A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 05. Voltaire
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diseased process of their minds, into poison. These malignant devotees have incessantly before their eyes the example of Ehud, who assassinated the king of Eglon; of Judith, who cut off the head of Holofernes while in bed with him; of Samuel, hewing in pieces King Agag; of Jehoiada the priest, who murdered his queen at the horse-gate. They do not perceive that these instances, which are respectable in antiquity, are in the present day abominable. They derive their fury from religion, decidedly as religion condemns it.
Laws are yet more powerless against these paroxysms of rage. To oppose laws to cases of such a description would be like reading a decree of council to a man in a frenzy. The persons in question are fully convinced that the Holy Spirit which animates and fills them is above all laws; that their own enthusiasm is, in fact, the only law which they are bound to obey.
What can be said in answer to a man who says he will rather obey God than men, and who consequently feels certain of meriting heaven by cutting your throat?
When once fanaticism has gangrened the brain of any man the disease may be regarded as nearly incurable. I have seen Convulsionaries who, while speaking of the miracles of St. Paris, gradually worked themselves up to higher and more vehement degrees of agitation till their eyes became inflamed, their whole frames shook, their countenances became distorted by rage, and had any man contradicted them he would inevitably have been murdered.
Yes, I have seen these wretched Convulsionaries writhing their limbs and foaming at their mouths. They were exclaiming, "We must have blood." They effected the assassination of their king by a lackey, and ended with exclaiming against philosophers.
Fanatics are nearly always under the direction of knaves, who place the dagger in their hands. These knaves resemble Montaigne's "Old Man of the Mountain," who, it is said, made weak persons imagine, under his treatment of them, that they really had experienced the joys of paradise, and promised them a whole eternity of such delights if they would go and assassinate such as he should point out to them. There has been only one religion in the world which has not been polluted by fanaticism and that is the religion of the learned in China. The different sects of ancient philosophers were not merely exempt from this pest of human society, but they were antidotes to it: for the effect of philosophy is to render the soul tranquil, and fanaticism and tranquillity are totally incompatible. That our own holy religion has been so frequently polluted by this infernal fury must be imputed to the foil and madness of mankind. Thus Icarus abused the wings which he received for his benefit. They were given him for his salvation and they insured his destruction:
Ainsi du plumage qu'il eut
Icare pervertit l'usage;
Il le reçut pour son salut,
Il s'en servit pour son dommage.
Fanatics do not always fight the battles of the Lord. They do not always assassinate kings and princes. There are tigers among them, but there are more foxes.
What a tissue of frauds, calumnies, and robberies has been woven by fanatics of the court of Rome against fanatics of the court of Calvin, by Jesuits against Jansenists, and vice versa! And if you go farther back you will find ecclesiastical history, which is the school of virtues, to be that of atrocities and abominations, which have been employed by every sect against the others. They all have the same bandage over their eyes whether marching out to burn down the cities and towns of their adversaries, to slaughter the inhabitants, or condemn them to judicial execution; or when merely engaged in the comparatively calm occupation of deceiving and defrauding, of acquiring wealth and exercising domination. The same fanaticism blinds them; they think that they are doing good. Every fanatic is a conscientious knave, but a sincere and honest murderer for the good cause.
Read, if you are able, the five or six thousand volumes in which, for a hundred years together, the Jansenists and Molinists have dealt out against each other their reproaches and revilings, their mutual exposures of fraud and knavery, and then judge whether Scapin or Trevelin can be compared with them.
One of the most curious theological knaveries ever practised is, in my opinion, that of a small bishop – the narrative asserts that he was a Biscayan bishop; however, we shall certainly, at some future period find out both his name and his bishopric – whose diocese was partly in Biscay and partly in France.
In the French division of his diocese there was a parish which had formerly been inhabited by some Moors. The lord of the parish or manor was no Mahometan; he was perfectly catholic, as the whole universe should be, for the meaning of catholic is universal. My lord the bishop had some suspicions concerning this unfortunate seigneur, whose whole occupation consisted in doing good, and conceived that in his heart he entertained bad thoughts and sentiments savoring not a little of heresy. He even accused him of having said, in the way of pleasantry, that there were good people in Morocco as well as in Biscay, and that an honest inhabitant of Morocco might absolutely not be a mortal enemy of the Supreme Being, who is the father of all mankind.
The fanatic, upon this, wrote a long letter to the king of France, the paramount sovereign of our little manorial lord. In this letter he entreated his majesty to transfer the manor of this stray and unbelieving sheep either to Lower Brittany or Lower Normandy, according to his good pleasure, that he might be no longer able to diffuse the contagion of heresy among his Biscayan neighbors, by his abominable jests. The king of France and his council smiled, as may naturally be supposed, at the extravagance and folly of the demand.
Our Biscayan pastor learning, some time afterwards, that his French sheep was sick, ordered public notices to be fixed up at the church gates of the canton, prohibiting any one from administering the communion to him, unless he should previously give in a bill of confession, from which it might appear that he was not circumcised; that he condemned with his whole heart the heresy of Mahomet, and every other heresy of the like kind – as, for example, Calvinism and Jansenism; and that in every point he thought like him, the said Biscayan bishop.
Bills of confession were at that time much in fashion. The sick man sent for his parish priest, who was a simple and sottish man, and threatened to have him hanged by the parliament of Bordeaux if he did not instantly administer the viaticum to him. The priest was alarmed, and accordingly celebrated the sacred ordinance, as desired by the patient; who, after the ceremony, declared aloud, before witnesses, that the Biscayan pastor had falsely accused him before the king of being tainted with the Mussulman religion; that he was a sincere Christian, and that the Biscayan was a calumniator. He signed this, after it had been written down, in presence of a notary, and every form required by law was complied with. He soon after became better, and rest and a good conscience speedily completed his recovery.
The Biscayan, quite exasperated that the old patient should have thus exposed and disappointed him, resolved to have his revenge, and thus he set about it.
He procured, fifteen days after the event just mentioned, the fabrication, in his own language or patois, of a profession of faith which the priest pretended to have heard and received. It was signed by the priest and three or four peasants, who had not been present at the ceremony; and the forged instrument was then passed through the necessary and solemn form of verification and registry, as if this form could give it authenticity.
An instrument not signed by the party alone interested, signed by persons unknown, fifteen days after the event, an instrument disavowed by the real and credible witnesses of that event, involved evidently the crime of forgery; and, as the subject of the forgery was a matter of faith, the crime clearly rendered both the priest and the witnesses liable to the galleys in this world, and to hell in the other.
Our lord of the manor, however, who loved a joke, but had no gall or malice in his heart, took compassion both upon the bodies and souls of these conspirators. He declined delivering them over to human justice, and contented himself with giving them up to ridicule. But he declared that after the death of the Biscayan he would, if he survived, have the pleasure of printing an account of all his proceedings and manœuvres on this business, together with the documents and evidences, just to amuse the small number of readers who might like anecdotes of that description; and not, as is often pompously announced, with a view to the instruction of the universe. There are so many authors who address themselves to