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children lived long with their parents. They conversed long with them. But
what else could be the subject of their talk save the history of their
ancestors, since to that all history was reduced, and men did not study
science or art, which now form a large part of daily conversation? We see
also that in these days tribes took particular care to preserve their
genealogies.
627. I believe that Joshua was the first of God's people to have this name,
as Jesus Christ was the last of God's people.
628. Antiquity of the Jews.--What a difference there is between one book and
another! I am not astonished that the Greeks made the Iliad, nor the
Egyptians and the Chinese their histories.
We have only to see how this originates. These fabulous historians are not
contemporaneous with the facts about which they write. Homer composes a
romance, which he gives out as such, and which is received as such; for
nobody doubted that Troy and Agamemnon no more existed than did the golden
apple. Accordingly, he did not think of making a history, but solely a book
to amuse; he is the only writer of his time; the beauty of the work has made
it last, every one learns it and talks of it, it is necessary to know it,
and each one knows it by heart. Four hundred years afterwards the witnesses
of these facts are no longer alive, no one knows of his own knowledge if it
be a fable or a history; one has only learnt it f
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office, or for some imaginary insult to his honour, is the very one who
knows without anxiety and without emotion that he will lose all by death. It
is a monstrous thing to see in the same heart and at the same time this
sensibility to trifles and this strange insensibility to the greatest
objects. It is an incomprehensible enchantment, and a supernatural slumber,
which indicates as its cause an all-powerful force.
There must be a strange confusion in the nature of man, that he should boast
of being in that state in which it seems incredible that a single individual
should be. However, experience has shown me so great a number of such
persons that the fact would be surprising, if we did not know that the
greater part of those who trouble themselves about the matter are
disingenuous and not, in fact, what they say. They are people who have heard
it said that it is the fashion to be thus daring. It is what they call
"shaking off the yoke," and they try to imitate this. But it w
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composed of externals and internals. It raises the common people to the
internal, and humbles the proud to the external; it is not perfect without
the two, for the people must understand the spirit of the letter, and the
learned must submit their spirit to the letter.
252. For we must not misunderstand ourselves; we are as much automatic as
intellectual; and hence it comes that the instrument by which conviction is
attained is not demonstrated alone. How few things are demonstrated! Proofs
only convince the mind. Custom is the source of our strongest and most
believed proofs. It bends the automaton, which persuades the mind without
its thinking about the matter. Who has demonstrated that there will be a
to-morrow and that we shall die? And what is more believed? It is, then,
custom which persuades us of it; it is custom that makes so many men
Christians; custom that makes them Turks, heathens, artisans, soldiers, etc.
(Faith in baptism is more received among Christians than among Turks.)
Finally, we must have re
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Mahomet slew; Jesus Christ caused His own to be slain.
Mahomet forbade reading; the Apostles ordered reading.
In fact, the two are so opposed that, if Mahomet took the way to succeed
from a worldly point of view, Jesus Christ, from the same point of view,
took the way to perish. And instead of concluding that, since Mahomet
succeeded, Jesus Christ might well have succeeded, we ought to say that,
since Mahomet succeeded, Jesus Christ should have failed.
600. Any man can do what Mahomet has done; for he performed no miracles, he
was not foretold. No man can do what Christ has done.
601. The heathen religion has no foundation at the present day. It is said
once to have had a foundation by the oracles which spoke. But what are the
books which assure us of this? Are they so worthy of belief on account of
the virtue of their authors? Have they been preserved with such care that we
can be sure that they have not been meddled with?
The Mahometan religion has for a foundation the Koran and Mahomet. But has
this prophet, who was to be the last hope of the world, been foretold? What
sign has he that every other man has not who chooses to call himself a
prophet? What miracles does he himself say that he has done? What mysteries
has he taught, even according to his own tradition? What was the morality,
what the happiness held out by him?
The Jewish religion must be differently regarded in the tradition of the
Holy Bible and in the tradition of the pe
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righteous in rejecting them and all that they do, and in casting them
off for ever. There is however a vast variety as to the manner and
distinctness of such convictions.
