am not concerned here with what is ridiculous and
impossible; I select only what is execrable. Having passed the Jordan
dry-shod, as they crossed the sea, we find our people in the promised
land.

The first person to let in this holy people, by an act of treachery,
is Rahab, a strange character for God to associate with himself.
He levels the walls of Jericho at the sound of the trumpet; the
holy people enters the town--to which it had no right, on its own
confession--and slays the men, women, and children. Let us pass over
the other carnages, the crucifixion of kings, the supposed wars
against the giants of Gaza and Ascalon, and the murder of those who
could not pronounce the word “Shibboleth.”

Listen to this fine story.

A Levite, with his wife, arrives on his ass at Gibeah, in the tribe
of Benjamin. Some of the Benjamites, who are bent on committing
the sin of sodomy with the Levite, turn their brutality upon the
woman, who dies of the violence. Were the culprits punished? Not
at all. The eleven tribes slaughtered the whole tribe of Benjamin;
only six hundred men escaped. But the eleven tribes are afterwards
sorry to see a tribe perish, and, to restore it, they exterminate
the inhabitants of one of their own towns in order to take from it
six hundred girls, whom they give to the six hundred Benjamites who
survive to perpetuate this splendid race.

How many crimes committed in the name of the Lord! We will give
only that of the man of God (Ehud). The Jews, having come so far to
conquer, are subject to the Philistines. In spite of the Lord, they
have sworn obedience to King Eglon. A holy Jew, named Ehud, asks
permission to speak in private with the king on the part of God. The
king does not fail to grant the audience. Ehud assassinates him,
and his example has been used many times by Christians to betray,
destroy, or massacre so many sovereigns.

At length this chosen nation, which had thus been directed by God
himself, desires to have a king; which greatly displeases the priest
Samuel. The first Jewish king renews the custom of immolating men.
Saul prudently enjoined that his soldiers should not eat on the day
they fought the Philistines, to give them more vigour; he swore to
the Lord that he would immolate to him any man who ate. Happily, the
people were wiser than he; they would not suffer the king’s son to
be sacrificed for eating a little honey. But listen, my brethren, to
this most detestable, yet most consecrated, act. It is said that Saul
takes prisoner a king of the country, named Agag. He did not kill his
prisoner; he acted as is usual in humane and civilised nations. What
happened? The Lord is angry, and Samuel, priest of the Lord, says to
Saul: “You are reprobate for having spared a king who surrendered to
you.” And the priestly butcher at once cuts Agag into pieces. What
would you say, my brethren, if, when the Emperor Charles V. had a
French king in his hands, his chaplain came and said to him: “You
are damned for not killing Francis I.,” and proceeded to cut the
French king to pieces before the eyes of the emperor?

What will you say of the holy King David, the king who found favour
in the eyes of the God of the Jews, and merited to be an ancestor
of the Messiah? This good king is at first a brigand, capturing and
pillaging all he finds. Among others, he despoils a rich man named
Nabal, marries his wife, and flies to King Achish. During the night
he descends upon the villages of King Achish, his benefactor, with
fire and sword. He slaughters men, women, and children, says the
sacred text, lest there be any one left to take the news. When he is
made king he ravishes the wife of Uriah, and has the husband put to
death; and it is from this adulterous homicide that the Messiah--God
himself--descends. What blasphemy! This David, who thus becomes an
ancestor of God as a reward of his horrible crime, is punished for
the one good and wise action which he did. There is no good and
prudent prince who ought not to know the number of his people, as
the shepherd should know the number of his flock. David has them
enumerated--though we are not told what the number was--and for
making this wise and useful enumeration a prophet comes from God to
give him the choice of war, pestilence, or famine.

Let us not linger, my dear brethren, over the numberless barbarities
of the kings of Judah and Israel--their murders and outrages, mixed
up always with ridiculous stories; though even the ridiculous in
them is always bloody, and not even the prophet Elisha is free from
barbarism. This worthy devotee has forty children devoured by bears
because the innocent youngsters had called him “bald.” Let us leave
this atrocious nation in the Babylonian captivity and in its bondage
to the Romans, with all the fine promises of their god Adonis or
Adonai, who had so often promised the Jews the sovereignty of the
earth. In fine, under the wise government of the Romans, a king is
born to the Hebrews. You know, my brethren, who this king, _shilo_,
or Messiah is; it is he who, after being at first numbered among
the prophets without a mission, who, though not priests, made a
profession of inspiration, was, after some centuries, regarded as a
god. We need go no farther; let us see on what pretexts, what facts,
what miracles, what prophecies--in a word, on what foundation, this
disgusting and abominable history is based.

                           _Second Point_

O God, if thou thyself didst descend upon the earth, and didst
command me to believe this tissue of murders, thefts, assassinations,
and incests committed by thy order and in thy name, I should say to
thee: No; thy sanctity cannot ask me to acquiesce in these horrible
things that outrage thee. Thou seekest, no doubt, to try me.

How, then, my virtuous and enlightened hearers, could we accept this
frightful story on the wretched evidence which is offered in support
of it?

Run briefly over the books that have been falsely attributed to
Moses. I say falsely, since it is not possible for Moses to have
written about things that happened long after his time. None of us
would believe that the memoirs of William, Prince of Orange, were
written with his own hand if there were allusions in these memoirs
to things that happened after his death. Let us see what is narrated
in the name of Moses. First, God created the light, which he calls
“day”; then the darkness, which he calls “night,” and it was the
first day. Thus there were days before the sun was made.

On the sixth day God makes man and woman; but the author, forgetting
that woman has been made already, afterwards derives her from one of
Adam’s ribs. Adam and Eve are put in a garden from which four rivers
issue; and of these rivers there are two, the Euphrates and the
Nile, which have their sources a thousand miles from each other. The
serpent then spoke like a man; it was the most cunning of animals.
It persuades the woman to eat an apple, and so has her driven from
paradise. The human race increases, and the children of God fall in
love with the daughters of men. There were giants on the earth, and
God was sorry that he had made man. He determined to exterminate him
by a flood; but wished to save Noah, and ordered him to make a vessel
of poplar wood, three hundred cubits in length. Into this vessel were
to be brought seven pairs of all the clean animals, and two pairs of
the unclean. It was necessary to feed them during the ten months that
the water covered the earth. You can imagine what would be needed to
feed fourteen elephants, fourteen camels, fourteen buffaloes, and
as many horses, asses, deer, serpents, ostriches--in a word, more
than two thousand species.[62] You will ask me whence came the water
to cover the whole earth and rise fifteen cubits above the highest
mountains? The text replies that it came from the cataracts of
heaven. Heaven knows where these cataracts are. After the deluge God
enters into an alliance with Noah and with all the animals; and in
confirmation of this alliance he institutes the rainbow.

Those who wrote these things were not, as you perceive, great
physicists. However, here is Noah with a religion given to him by
God, and this religion is neither Jewish nor Christian. The posterity
of Noah seeks to build a tower that shall reach to heaven. A fine
enterprise! But God fears it, and causes the workers suddenly to
speak several different tongues, and they disperse. The whole is
written in this ancient oriental vein.

A rain of fire converts towns into a lake; Lot’s wife is changed into
a salt statue; Jacob fights all night with an angel, and is hurt in
the leg; Joseph, sold as a slave into Egypt, is made first minister
because he explains a dream. Seventy members of the family settle in
Egypt, and in two hundred and fifteen years, as we saw, multiply into
two millions. It is these two million Hebrews who fly from Egypt, and
go the longest way in order to have the pleasure of crossing the sea
dry-shod.

But there is nothing surprising about this miracle. Pharaoh’s
magicians performed some very fine miracles. Like Moses, they changed
a rod into a serpent, which is a very simple matter. When Moses
changed water into blood, they did the same. When he brought frogs
into existence, they imitated him. But they were beaten when it came
to the plague of lice; on that subject the Jews knew more than other
nations.

In the end Adonai causes the death of each first-born in Egypt in
order to allow his people to leave in peace. The sea divides to let
them pass; it was the least that could be done on such an occasion.
The remainer is on the same level. The people cry out in the desert.
Some of the husbands complain of their wives; at once a water is
found which causes any woman who has forfeited her honour to swell
and burst. They have neither bread nor paste; quails and manna are
rained on them. Their garments last forty years, and grow with the
children. Apparently clothes descend from heaven for the new-born
children.

A prophet of the district seeks to curse the people, but his ass
opposes the project, together with an angel, and the ass speaks very
reasonably and at great length to the prophet.

When they attack a town, the walls fall at the sound of trumpets;
just as Amphion built walls to the sound of the flute. But the
finest miracle is when five Amorite kings--that is to say, five
village sheiks--attempt to oppose the ravages of Joshua. They are
not merely vanquished and cut to pieces, but the Lord sends a great
rain of stones upon the fugitives. Even that is not enough. A few
escape, and, in order to give the Israelites time to pursue them,
nature suspends its eternal laws. The sun halts at Gibeon, and the
moon at Aijalon. We do not quite understand how the moon comes in,
but the books of Joshua leave no room for doubt as to the fact. Now
let us pass to other miracles, and go on to Samson, who is depicted
as a famous plunderer, a friend of God. Samson routs a thousand
Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, because he is not shaved, and
ties by the tails three hundred foxes which he found in a certain
place.

There is hardly a page that does not contain similar stories. In one
place it is the shade of Samuel appearing in response to the voice
of a witch; in another it is the shadow on a sun-dial (assuming that
these miserable folk had sun-dials) receding ten degrees at the
prayer of Hezekiah, who prudently asks for this sign. God gives him
the alternatives of advancing or retarding the hour, and Dr. Hezekiah
thinks that it is not difficult to put the shadow on, but very
difficult to put it back.

Elias rises to heaven in a fiery chariot; children sing in a fiery
furnace. I should never come to an end if I wished to enter into all
the details of the unheard-of extravagances that swarm in this book.
Never was common-sense assailed with such indecency and fury.

Such is, from one end to the other, the Old Testament, the father
of the New, a father who disavows his child and regards it as a
rebellious bastard; for the Jews, faithful to the law of Moses,
regard with detestation the Christianity that has been reared on the
ruins of their law. The Christians, however, have with great subtlety
sought to justify the New Testament by the Old. The two religions
thus fight each other with the same weapons; they invoke the same
prophets and appeal to the same predictions.

Will the ages to come, which will have seen the passing of these
follies, yet may, unhappily, witness the rise of others not less
unworthy of God and men, believe that Judaism and Christianity
based their claims on such foundations and such prophecies? What
prophecies! Listen. The prophet Isaiah is summoned by Ahaz, king
of Judah, to make certain predictions to him, in the vain and
superstitious manner of the East. These prophets were, as you know,
men who earned more or less of a living by divination; there were
many like them in Europe in the last century, especially among the
common people. King Ahaz, besieged in Jerusalem by Shalmaneser, who
had taken Samaria, demanded of the soothsayer a prophecy and a sign.
Isaiah said to him: This is the sign:

“A girl will conceive, and will bear a child who shall be called
Emmanuel. He shall eat butter and honey until the day when he shall
reject evil and choose good; and before this child is of age, the
land which thou detestest shall be forsaken by its two kings; and the
Lord shall hiss for the flies that are on the banks of the streams of
Egypt and Assyria; and the Lord will take a razor, and shave the King
of Assyria; he will shave his head and the hair of his feet.”

After this splendid prophecy, recorded in _Isaiah_, but of which
there is not a word in _Kings_, the prophet orders him first to
write on a large roll, which they hasten to seal. He urges the king
to press to the plunder of his enemies, and then ensures the birth
of the predicted child. Instead of calling it Emmanuel, however, he
gives it the name of Maher Salabas. This, my brethren, is the passage
which Christians have distorted in favour of their Christ; this is
the prophecy that set up Christianity. The girl to whom the prophet
ascribes a child is incontestably the Virgin Mary.[63] Maher Salabas
is Jesus Christ. As to the butter and honey, I am unaware what it
means. Each soothsayer promises the Jews deliverance when they are
captive; and this deliverance is, according to the Christians,
the heavenly Jerusalem, and the Church of our time. Prophecy is
everything with the Jews; with the Christians miracle is everything,
and all the prophecies are figures of Jesus Christ.

