by Jean Meslier
“The wise man and the fool”, says Ecclesiastes, “have only one end; this is also why he considers it useless to pursue wisdom too much, since the wise man and the fool meet the same end. Sapientis oculi in capite ejus, stultus in tenebris ambulat et didici quod unus utriusque esset interitus et dixi in corde meo; si unus et stulti et meus occasus erit, quid mihi prodest quod majorem sapientie dedi operam… futura tempora oblivione cuncta pariter operient[935]. “God”, says the same Ecclesiastes, “made men like beasts; this is why their condition is equal to theirs, and both meet the same end, as one dies, so does the other; they all have the same spirit of life. Man has nothing more than the beast, and all is only vanity… Who knows,” he adds, “if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the beasts goes downward? In light of this,” he says, “there is nothing better for man than to rejoice and peacefully enjoy the fruit of his labors; for this is his lot, this is all the good he can expect[936]: unus interitus est hominis et jumentorum et aequa utriusque conditio. “What does the wise man have more than the fool? Does he find a better life? It is better”, he says, “to see and hold what one desires than to desire what one does not know”: Quid habet amplius sapiens a stulto nisi ut pergat illuc ibo est vita? Melius est videre quod cupias quam desiderare quod ingoras. “The living,” he says again, “know at least that they must die; but the dead know nothing more and have no more reward to hope for, because they fall into oblivion. Do not fear death,” says Ecclesiastes, “for there is no longer any accusation or blame after death”[937]: Noli metuere judicium mortis... non est enim in inferno accusatio vitae. “Love, too,” says Ecclesiastes, “and hatred, and envy come to an end with those who die, and they no longer take part in what is done under heaven. Go, then” he says, “drink and eat what bread and wine you have with joy, enjoy life’s pleasures with the woman you love; for this,” he says, “is the best you can hope for in life”: Viventes sciunt se esse morituros: mortui vero nihil noverunt amplius[938], vade ergo et comede in laetitia panem tuum et bibe cum gaudio vinum tuum… perfruere vita cum uxore quam diligis; hoc est enim pars in vita et in labore tuo quod laboras sub sole. But, if the soul were immortal, as our Christ-cultists say, it would be after the death of the body and after it was detached from matter, that it would be fit to know the greatness and the marvels of God; then it would be more capable of singing His praises and enjoying eternal rewards.
Since, then, according to the testimony of all these great and so-called holy personages of the Old Testament, there is no more knowledge after death, that there is no longer any way to know, or praise God after death, that men are like animals and they both come to the same end, that heaven is only for the Lord God and that the Earth is for men, that the dead can no longer praise the Lord, but that only the living can know and praise Him while they’re alive; that it’s pointless to seek wisdom so carefully, since the wise man and the fool will end up the same way, that it’s better to see and hold what is loved than to desire what isn’t known; that there is no reward to be expected after death, and finally that the best we can expect is to joyously and peacefully enjoy, in this world, the pleasures and contentment of life, and that this is our lot, is a clear and sure indication that they didn’t think that the soul was immortal, but that, quite the opposite, they believed it was mortal.
Indeed, they believed it was: this was the common belief of the whole Jewish nation, which was the only supposedly chosen people of God. They didn’t know about any other life than this one, and they didn’t claim that there were rewards and punishments after death. And how could they hope for rewards or worry about punishments after death, since their law, which they believed to be divine, told them nothing about that? It is not credible an infinitely good and infinitely wise God would have concealed such great mysteries, and such great and important truths as these from peoples by whom He wished to be loved, adored, and served faithfully, and whom He would have so specially favored with His graces and blessings. The clear knowledge and settled assurance that He might have given them of the immortality of their souls, of an eternally blessed life for the good, and an eternally miserable life for the wicked, would have been a far more powerful motivation to get them to fear Him and serve Him faithfully, than to have only offered temporal rewards and punishments. It is said of an ancient Orator, that he spoke so vividly about the immortality of the soul that he had to be interdicted to speak further on this subject, as several of his listeners, convinced by his speeches, voluntarily killed themselves[939] to enjoy this supposed immortality, with which he amused and abused them, all the sooner. If then, God had given His people a clear knowledge of the immortality of their souls, and a strong assurance that they would receive, in another life, eternal rewards or punishments, according to their deserts; this would have been a far more powerful motive pushing them to love Him with all their hearts, and to faithfully observe His law and His commandments and to be afraid of causing Him offense. But, since He hasn’t given them this knowledge, and He hasn’t given them any hope, or any fear for another life; this is a certain and sure proof that this supposed immortality of the soul amounts to nothing, and that these supposed eternal rewards or punishments in the next life amount to nothing; and consequently, that everything our Christ-cultists say on this subject is nothing but vanity, lies, errors, illusions, falsehoods, and fictions of the human mind, based only on the maxim of certain politicians, that it’s necessary for the masses to ignore many true things and believe many false things.
