Voltaire: Treatise on Tolerance. Вольтер
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who are of the established religion of the state. In England the Roman Catholics, who are in general looked upon to be friends to the Pretender, are excluded from all civil posts, and are even double-taxed; but then, in every other respect, they enjoy the prerogatives of citizens.
Some of our bishops in France have been suspected of thinking that their honor and interest is concerned in not suffering any Protestants within their diocese, and that this is the principal obstacle to allowing of toleration amongst us; but this I cannot believe. The episcopal body in France is composed of persons of quality, who think and act in a manner suitable to their high birth; and as envy itself must confess that they are generous and charitable, they therefore certainly cannot think that those whom they thus drive out of their diocese would become converts in any other country, but great honor would redound from the conversion of them at home; nor would the prelate be any loser by it in his temporals, seeing that the greater the number of the inhabitants, the greater is the value of the land.
A certain Polish bishop had a farmer who was an Anabaptist, and a receiver of his rents who was a Socinian. Some person proposed to the bishop to prosecute the latter in the spiritual court for not believing in transubstantiation, and to turn the other out of his farm because he would not have his son christened till he was fifteen years of age; the prelate very prudently replied that though he made no doubt of their being eternally damned in the next world, yet he found them extremely necessary to him in this.
Let us now for a while quit our own little sphere, and take a survey of the rest of the globe. The Grand Seignior peaceably rules over subjects of twenty different religions; upwards of two hundred thousand Greeks live unmolested within the walls of Constantinople; the mufti himself nominates the Greek patriarch, and presents him to the Emperor, and, at the same time, allows the residence of a Latin patriarch. The Sultan appoints Latin bishops for some of the Greek isles. The form used on this occasion is as follows:10 “I command such a one to go and reside as bishop in the Isle of Chios, according to the ancient custom and idle ceremonies of those people.” The Ottoman Empire swarms with Jacobins, Nestorians, Monothelites, Cophti, Christians of St. John, Guebres, and Banians; and the Turkish annals do not furnish us with one single instance of a rebellion occasioned by any of these different sects.
Go into India, Persia, and Tartary, and you will meet with the same toleration and the same tranquillity. Peter the Great encouraged all kinds of religions throughout his vast empire; trade and agriculture have been gainers by it, and no injury ever happened therefrom to the body politic.
We do not find that the Chinese government, during the course of four thousand years that it has existed, has ever adopted any other religion than that of the Noachides, which consists in the simple worship of one God; and yet it tolerates the superstitions of Fo, and that of a multitude of bonzes; which might be productive of dangerous consequences did not the wisdom of the tribunals keep them within proper bounds.
It is true that the great Yong-T-Chin, the most wise and magnanimous of all the emperors of China, drove the Jesuits out of his kingdom; but this was not because that prince himself was non-tolerant, but, on the contrary, because the Jesuits were so.
They themselves, in their letters, have given us the speech the emperor made to them on that occasion: “I know,” said he, “that your religion admits not of toleration; I know how you have behaved in the Manilas and in Japan; you deceived my father, but think not to deceive me in the same manner.” And if we read the whole of the conversation which he deigned to hold with them, we must confess him to be the wisest and most clement of all princes. How could he indeed, with any consistency, keep in his kingdom European philosophers, who, under the pretence of teaching the use of thermometers and eolipiles, had found means to debauch a prince of the blood? But what would this emperor have said had he read our histories, and had he been acquainted with the times of the League and the Gunpowder Plot?
It was sufficient for him to be informed of the outrageous and indecent disputes between those Jesuits, Dominicans, Capuchins, and secular priests who were sent as missionaries into his dominions from one extremity of the globe to preach the truth; instead of which they employed their time in mutually pronouncing damnation against one another. The emperor, then, did no more than send away a set of foreigners who were disturbers of the public peace. But with what infinite goodness did he dismiss them! and with what paternal care did he provide for their accommodation in their journey, and to prevent their meeting with any insult on their way! This very act of banishment might serve as an example of toleration and humanity. 11 The Japanese were the most tolerant of all nations; twelve different religions were peaceably established in their empire; when the Jesuits came, they made the thirteenth; and, in a very little time after their arrival, they would not suffer any other than their own. Everyone knows the consequence of these proceedings; a civil war, as calamitous as that of the League, soon spread destruction and carnage through the empire; till at length the Christian religion was itself swallowed up in the torrents of blood it had set aflowing, and the Japanese forever shut the entrance of their country against all foreigners, looking upon us as no better than savage beasts, such as those from which the English have happily cleared their island. Colbert, the minister, who knew the necessity we were in of the commodities of Japan, which wants nothing from us, labored in vain to settle a trade with that empire; he found those people inflexible.
Thus, then, everything on our continent shows us that we ought neither to preach nor to exercise non-toleration.
Let us now cast our eyes on the other hemisphere. Behold Carolina! whose laws were framed by the wise Locke; there every master of a family, who has only seven souls under his roof, may establish what religion he pleases, provided all those seven persons concur with him therein; and yet this great indulgence has not, hitherto, been the occasion of any disorders. God forbid that I should mention this as an example to every master of a family to set up a particular worship in his house; I have only introduced it to show that the utmost lengths to which toleration can be carried have never yet given rise even to the slightest dissensions.
And what shall we say of those pacific primitive Christians, who have, by way of derision, been called Quakers; and who, though some of their customs may perhaps be ridiculous, are yet remarkable for the virtue and sobriety of their lives, and for having in vain endeavored to preach peace and good-will to the rest of mankind? There are at least a hundred thousand of them in Pennsylvania; discord and controversy are unknown in that happy spot where they have settled; the very name of their principal city, Philadelphia, is a continual memento to them that all men are brethren, and is at once an example and reproach to those nations which have not yet adopted toleration.
To conclude, toleration has never yet excited civil wars, whereas its opposite has filled the earth with slaughter and desolation. Let any one then judge which of the two is more entitled to our esteem, or which we should applaud; the mother who would deliver her son into the hand of the executioner, or she who would resign all right to him to save his life.
In all that I have said I have had only the interest of nations in view, and, as I pay all due respect to the doctrines of the Church, I have in this article only considered the physical and moral advantages of society. I therefore hope that every impartial reader will properly weigh these truths, that he will view them in their proper light, and rectify what may be amiss. Those who read with attention, and reciprocally communicate their thoughts, will always have the start of the author.12
Chapter V.
In What Cases Toleration May Be Admitted.
Let me for once suppose that a minister equally noble and discerning, that a prelate equally wise and humane, or a prince who is sensible that his interest consists in the increased number of his subjects, and his glory in their happiness, may deign to cast their eyes on this random and defective production. In this case his own consummate knowledge will naturally lead him to ask himself, “What hazard shall I run by seeing the land beautiful and enriched by a greater number of industrious laborers, the aids augmented, and the state rendered more flourishing?”
Germany,