Here, my brethren, is one of these fine and striking prophecies. The
great prophet Ezekiel sees a wind from the north, and four animals,
and wheels of chrysolite full of eyes; and the Lord says to him:
“Rise, eat a book, and then depart.”

The Lord orders him to sleep three hundred and ninety days on the
left side, and then forty on the right side. The Lord binds him with
cords; he was certainly a man that needed binding. What follows in
Ezekiel is very distasteful.

But we need not waste our time in assailing all the disgusting and
abominable dreams which are the subject of controversy between the
Jews and Christians. We will be content to deplore the most pitiful
blindness that has ever darkened the mind of man. Let us hope that
this blindness will pass like so many others, and let us proceed to
the New Testament, a worthy sequel to what has gone before.

                            _Third Point_

Vain was it that the Jews were a little more enlightened in the time
of Augustus than in the barbaric ages of which we have spoken. Vainly
did the Jews begin to recognise the immortality of the soul, a dogma
unknown to Moses, and the idea of God rewarding the just after death
and punishing the wicked, a dogma equally unknown to Moses. Reason
none the less penetrated this miserable people, from whom issued the
Christian religion, which has proved the source of so many divisions,
civil wars, and crimes; which has caused so much blood to flow; and
which is broken into so many sects in the corner of the earth where
it rules.

There were at all times among the Jews people of the lowest order,
who made prophecies in order to distinguish themselves from the
populace. We deal here with the one who has become best known, and
has been turned into a god; we give a brief account of his career, as
it is described in the books called the gospels. We need not seek to
determine when these books were written; it is evident that they were
written after the fall of Jerusalem. You know how absurdly the four
authors contradict each other. It is a demonstrative proof that they
are wrong. We do not, however, need many proofs to demolish this
miserable structure. We will be content with a short and faithful
account.

In the first place, Jesus is described as a descendant of Abraham and
David, and the writer Matthew counts forty-two generations in two
thousand years. In his list, however, we find only forty-one, and
in the genealogical tree which he borrows from _Kings_ he blunders
clumsily in making Josiah the father of Jechoniah.

Luke also gives a genealogy, but he assigns forty-nine generations
after Abraham, and they are entirely different generations. To
complete the absurdity, these generations belong to Joseph, and the
evangelists assure us that Jesus was not the son of Joseph. Would one
be received in a German chapter on such proofs of nobility? Yet there
is question here of the son of God, and God himself is the author of
the book!

Matthew says that when Jesus, King of the Jews, was born in a stable
in the town of Bethlehem, three magi or kings saw his star in the
east, and followed it, until it halted over Bethlehem; and that King
Herod, hearing these things, caused all the children under two years
of age to be put to death. Could any horror be more ridiculous?
Matthew adds that the father and mother took the child into Egypt,
and remained there until the death of Herod. Luke says precisely the
contrary; he observes that Joseph and Mary remained peacefully at
Bethlehem for six weeks, then went to Jerusalem, and from there to
Nazareth; and that they went every year to Jerusalem.

The evangelists contradict each other in regard to the time of
the life of Jesus, his miracles, the night of the supper, and the
day of his death--in a word, in regard to nearly all the facts.
There were forty-nine gospels composed by the Christians of the
first few centuries, and these were still more flagrant in their
contradictions. In the end, the four which we have were selected.
Even if they were in harmony, what folly, what misery, what puerile
and odious things they contain!

The first adventure of Jesus, son of God, is to be taken up by the
devil; the devil, who makes no appearance in the books of Moses,
plays a great part in the gospels. The devil, then, takes God up a
mountain in the desert. From there he shows him all the kingdoms of
the earth. Where is this mountain from which one can see so many
lands? We do not know.

John records that Jesus goes to a marriage-feast, and changes water
into wine; and that he drives from the precincts of the temple those
who were selling the animals of the sacrifices ordered in the Jewish
law.

All diseases were at that time regarded as possession by the devil,
and Jesus makes it the mission of his apostles to expel devils. As
he goes along, he delivers one who was possessed by a legion of
devils, and he makes these devils enter a herd of swine, which cast
themselves into the sea of Tiberias. We may suppose that the owners
of the swine, who were not Jews apparently, were not pleased with
this comedy. He heals a blind man, and the blind man sees men as if
they were trees. He wishes to eat figs in winter, and, not finding
any on a tree, he curses the tree and causes it to wither; the text
prudently adds: “For it was not the season of figs.”

He is transformed during the night, and causes Moses and Elias to
appear. Do the stories of romancers even approach these absurdities?
At length, after constantly insulting the Pharisees, calling them
“races of vipers,” “whitened sepulchres,” etc., he is handed over by
them to justice, and executed with two thieves; and the historians
are bold enough to tell us that at his death the earth was darkened
at midday, and at a time of full moon. As if every writer of the time
would not have mentioned so strange a miracle.

After that it is a small matter to make him rise from the dead and
predict the end of the world; which, however, has not happened.

The sect of Jesus lingers in concealment; fanaticism increases.
At first they dare not make a god of this man, but they soon take
courage. Some Platonic metaphysic amalgamates with the Nazaræan sect,
and Jesus becomes the logos, the word of God, then consubstantial
with God his father. The Trinity is invented; and, in order to have
it accepted, the first gospels are falsified.

A passage is added in regard to this truth, and the historian
Josephus is falsified and made to speak of Jesus, though Josephus is
too serious an historian to mention such a man. They go so far as
to forge sibylline books. In a word, there is no kind of trickery,
fraud, and imposture that the Nazaræans do not adopt. At the end of
three years they succeeded in having Jesus recognised as a god. Not
content with this extravagance, they go so far as to locate their god
in a bit of paste. While their god is eaten by mice and digested,
they hold that there is no such thing as bread in the host; that God
has, at the word of a man, put himself in the place of the bread. All
kinds of superstitions flood the Church; plunder is predominant in
it; indulgences, benefices, and all kinds of spiritual things are put
up for sale.

The sect splits into a multitude of sects; age after age they fight
and slaughter each other. At every dispute kings and princes are
massacred.

Such, my dear brethren, is the fruit of the tree of the Cross, the
power that has been declared divine.

For this they have dared to bring God upon the earth; to commit
Europe for ages to murder and brigandage. It is true that our fathers
have in part shaken off this frightful yoke, and rid themselves of
some errors and superstitions. But how imperfect they have left
the work! Everything tells us that it is time to complete it; to
destroy utterly the idol of which we have as yet broken only a finger
or two. Numbers of theologians have already embraced Socinianism
(Unitarianism), which comes near to the worship of one God, freed
from superstition. England, Germany, and the provinces of France are
full of wise doctors, who ask only the opportunity to break away.
There are great numbers in other countries. Why persist in teaching
what we do not believe, and make ourselves guilty before God of this
great sin?

We are told that the people need mysteries, and must be deceived.
My brethren, dare any one commit this outrage on humanity? Have not
our fathers already taken from the people their transubstantiation,
auricular confession, indulgences, exorcisms, false miracles, and
ridiculous statues? Are not the people accustomed to the deprivation
of this food of superstition? We must have the courage to go a few
steps farther. The people are not so weak of mind as is thought;
they will easily admit a wise and simple cult of one God, such as
was professed, it is said, by Abraham and Noah, and by all the sages
of antiquity, and as is found among the educated people of China.
We seek not to despoil the clergy of what the liberality of their
followers has given them; we wish them, since most of them secretly
laugh at the untruths they teach, to join us in preaching the truth.
Let them observe that, while they now offend and dishonour the
Deity, they would, if they follow us, glorify him. What incalculable
good would be done by that happy change? Princes and magistrates
would be better obeyed, the people would be tranquil, the spirit
of division and hatred would be expelled. They would offer to God,
in peace, the first fruits of their work. There would assuredly be
more righteousness on the earth, for many weak-minded folk who hear
contempt expressed daily for the Christian superstition, and know
that it is ridiculed by the priests themselves, thoughtlessly imagine
that there is no such thing as religion, and abandon themselves to
excesses. But when they learn that the Christian sect is really only
a perversion of natural religion; when reason, freed from its chains,
teaches the people that there is but one God; that this God is the
common parent of all men, who are brothers; that, as brothers, they
must be good and just to each other, and practise every virtue; that
God, being good and just, must reward virtue and punish crime; then
assuredly, my brethren, men will gain in righteousness as they lose
in superstition.

We begin by giving this example in secret, and we trust that it will
be followed in public.

May the great God who hears me--a God who certainly could not be born
of a girl, nor die on a gibbet, nor be eaten in a morsel of paste,
nor have inspired this book with its contradictions, follies, and
horrors--may this God, creator of all worlds, have pity on the sect
of the Christians who blaspheme him. May he bring them to the holy
and natural religion, and shower his blessing on the efforts we make
to have him worshipped. Amen.

                       THE QUESTIONS OF ZAPATA

            (TRANSLATED BY DR. TAMPONET, OF THE SORBONNE)

  _The licentiate Zapata, being appointed Professor of Theology
  at the University of Salamanca, presented these questions to a
  committee of doctors in 1629. They were suppressed. The Spanish
  copy is in the Brunswick Library._

WISE MASTERS:

1º. How ought I to proceed with the object of showing that the Jews,
whom we burn by the hundred, were for four thousand years God’s
chosen people?

2º. How could God, whom one cannot without blasphemy regard as
unjust, forsake the whole earth for the little Jewish tribe, and then
abandon this little group for another, which, during two hundred
years, was even smaller and more despised?

3º. Why did he perform a number of incomprehensible miracles in
favour of this miserable nation before the period which is called
_historical_? Why did he, some centuries ago, cease to perform them?
And why do we, who are God’s people, never witness any?

4º. If God is the God of Abraham, why do you burn the children of
Abraham? And, when you burn them, why do you recite their prayers?
How is it that, since you worship the book of their law, you put them
to death for observing that law?

5º. How shall I reconcile the chronology of the Chinese, Chaldæans,
Phœnicians, and Egyptians with that of the Jews? And how shall I
reconcile the forty different methods of calculation which I find in
the commentators? If I say that God dictated the book, I may be told
that God evidently is not an expert in chronology.

6º. By what argument can I prove that the books attributed to Moses
were written by him in the desert? How could he say that he wrote
beyond the Jordan when he never crossed the Jordan? I may be told
that God is evidently not good at geography.

7º. The book entitled _Joshua_ says that Joshua had _Deuteronomy_
engraved on stones coated with mortar; this passage in _Joshua_,
and others in ancient writers, clearly prove that in the days of
Moses and Joshua the peoples of the East engraved their laws and
observations on stone and brick. The Pentateuch tells us that the
Jewish people were without food and clothing in the desert; it seems
hardly probable that, if they had no tailors or shoemakers, they had
men who were able to engrave a large book. In any case, how did they
preserve this large work inscribed in mortar?

8º. What is the best way to refute the objections of the learned men
who find in the Pentateuch the names of towns which were not yet in
existence; precepts for kings whom the Jews detested, and who did not
reign until seven hundred years after Moses; and passages in which
the author betrays that he was much later than Moses, as: “The bed of
Og, which is still seen in Ramath,” “The Canaanite was then in the
land,” etc., etc., etc., etc.?

These learned men might, with the difficulties and contradictions
which they impute to the Jewish chronicles, give some trouble to a
licentiate.

9º. Is the book of _Genesis_ to be taken literally or allegorically?
Did God really take a rib from Adam and make woman therewith? and, if
so, why is it previously stated that he made man male and female? How
did God create light before the sun? How did he separate light from
darkness, since darkness is merely the absence of light? How could
there be a day before the sun was made? How was the firmament made
amid the waters, since there is no such thing as a firmament?--it
is an illusion of the ancient Greeks. There are those who suggest
that _Genesis_ was not written until the Jews had some knowledge of
the erroneous philosophy of other peoples, and it would pain me to
hear it said that God knows no more about physics than he does about
chronology and geography.

10º. What shall I say of the garden of Eden, from which issued a
river which divided into four rivers--the Tigris, Euphrates, Phison
(which is believed to be the Phasis), and Gihon, which flows in
Ethiopia, and must therefore be the Nile, the source of which is a
thousand miles from the source of the Euphrates? I shall be told once
more that God is a very poor geographer.

