Juliette

by Marquis de Sade

  “But would there not be some substantial difference between one species of crime and another, and may there not be murders so base, so heinous as might be revolting to Nature? What an idea! What stupidity to entertain it even for a moment! This person upon whom our human conventions shed an aura of sanctity, can he be of superior worth in Nature’s eyes? In what way can the body of your father, of your mother, of your sister outvalue, in Nature’s consideration, that of your slave? Such distinctions cannot exist for her; she does not even perceive them; she cannot possibly perceive them; and this body, so precious according to your laws, will metamorphose itself just as surely as the body of that helot you so thoroughly despise. Arm yourself in the knowledge that the atrocity you dread pleases her; she would have you inject an ever greater dose of atrocity in those that you call your destructions, that you become an intransigent opponent of any reproduction is her wish, her greatest expectation of you, that you annihilate the three kingdoms: this you cannot do; why then, if the atrocity she desires of you cannot attain the farther target she sets you, turn it upon the nearer and you shall have satisfied her to the best of your abilities. Unable to please her by the atrocity of a global destruction, at least provide her the pleasure of local atrocity, and into your murderings put every imaginable foulness and horror, thereby showing utmost docility in your compliance with the laws she imposes upon you; your inability to do all she wants does not exempt you from doing all you can.

  “From the foregoing it would clearly appear that infanticide fits in closest with her designs because it severs the chain of progeniture, it consigns the greatest number of seeds to the tomb. In killing his father the son breaks nothing, he removes the uppermost link of the chain; when the father kills his son he prevents further links from ever being added thereunto; the line is doomed; it is not doomed by the son’s destroying the father, for the son remains, and in him lives the future of the line. Either children or young mothers, preferably when they are pregnant, these are the two murders which best answer the aim of the kingdom and above all of Nature, ’tis in that direction everybody should exert himself if he wishes to please the harsh dam of humankind.28

  “Ah, do we not see, do we not sense that atrocity in crime pleases Nature, since ’tis according to this factor alone she regulates the amount of delight to provide us when we commit a crime. The more frightful it is, the more we enjoy it; the blacker, the fouler it is, the more we are thrilled by it. Thus it is that an inexplicable Nature asks for viciousness, for vileness, for atrocious-ness in the deed she prompts us to, she wants us to adorn it with the same features she puts into the banes and plagues wherewith she besets us: so let us proceed fearlessly, imaginatively, let us set all scruples and bars aside, let us scorn humanity’s vain laws, the idiotic institutions which prisoner us. Let us heed none but Nature’s sacred voice, full certain that its instructions will always contradict the absurd principles of human morality and of infamous civilization. Do you then think civilization or morals have made men better? Imagine no such thing, take care not to suppose it; the one and the other have served only to soften man, to obscure in him the laws of Nature who made him free and cruel; alienated from her, the entire species sank straight into degradation, its ferocity changed into cunning, and ever since then the insidious evil man has done has only become more dangerous to his fellows. Since commit this evil he must, since it is necessary, since it is agreeable to Nature, let us leave man to commit it in the manner most satisfying to him, and let us prefer him fierce to treacherous, the peril is less.

  “Let us not tire to repeat it: never has any intelligent nation presumed to erect murder into a crime: in order that murder be crime one must admit the possibility of destruction, an altogether unacceptable proposition, we have just agreed to that. Once again: murder is nothing more than a formal variation resulting in no loss29 whatsoever to the law of the three kingdoms nor to the law of Nature, but redounding prodigiously to their benefit. And why punish a man for restoring a little ahead of time a portion of matter which is destined to the elements anyhow, and which, as soon as it returns to them, these same elements employ in new compositions: the sooner you kill that fly, the sooner we will have back a pasha, do you prefer to spare a cockroach and forego an archbishop? There is then nothing wrong or bad in restoring to the elements the means to recompose a thousand insects at the expense of a few ounces of blood diverted out of its usual canals, in a somewhat larger species of animal conventionally known as man.