As they are gradually more and more convinced of the corruption and
wickedness of their hearts, they seem to themselves to grow worse and
worse, harder and blinder, and more desperately wicked, instead of
growing better. They are ready to be discouraged by it, and oftentimes
never think themselves so far off from good as when they are nearest.
Under the sense which the Spirit of God gives them of their sinfulness,
they often think that they differ from all others; their hearts are
ready to sink with the thought that they are the worst of all, and that
none ever obtained mercy who were so wicked as they.
When awakenings first begin, their consciences are commonly most
exercised about their outward vicious course, or other acts of sin; but
afterwards are much more burdened with a sense of heart-sins, the
dreadful corruption of their nature, their enmity against God, the pride
of their hearts, their unbelief, their rejection of Christ, the
stubbornness and obstinacy of their wills; and the like. In many, God
makes much use of their own experience, in the course of their
awakenings and en
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estimate of wisdom.
331. We can only think of Plato and Aristotle in grand academic robes. They
were honest men, like others, laughing with their friends, and, when they
diverted themselves with writing their Laws and the Politics, they did it as
an amusement. That part of their life was the least philosophic and the
least serious; the most philosophic was to live simply and quietly. If they
wrote on politics, it was as if laying down rules for a lunatic asylum; and
if they presented the appearance of speaking of a great matter, it was
because they knew that the madmen, to whom they spoke, thought they were
kings and emperors. They entered into their principles in order to make
their madness as little harmful as possible.
332. Tyranny consists in the desire of universal power beyond its scope.
There are different assemblies of the strong, the fair, the sensible, the
pious, in which each man rules at home, not elsewhere. And sometimes they
meet, and the strong and the
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deceived; still fewer study it than geometry. It is only from the want of
knowing how to study this that we seek the other studies. But is it not that
even here is not the knowledge which man should have and that for the
purpose of happiness it is better for him not to know himself.?
145. One thought alone occupies us; we cannot think of two things at the
same time. This is lucky for us according to the world, not according to
God.
146. Man is obviously made to think. It is his whole dignity and his whole
merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. Now, the order of thought
is to begin with self, and with its Author and its end.
Now, of what does the world think? Never of this, but of dancing, playing
the lute, singing, making verses, running at the ring, etc., fighting,
making oneself king, without thinking what it is to be a king and what to be
a man.
147. We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in
our own being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others,
and for this purpose we endeavour to shine. We labour unceasingly to adorn
and preserve this imaginary existence and neglect the real. And if we
possess calmness, or generosity, or truthfulness, we are eager to make it
known, so as to attach these virtues to that imaginary existence. We would
rather separate them from ourselves to join them to it; and we would
willingly be cowards in order to acquire the reputation of being brave. A
great proof of the nothingness of our being, not to be satisfied with the
one without the other, and to renounce the one for the other! For he would
be infamous who would not die to preserve his honour.
148. We are so presumptuous that we would wish to be known by all the world,
even by p
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Can a woman forget her child, that she should not have compassion on the son
of her womb? but if she forget, yet will not I forget thee, O Sion. I will
bear thee always between my hands, and thy walls are continually before me.
They that shall build thee are come, and thy destroyers shall go forth of
thee. Lift up thine eyes round about, and behold; all these gather
themselves together, and come to thee. As I live, saith the Lord, thou shalt
surely clothe thee with them all, as with an ornament. Thy waste and thy
desolate places, and the land of thy destruction shall even now be too
narrow by reason of the inhabitants, and the children thou shalt have after
thy barrenness shall say again in thy ears: The place is too strait for me:
give place to me that I may dwell. Then shalt thou say in thy heart: Who
hath begotten me these, seeing I have lost my children, and am desolate, a
captive, and removing to and fro? and who brought up these? Behold, I was
left alone; these, where had they been? And
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our ultimate end.
Thus our first interest and our first duty is to enlighten ourselves on this
subject, whereon depends all our conduct. Therefore among those who do not
believe, I make a vast difference between those who strive with all their
power to inform themselves and those who live without troubling or thinking
about it.
I can have only compassion for those who sincerely bewail their doubt, who
regard it as the greatest of misfortunes, and who, sparing no effort to
escape it, make of this inquiry their principal and most serious occupation.