11º. I should, with all my heart, like to eat the fruit which hung
from the tree of knowledge; and it seems to me that the prohibition
to eat it is strange. Since God endowed man with reason, he ought
to encourage him to advance in knowledge. Did he wish to be served
only by fools? I should also like to have speech with the serpent,
since it was so intelligent; but I should like to know what language
it spoke. The Emperor Julian, a great philosopher, asked this of the
great St. Cyril, who could not meet the question, and said to the
learned emperor: “You are the serpent.” St. Cyril was not polite;
but you will observe that he did not perpetrate this theological
impertinence until Julian was dead.

_Genesis_ says that the serpent eats earth; you know that _Genesis_
is wrong, and that earth alone contains no nourishment. In regard
to God walking familiarly every day in the garden, and talking to
Adam and Eve and the serpent, I may say that it would have been very
pleasant to have been there. But as I think you are much more fitted
for the kind of society which Joseph and Mary had in the stable
at Bethlehem, I will not advise you to visit the garden of Eden,
especially as the gate is now guarded by a cherub armed to the teeth.
It is true that, according to the rabbis, _cherub_ means “ox.”[64] A
curious kind of porter! Please let me know at least what a cherub is.

12º. How shall I explain the story of the angels who fell in love
with the daughters of men, and begot giants? May I not be told
that this episode is borrowed from pagan legends? But as the Jews
invented everything in the desert, and were very ingenious, it is
clear that all the other nations took their science from the Jews.
Homer, Plato, Cicero, and Vergil learned all they knew from the Jews.
Is not that proved?

13º. How shall I get out of the deluge, the cataracts of heaven
(which has no cataracts), and the animals coming from Japan, Africa,
America, and the south, and being enclosed in a large ark with food
and drink for one year, without counting the time when the earth was
still too damp to produce food for them? How did Noah’s little family
manage to give all these animals their proper food? It consisted only
of eight persons.

14º. How can I make the story of the tower of Babel plausible? This
tower must have been higher than the pyramids of Egypt, since God
allowed the building of the pyramids. Did it reach as high as Venus,
or at least to the moon?

15º. By what device shall I justify the two lies of Abraham, the
father of believers, who, at the age of one hundred and thirty-five
(counting carefully), represented the pretty Sarah as his sister in
Egypt and at Gerar, in order that the kings of those countries might
fall in love with her and make presents to him? What a naughty thing
to do, to sell one’s wife!

16º. Give me some explanation why, although God told Abraham that all
his posterity should be circumcised, this was not done under Moses.

17º. Can I know by my natural powers whether the three angels, to
whom Sarah offered a whole calf to eat, had bodies, or borrowed
bodies?

18º. Will my hearers believe me when I tell them that Lot’s wife
was changed into a salt statue? What shall I say to those who tell
me that it is probably a coarse imitation of the ancient fable of
Eurydice, and that a salt statue would not last in the rain?

19º. What shall I say in justification of the blessings which fell
on Jacob, the just man, who deceived his father Isaac and robbed his
father-in-law Laban? How shall I explain God appearing to him at the
top of a ladder? And how could Jacob fight an angel all night?, etc.,
etc.

20º. How must I treat the sojourn of the Jews in Egypt and their
escape? _Exodus_ says that they remained four hundred years in Egypt;
but, counting carefully, we find only two hundred and five years. Why
did Pharaoh’s daughter bathe in the Nile, in which no one ever bathes
on account of the crocodiles?, etc., etc.

21º. Moses having wedded the daughter of an idolater, how could
God choose him as his prophet without reproaching him? How could
Pharaoh’s magicians work the same miracles as Moses, except that of
covering the land with lice and vermin? How could they change into
blood all the waters, since these had already been changed into
blood by Moses? How was it that Moses, led by God himself, and at
the head of six hundred and thirty thousand fighting men, fled with
his people, instead of taking Egypt, in which God had slain all the
first-born? Egypt never had an army of a hundred thousand men,
from the first mention of it in historical times. How was it that
Moses, flying with his troops from the land of Goshen, crossed half
of Egypt, instead of going straight to Canaan, and advanced as far
as Memphis, between Baal-Sephon and the Red Sea? Finally, how could
Pharaoh pursue him with all his cavalry when, in the fifth plague
of Egypt, God had just destroyed all the horses and beasts in the
country, and, moreover, Egypt, which is much broken by canals, always
had very little cavalry?

22º. How shall I reconcile what is said in _Exodus_ with the speech
of St. Stephen in _Acts_ and the passages of _Jeremiah_ and _Amos_?
_Exodus_ says that they sacrificed to Jehovah for forty years in the
desert; Jeremiah, Amos, and St. Stephen say that neither sacrifice
nor victim was offered during all that time. _Exodus_ says that they
made the tabernacle, which contained the ark of the covenant; St.
Stephen, in _Acts_, says that they took the tabernacle from Moloch
and Remphan.

23º. I am not sufficiently versed in chemistry to deal happily with
the golden calf which, _Exodus_ says, was made in a day, and which
Moses reduced to ashes. Are they two miracles, or two possibilities
of human art?

24º. Was it a further miracle for the leader of a nation, in a
desert, to have twenty-three thousand men of that nation slain by a
single one of the twelve tribes, and for twenty-three thousand men to
let themselves be massacred without making any defence?

25º. Must I again regard it as a miracle, or as an act of ordinary
justice, that twenty-four thousand Hebrews were put to death because
one of them had lain with a Midianite woman, while Moses himself had
married a Midianite? And were not these Hebrews, who are described
to us as so ferocious, really very good fellows to let themselves be
slain for girls?

26º. What explanation shall I give of the law which forbids the
eating of the hare “because it ruminates, and has not a cloven
foot,” whereas hares have cloven feet and do not ruminate? We have
already seen that this remarkable book suggests that God is a poor
geographer, a poor chronologist, and a poor physicist; he seems
to have been no less weak in natural history. How can I explain
other equally wise laws, such as that of the waters of jealousy and
the sentence of death on a man who lies with his wife during the
menstrual period? etc., etc., etc. Can I justify these barbaric and
ridiculous laws, which are said to have been given by God himself?

27º. What answer shall I make to those who are surprised that a
miracle was needed to effect the crossing of the Jordan, since it is
only forty-five feet across at its widest, could easily be crossed
with a small raft, and was fordable at many points, as we learn from
the slaying of forty-two thousand Ephraimites by their brothers at a
ford of the same river?

28º. What reply shall I make to those who ask how the walls of
Jericho fell at the sound of a trumpet, and why other towns did not
fall in the same way?

29º. How shall I excuse the conduct of the harlot Rahab in betraying
her country, Jericho? How was this treachery necessary, since they
had only to blow their trumpet to take a town? And how shall I fathom
the depth of the divine decrees which enacted that our divine Saviour
Jesus Christ should descend from this harlot Rahab, from the incest
of Thamar with her father-in-law Judah, and from the adultery of
David and Bathsheba? How incomprehensible are the ways of God!

30º. How can I approve of Joshua hanging thirty-one kinglets and
usurping their little States--that is to say, their villages?

31º. How shall I speak of the battle of Joshua with the Amorites at
Beth-horon on the way to Gibeon? The Lord sends a rain of stones,
from Beth-horon to Azekah: it is fifteen miles from Beth-horon to
Azekah; therefore the Amorites were exterminated by rocks which fell
from heaven over a space of fifteen miles. The Scripture says that
it was midday. Why, then, did Joshua command the sun and the moon to
stand still in the middle of the sky in order to give him time to
complete the defeat of a small troop which was already exterminated?
Why did he tell the moon to stand still at midday? How could the sun
and moon remain in the same place for a day? Which commentator shall
I consult for an explanation of this extraordinary truth?

32º. What shall I say of Jephthah immolating his daughter, and having
forty-two thousand Jews of the tribe of Ephraim, who could not say
_Shibboleth_, put to death?

33º. Ought I to admit or deny that the Jewish law nowhere speaks of
punishment or reward after death? How is it that neither Moses nor
Joshua ever spoke of the immortality of the soul, a dogma well known
to the ancient Egyptians, Chaldæans, Persians, and Greeks, but hardly
known to the Jews until after the time of Alexander, and always
rejected by the Sadducees because it is not in the Pentateuch?

34º. What gloss must I put on the story of the Levite who, coming on
his ass to the Benjamite town Gibeah, excited the passion of all the
Gibeonites? He abandoned his wife to them, and she died the next day.

35º. I need your advice to enable me to understand the nineteenth
verse of the first chapter of _Judges_: “And the Lord was with Judah:
and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain: but could not
drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots
of iron.” I cannot, of my own feeble lights, understand how the God
of heaven and earth, who had so often superseded the order of nature
and suspended the eternal laws in favour of the Jewish people, was
unable to vanquish the inhabitants of a valley because they had iron
chariots. Can it be true that, as some learned men say, the Jews
at that time regarded their God as a local and protecting deity,
sometimes more powerful, at other times less powerful, than the gods
of the enemy? And is this not proved by the reply of Jephthah: “Ye
possess by right what your god Camos has given you: suffer then that
we take what our god Adonai has promised us”?

36º. I may add that it is difficult to believe that there were so
many chariots armed with scythes in a mountainous district, in which,
as the Scriptures often show, the height of magnificence was to be
mounted on an ass.[65]

37º. The story of Ehud gives me even greater trouble. I see that the
Jews were always in bondage, in spite of the help of their God, who
had sworn to give them all the country between the Nile, the sea,
and the Euphrates. For eighteen years they were subject to a petty
king named Eglon, when God raised up for them Ehud, son of Gera, who
used his left hand as well as the right. Ehud, son of Gera, made a
two-edged sword, and hid it under his cloak--as Jacques Clément and
Ravaillac did afterwards. He asks a private audience of the king,
saying that he has a secret of the utmost importance to communicate
to him from God. Eglon respectfully rises, and Ehud drives his
sword into his belly with his left hand. God entirely approved this
deed; but, judged by the moral code of all nations, it seems rather
questionable. Please tell me which was the most divine assassination,
that of St. Ehud, or that of St. David (who had Uriah, the husband
of his mistress, slain), or that of the blessed Solomon, who, having
seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, assassinated his
brother Adonias because he asked for one of them? etc., etc., etc.,
etc.

38º. I pray you tell me by what trick Samson caught three hundred
foxes, tied them together by their tails, and fastened lighted
torches to their hind quarters, in order to set fire to the harvests
of the Philistines. Foxes are found only in wooded country. There was
no forest in this district, and it seems rather difficult to catch
three hundred foxes alive and tie them together by their tails. It is
then said that he killed a thousand Philistines with the jaw of an
ass, and that a spring issued from one of the teeth of this jaw. When
it comes to the jaws of asses, you certainly owe me explanations.

39º. I also ask you for information about that good man Tobias, who
slept with his eyes open, and was blinded by the droppings of a
swallow; about the angel who came down expressly from what is called
the empyrean to seek, with Tobias junior, the money which the Jew
Gabel owed to Tobias senior; about the wife of Tobias junior, who had
had seven husbands whose necks had been wrung by the devil; and about
the way to restore sight to the blind with the gall of a fish. These
stories are curious, and nothing is more worthy of attention--after
Spanish novels; the only things to which they may be compared are the
stories of Judith and Esther. But how am I to interpret the sacred
text which says that the beautiful Judith descended from Simeon, son
of Reuben, whereas Simeon was the brother of Reuben, according to the
same sacred text, which cannot lie?

I am very fond of Esther, and think the alleged King Assuerus acted
very sensibly in marrying a Jewess and living with her for six
months without knowing who she was. As all the rest of the story
is of much the same character, I must ask you kindly to come to my
assistance, my wise masters.

