I was plunged in these ideas when one of those genii who throng the interplanetary spaces came down to me. I recognized this aerial creature as one who had appeared to me on another occasion, to teach me how different God’s judgments were from our own, and how a good action is preferable to an argument.
He transported me into a desert, covered with piles of bones; and between these heaps of dead men there were walks of evergreen trees, and at the end of each walk there was a tall man of august mien, who regarded these sad remains with pity.
“Alas! my archangel,” said I, “where have you brought me?”
“To desolation,” he answered.
“And who are these fine patriarchs whom I see sad and motionless at the end of these green walks? They seem to be weeping over this countless crowd of dead.”
“You shall know, poor human creature,” answered the genie from the interplanetary spaces. “But first of all you must weep.”
He began with the first pile. “These,” he said, “are the twenty-three thousand Jews who danced before a calf, with the twenty-four thousand who were killed while lying with Midianitish women. The number of those massacred for such errors and offenses amounts to nearly three hundred thousand.
“In the other walks are the bones of the Christians slaughtered by each other in metaphysical quarrels. They are divided into several heaps of four centuries each. One heap would have mounted right to the sky, so they had to be divided.”
“What!” I cried. “Brothers have treated their brothers like this, and I have the misfortune to be of this brotherhood!”
“Here,” said the spirit, “are the twelve million Americans killed in their native land because they had not been baptized.”
“My God! why did you not leave these frightful bones to dry in the hemisphere where their bodies were born, and where they were consigned to so many different deaths? Why assemble here all these abominable monuments to barbarism and fanaticism?”
“To instruct you.”
“Since you wish to instruct me,” I said to the genie, “tell me if there have been peoples other than the Christians and the Jews in whom zeal and religion wretchedly transformed into fanaticism have inspired so many horrible cruelties.”
“Yes,” he said. “The Mohammedans were sullied with the same inhumanities, but rarely; and when one asked amman, pity, of them and offered them tribute, they were merciful. As for the other nations, there has not been a single one, from the beginning of the world, which has ever made a purely religious war. Follow me now.” I followed him.
A little beyond these piles of dead men, we found other piles; they were composed of sacks of gold and silver, and each had its label: “Substance of the heretics massacred in the eighteenth century, the seventeenth, and the sixteenth.” And so on in going back: “Gold and silver of Americans slaughtered,” etc., etc. And all these piles were surmounted with crosses, mitres, croziers, and triple crowns studded with precious stones.
“What, my genie! Do you mean that these dead were piled up for the sake of their wealth?”
“Yes, my son.”
I wept. And when, by my grief, I was worthy of being led to the end of the green walks, he led me there.
“Contemplate,” he said, “the heroes of humanity who were the world’s benefactors, and who were all united in banishing from the world, as far as they were able, violence and rapine. Question them.”
I ran to the first of the band. He had a crown on his head, and a little censer in his hand. I humbly asked him his name. “I am Numa Pompilius,” he said to me. “I succeeded a brigand, and I had to govern brigands. I taught them virtue and the worship of God, but after me they forgot both more than once. I forbade that there should be any image in the temples, because the Deity which animates nature cannot be represented. During my reign the Romans had neither wars nor seditions, and my religion did nothing but good. All the neighboring peoples came to honor me at my funeral; and a unique honor it was.”
I kissed his hand, and I went to the second. He was a fine old man about a hundred years old, clad in a white robe. He put his middle finger on his mouth, and with the other hand he cast some beans behind him. I recognized Pythagoras. He assured me he had never had a golden thigh, and that he had never been a cock; but that he had governed the Crotoniates with as much justice as Numa governed the Romans, almost at the same time; and that this justice was the rarest and most necessary thing in the world. I learned that the Pythagoreans examined their consciences twice a day. The honest people! How far we are from them! But we, who have been nothing but assassins for thirteen hundred years, we call these wise men arrogant.
In order to please Pythagoras, I did not say a word to him, and I passed on to Zoroaster, who was occupied in concentrating the celestial fire in the focus of a concave mirror, in the middle of a hall with a hundred doors which all led to wisdom. (Zoroaster’s precepts are called doors, and are a hundred in number.) Over the principal door I read these words which are the sum of all moral philosophy, and which cut short all the disputes of the casuists: “When in doubt if an action is good or bad, refrain.”
“Certainly,” I said to my genie, “the barbarians who immolated all these victims had never read these beautiful words.”
We then saw Zaleucus, Thales, Anaximander, and all the sages who had sought truth and practiced virtue.
When we came to Socrates, I recognized him very quickly by his flat nose. “Well,” I said to him, “so you are one of the Almighty’s confidants! All the inhabitants of Europe, except the Turks and the Tartars of the Crimea, who know nothing, pronounce your name with respect. It is revered, loved, this great name, to the point that people have wanted to know those of your persecutors. Melitus and Anitus are known because of you, just as Ravaillac is known because of Henry IV; but I know only this name of Anitus. I do not know precisely who was the scoundrel who calumniated you, and who succeeded in having you condemned to drink hemlock.”