But as for those who pass their life without thinking of this ultimate end
of life, and who, for this sole reason that they do not find within
themselves the lights which convince them of it, neglect to seek them
elsewhere, and to examine thoroughly whether this opinion is one of those
which people receive with credulous simplicity, or one of those which,
although obscure in themselves, have nevertheless a solid and immovable
foundation, I look upon them in a manner quite different.
This carelessness in a matter which concerns themselves, their eternity,
their all, moves me more to anger than pity; it astonishes and shocks me; it
is to me monstrous. I do not say this out of the pious zeal of a spiritual
devotion. I expect, on the contrary, that we ought to have this feeling from
principles of human interest and self-love; for this we need only see what
the least enlightened persons see.
We do not require great education of the mind to understand that here is no
real and lasting satisfaction; that our pl
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strong, having only their own force. What does he say, then, that we must
believe him?
596. The Psalms are chanted throughout the whole world.
Who renders testimony to Mahomet? Himself. Jesus Christ desires His own
testimony to be as nothing.
The quality of witnesses necessitates their existence always and everywhere;
and he, miserable creature, is alone.
597. Against Mahomet.--The Koran is not more of Mahomet than the Gospel is
of Saint Matthew, for it is cited by many authors from age to age. Even its
very enemies, Celsus and Porphyry, never denied it.
The Koran says Saint Matthew was an honest man. Therefore Mahomet was a
false prophet for calling honest men wicked, or for not agreeing with what
they have said of Jesus Christ.
598. It is not by that which is obscure in Mahomet, and which may be
interpreted in a mysterious sense, that I would have him judged, but by what
is clear, as his paradise and the rest. In that he is ridiculous. And since
what is clear is ridiculous, it is not right to take his obscurities for
mysteries.
It is not the same with the Scripture. I agree that there are in it
obscurities as strange as those of Mahomet; but there are admirably clear
passages, and the prophecies are manifestly fulfilled. The cases are,
therefore, not on a par. We must not confound and put on one level things
which only resemble each other in their obscurity, and not in the clearness,
which requires us to reverence the obscurities.
599. The difference between
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established. Malachi 1:11.
That the order of Aaron's priesthood should be rejected, and that of
Melchizedek introduced by the Messiah. Ps. Dixit Dominus.
That this priesthood should be eternal. Ibid.
That Jerusalem should be rejected, and Rome admitted, Ibid.
That the name of the Jews should be rejected, and a new name given. Isaiah
65:15.
That this last name should be more excellent than that of the Jews, and
eternal. Isaiah 56:5.
That the Jews should be without prophets (Amos), without a king, without
princes, without sacrifice, without an idol.
That the Jews should, nevertheless, always remain a people. Jer. 31:36
611. Republic.--The Christian republic--and even the Jewish--has only had
God for ruler, as Philo the Jew notices, On Monarchy.
When they fought, it was for God only; their chief hope was in God only;
they considered their towns as belonging to God only, and kept them for God.
I Chron. 19:13.
612. Gen. 17:7. Statuam pactum meum inter me et te foedere sempiterno... us
sim D
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time and the vain fancies of our dreams?
These are the chief arguments on one side and the other.
I omit minor ones, such as the sceptical talk against the impressions of
custom, education, manners, country and the like. Though these influence the
majority of common folk, who dogmatise only on shallow foundations, they are
upset by the least breath of the sceptics. We have only to see their books
if we are not sufficiently convinced of this, and we shall very quickly
become so, perhaps too much.
I notice the only strong point of the dogmatists, namely, that, speaking in
good faith and sincerely, we cannot doubt natural principles. Against this
the sceptics set up in one word the uncertainty of our origin, which
includes that of our nature. The dogmatists have been trying to answer this
objection ever since the world began.
So there is open war among men, in which each must take a part and side
either with dogmatism or scepticism. For he who thinks to remain neutral is
above all a sceptic. This neutrality is the essence of the sect; he who is
not against them is essentially for them. In this appears their advantage.
They are not for themselves; they are neutral, indifferent, in suspense as
to all things, even themselves being no exception.
What, then, shall man do in this state? Shall he doubt everything? Shall he
doubt whether he is awake, whether he is being pinched, or whether he is
being burned? Shall he doubt whether he doubts? Shall he doubt whether he
exists? We cannot go so