40º. I need your help in regard to the history of the kings, at
least as much as in regard to the history of the judges, of Tobias
and his dog, of Esther, of Judith, of Ruth, etc., etc. When Saul was
appointed king, the Jews were in bondage to the Philistines. Their
conquerors did not allow them to have swords or lances; they were
even compelled to go to the Philistines to have their ploughshares
and axes sharpened. Nevertheless, Saul gives battle to the
Philistines and defeats them; and in this battle he is at the head of
three hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, in a little country that
cannot sustain thirty thousand souls. The Jews had not at that time
more than a third of Palestine, at the most, and so sterile a country
does not sustain twenty thousand inhabitants to-day. The surplus
population was compelled to go and earn its living by prostitution at
Damascus, Tyre, and Babylon.

41º. I know not how I can justify the conduct of Samuel in cutting
into pieces Agag, whom Saul had taken prisoner and put to ransom. I
wonder whether our king Philip, if he captured a Moorish king, and
made an agreement with him, would be approved if he cut the captured
king in pieces.

42º. We owe great respect to David, who was a man after God’s heart;
but I fear I am not learned enough to justify, by ordinary laws,
the conduct of David in associating with four hundred men of evil
ways, and burdened with debt, as the Scripture says; in going to
sack the house of the king’s servant Nabal, and marrying his widow
a week later; in offering his services to Achish, the king’s enemy,
and spreading fire and blood over the land of the allies of Achish,
without sparing either age or sex; in taking new concubines as soon
as he is on the throne; and, not content with these concubines, in
stealing Bathsheba from her husband, whom he not only dishonours,
but slays. I find it difficult to imagine how God could afterwards
descend, in Judæa, from this adulterous and homicidal woman, who is
counted among the ancestresses of the Eternal. I have already warned
you that this article causes much trouble to pious souls.

43º. The wealth of David and Solomon, which amounted to more than
five hundred thousand million gold ducats, seems to be not easily
reconciled with the poverty of the country and with the condition to
which the Jews were reduced under Saul, when they had not the means
of sharpening their ploughshares and axes. Our cavalry officers will
shrug their shoulders when I tell them that Solomon had four hundred
thousand horses in a little country where there never were, and are
not to-day, anything but asses, as I have already had the honour to
represent to you.

44º. If I were to run over the history of the frightful cruelties of
nearly all the kings of Judah and Israel, I fear I should scandalise,
rather than edify, the weak. These kings assassinate each other a
little too frequently. It is bad politics, if I am not mistaken.

45º. I see this small people almost always in bondage to the
Phœnicians, Babylonians, Persians, Syrians, or Romans; and I may
have some trouble in reconciling so much misery with the magnificent
promises of their prophets.

46º. I know that all the eastern nations had prophets, but I do not
quite understand those of the Jews. What is the meaning of the vision
of Ezekiel, son of Buzi, near the river Chebar; of the four animals
which had four faces and four wings each, with the feet of calves; of
the wheel that had four faces; and of the firmament above the heads
of the animals? How can we explain the order given by God to Ezekiel
to eat a parchment book, to have himself bound, and to lie on his
left side for three hundred and ninety days, and on his right side
for forty days?

47º. It will be my duty to explain the great prophecy of Isaiah in
regard to our Lord Jesus Christ. It is, as you know, in the seventh
chapter. Rezin, king of Syria, and Pekah, kinglet of Israel, were
besieging Jerusalem. Ahaz, kinglet of Jerusalem, consults the prophet
Isaiah as to the issue of the siege. Isaiah replies: “God shall give
you a sign: a girl (or woman) shall conceive and bear a son, and
shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, that he
may know to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child
shall be able to refuse the evil and choose the good the land shall
be delivered of both the kings, ... and the Lord shall hiss for the
fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the
bee that is in the land of Assyria.”

Then, in the eighth chapter, the prophet, to ensure the fulfilment
of the prophecy, lies with the prophetess. She bore a son, and
the Lord said to Isaiah: “Call his name Maher-shalal-hash-baz
[Hasten-to-seize-the-spoil, or Run-quickly-to-the-booty]. For before
the child shall have knowledge to cry, My father and my mother, the
power of Damascus shall be overthrown.” I cannot plainly interpret
this prophecy without your assistance.

48º. How must I understand the story of Jonah, who was sent to
Nineveh to preach penance? Nineveh was not Israelitic, and it seems
that Jonah was to instruct it in the Jewish law before bringing it
to repent. Instead of obeying the Lord, Jonah flies to Tarshish. A
storm arises, and the sailors throw Jonah into the sea to appease
the tempest. God sends a great fish to swallow Jonah, and he remains
three days and three nights in the belly of the fish. God orders the
fish to give up Jonah, and it obeys. Jonah disembarks on the coast
of Joppa. God commands him to go and tell Nineveh that in forty days
it will be overturned, unless it does penance. It is more than four
hundred miles from Joppa to Nineveh. Do not all the stories demand
a superior knowledge which I lack? I greatly wish to confound the
learned men who assert that this legend is taken from the legend of
the ancient Hercules.

49º. Show me how to interpret the first verses of the prophet Hosea.
God explicitly enjoins him to take a harlot and have children by
her. The prophet obeys punctually. He pays his respects to Dona
Gomer, daughter of Dom Diblaim, keeps her three years, and has three
children--which is a model. Then God desires another model. He orders
him to lie with another gay lady, a married woman, who has already
deceived her husband. The good Hosea, always obedient, has no trouble
in finding a handsome lady of this character, and it costs him only
fifteen pieces of silver and a measure of barley. I beg you to tell
me how much the piece of silver was worth among the Jews.

50º. I have still greater need of your wise guidance in regard to the
New Testament. I hardly know what to say when I have to reconcile
the two genealogies of Jesus. I shall be reminded that Matthew makes
Jacob the father of Joseph, while Luke makes him the son of Heli,
and that this is impossible unless we change _He_ into _Ja_ and _li_
into _cob_. I shall be asked why the one counts fifty-six generations
and the other only forty-two, and why the generations are quite
different; and then why only forty-one are given instead of the
promised forty-two; and lastly why the genealogical tree of Joseph
was given at all, seeing that he was not the father of Jesus. I fear
to make a fool of myself, as so many of my predecessors have done. I
trust that you will extricate me from this labyrinth.

51º. If I declare that, as Luke says, Augustus had ordered a census
to be taken of the whole earth when Mary was pregnant, and that
Cyrenius or Quirinus, the governor of Syria, published the decree,
and that Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem to be enumerated; and if
people laugh at me, and antiquarians teach me that there never was a
census of the Roman Empire, that Quintilius Varus, not Cyrenius, was
at that time governor of Syria, and that Cyrenius only governed Syria
ten years after the birth of Jesus, I shall be very much embarrassed,
and no doubt you will extricate me from this little difficulty. For
how could a book be inspired if there were one single untruth in it?

52º. When I teach that, as Matthew says, the family went into Egypt,
I shall be told that that is not true, but that, as the other
evangelists say, the family remained in Judæa; and if I then grant
that they remained in Judæa, I shall be told that they were in Egypt.
Is it not simpler to say that one can be in two places at once, as
happened to St. Francis Xavier and several other saints?

53º. Astronomers may laugh at the star which led the three kings
to a stable. But you are great astrologers, and will be able to
explain the phenomenon. Tell me, especially, how much gold the kings
presented. For you are wont to extort a good deal of it from kings
and peoples. And in regard to the fourth king, Herod, why did he
fear that Jesus, born in a stable, might become king of the Jews?
Herod was king only by permission of the Romans; it was the business
of Augustus. The massacre of the innocents is rather curious. I am
disappointed that no Roman writer mentions it. An ancient and most
truthful (as they all are) martyrology gives the number of these
martyred infants as fourteen thousand. If you would like me to add a
few thousand more, you have only to say so.

54º. You will tell me how the devil carried off God and perched him
on a hill in Galilee, from which one could see all the kingdoms of
the earth. The devil promising these kingdoms to God, provided God
worships the devil, may scandalise many good people, whom I recommend
to your notice.

55º. I beg you, when you go to a wedding feast, to tell me how God,
who also went to a wedding feast, succeeded in changing water into
wine for the sake of people who were already drunk.

56º. When you eat figs at breakfast towards the end of July, I
beg you to tell me why God, being hungry, looked for figs at the
beginning of the month of March, when it was not the season of figs.

57º. Having received your instructions on all the prodigies of this
nature, I shall have to say that God was condemned to be executed
for original sin. And if I am told that there was never any question
of original sin, either in the Old or the New Testament; that it is
merely stated that Adam was condemned to die on the day on which he
should eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and he did not die;
and that Augustine, bishop of Hippo, formerly a Manichean, was the
first to set up the doctrine of original sin, I submit to you that,
as my hearers are not the simple folk of Hippo, I run some risk of
exciting derision by speaking much without saying anything. When
certain cavillers came to show me that God could not possibly be
executed because an apple was eaten four thousand years before his
death, and could not possibly have redeemed the human race, yet,
apart from a chosen few, left the whole of it in the devil’s claws, I
had only verbiage to give in reply, and went away to hide my shame.

58º. Throw some light for me on the prophecy which Our Lord makes
in _Luke_ (ch. xxi.). Jesus says explicitly that he will come in
a cloud with great power and great glory before the generation to
which he speaks shall pass away. He did not do this; he did not come
in the clouds. If he came in some fog or other, we know nothing
about it; tell me what you think. The Apostle Paul also says to his
Thessalonian disciples that they will go with him in the clouds to
Jesus. Why did they not go? Does it cost more to go to the clouds
than to the third heaven? I beg your forgiveness, but I prefer the
clouds of Aristophanes to those of Paul.

59º. Shall I say with Luke that Jesus went up to heaven from the
little village of Bethany? Shall I state with Matthew that it was
from Galilee, where the disciples saw him for the last time? Or shall
I take the word of a learned doctor who says that Jesus had one foot
in Bethany and another in Galilee? The latter opinion seems to me the
more probable, but I will await your decision.

60º. I shall then be asked whether Peter was ever at Rome. I shall
reply, of course, that he was pope there for twenty-five years; and
the chief reason I shall give is that we have an epistle from the
good man (who could neither read nor write), and that it is dated
from Babylon. There is no answer to that argument, but I should like
something stronger.

61º. Please tell me why the “Apostles’ Creed” was not written until
the time of Jerome and Rufinus, four hundred years after the
apostles. Tell me why the earliest fathers of the Church never quote
any but the gospels which we call apocryphal. Is it not a clear proof
that the four canonical gospels had not yet been written?

62º. Are you not sorry, as I am, that the early Christians forged
so much bad poetry, and attributed it to the Sibyls? And that they
forged letters of Paul and Seneca, of Jesus, of Mary, and of Pilate?
And that they thus set up their sect on a hundred forgeries which
would be punished to-day by any court in the world? These frauds
are now recognised by all scholars. We are reduced to calling them
“pious.” But is it not sad that your truth should be based on lies?

63º. Tell me why, since Jesus did not institute seven sacraments,
we have seven sacraments[66]; why, whereas Jesus never said that he
was threefold and had two natures and two wills and one person, we
make him threefold, with one person and two natures; and why, having
two wills, he had not the will to instruct us in the dogmas of the
Christian religion.

64º. Is the pope infallible when he consorts with his mistress, and
when he brings to supper a bottle of poisoned wine for Cardinal
Cornetto?[67] When two councils anathematise each other, as has often
happened, which of them is infallible?

65º. Would it not really be better to avoid these labyrinths, and
simply preach virtue? When God comes to judge us, I doubt very
much if he will ask us whether grace is versatile or concomitant,
whether marriage is the visible sign of an invisible thing, whether
we believe that there are ten choirs of angels or nine, whether the
pope is above the council or the council above the pope. Will it be a
crime in his eyes to have prayed to him in Spanish when one does not
know Latin? Shall we be visited with his cruel wrath for having eaten
a penny-worth of bad meat on a certain day? And shall we be eternally
rewarded if, like you, my learned masters, we ate a hundred piastres’
worth of turbot, sole, and sturgeon? You do not believe it in the
depth of your hearts; you believe that God will judge you by your
works, not by the opinions of Thomas and Bonaventure.