“Since my adventure,” replied Socrates, “I have never thought about that man, but seeing that you make me remember it, I pity him. He was a wicked priest who secretly conducted a business in hides, a trade reputed shameful among us. He sent his two children to my school. The other disciples taunted them with having a father who was a currier, and they were obliged to leave. The irritated father did not rest until he had stirred up all the priests and all the sophists against me. They persuaded the council of five hundred that I was an impious fellow who did not believe that the Moon, Mercury, and Mars were gods. Indeed, I used to think, as I think now, that there is only one God, master of all nature. The judges handed me over to the poisoner of the republic. He cut short my life by a few days: I died peacefully at the age of seventy, and since that time I have led a happy life with all these great men whom you see, and of whom I am the least.”
After enjoying some time in conversation with Socrates, I went forward with my guide into a grove situated above the thickets where all the sages of antiquity seemed to be tasting sweet repose.
I saw a man of gentle, simple countenance, who seemed to me to be about thirty-five years old. From afar he cast compassionate glances on these piles of whitened bones, across which I had had to pass to reach the sages’ abode. I was astonished to find his feet swollen and bleeding, his hands likewise, his side pierced, and his ribs flayed with whip cuts. “Good Heavens!” I said to him, “is it possible for a just man, a sage, to be in this state? I have just seen one who was treated in a very hateful way, but there is no comparison between his torture and yours. Wicked priests and wicked judges poisoned him. Were priests and judges your torturers?”
He answered with much courtesy: “Yes.”
“And who were these monsters?”
“They were hypocrites.”
“Ah! that says everything. I understand by this single word that they must have condemned you to death. Had you proved to them then, as Socrates did, that the Moon was not a goddess, and that Mercury was not a god?”
“No, these planets were not in question. My compatriots did not know what a planet is; they were all arrant ignoramuses. Their superstitions were quite different from those of the Greeks.”
“You wanted to teach them a new religion, then?”
“Not at all. I said to them simply: ‘Love God with all your heart and your fellow creature as yourself, for that is man’s whole duty.’ Judge if this precept is not as old as the universe; judge if I brought them a new religion. I did not stop telling them that I had come not to destroy the law but to fulfill it. I observed all their rites; circumcized as they all were, baptized as were the most zealous among them. Like them I paid the Corban; I observed the Passover as they did, eating, standing up, a lamb cooked with lettuce. I and my friends went to pray in the temple; my friends even frequented this temple after my death. In a word, I fulfilled all their laws without a single exception.”
“Whatl these wretches could not even reproach you with swerving from their laws?”
“Not, not possibly.”
“Why then did they reduce you to the condition in which I now see you?”
“What do you expect me to say! They were very arrogant and selfish. They saw that I knew them for what they were; they knew that I was making the citizens acquainted with them; they were the stronger; they took away my life: and people like them will always do as much, if they can, to anyone who does them too much justice.”
“But did you say nothing, do nothing that could serve them as a pretext?”
“To the wicked everything serves as pretext.”
“Did you not say once that you were come not to bring peace, but a sword?”
“It is a copyist’s error. I told them that I brought peace and not a sword. I never wrote anything; what I said may have been changed without evil intention.”
“You therefore contributed in no way by your speeches, badly reported, badly interpreted, to these frightful piles of bones which I saw on my road in coming to consult you?”
“It is with horror only that I have seen those who bave made themselves guilty of these murders.”
“And these monuments of power and wealth, of pride and avarice, these treasures, these ornaments, these signs of grandeur, which I have seen piled up on the road while I was seeking wisdom, do they come from you?”
“That is impossible. I and my followers lived in poverty and meanness: my grandeur was in virtue only.”
I was about to beg him to be so good as to tell me just who he was. My guide warned me to do nothing of the sort. He told me that I was not made to understand these sublime mysteries. But I did implore him to tell me in what true religion consisted.
“Have I not already told you? Love God and your fellow creature as yourself.”
“What! If one loves God, one can eat meat on Friday?”
“I always ate what was given me, for I was too poor to give anyone food.”
“In loving God, in being just, should one not be rather cautious not to confide all the adventures of one’s life to an unknown being?”
“That was always my practice.”
“Can I not, by doing good, dispense with making a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella?”
“I have never been in that region.”
“Is it necessary for me to imprison myself in a retreat with fools?”
“As for me, I was always making little journeys from town to town.”
“Is it necessary for me to take sides either for the Greek Church or the Latin?”
“When I was in the world, I never differentiated between the Jew and the Samaritan.”
“Well, if that is so, I take you for my only master.” Then he made me a sign with his head which filled me with consolation. The vision disappeared, and a clear conscience stayed with me.
SECT
Every sect, of every kind, is a rallying-point for doubt and error. Scotist, Thomist, Realist, Nominalist, Papist, Calvinist, Molinist, and Jansenist, are only pseudonyms.