  “Murderers, to be brief, are in Nature as are war, famine, and cholera; they are one of the means Nature disposes of, like all the hostile forces she pits against us. Thus when one ventures the statement that an assassin offends Nature, the absurdity one utters is as great as though one were to declare that cholera, famine, or war irritates Nature or commits crimes; it is exactly the same thing. But we cannot flog or burn or brand or hang cholera or famine, whereas we can do all of these to a man: that is why he is wrong. You will almost always find wrongs measured not by the size of the offense, but by the vulnerability of the aggressor; and there is your explanation for why wealth and position are always right, and indigence is always at fault.

  “As concerns the cruelty which leads to murder, we may confidently submit that it is one of man’s most natural dispositions; it is one of the sweetest penchants, one of the keenest he has received from Nature; cruelty in man is simply an expression of his desire to exercise his strength. It pervades all his deeds, all his words, all his behavior; education disguises it sometimes, but it is quick to reappear. It then manifests itself under all kinds of forms. The violent throbbings it causes us to feel, either at the idea or upon the execution of the crime cruelty suggests to us, are invincible proof that we are born to serve as blind instruments to the kingdoms’ laws as well as to Nature’s, and that once we lend ourselves to do their bidding, voluptuousness invades us through every pore.

  “So reward him, this murderer, employ instead of punishing him; remember that there is no crime, of whatever slight importance in itself, that does not however demand as much strength and energy, as much courage and philosophy, as the grand crime of murder. There are a thousand cases in which an enlightened government ought only to use assassins…. Juliette, he who knows how to stifle the cries of his conscience to the point of making a game of the lives of others, this man already has the stuff qualifying him for the very greatest undertakings. There are heaven knows how many people in the world who turn criminal on their own account simply because an undiscerning government ignores their worth and neglects to put them to work; the result is that the unlucky souls are broken on the wheel for plying the same trade in which they might otherwise have got themselves covered with renown and honor. The Alexanders, the Saxes, the Turennes might perhaps have become highway robbers had distinguished birth and smiling fortune not readied them for laurels in the career of glory; while assuredly the Cartouches, the Mandrins, and Desrues would have become great men had the government known how to employ them.

  “Oh, height of fearful injustice! wild animals may exist, such as the lion, the wolf, the tiger who live from murdering alone; in so living these animals disobey no laws, and there are other animals to be met with in the world who, to satisfy another passion than hunger, indulge in the same excesses—and these other animals, so it is claimed, commit crimes!

  “We often complain of the existence of such and such a beast whose form or aspect is offensive to our eyes, or which causes us some nuisance or other, and we console ourselves by saying, rightly and with common sense, ‘ ’Tis a dreadful-looking creature, a harmful one too, but it is useful; Nature has created nothing in vain; this animal probably breathes a certain air that would poison us, or else it eats insects of still greater danger to us.’ Let us be equally philosophical in every other regard, and in the murderer see nought but a hand guided by irresistible laws, a hand that ministers to Nature and which, through the crimes it accomplishes, of whatever sort you wish to suppose them, acts at
the behest of certain intentions unknown to us, or prevents some accident perhaps a thousand times more to be deplored than the one it occasions.