Shall I not render a service to men in speaking to them only of
morality? This morality is so pure, so holy, so universal, so clear,
so ancient, that it seems to come from God himself, like the light
which we regard as the first of his works. Has he not given men
self-love to secure their preservation; benevolence, beneficence,
and virtue to control their self-love; the natural need to form a
society; pleasure to enjoy, pain to warn us to enjoy in moderation,
passions to spur us to great deeds, and wisdom to curb our passions?
Will you allow me to announce these truths to the noble people of
Spain?

66º. If you bid me conceal these truths, and strictly enjoin me
to announce the miracles of St. James of Galicia, or of Our Lady
of Atocha, or of Maria d’Agreda (who in her ecstasies behaved in
a most improper manner), tell me what I must do with those who
dare to doubt? Must I, for their edification, have the ordinary and
extraordinary question put to them?[68]

I await the honour of your reply,

                                           DOMINICO ZAPATA,
                                              y verdadero, y honrado,
                                                    y caricativo.

  Zapata, receiving no answer, took to preaching God in all
  simplicity. He announced to men the common father, the rewarder,
  punisher, and pardoner. He extricated the truth from the lies, and
  separated religion from fanaticism; he taught and practised virtue.
  He was gentle, kindly, and modest; and he was burned at Valladolid
  in the year of grace 1631. Pray God for the soul of Brother Zapata.

                         WE MUST TAKE SIDES;

                     OR, THE PRINCIPLE OF ACTION

                            INTRODUCTION

It is not a question of taking sides between Russia and Turkey; for
these States will, sooner or later, come to an understanding without
my intervention.

It is not a question of declaring oneself in favour of one English
faction and against another; for they will soon have disappeared, to
make room for others.

I am not endeavouring to choose between Greek and Armenian
Christians, Eutychians and Jacobites, Christians who are called
Papists and Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, the primitive folk
called Quakers, Anabaptists, Jansenists, Molinists, Socinians,
Pietists, and so many other ’ists. I wish to live in peace with all
these gentlemen, whenever I may meet them, and never dispute with
them; because there is not a single one of them who, when he has a
crown to share with me, will not know his business perfectly, or who
would spend a single penny for the salvation of my soul or his own.

I am not going to take sides between the old and the new French
Parliaments; because in a few years there will be no question of
either of them.

Nor between the ancients and the moderns; because the trial would be
endless.

Nor between the Jansenists and the Molinists; because they exist no
longer, and, thank God, five or six thousand volumes have become as
useless as the works of St. Ephraim.

Nor between the partisans of the French and the Italian opera;
because it is a mere matter of fancy.

The subject I have in mind is but a trifle--namely, the question
whether there is or is not a God; and I am going to examine it in all
seriousness and good faith, because it interests me, and you also.

                     OF THE PRINCIPLE OF ACTION

Everything is in motion, everything acts and reacts, in nature.

Our sun turns on its axis with a rapidity that astonishes us; other
suns turn with the same speed, while countless swarms of planets
revolve round them in their orbits, and the blood circulates more
than twenty times an hour in the lowliest of our animals.

A straw that is borne on the wind tends naturally towards the centre
of the earth, just as the earth gravitates towards the sun, and the
sun towards the earth. The sea owes to the same laws its eternal
ebb and flow. In virtue of the same laws the vapours which form our
atmosphere rise continually from the earth, and fall again in dew,
rain, hail, snow, and thunder. Everything, even death, is active.
Corpses are decomposed, transformed into plants, and nourish the
living, which in their turn are the food of others. What is the
principle of this universal activity?

This principle must be unique. The unvarying uniformity of the laws
which control the march of the heavenly bodies, the movements of
our globe, every species and genus of animal, plant, and mineral,
indicates that there is one mover. If there were two, they would
either differ, or be opposed to each other, or like each other. If
they were different, there would be no harmony; if opposed, things
would destroy each other; if like, it would be as if there were only
one--a twofold employment.

I am encouraged in this belief that there can be but one principle,
one single mover, when I observe the constant and uniform laws of the
whole of nature.

The same gravitation reaches every globe, and causes them to tend
towards each other in direct proportion, not to their surfaces, which
might be the effect of an impelling fluid, but to their masses.

The square of the revolution of every planet is as the cube of
its distance from the sun (which proves, one may note, what Plato
had somehow divined, that the world is the work of the eternal
geometrician).

The rays of light are reflected and refracted from end to end of the
universe. All the truths of mathematics must be the same on the star
Sirius as in our little home.

If I glance at the animal world, I find that all quadrupeds, and
all wingless bipeds, reproduce their kind by the same process of
copulation, and all the females are viviparous.

All female birds lay eggs.

In each species there is the same manner of reproduction and feeding.

Each species of plants has the same basic qualities.

Assuredly the oak and the nut have come to no agreement to be born
and to grow in the same way, any more than Mars and Saturn have come
to an understanding to observe the same laws. There is, therefore,
a single, universal, and powerful intelligence, acting always by
invariable laws.

No one doubts that an armillary sphere, landscapes, drawings of
animals, or models in coloured wax, are the work of clever artists.
Is it possible for the copyists to be intelligent and the originals
not? This seems to me the strongest demonstration; I do not see how
it can be assailed.

                                 II

          OF THE NECESSARY AND ETERNAL PRINCIPLE OF ACTION

This single mover is very powerful, since it directs so vast and
complex a machine. It is very intelligent, since the smallest spring
of this machine cannot be equalled by us, who are intelligent beings.

It is a necessary being, since without it the machine would not
exist.

It is eternal, for it cannot be produced from nothing, which, being
nothing, can produce nothing; given the existence of something, it
is demonstrated that something has existed for all eternity. This
sublime truth has become trivial. So great has been the advance of
the human mind in our time, in spite of the efforts to brutalise us
which the masters of ignorance have made for so many centuries.

                       WHAT IS THIS PRINCIPLE?

I cannot prove synthetically the existence of the principle of
action, the prime mover, the Supreme Being, as Dr. Clarke does. If
this method were in the power of man, Clarke was, perhaps, worthy to
employ it; but analysis seems to me more suitable for our poor ideas.
It is only by ascending the stream of eternity that I can attempt to
reach its source.

Having therefore recognised from movement that there is a mover;
having proved from action that there is a principle of action; I
seek the nature of this universal principle. And the first thing I
perceive, with secret distress but entire resignation, is that, being
an imperceptible part of the great whole; being, as Plato says in the
_Timæus_, a point between two eternities; it will be impossible for
me to understand this great whole, which hems me in on every side,
and its master.

Yet I am a little reassured on seeing that I am able to measure
the distance of the stars, and to recognise the course and the laws
which keep them in their orbits. I say to myself: Perhaps, if I use
my reason in good faith, I may succeed in discovering some ray of
probability to lighten me in the dark night of nature. And if this
faint dawn which I seek does not come to me, I shall be consoled
to think that my ignorance is invincible; that knowledge which is
forbidden me is assuredly useless to me; and that the great Being
will not punish me for having sought a knowledge of him and failed to
obtain it.

                                 IV

            WHERE IS THE FIRST PRINCIPLE? IS IT INFINITE?

I do not see the first motive and intelligent principle of the animal
called man, when he demonstrates a geometrical proposition or lifts
a burden. Yet I feel irresistibly that there is one in him, however
subordinate. I cannot discover whether this first principle is in his
heart, or in his head, or in his blood, or in his whole body. In the
same way I have detected a first principle in nature, and have seen
that it must necessarily be eternal. But where is it?

If it animates all existence, it is in all existence: that seems to
be beyond doubt. It is in all that exists, just as movement is in the
whole body of an animal, if one may use so poor a comparison.

But while it is in what exists, can it be in what does not exist?
Is the universe infinite? I am told that it is; but who will prove
it? I regard it as eternal, because it cannot have been made from
nothing; because the great principle, “nothing comes from nothing,”
is as true as that two and two make four; because, as we saw
elsewhere, it is an absurd contradiction to say that the active being
has spent an eternity without acting, the formative being has been
eternal without forming anything, and the necessary being has been,
during an eternity, a useless being.

But I see no reason why this necessary being should be infinite. Its
nature seems to me to be wherever there is existence; but why, and
how, an infinite existence? Newton has demonstrated the void, which
had until his time been a matter of conjecture. If there is a void in
nature, there may be a void outside nature. What need is there that
beings should extend to infinity? What would an infinite extension
be? Nor can we have infinity in number. There is no number and no
extension to which I cannot add. It seems to me that in this matter
the conclusion of Cudworth is preferable to that of Clarke.

God is present everywhere, says Clarke. Yes, doubtless; but
everywhere where there is something, not where there is not. To
be present in nothing seems to me a contradiction in terms, an
absurdity. I am compelled to admit eternity, but I am not compelled
to admit an actual infinity.

In fine, what does it matter to me whether space is a reality or
merely an idea in my mind? What does it matter whether or no the
necessary, intelligent, powerful, eternal being, the former of all
being, is in this imaginary space? Am I less his work? Am I less
dependent on him? Is he the less my master? I see this master of the
world with the eyes of my mind, but I see him not beyond the world.

It is still disputed whether or no infinite space is a reality. I
will not base my judgment on so equivocal a point, a quarrel worthy
of the scholastics. I will not set up the throne of God in imaginary
spaces.

If it is allowable to compare once more the little things which seem
large to us to what is great in reality, let us imagine a gentleman
of Madrid trying to persuade a Castilian neighbour that the king
of Spain is master of the sea to the north of California, and that
whoever doubts it is guilty of high treason. The Castilian replies:
I do not even know whether there is a sea beyond California. It
matters little to me whether there is or not, provided that I have
the means of subsistence in Madrid. I do not need this sea to be
discovered to make me faithful to the king my master on the banks of
the Manzanares. Whether or no there are vessels beyond Hudson Bay, he
has none the less power to command me here; I feel my dependence on
him in Madrid, because I know that he is master of Madrid.

In the same way, our dependence on the great being is not due to the
fact that he is present outside the world, but to the fact that he
is present in the world. I do but ask pardon of the master of nature
for comparing him to a frail human being in order to make my meaning
clearer.

                                  V

         THAT ALL THE WORKS OF THE ETERNAL BEING ARE ETERNAL

The principle of nature being necessary and eternal, and its very
essence being to act, it must have been always active. If it had not
been an ever-active God, it would have been an eternally indolent
God, the God of Epicurus, the God who is good for nothing. This truth
seems to me to be fully demonstrated.

Hence the world, his work, whatever form it assume, is, like him,
eternal; just as the light is as old as the sun, movement as old as
matter, and food as old as the animals; otherwise the sun, matter,
and the animals would be, not merely useless, but self-contradictory
things, chimæras.

What, indeed, could be more contradictory than an essentially active
being that has been inactive during an eternity; a formative being
that has fashioned nothing, or merely formed a few globes some years
ago, without there being the least apparent reason for making them
at one time rather than another? The intelligent principle can do
nothing without reason; nothing can exist without an antecedent and
necessary reason. This antecedent and necessary reason has existed
eternally; therefore the universe is eternal.

We speak here a strictly philosophical language; it is not our part
even to glance at those who use the language of revelation.

                                 VI

          THAT THE ETERNAL BEING, AND FIRST PRINCIPLE, HAS
                   ARRANGED ALL THINGS VOLUNTARILY

It is clear that this supreme, necessary, active intelligence is
possessed of will, and has arranged all things because it[69] willed
them. How can one act, and fashion all things, without willing to
fashion them? That would be the action of a mere machine, and this
machine would presuppose another first principle, another mover. We
should always have to end in a first intelligent being of some kind
or other. We wish, we act, we make machines, when we will; hence
the great very powerful _Demiourgos_ has done all things because he
willed.

Spinoza himself recognises in nature an intelligent, necessary power.
But an intelligence without will would be an absurdity, since such an
intelligence would be useless; it would do nothing, because it would
not will to do anything. Hence the great necessary being has willed
everything that it has done.

I said above that it has done all things necessarily because, if
its works were not necessary, they would be useless. But does this
necessity deprive it of will? Certainly not. I necessarily will to be
happy, but I will it none the less on that account; on the contrary,
I will it all the more strongly because I will it irresistibly.

Does this necessity deprive it of liberty? Not at all. Liberty can
only be the power to act. Since the supreme being is very powerful,
it is the freest of beings.

We thus recognise that the great artisan of things is necessary,
eternal, intelligent, powerful, possessed of will, and free.