95. PLINY, THE FAMOUS NATURALIST, DIDN’T BELIEVE IN IT; HIS VIEWS ON THIS SUBJECT.
Pliny, the famous naturalist and a very judicious man, scoffed at the supposed immortality of the soul:
After man is buried, people speak in various ways about his soul, it is always held that men, after their last day, return to the same Being, that they were before their first one: and that there is no more any sensation in the body and soul after death, than before they were born: but the vanity and folly of man, has led him to think he will be something after his death; so that, flattering himself even at the moment of death, he promises himself a certain life. Some attribute immortality to the soul; others say that it is transfigured, and some even think that the dead have feelings, this is why they revere them, establishing and making a God of him[940] who couldn’t stay a man, as if the breath of man, which gives him life, were different from that of beasts, or that there were things in this world that live much longer than man, and yet to which nobody attributes anything like immortality. But show me a body which follows the matter of the soul; where is its thought? Where is its life? Where is its hearing? What does it do? What does it get up to? Or, without all these things, what good is it? Indeed, where does it go? O, since the world was, how many souls there would be! They would be thick like shadows. But not so, all these things are only childish reveries and human inventions, who don’t want to die. By which it’s sheer folly to keep the body in hope of a resurrection, as Democritus promised, but who, himself, has yet to return to life. But what folly would it be to think that, by death, one might pass to a second life? And what peace might anyone expect, if the sense of their souls is retained in heaven and their shades in hell? Certainly, it’s just pleasing words; and the mad belief of men ruins all the sweetness of the chief good of nature, which is death; thereby doubling the misery of those who worry about a future life; for if existence is indeed a blessing, what contentment might one expect to have in thinking that one once existed? O, how far easier and safer it is for all of us to believe ourselves, and find our assurance in the experience of what we were before we were born.
That is how this writer handles this vain and foolish opinion that some men have about the immortality of their soul.
“The opinion of the immortality of the soul”, says Cicero, “was first introduced by Pherecidas[941], a Syrian of the times of King Tullus”[942]. Others attribute its invention to Thales, and others to other people.
As Lord de Montaigne puts it:
“They are the dreams,” said an ancient, “not of a man who teaches, but of a man who guesses”: Somnia sunt non docentis sed optantis. “It is,” says Seneca, “a pleasant thing, which is promised, but not proven, to us”: Gratissimam rem promittentium magis quam probantium[944]. It would take too long, and perhaps even be useless here to detail here all the opinions that the ancient Philosophers have held on this subject. Everything I've said so far is enough to clearly show that our soul is neither spiritual nor eternal, as our Cartesians understand it to be. And although it’s hard to distinctly know its nature and its operations, for the reason I’ve already given, we certainly feel internally and externally by ourselves, that we nothing but matter, and that even our most spiritual thoughts are only in the matter of our brain; and that they are only made consequently to the material constitution of our brains; and that, therefore, what we call our soul can be nothing other than a portion of the most fine, the most delicate, and the most subtle matter; which, being mixed and modified in a certain way in another portion of the coarser matter, along with which it forms an organic body, gives it, through its continual agitations, life, movement, and feeling.
All those propositions follow from each other, and therefore it is clear and evident that the soul is neither spiritual nor immortal, but that it is material and mortal like the body. And if it is mortal like the body, there are rewards to expect, or punishments to fear after this life. There are, therefore, thousands upon thousands of thousands of innocent and righteous people who will never get the reward of their virtues, or their good works, and thousands upon thousands of thousands of wicked and abominable wretches who will never be punished for their wickedness and their despicable crimes, because thousands upon thousands of wicked people die every day without receiving any punishment for their crimes, and thousands upon thousands of the innocent and the righteous die without any reward for their virtues or their good works, and there are so many of the righteous and innocent who remain without any reward, and so many of the wicked and ungodly remain without punishment or correction. There is, therefore, no supreme goodness to reward all the just and all the innocent, and no supreme justice to punish the wicked. And if there is no supreme justice, or a supreme goodness, there is no wise or supreme power. And if there is no goodness, or justice, or wisdom, or supreme power, then there is no infinitely perfect Being, and therefore there is no God, which is what I set out to prove and demonstrate. All these conclusions follow each other naturally, and so it stands conclusively proven, contra the superstitious God-cultists, that there is no God.
96. THE INEVITABLE NECESSITY OF EVIL IS ANOTHER KIND OF DEMONSTRATION THAT THERE IS NO SUPREME BEING WHO CAN PREVENT EVIL.