  “‘Sophistry! Nothing but sophistry!’ fools shrill at this point; ‘it is true that murder offends Nature, that he who has just committed it will shudder for the rest of his life at what he has done.’ Imbeciles. ’Tis not because the deed is bad in itself that the murderer shudders, for be certain of it, in those countries where murder is recompensed he shudders not…. Does the warrior shudder over the enemy he has just felled? The sole cause of the uneasiness we feel after the deed lies in its prohibition; every man has sometime in his life, before a perfectly commonplace action which circumstances happen to forbid, sensed all the terror he could possibly know from rendering himself guilty of that action. A sign is nailed over a door, saying it is forbidden to trespass here: no matter who he is who makes up his mind to go in will do so with a kind of shudder, and yet this thing he does is not evil. It is thus from nothing but the prohibition that the terror is born, and not at all from the action itself which, as we see, may inspire the same fear though there be nothing criminal to it. This pusillanimity which accompanies the murder, this little moment of fright, derives infinitely more from prejudice than from the kind of deed at hand. However, let the wind blow in another direction for a month, let the sword of Justice smite what you call virtue for a while, and let the laws reward crime: you’ll see the virtuous quaking and the wicked serene as they both go about acquitting themselves of their favorite deeds. In these matters Nature is silent; the voice that thunders inside us belongs to the prejudice which with a little effort and determination we can quell forever. There is however a sacred organ whose intimate murmur used to resound in us before the voices of error or of education made themselves heard; but this other voice, which reminds us of our bondage to the elements, constrains us only to that which favors the harmonious accord of these elements, and their combinations modified after the forms which these same elements employ in composing us. However, this last-named voice is not strident, nor theatrical, it dins no knowledge of God into us, makes no mention of consanguinary or social duties, for these things are false and it speaks the truth only. Neither does it tell us not to do unto others that which unto our own selves we would not that there be done; if we care to listen closely to it, ’tis quite the opposite message we will hear.

  “‘Be ever mindful,’ Nature says to us instead, ‘be ever mindful that all which thou wouldst not have done unto thyself, being the grave harm done a neighbor whence there is much profit to be had, is precisely that which thou must do to be happy; for it is writ in my laws that ye all destroy yourselves mutually; and the true way to succeed therein is to harm thy neighbor without stint or cease. Whence it cometh that I have placed the sharpest bent for crime in thee; whence it is that my intention be that thou render thyself happy, at the expense of whosoever it be. Let thy father, thy mother, thy son, thy daughter, thy niece, thy wife, thy sister, thy friend be no dearer to thee than the lowliest worm that crawleth on the face of the earth; for bonds, duties, allegiances, affections, none of these hath ever been had from me, they were wrought by thy weakness only, by thy education, and by thy folly; they concern me not nor interest me at all; thou mayst violate them, break them, loathe them, annul them; ’tis all one to me. I cast thee into being as I cast the ox, the ass, the artichoke, the louse; to them all I gave faculties, some of greater, some of lesser proportions; use what are thine; once gone forth out of my bosom, thou canst touch me no more, whatever thou doest. If thou keepest thee safe and increase, thou shalt do well as regards thyself; if thou dost destroy thyself and others, nay, if thou contrivest, using such capacities as thou hast, to lay the three kingdoms waste and to devastate them so there shall be nothing left, ’tis there something whereat I shall be pleased beyond measure; for I in my turn shall use the fairest attribute of my power, that which is my ability to create, to make beings anew—which thy accursed progeniture hinders me from doing. Cease to engender, destroy absolutely all that exists, thou shalt disturb not the slightest thing in my scheme or workings. But whether ye destroy or create, the two be nearly the same in my eyes, whichever way thou wouldst proceed, I benefit from thy doings, nothing is lost in my domain: the leaf that falls from the shrub is as useful to me as the cedars that forest Lebanon, and the rot-spawned worm is of no less nor more considerable value in my eyes than the mightiest king on earth. So form or destroy as thou wilt and at thy ease; tomorrow’s sun shall rise just the same, all the globes I hang and guide in space shall hold nonetheless firm in their orbits; and if thou dost destroy all, as these three kingdoms annihilated by thy wickedness are the necessary results of my combinations and as I form nothing anymore, because these kingdoms are created with the faculty of reproducing themselves mutually; smitten by thy traitorous hand, they shall be re-formed by me, I shall cast them again and it shall be on earth as it was before. The vastest, the profoundest, the most atrocious of thy crimes shall thus only have pleased me.’

