The Philosophy of Voltaire - Collected Works: Treatise On Tolerance, Philosophical Dictionary, Candide, Letters on England, Plato's Dream, Dialogues, The Study of Nature, Ancient Faith and Fable…. Вольтер
Читать онлайн книгу.
most religious of men. They believed not only in the existence of an eternal God, but that He was always present among them; they trembled lest they should be punished in themselves, their wives, their children, their posterity to the fourth generation. This was a very powerful check.
But among the Gentiles various sects had no restraint; the Skeptics doubted of everything; the Academics suspended their judgment on everything; the Epicureans were persuaded that the Divinity could not meddle in human affairs, and in their hearts admitted no Divinity. They were convinced that the soul is not a substance, but a faculty which is born and perishes with the body; consequently, they had no restraint but that of morality and honor. The Roman senators and knights were in reality atheists; for to men who neither feared nor hoped anything from them, the gods could not exist. The Roman senate, then, in the time of Cæsar and Cicero, was in fact an assembly of atheists.
That great orator, in his oration for Cluentius, says to the whole assembled senate: "What does he lose by death? We reject all the silly fables about the infernal regions. What, then, can death take from him? Nothing but the susceptibility of sorrow."
Does not Cæsar, wishing to save the life of his friend Catiline, threatened by the same Cicero, object that to put a criminal to death is not to punish him—that death is nothing—that it is but the termination of our ills—a moment rather fortunate than calamitous? Did not Cicero and the whole senate yield to this reasoning? The conquerors and legislators of all the known world then, evidently, formed a society of men who feared nothing from the gods, but were real atheists.
Bayle next examines whether idolatry is more dangerous than atheism—whether it is a greater crime not to believe in the Divinity than to have unworthy notions of it; in this he thinks with Plutarch—that it is better to have no opinion than a bad opinion; but, without offence to Plutarch, it was infinitely better that the Greeks should fear Ceres, Neptune, and Jupiter than that they should fear nothing at all. It is clear that the sanctity of oaths is necessary; and that those are more to be trusted who think a false oath will be punished, than those who think they may take a false oath with impunity. It cannot be doubted that, in an organized society, it is better to have even a bad religion than no religion at all.
It appears then that Bayle should rather have examined whether atheism or fanaticism is the most dangerous. Fanaticism is certainly a thousand times the most to be dreaded; for atheism inspires no sanguinary passion, but fanaticism does; atheism does not oppose crime, but fanaticism prompts to its commission. Let us suppose, with the author of the "Commentarium Return Gallicarum," that the High-Chancellor de l'Hôpital was an atheist; he made none but wise laws; he recommended only moderation and concord. The massacres of St. Bartholomew were committed by fanatics. Hobbes passed for an atheist; yet he led a life of innocence and quiet, while the fanatics of his time deluged England, Scotland, and Ireland with blood. Spinoza was not only an atheist—he taught atheism; but assuredly he had no part in the judicial assassination of Barneveldt; nor was it he who tore in pieces the two brothers De Witt, and ate them off the gridiron.
Atheists are, for the most part, men of learning, bold but bewildered, who reason ill and, unable to comprehend the creation, the origin of evil, and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis of the eternity of things and of necessity.
The ambitious and the voluptuous have but little time to reason; they have other occupations than that of comparing Lucretius with Socrates. Such is the case with us and our time.
It was otherwise with the Roman senate, which was composed almost entirely of theoretical and practical atheists, that is, believing neither in Providence nor in a future state; this senate was an assembly of philosophers, men of pleasure, and ambitious men, who were all very dangerous, and who ruined the commonwealth. Under the emperors, Epicureanism prevailed. The atheists of the senate had been factious in the times of Sulla and of Cæsar; in those of Augustus and Tiberius, they were atheistical slaves.
I should not wish to come in the way of an atheistical prince, whose interest it should be to have me pounded in a mortar; I am quite sure that I should be so pounded. Were I a sovereign, I would not have to do with atheistical courtiers, whose interest it was to poison me; I should be under the necessity of taking an antidote every day. It is then absolutely necessary for princes and people that the idea of a Supreme Being—creating, governing, rewarding, and punishing—be profoundly engraved on their minds.
There are, nations of atheists, says Bayle in his "Thoughts on Comets." The Kaffirs, the Hottentots, and many other small populations, have no god; they neither affirm nor deny that there is one; they have never heard of Him; tell them that there is one, and they will easily believe it; tell them that all is done by the nature of things, and they will believe you just the same. To pretend that they are atheists would be like saying they are anti-Cartesians. They are neither for Descartes nor against him; they are no more than children; a child is neither atheist nor deist; he is nothing.
From all this, what conclusion is to be drawn? That atheism is a most pernicious monster in those who govern; that it is the same in the men of their cabinet, since it may extend itself from the cabinet to those in office; that, although less to be dreaded than fanaticism, it is almost always fatal to virtue. And especially, let it be added, that there are fewer atheists now than ever—since philosophers have become persuaded that there is no vegetative being without a germ, no germ without a design, etc., and that the corn in our fields does not spring from rottenness.
Unphilosophical geometricians have rejected final causes, but true philosophers admit them; and, as it is elsewhere observed, a catechist announces God to children, and Newton demonstrates Him to the wise.
If there be atheists, who are to blame? Who but the mercenary tyrants of our souls, who, while disgusting us with their knavery, urge some weak spirits to deny the God whom such monsters dishonor? How often have the people's bloodsuckers forced overburdened citizens to revolt against the king!
Men who have fattened on our substance, cry out to us: "Be persuaded that an ass spoke; believe that a fish swallowed a man, and threw him up three days after, safe and sound, on the shore; doubt not that the God of the universe ordered one Jewish prophet to eat excrement, and another to buy two prostitutes, and have bastards by them;" such are the words put into the mouth of the God of purity and truth! Believe a hundred things either visibly abominable or mathematically impossible; otherwise the God of Mercy will burn you in hell-fire, not only for millions of millions of ages, but for all eternity, whether you have a body or have not a body.
These brutal absurdities are revolting to rash and weak minds, as well as to firm and wise ones. They say: "Our teachers represent God to us as the most insensate and barbarous of all beings; therefore, there is no God." But they ought to say, "Our teachers represent God as furious and ridiculous, therefore God is the reverse of what they describe Him; He is as wise and good as they say He is foolish and wicked." Thus do the wise decide. But, if a fanatic hears them, he denounces them to a magistrate—a sort of priest's officer, which officer has them burned alive, thinking that he is therein imitating and avenging the Divine Majesty which he insults.
ATHEIST.
SECTION I.
There were once many atheists among the Christians; they are now much fewer. It at first appears to be a paradox, but examination proves it to be a truth, that theology often threw men's minds into atheism, until philosophy at length drew them out of it. It must indeed have been pardonable to doubt of the Divinity, when His only announcers disputed on His nature. Nearly all the first Fathers of the Church made God corporeal, and others, after them, giving Him no extent, lodged Him in a part of heaven. According to some, He had created the world in Time; while, according to others, He had created Time itself. Some gave Him a Son like to Himself; others would not grant that the Son was like to the Father. It was also disputed in what way a third person proceeded from the other two.
It was agitated whether the Son had been, while on earth,