There are no sects in geometry. One does not speak of a Euclidean, an Archimedean. When the truth is evident, it is impossible for parties and factions to arise. There has never been a dispute as to whether there is daylight at noon. The branch of astronomy which determines the course of the stars and the return of eclipses being once known, there is no dispute among astronomers.
In England one does not say: “I am a Newtonian, a Locldan, a Halleyan.” Why? Those who have read cannot refuse their assent to the truths taught by these three great men. The more Newton is revered, the less do people style themselves Newtonians; this word supposes that there are anti-Newtonians in England. Maybe we still have a few Cartesians in France, but only because Descartes’ system is a tissue of erroneous and ridiculous speculations.
It is the same with the small number of matters of fact which are well established. The records of the Tower of London having been authentically gathered by Rymer, there are no Rymerians, because it occurs to no one to assail this collection. In it one finds neither contradictions, absurdities, nor prodigies; nothing which revolts the reason, nothing, consequently, which sectarians strive to maintain or upset by absurd arguments. Everyone agrees, therefore, that Rymer’s records are worthy of belief.
You are a Mohammedan; therefore there are people who are not; therefore you might well be wrong.
What would be the true religion if Christianity did not exist? The religion in which there were no sects, the religion in which all minds were necessarily in agreement.
Well, to what dogma do all minds agree? To the worship of a God, and to honesty. All the philosophers of the world who have had a religion have said in all ages: “There is a God, and one must be just.” There, then, is the universal-religion established in all ages and throughout mankind. The point in which they all agree is therefore true, and the systems through which they differ are therefore false.
“My sect is the best,” says a Brahmin to me. But, my friend, if your sect is good, it is necessary; for if it were not absolutely necessary you would admit to me that it was useless. If it is absolutely necessary, it is for all men. How, then, can it be that all men have not what is absolutely necessary to them? How is it possible for the rest of the world to laugh at you and your Brahma?
When Zoroaster, Hermes, Orpheus, Minos, and all the great men say: “Let us worship God, and let us be just,” nobody laughs. But everyone hisses the man who claims that one cannot please God unless one is holding a cow’s tail when one dies; or the man who wants one to have the end of one’s prepuce cut off; or the man who consecrates crocodiles and onions; or the man who attaches eternal salvation to dead men’s bones carried under one’s shirt, or to a plenary indulgence which may be bought at Rome for two and a half sous.
Whence comes this universal competition in hisses and derision from one end of the world to the other? It is clear that the things at which everyone sneers are not very evidently true. What would we say of one of Sejan’s secretaries who dedicated to Petronius a bombastic book entitled: “The Truths of the Sibylline Oracles, Proved by the Facts”?
This secretary proves to you, first, that it was necessary for God to send on earth several sibyls one after the other; for He had no other means of teaching mankind. It is demonstrated that God spoke to these sibyls, for the word sibyl signifies God’s counsel. They had to live a long time, for persons to whom God speaks should have this privilege, at the very least. They were twelve in number, for this number is sacred. They had certainly predicted all the events in the world, for Tarquinius Superbus bought three of their books from an old woman for a hundred crowns. “What incredulous fellow,” adds the secretary, “will dare deny all these obvious facts which happened in a corner in the sight of the whole world? Who can deny the fulfillment of their prophecies? Has not Virgil himself quoted the predictions of the sibyls? If we have no first editions of the Sibylline Books, written at a time when people did not know how to read or write, have we not authentic copies? Impiety must be silent before such proof
s.” Thus did Houttevillus speak to Sejan. He hoped to have a position as augur which would be worth an income of fifty thousand francs, and he had nothing.
“What my sect teaches is obscure, I admit it,” says a fanatic; and it is because of this obscurity that it must be believed; for the sect itself says it is full of obscurities. My sect is extravagant, therefore it is divine; for how should what appears so mad have been embraced by so many peoples, if it were not divine?” It is precisely like the Koran which the Sonnites say has an angel’s face and an animal’s snout. Be not scandalized by the animal’s snout, and worship the angel’s face. Thus speaks this mad fellow. But a fanatic of another sect answers: ”It is you who are the animal, and I who am the angel.”
Well, who shall judge the case? Who shall decide between these two fanatics? Why, the reasonable, impartial man who is learned in a knowledge that is not that of words; the man free from prejudice and the lover of truth and justice-in short, the man who is not the foolish animal, and who does not think he is the angeL
Sect and error are synonymous. You are a Peripatetic and I a Platonist; we are therefore both wrong; for you combat Plato only because his fantasies have revolted you, while I am alienated from Aristotle only because it seems to me that he does not know what he is talking about. If one or the other had demonstrated the truth, there would be a sect no longer. To declare oneself for the opinion of one or the other is to take sides in a civil war. There are no sects in mathematics, in experimental physics. A man who examines the relations between a cone and a sphere is not of the sect of Archimedes: he who sees that the square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the square of the two other sides is not of the sect of Pythagoras.
The Portable Voltaire (Portable Library) Page 18