  “Such are the laws of Nature, Juliette; such are the only laws she has ever dictated, the only ones which are precious to her, the only ones we should never transgress. If man makes other laws, we may deplore his stupidity, but we must never let it be binding upon us; we may fear becoming the victim of his absurd laws, but let us not violate them any the less; and, free of all prejudices, directly we can do so with impunity, let us seize every opportunity to revenge ourselves for the odious constraint of his laws by perpetrating the most signal outrages. Regret nothing but that we are unable to do enough, lament nothing but the weakness of the faculties we have received for our share and whose ridiculous limitations so cramp our penchants. And far from thanking this illogical Nature for the slender freedom she allows us for accomplishing the desires she inspires in us, let us curse her from the bottom of our heart for so restricting the career which fulfills her aims; let us outrage her, let us abominate her for having left us so few wicked things to do, and then giving us such violent urges to commit crimes without measure or pause.

  “‘O Thou,’ so should we speak to her, ‘Thou, unreasoning and reasonless force of which I find myself the involuntary result, Thou who hurled me into this world with the desire that I offend Thee, and who hast however denied me the means so to do, inspire in my blazing soul some crimes which would serve Thee better than these poor melancholy things Thou hast put inside my reach. I would obey Thy laws, since they require horrors of me and for horrors I have a fiery thirst; but provide me better to do than Thy debility has given me so far. When I have exterminated all the creatures that cover the earth, still shall I be far from my mark, since I shall have merely served Thee, O unkind Mother, for it is to vengeance I aspire, vengeance for what, whether through stupidity or malice, Thou doest to men in never furnishing them the means to translate fairly into deeds the appalling desires Thou dost ever rouse in them.’

  “And now, Juliette,” continued the Pontiff, “I believe I shall present to you some examples such as will prove to you that in all ages and everywhere, man has placed his delight in destroying, and Nature hers in permitting it.

  “At Capodimonte, if a woman gives birth to twins, her husband strangles one of the infants on the spot.

  “Everybody knows the case the Arabs and Chinese make of their children. Hardly half the number born are kept; they kill, burn, or drown the rest, and principally the females. The same horror of offspring prevails in Formosa.

  “The Mexicans never set out on a military expedition without first sacrificing children of the one sex or the other.

  “Japanese women are allowed to procure abortions as frequently as they like; no one holds them to account for the fruit they are unwilling to bear.30

  “The king of Calicut has in his palace an armchair of iron, beneath which he lights a great fire; in it, on certain festival days, a child is made fast, and it remains seated until it has been reduced to cinders.

  “Never was murder punished by death amo
ng the Romans; and for a long time the emperors in this regard followed Sulla’s law, which merely condemns the murderer to a fine.

  “On Mindanao this same crime is honored; he who commits it is sure, after producing proof of the deed, of being raised to the rank of a brave, with the right to wear a red ribbon.

  “Among the Caraguos the same honor is obtained by the quantity of murders alone: it takes the killing of seven men before one is entitled to the red turban.

  “On the banks of the Orinoco, mothers drown their daughters the moment they see the light.

  “In the kingdom of Zopit and in Trapobania, fathers cut the throats of children of whichever sex, once they grow weary of the sight of them or when these children begin to take on airs.

  “In Madagascar all infants born on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays are abandoned to wild beasts by their own parents.

  “Up until the Empire removed to the East, a Roman child of whatever age who displeased his father would be put to death by him.

  “Several chapters in the Pentateuch clearly show that fathers had the right of life or death over their children.

  “A law the Parthians had, and the Armenians too, authorized a father to kill his son and even his daughter when they reached marriageable age.

  “Caesar found this same custom established amongst the Gauls.

  “To his subjects Czar Peter of the Russias addressed a public declaration the gist of which was that, by all laws human and divine, a father had the right of life and death over his children, without appeal and to be exercised without any permission, on the spur of the moment. No sooner had he published his decree than Peter proceeded to act according to it.

  “The Galla chief, as soon as he is elected, must distinguish himself by an incursion into Abyssinia; ’tis the multiplicity of his crimes which renders him worthy of his post. He must plunder, rape, mutilate, massacre, burn; the more appalling his exploits, the more he is honored.