                                 VII

   THAT ALL BEINGS, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, ARE SUBJECT TO ETERNAL LAWS

What are the effects of this eternal power that dwells essentially
in nature? I see only two classes of them, the insensitive and the
sensitive.

The earth, the seas, the planets, the suns, seem admirable but
lifeless things, devoid of sensibility. A snail that wills, has some
degree of perception, and makes love, seems, to that extent, to have
an advantage greater than all the glory of the suns that illumine
space.

But all these beings are alike subject to eternal and unvarying laws.

Neither the sun, nor the snail, nor the oyster, nor the dog, nor the
ape, nor man, has given himself any one of the things which he has;
it is evident that they have received everything.

Man and the dog are born, unwittingly, of a mother who has brought
them into the world in spite of herself. Both of them suck the
mother’s breast without knowing what they do, and they do this in
virtue of a very delicate and complex mechanism, the nature of which
is known to few men.

Both of them have, after a time, ideas, memory, and will; the dog
much earlier than the man.

If the animals were mere machines, it would be another argument for
the position of those who believe that man also is a mere machine;
but there are now none who do not admit that the animals have ideas,
memory, and a measure of intelligence, and that they improve their
knowledge; that a hunting-dog learns its work, an old fox is more
astute than a young one, and so on.

Whence have they these faculties, if not from the primordial eternal
cause, the principle of action, the great being that animates the
whole of nature?

Man obtains the faculties of the animals much later than they, but in
a higher degree; can he obtain them from any other source?

He has nothing but what the great being has given him. It would
be a strange contradiction, a singular absurdity, if all the
stars and elements, the animals and plants, obeyed, unceasingly
and irresistibly, the laws of the great being, and man alone were
independent of them.

                                VIII

            THAT MAN IS ESSENTIALLY SUBJECT IN EVERYTHING
             TO THE ETERNAL LAWS OF THE FIRST PRINCIPLE

Let us regard, with the eyes of reason, this animal man which the
great being has produced.

What is his first sensation? A sensation of pain; then the pleasure
of feeding. That is the whole of our life: pain and pleasure. Whence
have we these two springs which keep us in action until our last
moment, if not from this first principle of action, this Demiourgos?
Assuredly we do not give pain to ourselves; and how could we be
the cause of our few pleasures? We have said elsewhere that it is
impossible for us to invent a new kind of pleasure--that is to say,
a new sense. Let us now say that it is equally impossible for us to
invent a new kind of pain. The most execrable of tyrants cannot do
it. The Jews, whose tortures have been described by the Benedictine
monk Calmet in his dictionary, could only cut, tear, mutilate, draw,
burn, strangle, and crush; all torments may thus be summarised. We
can therefore do nothing of ourselves, either for good or evil; we
are but the blind instruments of nature.

But I wish to think and I think, most men will recklessly assert. Let
us consider it. What was our first idea after the feeling of pain?
The idea of the breast that we sucked; then the face of the nurse;
then a few other objects and needs made their faint impressions.
Would any one up to this point venture to say that he was more than
a sentient automaton, a wretched abandoned animal destitute of
knowledge or power, an outcast of nature? Will he venture to say
that in this condition he is a thinking being, the author of his own
ideas, the possessor of a soul? What is the son of a king when he
leaves the womb? He would excite the disgust of his father, if he
were not his father. A flower of the field that one treads underfoot
is an infinitely superior thing.

                                 IX

            OF THE PRINCIPLE OF ACTION IN SENTIENT BEINGS

There comes at length a time when a greater or smaller number of
perceptions, received in our mechanism, seem to present themselves to
our will. We think that we are forming ideas. It is as if, when we
turn the tap of a fountain, we were to think that we cause the water
which streams out. We create ideas, poor creatures that we are! It
is evident that we had no share in the former, yet we would regard
ourselves as the authors of the latter. If we reflect well on this
vain boast of forming ideas, we shall see that it is insolent and
absurd.

Let us remember that there is nothing in external objects with the
least analogy, the least relation, to a feeling, an idea, a thought.
Let an eye or an ear be made by the best artisan in the world; the
eye will see nothing, the ear will hear nothing. It is the same with
our living body. The universal principle of action does everything in
us. He has not made us an exception to the rest of nature.

Two experiences which are constantly repeated during the course of
our life, and of which I have spoken elsewhere, will convince every
thoughtful man that our ideas, our wills, and our actions do not
belong to us.

The first is that no one knows, or can know, what idea he will have
at any minute, what desire he will have, what word he will speak,
what movement his body will perform.

The second is that during sleep it is clear that we have not the
least share in what takes place in our dreams. We grant that we are
then mere automata, on which an invisible power acts with a force
that is as real and powerful as it is incomprehensible. This power
fills the mind with ideas, inspires desires, passions, reflections.
It sets in motion all the organs of the body. It has happened at
times that a mother has smothered, in a restless dream, the new-born
child that lay by her side; that a man has killed his friend. How
many musicians have composed music during sleep? How many young
preachers have composed sermons during their sleep?

If our life were equally divided between waking and sleeping, instead
of our usually spending a third of our short career in sleep, and if
we always dreamed during sleep, it would then be evident that half of
our life did not depend on us. In any case, assuming that we spend
eight out of the twenty-four hours in sleep, it is plain that a third
of our existence is beyond our control. Add to this infancy, add all
the time that is occupied in purely animal functions, and see how
much is left. You will admit with surprise that at least half our
life does not belong to us at all. Then reflect how inconsistent it
would be if one half depended on us and the other half did not.

Conclude, therefore, that the universal principle of action does
everything in us.

Here the Jansenist interrupts me and says: “You are a plagiarist; you
have taken your doctrine from the famous book, _The Action of God
on Created Things, or Physical Premotion_, by our great patriarch
Boursier.” I have said somewhere of Boursier that he had dipped
his pen in the inkpot of the Deity. No, my friend; I have never
received anything from the Jansenists or the Molinists except a
strong aversion for sects, and some indifference to their opinions.
Boursier, taking God as his model, knows precisely what was the
nature of Adam’s dream when God took a rib from his side wherewith
to make woman; he knows the nature of his concupiscence, habitual
grace, and actual grace. He knows, with St. Augustine, that men and
women would have engendered children dispassionately in the earthly
paradise, just as one sows a field, without any feeling of carnal
pleasure. He is convinced that Adam sinned only by distraction in the
earthly paradise. I know nothing about these things, and am content
to admire those who have so splendid and profound a knowledge.

                                  X

             OF THE PRINCIPLE OF ACTION CALLED THE SOUL

But, some centuries later in the history of man, it came to be
imagined that we have a soul which acts of itself; and the idea has
become so familiar that we take it for a reality.

We talk incessantly of “the soul,” though we have not the least idea
of the meaning of it.

To some the soul means the life; to others it is a small, frail
image of ourselves, which goes, when we die, to drink the waters of
Acheron; to others it is a harmony, a memory, an entelechy. In the
end it has been converted into a little being that is not body, a
breath that is not air; and of this word “breath,” which corresponds
to “spirit” in many tongues, a kind of thing has been made which is
nothing at all.

Who can fail to see that men uttered, and still utter, the word
“soul” vaguely and without understanding, as we utter the words
“movement,” “understanding,” “imagination,” “memory,” “desire,” and
“will”? There is no real being which we call will, desire, memory,
imagination, understanding, or movement; but the real being called
man understands, imagines, remembers, desires, wills, and moves.
They are abstract terms, invented for convenience of speech. I run,
I sleep, I awake; but there is no such physical reality as running,
sleep, or awakening. Neither sight, nor hearing, nor touch, nor
smell, nor taste, is a real being; I hear, I see, I smell, I taste, I
touch. And how could I do this if the great being had not so disposed
all things; if the principle of action, the universal cause--in one
word, God--had not given us these faculties?

We may be quite sure that there would be just as much reason to grant
the snail a hidden being called a “free soul” as to grant it to man.
The snail has a will, desires, tastes, sensations, ideas, and memory.
It wishes to move towards the material of its food or the object of
its love. It remembers it, has an idea of it, advances towards it
as quickly as it can; it knows pleasure and pain. Yet you are not
terrified when you are told that the animal has not a spiritual soul;
that God has bestowed on it these gifts for a little time; that he
who moves the stars moves also the insect. But when it comes to man
you change your mind. This poor animal seems to you so worthy of
your respect--that is to say, you are so proud--that you venture to
place in its frail body something that seems to share the nature of
God himself, yet something that seems to you at times diabolical
in the perversity of its thoughts; something wise and foolish,
good and execrable, heavenly and infernal, invisible, immortal,
incomprehensible. And you have familiarised yourself with this idea,
as you have grown accustomed to speak of movement, though there is no
such being as movement; as you use abstract words, though there are
no abstract beings.

                                 XI

       EXAMINATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF ACTION CALLED THE SOUL

There is, nevertheless, a principle of action in man. Yes, there
is one everywhere. But can this principle be anything else than a
spring, a secret first mover which is developed by the ever-active
first principle--a principle that is as powerful as it is secret,
as demonstrable as it is invisible, which we have recognised as the
essential cause in the whole of nature?

If you create movement or ideas because you will it, you are God for
the time being; for you have all the attributes of God--will, power,
and creation. Consider the absurdity into which you fall in making
yourself God.

You have to choose between these two alternatives: either to be God
whenever you will, or to depend continually on God. The first is
extravagant; the second alone is reasonable.

If there were in our body a little god called “the free soul,” which
becomes so frequently a little devil, this little god would have to
be regarded either as having been created from all eternity, or as
created at the moment of your conception, or during your embryonic
life, or at birth, or when you begin to feel. All these positions are
equally ridiculous.

A little subordinate god, existing uselessly during a past eternity
and descending into a body that often dies at birth, is the height of
absurdity.

If this little god-soul is supposed to be created at the moment of
conception, we must consider the master of nature, the being of
beings, continually occupied in watching assignations, attentive to
every intercourse of man and woman, ever ready to despatch a sentient
and thinking soul into a recess between the entrails. A fine lodging
for a little god! When the mother brings forth a still-born child,
what becomes of the god-soul that had been lodged in the abdomen?
Whither has it returned?

The same difficulties and absurdities, equally ridiculous and
revolting, and found in connection with each of the other
suppositions. The idea of a soul, as it is usually and thoughtlessly
conceived by people, is one of the most foolish things that has ever
been devised.

How much more reasonable, more decent, more respectful to the supreme
being, more in harmony with our nature, and therefore truer, is it
not to say:

“We are machines made successively by the eternal geometrician;
machines made like all the other animals, having the same organs, the
same needs, the same pleasures, the same pains; far superior to all
of them in many things, inferior to them in others; having received
from the great being a principle of action which we cannot penetrate;
receiving everything, giving ourselves nothing; and a million times
more subject to him than the clay is to the potter who moulds it”?

Once more, either man is a god or he is precisely as I have described
him.

                                 XII

         WHETHER THE PRINCIPLE OF ACTION IN ANIMALS IS FREE

There is a principle of action in man and in every animal, just
as there is in every machine; and this first mover, this ultimate
spring, is necessarily eternally arranged by the master, otherwise
all would be chaos, and there would be no world.

Every animal, like every machine, necessarily and irresistibly
obeys the power that directs it. That is evident, and sufficiently
familiar. Every animal is possessed of will, and one must be a
fool to think that a dog following its master has not the will to
follow him. No doubt, it follows him irresistibly; but it follows
voluntarily. Does it follow freely? Yes, if nothing prevents it; that
is to say, it can follow, it wills to follow, and it follows. The
freedom to follow is not in its will, but in the power to walk that
is given to it. A nightingale wills to make its nest, and makes it
when it has found some moss. It had the freedom to construct this
cradle, just as it had freedom to sing when it desires, and has not
a chill. But was it free to have the desire? Did it will to will to
make its nest? Had it that absurd “liberty of indifference” which
theologians would describe as follows: “I neither will to make my
nest nor the contrary; it is a matter of complete indifference to
me; but I am going to will to make my nest solely for the sake of
willing, and without being determined to do it in any way, merely
to prove that I am free”? Such is the absurdity we find taught in
the schools. If the nightingale could speak, it would say to these
doctors: “I am irresistibly determined to nest, I will to nest, and I
nest; you are irresistibly determined to reason badly, and you fulfil
your destiny as I do mine.”