So far, I have conclusively proved this truth by an argument that I derived from the near-infinite variety of evils, vices, crimes, and wickedness in the world; which evils, which vices, and which wickedness clearly show that there is no all-powerful, infinitely good, infinitely wise being to do what is good impose order on all things, and to prevent evil. The task at hand is to prove this truth by this argument, which is derived from the very necessity of evil, which, according to the present constitution of nature, would follow from good itself, and from the removal of all the vices and all the wickedness I’ve spoken of; for it is certain that, according to the present constitution of nature, which clearly tends without cease to new productions of herbs and plants of all kinds, but also to new generations of men and of animals of all kinds, it’s certain that if there were no evil in the world, i.e., if there were neither death nor illness in men, and among men, and even if men and animals never hurt each other, as they do, they would multiply to such a degree that they would be led to suffocate each other, and the earth wouldn’t be able to hold them all, or to produce enough for them to eat and be kept properly, that they would be forced to eat each other, or to languish and die of hunger, which would still be an evil, and a grave one at that; and consequently, it’s an inevitable necessity, according to the present constitution of nature, for there to be evil in one way or another; so that, if it didn’t originate, as it now does, from flaws and defects, and from human malice and wickedness, it would necessarily and infallibly come from the overpopulation of men and beasts on the Earth, who would have nowhere to stand and nothing to eat without eating each other. Which clearly shows us that the world is necessarily a mixture of good and evil, and that, according to the constitution of nature, good and evil are necessary to it; since the natural order of reproduction and successive generations, which subsists in nature, couldn’t hold out for long without this unpleasant mixture of good and evil, and without a large number of productions vanishing every day to make way for new ones, which can’t happen, according to the constitution of nature, without good for some and harm for others; i.e., without the birth of some and the destruction of others, which is a boon for the former and a curse for the latter.
And it is not credible, and it’s not even possible, that all-powerful, infinitely good, infinitely loveable, and infinitely wise being would ever wish, while creating the world to make such a jumbled admixture of good and evil. A being who is supposed to be infinitely good and infinitely wise, cannot contradict itself, or go against the very nature of its infinite goodness and infinite wisdom; and therefore, it would not have wished to do evil, when it could always have done good without any adulteration of evil. And thus, since the world is necessarily, as anyone can see, a confused mixture of good and evil, it clearly follows that it was not made by an infinitely perfect being, and consequently that there is no God. This argument is conclusive.
97. THE HARMONY OF ALL THE PROOFS ALLEGED ON THIS SUBJECT, WHICH FOLLOW, SUSTAIN, AND CONFIRM EACH OTHER, CONSTITUTES A PROOF THAT THEY ARE TRULY SOUND AND SOLID.
But here is yet another kind of demonstration, which confirms the previous ones. It’s that, of all the evident proofs that I’ve put forward, and all the arguments I’ve made so far on this subject, there is no proof, or any argument, that is refuted, or upended, or contradicted by the others; instead, all the proofs that I’ve put forward and which are completely evident, proceed from, sustain, and confirm each other. Equally, all the arguments that I’ve made on this subject proceed from, sustain, and clearly confirm each other; it’s like a chain of proofs and conclusive arguments, that proceed from, sustain, and plainly confirm each other; which is a sure sign that they are all based on the firm and solid foundation of truth itself; because error on such a subject could not be confirmed by the total harmony of so many and strong and powerful arguments, and there might be no reason at all which can be proved and demonstrated by as many and as clear and plain testimonies of truth, as this demonstrates.
Things are different with the Doctrine of our God-cultists about the supposed Existence of their God. They can’t provide any clear and sure proof of this; what they say about His nature and His operations is full of contrariety and contradictions. What our Christ-cultists say is no less ridiculous and absurd; for they attribute incompatible things to Him, and often what they claim to prove with one argument, is negated by an opposite argument. The unity, for example, which they attribute to the nature of their God, negates the trinity of persons, which they also attribute to Him, and the trinity of persons reciprocally negates the unity of His nature. The generation or production of two of said persons negates their supposed eternity, and their suppo
sed eternity also negates their supposed generation or production. The indivisible simplicity of a divine nature, which would have no extension at all, negates the immensity that they attribute to Him, and this claimed immensity is clearly repugnant to a nature that isn’t supposed to have any extension. The immobility and immutability, which they attribute to their God, is inherently destructive of the capacity of first cause and first mover, which they give Him, and this supposed quality of first cause and first mover is destructive of this supposed immobility and immutability; for that which is absolutely and essentially immobile per se can’t change anything, or move anything, either outside or inside itself. The supposed infinite kindness and mercy they attribute to Him, negates the infinite rigor of His supposed justice, and the infinite rigor of His supposed justice destroys the infinite gentleness of His supposed kindness and mercy. The infinite wisdom, the omnipotence, and the general providence which they attribute to Him in the way He rules the world, and even in the governing of each thing in particular, necessarily does away with a perfectly fine and good rule of all things, which would necessarily show and attract admiration for His kindness and wisdom, His power and the amazing providence of the infinitely perfect Being who governs all things so well, so wisely, and so fortunately; but the clear and obvious spectacle of the opposite, the spectacle of the evils, the miseries, the vices, the disorder, and the wickedness that is found and that is so universally dominant in the world, completely ruins the belief in this supposed wisdom, this supposed omnipotence, and this supposed general providence of an infinitely perfect Being who will govern all things. And besides, the arguments our Christ-cultists use to establish and explain their doctrine on this subject are so inherently feeble and so full of mutual contrarieties and contradictions, which refute each other, that they don’t deserve any credit, which is yet another clear proof of the falsehood of their principles and their doctrine, and consequently also a clear and evident proof of the truth of the opposite doctrine.