We will now see if man is free in any other sense.

                                XIII

                OF THE LIBERTY OF MAN, AND OF DESTINY

A ball that drives another, a hunting-dog that necessarily and
voluntarily follows a stag, a stag that leaps a great ditch not less
necessarily and voluntarily, a roe that gives birth to another roe,
which will bring a third into the world--these things are not more
irresistibly determined than we are to do all that we do. Let us
remember always how inconsistent and absurd it would be for one set
of things to be arranged and the other not.

Every present event is born of the past, and is father of the future;
otherwise the universe would be quite other than it is, as Leibnitz
has well said, more correct in this than in his pre-established
harmony.[70] The eternal chain can be neither broken nor entangled.
The great being who necessarily sustains it cannot let it hang
uncertainly, nor change it; for he would then no longer be the
necessary and immutable being, the being of beings; he would be
frail, inconstant, capricious; he would belie his nature, and exist
no longer.

Hence, an inevitable destiny is the law of nature, as the whole of
antiquity felt. The dread of depriving man of some false liberty,
robbing virtue of its merit, and relieving crime of its horror, has
at times alarmed tender souls; but as soon as they were enlightened
they returned to this great truth, that all things are enchained and
necessary.

Man is free, we repeat, when he can do what he wills to do; but he is
not free to will; it is impossible that he should will without cause.
If this cause is not infallibly followed by its effect, it is no
cause. It would not be more absurd for a cloud to say to the wind:
“I do not wish to be driven by you.” This truth can never injure
morality. Vice is always vice, as disease is always disease. It will
always be necessary to repress the wicked; if they are determined to
evil, we must reply that they are equally predestined to chastisement.

Let us make these truths clearer.

                                 XIV

         ABSURDITY OF WHAT IS CALLED LIBERTY OF INDIFFERENCE

What an admirable spectacle is that of the eternal destinies of all
beings chained to the throne of the maker of all worlds! I imagine a
time when it is not so, but a chimerical liberty makes every event
uncertain. I imagine that one of the substances intermediate between
us and the great being (there may be millions of such beings) comes
to consult the eternal being on the destiny of some of the enormous
globes that stand at such vast distances from us. The sovereign of
nature would be forced to reply: “I am not sovereign, I am not the
great necessary being; every little embryo is a master of destiny.
The whole world is free to will without any other cause than the
will. The future is uncertain; everything depends on caprice. I can
foresee nothing. This great whole, which you regarded as so regular,
is but a vast anarchy in which all is done without cause or reason. I
shall be very careful not to say to you that such and such a thing
will happen; for then the wicked folk who people the globes would do
the contrary to what I had foretold, if it were only from malice. Men
always dare to be jealous of their master, when he has not a power
so absolute as to take away the very faculty of jealousy; they are
pleased to see him fall into a trap. I am but weak and ignorant.
Appeal to one more powerful and more gifted than I.”

Possibly this allegory will avail more than any other argument to
arrest the partisans of this empty liberty of indifference, if there
still be any, and those who labour to reconcile foreknowledge with
this liberty, and those who, in the university of Salamanca or in
Bedlam, still speak of medicinal and concomitant grace.

                                 XV

     OF EVIL AND, IN THE FIRST PLACE, THE DESTRUCTION OF BEASTS

We have never had any idea of good and evil, save in relation to
ourselves. The sufferings of an animal seem to us evils, because,
being animals ourselves, we feel that we should excite compassion if
the same were done to us. We should have the same feeling for a tree
if we were told that it suffered torment when it was cut; and for a
stone if we learned that it suffers when it is dressed. But we should
pity the tree and the stone much less than the animal, because they
are less like us. Indeed, we soon cease to be touched by the awful
destiny of the beasts that are intended for our table. Children who
weep at the death of the first chicken they see killed laugh at the
death of the second.

It is only too sure that the disgusting carnage of our butcheries and
kitchens does not seem to us an evil. On the contrary, we regard this
horror, pestilential as it often is, as a blessing of the Lord; and
we still have prayers in which we thank him for these murders. Yet
what can be more abominable than to feed constantly on corpses?

Not only do we spend our lives in killing, and devouring what we have
killed, but all the animals slaughter each other; they are impelled
to do so by an invincible instinct. From the smallest insects to the
rhinoceros and the elephant, the earth is but a vast battle-field, a
world of carnage and destruction. There is no animal that has not its
prey, and that, to capture it, does not employ some means equivalent
to the ruse and rage with which the detestable spider entraps and
devours the innocent fly. A flock of sheep devours in an hour, as it
crops the grass, more insects than there are men on the earth.

What is still more cruel is that in this horrible scene of
reiterated murder we perceive an evident design to perpetuate all
species by means of the bloody corpses of their mutual enemies.
The victims do not expire until nature has carefully provided for
new representatives of the species. Everything is born again to be
murdered.

Yet I observe no moralist among us, nor any of our fluent preachers
or boasters, who has ever reflected in the least on this frightful
habit, which has become part of our nature. We have to go back to the
pious Porphyry and the sympathetic Pythagoreans to find those who
would shame us for our bloody gluttony; or we must travel to the land
of the Brahmans. Our monks, the caprice of whose founders has bade
them renounce the flesh, are murderers of soles and turbots, if not
of partridges and quails. Neither among the monks, nor in the Council
of Trent, nor in the assemblies of the clergy, nor in our academies,
has this universal butchery ever been pronounced an evil. There has
been no more thought given to it in the councils of the clergy than
in our public-houses.

Hence the great being is justified of these butcheries in our eyes;
or, indeed, we are his accomplices.

                                 XVI

                  OF EVIL IN THE ANIMAL CALLED MAN

So much for the beasts; let us come to man. If it be not an evil that
the only being on earth that knows God by his thoughts should be
unhappy in his thoughts; if it be not an evil that this worshipper of
the Deity should be almost always unjust and suffering, should know
virtue and commit crime, should so often deceive and be deceived, and
be the victim or the executioner of his fellows, etc.; if all that be
not a frightful evil, I know not where evil is to be found.

Beasts and men suffer almost without ceasing; men suffer the more
because, not only is the gift of thought often a source of torture,
but this faculty of thinking always makes them fear death, which the
beast cannot foresee. Man is a very miserable being, having but a few
hours of rest, a few moments of satisfaction, and a long series of
days of sorrow in his short life. Everybody admits and says this; and
it is true.

They who have protested that all is well are charlatans. Shaftesbury,
who set the fashion in this, was a most unhappy man. I have seen
Bolingbroke torn with grief and rage; and Pope, whom he induced to
put this miserable joke into verse, was one of the most pitiable men
I have ever known, misshapen in body, unbalanced in temperament,
always ill and a burden to himself, harassed by a hundred enemies
until his last moment. At least let us have happy beings saying that
all is well.

If by all is well it is merely meant that a man’s head is happily
placed above his shoulders, so that his eyes are better situated
beside the root of his nose than behind his ears, we may assent.
All is well in that sense. The laws of physics and mathematics are
very well observed in his structure. A man who saw the beautiful
Anne Boleyn, or the still more beautiful Mary Stuart, in her youth,
would have said that it was well; would he have said it on seeing
them die by the hand of the executioner? Would he have said it on
seeing the grandson of the beautiful Mary Stuart perish in the same
way in the heart of his capital? Would he have said it on seeing the
great-grandson even more miserable, because he lived longer?

Glance over the human race, if it be but from the prescriptions of
Sylla to the Irish massacres.

Behold these battlefields, strewn by imbeciles with the corpses of
other imbeciles, whom they have slain with a substance born of the
experiments of a monk. See these arms, these legs, these bloody
brains, and all these scattered limbs; it is the fruit of a quarrel
between two ignorant ministers, neither of whom would dare to open
his mouth in the presence of Newton, Locke, or Halley; or of some
ridiculous quarrel between two forward women. Enter the neighbouring
hospital, where are gathered those who are not yet dead. Their life
is taken from them by fresh torments, and men make a fortune out of
them, keeping a register of the victims who are dissected alive, at
so much a day, under the pretext of healing them.

See these other men, dressed as comedians, earning a little money
by singing, in a foreign language, a very obscure and insipid song,
to thank the author of nature for this horrible outrage done to
nature; and then tell me calmly that all is well.[71] Say the word,
if you dare, in connection with Alexander VI. and Julius II.; say
it over the ruins of a hundred towns that have been swallowed up by
earthquakes, and amid the twelve millions of Americans who are being
assassinated, in twelve million ways, to punish them for not being
able to understand in Latin a papal bull that the monks have read
to them. Say it to-day, the 24th of August, 1772; a day on which
the pen trembles in my fingers, the two-hundredth anniversary of the
massacre of St. Bartholomew. Pass from these innumerable theatres
of carnage to the equally unnumbered retreats of sorrow that cover
the earth, to that swarm of diseases which slowly devour so many
poor wretches while they yet live; think of that frightful ravage of
nature which poisons the human race in its source, and associates
the most abominable of plagues with the most necessary of pleasures.
See that despised king Henry III., and that mediocre leader the Duke
of Mayenne, struck down with the small-pox while they are waging
civil war; and that insolent descendant of a Florentine merchant,
Gondi, and Retz, the priest, archbishop of Paris, preaching with
sword in hand and body diseased. To complete this true and horrible
picture, fancy yourself amid the floods and volcanoes that have so
often devastated so many parts of the world; amid the leprosy and the
plague that have swept it. And do you who read this recall all that
you have suffered, admit that evil exists, and do not add to so many
miseries and horrors the wild absurdity of denying them.

                                XVII

           ROMANCES INVENTED TO EXPLAIN THE ORIGIN OF EVIL

Of a hundred peoples who have sought the cause of physical and moral
evil, the Hindoos are the first whose romantic imaginations are known
to us. They are sublime, if the word “sublime” be taken to mean
“high.” Evil, according to the ancient Brahmans, comes of a quarrel
that once took place in the highest heavens, between the faithful and
the jealous angels. The rebels were cast out of heaven into Ondera
for millions of ages. But the great being pardoned them at the end
of a few thousand years; they were turned into men, and they brought
upon the earth the evil that they had engendered in the empyræan. We
have elsewhere described at length this ancient fable, the source of
all fables.

It was finely imitated by gifted nations, and grossly reproduced by
barbarians. Nothing, indeed, is more spiritual and agreeable than
the story of Pandora and her box. If Hesiod has had the merit of
inventing this allegory, I think it as superior to Homer as Homer is
to Lycophron.

This box of Pandora, containing all the evils that have issued from
it, seems to have all the charm of the most striking and delicate
allusions. Nothing is more enchanting than this origin of our
sufferings. But there is something still more admirable in the story
of Pandora. It has a very high merit, which seems to have escaped
notice: it is that no one was ever commanded to believe it.

                                XVIII

         OF THE SAME ROMANCES, IMITATED BY BARBARIC NATIONS

In the regions of Chaldæa and Syria the barbarians also had their
legends of the origin of evil. Among one of these nations in the
neighbourhood of the Euphrates it was said that a serpent, meeting
a burdened and thirsty ass, asked what the ass carried. “The recipe
of immortality,” said the ass; “God has bestowed it upon man, who
has laid it on my back. He follows me, but is far off, because he
has only two legs. I die of thirst; prithee tell me where there is a
stream.” The serpent led the ass to water, and, while it drank, stole
the recipe. Hence it is that the serpent is immortal, while man is
subject to death and all the pains that precede it.

You will observe that the serpent was thought by all peoples to
be immortal because it cast its skin. If it changed its skin,
this must have been in order to become young again. I have spoken
elsewhere of this naïve theology; but it is well to bring it once
more to the notice of the reader, in order to show him the nature of
this venerable antiquity, in which serpents and asses played such
important parts.

The Syrians rose higher. They told that man and woman, having been
created in heaven, desired one day to eat a certain cake; and that
they then asked an angel to show them the place of retirement. The
angel pointed to the earth. They went thither; and God, to punish
them for their gluttony, left them there. Let us also leave them
there, and their dinner and their ass and their serpent. These
inconceivable puerilities of ancient Syria are not worth a moment’s
notice. The detestable fables of an obscure people should be excluded
from a serious discussion.

Let us return from these miserable legends to the great saying of
Epicurus, which has so long alarmed the whole earth, and to which
there is no answer but a sigh: “Either God wished to prevent evil
and could not do so; or he was able to do so, and did not wish.”

A thousand bachelors and doctors of divinity have fired the arrows of
the school at this unshakeable rock; in this terrible shelter have
the Atheists taken refuge. Yet the Atheist must admit that there is
in nature an active, intelligent, necessary, eternal principle, and
that from this principle comes all that we call good and evil. Let us
discuss the point with the Atheist.

                                 XIX

                 DISCOURSE OF AN ATHEIST ON ALL THIS

An Atheist says to me: It has been proved, I admit, that there is
an eternal and necessary principle. But from the fact that it is
necessary I infer that all that is derived from it is necessary;
you have been compelled to admit this yourself. Since everything is
necessary, evil is as inevitable as good. The great wheel of the
ever-turning machine crushes all that comes in its way. I have no
need of an intelligent being who can do nothing of himself, and who
is as much a slave to his destiny as I am to mine. If he existed,
I should have too much with which to reproach him. I should be
obliged to call him either feeble or wicked. I would rather deny
his existence than be discourteous to him. Let us get through this
miserable life as well as we can, without reference to a fantastic
being whom no one has ever seen, and to whom it would matter little,
if he existed, whether we believed in him or not. What I think of
him can no more affect him, supposing that he exists, than what
he thinks of me, of which I am ignorant, affects me. There is no
relation, no connection, no interest between him and me. Either there
is no such being or he is an utter stranger to me. Let us do as nine
hundred and ninety-nine mortals out of a thousand do; they work,
generate, eat, drink, sleep, suffer, and die, without speaking of
metaphysics, or knowing that there is such a thing.

                                 XX

                      DISCOURSE OF A MANICHÆAN

A Manichæan, hearing the Atheist, says to him: You are mistaken.
Not only is there a God, but there are necessarily two. It has been
fully proved that the universe is arranged intelligently, and there
is an intelligent principle in nature; but it is impossible that this
intelligent principle, which is the author of good, should also be
the author of evil. Evil must have its own God. Zoroaster was the
first to proclaim this great truth, about two thousand years ago;
and two other Zoroasters came afterwards to confirm it. The Parsees
have always followed, and still follow, this excellent doctrine. Some
wretched people or other, called the Jews, at that time in bondage to
us, learned a little of our science, together with the names of Satan
and Knatbul. They recognised God and the devil; and the devil was so
powerful, in the opinion of this poor little people, that one day,
when God had descended into their country, the devil took him up
into a mountain. Admit two gods, therefore; the world is large enough
to hold them and find sufficient work for them.

                                 XXI

                        DISCOURSE OF A PAGAN

Then a Pagan arose, and said: If we are to admit two gods, I do
not see what prevents us from worshipping a thousand. The Greeks
and Romans, who were superior to you, were polytheists. It will be
necessary some day to return to the admirable doctrine that peoples
the universe with genii and deities; it is assuredly the only
system which explains everything--the only one in which there is no
contradiction. If your wife betrays you, Venus is the cause of it.
If you are robbed, put the blame on Mercury. If you lose an arm or
a leg in battle, it was arranged by Mars. So much for the evil. In
regard to the good, not only do Apollo, Ceres, Pomona, Bacchus, and
Flora load you with presents, but occasionally the same Mars will rid
you of your enemies, the same Venus will find you mistresses, the
same Mercury may pour all your neighbours’ gold into your coffers,
provided your hand comes to the assistance of his wand.

It was much easier for these gods to agree in governing the universe
than it seems to be to this Manichæan to reconcile his Ormuzd, the
benevolent, and Ahriman, the malevolent, two mortal enemies, so as
to maintain both light and darkness. Many eyes see better than one.
Hence all the poets of antiquity are continually calling councils
of the gods. How can you suppose that one god is enough to see to
all the details of life on Saturn and all the business of the star
Capella? What! You imagine that everything on our globe, except
in the houses of the King of Prussia and the Pope Ganganelli, is
regulated by councils, and there is no council in heaven! There is no
better way of deciding things than by a majority of votes. The deity
always acts in the wisest way. The Theist seems to me, in comparison
with a Pagan, to be like a Prussian soldier entering the territory
of Venice; he is charmed with the excellence of the government. “The
king of this country,” he says, “must work from morning to night. I
greatly pity him.” “There is no king,” people reply; “we are governed
by a council.”

Here are the true principles of our ancient religion.

The great being known as Jehovah or Yaa among the Phœnicians, the
Jove of other Asiatic nations, the Jupiter of the Romans, the Zeus of
the Greeks, is the sovereign of gods and men.

                   _Deum sator atque hominum rex._

The master of the whole of nature, to whom nothing in the whole range
of being approaches.

                  _Cui nihil simile, nec secundum._

The animating spirit of the universe.

                        _Jovis omnia plena._

All the ideas that one may have of God are enfolded in this fine
verse of the ancient Orpheus, quoted throughout antiquity, and
repeated in all the mysteries.

          εἶς ἔστ’, αὐτογενὴς, ἑνὸς ἔkγονα πάντα τέτέυκται.

          “He is One, self-born, and all was born of One.”

But he confides to the subordinate gods the care of the stars, the
elements, the seas, and the bowels of the earth. His wife, who
represents the expanse of space that he fills, is Juno. His daughter,
who is eternal wisdom, his word, is Minerva. His other daughter,
Venus, is the lover of the poetical generation. She is the mother of
love, inflaming all sensitive beings, uniting them, reproducing by
the attraction of pleasure all that necessity devotes to death. All
the gods have made presents to mortals. Ceres has given them corn,
Bacchus the vine, Pomona fruit; Apollo and Mercury have taught them
the arts.

The great Zeus, the great Demiourgos, had made the planets and the
earth. He had brought men and animals into existence on our planet.
The first man was, according to the account of Berosus, Alora, father
of Sares, grandfather of Alaspara, who begot Amenon, of whom was born
Metalare, who was the father of Daon, father of Everodao, father of
Amphis, father of Osiarte, father of the famous Sixutros or Xixutrus,
King of Chaldæa, under whom occurred the well-known deluge, which the
Greeks called “the deluge of Ogyges”; a flood of which the precise
date is still uncertain, as is that of the other great inundation,
which swallowed up the isle of Atlantis and part of Greece about six
thousand years ago.

We have another theogony in Sanchoniathon, without a deluge. Those of
the Hindoos, Chinese, and Egyptians are very different again.

All events of antiquity are lost in a dark night; but the existence
and blessings of Jupiter are clearer than the light of the sun. The
hero who, stirred by his example, did good to men was known by the
holy name of Dionysos, son of God. Bacchus, Hercules, Perseus, and
Romulus also received this divine name. Some went so far even as to
say that the divine virtue was communicated to their mothers. The
Greeks and Romans, although they were somewhat debauched, as are
to-day all Christians of a sociable nature, rather drunken, like the
canons of Germany, and given to unnatural vices, like the French
king Henry III. and his Nogaret, were very religious. They offered
sacrifice and incense, walked in processions, and fasted.

But everything becomes corrupt in time. Religion changed. The
splendid name of Son of God--that is to say, just and benevolent--was
afterwards given to the most unjust and cruel of men, because they
were powerful. The ancient piety, which was humane, was displaced by
superstition, which is always cruel. Virtue had dwelt on the earth as
long as the fathers of families were the only priests, and offered to
Jupiter and the immortal gods the first of their fruits and flowers;
but all this was changed when the priests began to shed blood and
wanted to share with the gods. They did share in truth; they took the
offerings, and left the smoke to the gods. You know how our enemies
succeeded in crushing us, adopting our earlier morals, rejecting our
bloody sacrifices, calling men to the Church, making a party for
themselves among the poor until such time as they should capture the
rich. They took our place. We are annihilated, they triumph; but,
corrupted at length like ourselves, they need a great reform, which I
wish them with all my heart.

                                XXII

                         DISCOURSE OF A JEW

Take no notice of this idolatrous Pagan who would turn God into
a Dutch president, and offer us subordinate gods like members of
parliament.

My religion, being above nature, can have no resemblance to others.

The first difference between them and us is that the source of our
religion was hidden for a very long time from the rest of the earth.
The dogmas of our fathers were buried, like ourselves, in a little
country about a hundred and fifty miles long and sixty in width. In
this well dwelt the truth that was unknown to the whole world, until
certain rebels, going forth from among us, took from it the name of
“truth” in the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero; and
presently boasted that they were establishing a new truth.

The Chaldæans recognised Alora as their father, as you know.
The Phœnicians descended from a man named Origen, according to
Sanchoniathon. The Greeks had their Prometheus; the Atlantids had
their Ouran, called in Greek Ouranos. I say nothing of the Chinese,
Hindoos, or Scythians. We had our Adam, of whom nobody ever heard
except our nation, and we only very late. It was not the Ephaistos
of the Greeks, known to the Latins as Vulcan, who invented the
art of using metals; it was Tubalcain. The whole of the West was
astonished to hear, under Constantine, that it was not Bacchus to
whom the nations owed the use of wine, but Noah, whose name none
knew in the whole Roman Empire, any more than they knew the names of
his ancestors, which were unknown throughout the earth. The anecdote
was learned only from our Bible, when it was translated into Greek;
it began to spread about that time. The sun was then seen to be no
longer the source of light; the light was created before the sun,
and separated from the darkness, as the waters were separated from
the waters. Woman was made from a rib, which God himself took out
of a sleeping man, without awakening him, and without causing his
descendants to be short of a rib.

The Tigris, Araxis, Euphrates, and Nile all had their source in the
same garden. We do not know where the garden was, but its existence
is proved, because the gate was guarded by a cherub.

Animals speak. The eloquence of a serpent was fatal to the whole
human race. A Chaldæan prophet conversed with his ass.

God, the creator of all men, is not the father of all men, but of
one family alone. This family, always wandering, left the fertile
land of Chaldæa to wander for some time in the neighbourhood of
Sodom; from this journey it acquired an incontestable right to the
city of Jerusalem, which was not yet in existence.

Our family increases at such a rate that seventy men produce, at the
end of two hundred and fifty years, six hundred and thirty thousand
men bearing arms; counting the women, children, and old men, that
amounts to about three millions. These three millions live in a small
canton of Egypt which cannot maintain twenty thousand people. For
their advantage God puts to death in one night all the first-born of
the Egyptians; and, after this massacre, instead of giving Egypt to
his people, God puts himself at their head to fly with them dry-foot
across the sea, and cause a whole generation of Jews to die in the
desert.

We have seven times been in slavery in spite of the appalling
miracles that God works for us every day, causing the moon to stand
still in midday, and also the sun. Ten out of twelve of our tribes
perished for ever. The other two are scattered and in misery. We
have always prophets, nevertheless. God descends continually among
our people alone, and mingles only with us. He appears constantly to
these prophets, his sole confidants and favourites.

He goes to visit Addo or Iddo or Jeddo, and commands him to travel
without eating. The prophet thinks that God has ordered him to eat
that he may walk better; he eats, and forthwith he is eaten by a lion
(1 _Kings_ xiii.).

God commands Isaiah to go forth among his fellow-citizens in a most
unbecoming state of attire, _discoopertis natibus_ (_Isaiah_ xx.).

God orders Jeremiah to put a yoke on his neck and a saddle on his
back (_ch._ xxvii. according to the Hebrews).

He orders Ezekiel to have himself bound, to eat a parchment book, to
lie for two hundred and ninety days on the right side and forty days
on the left side, and then to eat filth with his bread.

He commands Hosea to take a prostitute and have three children
by her; then he commands him to pay an adulterous woman and have
children by her.

Add to all these prodigies an uninterrupted series of massacres, and
you will see that among us all things are divine, because nothing is
in accordance with what men call decent laws.

Unhappily, we were not well known to other nations until we were