Part 4

It is, undoubtedly, because a similar authority appears absolutely necessary to the maintenance of public order, that several philosophic writers have endeavoured to introduce it as a principle of atheism. In such a system the whole is fictitious; they speak of our blushing at the recollection of our follies, of dreading our own secret reproaches, and of being afraid of the condemnation, which, in the calm of reflection, we shall pronounce against ourselves; but these sentiments, which have so much force with the idea of a God, they know not what to unite them with, when they would give only for a guide the most active personal interest, and when all the grand communications, established between men by religious opinions, are absolutely broken; conscience is then an expression void of meaning, a useless word in the language. We may still feel remorse, that is to say, regret at being deceived in the pursuits of ambition, in promoting our interest, in the choice of means which we employ to obtain the respect and praise of others; in short, in the various calculations of our worldly advantage: but such remorse is only an exaltation of our self-love; we deify, in some measure, our judgment and understanding, and we make at last all our actions appear before these false idols, to reproach us with our errors and weaknesses; we thus voluntarily become our own tormentors; but when this perfection is too importunate, we have it in our power to command our tyrants to use more indulgence towards us. It is not the same with the reproaches of conscience; the sentiments which produce them have nothing compounded or artificial in them, we cannot corrupt our judge, nor enter into a compromise with him; that which seduces men never deceives him, and amidst the giddiness of prosperity, in the intoxication of the greatest success, his looks are inevitably fixed on us; and we cannot but with terror enjoy the applause and the triumphs which we have not merited.

We read in several modern books, that with good laws we should always have morality sufficient; but I cannot adopt this opinion. Man is a being so compounded, and his relations with his species are so various and so fine, that to regulate his mind, and direct his conduct, he has need of a multitude of sentiments, on which the commands of the sovereign have not any hold; they are all simple and declared duties, which the legislators have reduced to precepts, and this rough building, termed civil laws, leaves vacancies throughout. The laws require merely a blind obedience; and as they enjoin and defend only actions, are absolutely indifferent to the private sentiments of men; the moral edifice which they raise is in several parts a mere exterior form, and it is at the roof, if I may say so, that they have begun. Religion proceeds in a manner diametrically opposite; it is in the heart, it is in the recesses of conscience, that it lays its first base; it appears to be acquainted with the grand secrets of nature; it sows in the earth a grain, and this grain is nourished, and transformed into numerous branches, which, without any effort, spring up, and extend themselves to all dimensions and in every kind of form.

I will suppose, nevertheless, that we believed it sufficient for the maintenance of public order, to reduce morality to the spirit of civil laws, it would still be out of the power of men to draw from this assimilation familiar instructions proper to form a code of education; for these laws, simple in their commands, are not so in their principles. We perceive not immediately why revenge, the most just, is prohibited; why we have not the power to do ourselves justice by the same means a ravisher would use; why we have not a right to resist with violence the tyrannic oppressor; in short, why certain actions, some indifferent in themselves, and some hurtful to others, are condemned in a general and uniform manner: a kind of combination is necessary to discover, that the legislator himself is wandering from natural ideas, in order to prevent every person from being a judge in his own cause, and to avoid that, those exceptions and distinctions, of which every circumstance is susceptible, might never be determined by the judgment of individuals. In the same manner, from those indirect motives, the laws treat with more rigour an offence difficult to define, than a disorder more reprehensible in itself; but of which the excesses might be easily perceived: and they observe still the same rule with respect to crimes which are surrounded by greater allurements, though this seduction is even a motive for indulgence in the eyes of simple justice; in short, the laws, in adopting a more determinate method, to constrain debtors to the discharge of their obligations, prove that they are not compassionate to unforeseen misfortunes, nor actuated by other motives of equity which merit an equal interest; all their attention is fixed on the relation of engagements with the political resources, which arise from commerce and its transactions. There exists thus a multitude of prohibitions of punishments, or gradations in the penalties, which have not any connexion but with the general views of the legislation, and agree not with the circumscribed good sense, which determines the judgment of individuals. It is then often, by considerations very extensive and complicated, that an action is criminal or reprehensible in the eyes of the law: thus, we know not how to erect, on this base alone, a system of morality, of which every one can have a clear perception; and since the legislator carefully avoids submitting any thing to private examination, because he sacrifices often to this principle natural justice, how then can he wish, at the same time, to give us for a rule of conduct a political morality, which is all founded on reasoning?

It is of consequence still to observe, that to the eyes of the greater number of men, the sense of the laws, and the decrees formed by those who interpret them, ought necessarily to be identified and blended, and form only one point of view; and as the judges are frequently exposed to error, the true spirit of legislation remains often in obscurity, and we with difficulty discern it.

It is, perhaps, because laws are the work of our understanding, that we are disposed to grant them a universal dominion: but I will avow, I am far from thinking that they can ever be substituted instead of the salutary influence of religion, and that I believe them insufficient even to regulate the things immediately under their jurisdiction; thus I would request you to reflect, if the unfortunate errors with which we reproach criminal tribunals, have not their source in the faults committed by sovereign authority; when it has referred all the duties of the judges to the injunctions of the law, and when it has refused to confide any longer in the conscience and private sentiments of the magistrates.

Let us render this observation more clear by a single example chosen from a number. We demand at present, that the legislator explain himself afresh on the grand question, what witnesses are necessary? but will he not always run the risk of being deceived, whether he absolutely rejects a probable evidence, or whether he makes the fate of a criminal depend upon it? How will he determine, that the testimony of an honest man, identifying the person of an assassin, in his own cause, should not be reckoned any thing by the judge; and how can he pretend also, that a testimony of this nature is sufficient to determine a condemnation, when he who gives the evidence appears suspicious, either from the motives, which we must suppose actuate him, or from the improbability of his assertion? Reason is then placed between two extremes; but intermediate ideas not being consonant with the absolute language of law, we ought, in such circumstances, to leave much to the wisdom and integrity of the magistrates; and so far from serving innocence by acting otherwise, we visibly endanger it; because judges habituate themselves to render the laws responsible for every thing, and respectfully submit to the letter, instead of obeying the spirit, which is the earnest desire of obtaining truth. What then, some will say, would you wish that there should be no positive instructions, neither to serve for a guide in the examination of crimes, nor to determine the character by which these crimes may be distinguished? This was never in my mind; but I could wish, that in an affair of such serious importance, they would unite to the judgment which proceeded from the prudence of the legislator, that which may be brought by the wisdom of the judges; I could wish, that the criminal legislation prescribed to the magistrates, not all that they are obliged to do, but all from which they are not exempt; not all that is sufficient to determine their opinion, but all which ought to be the indispensable condition of a capital punishment. Guided by such a spirit, the commands given by the law, would be a safeguard against the ignorance, or possible prevarication of the judges; but as any general rule, any immutable principle, is not applicable to an infinite diversity of circumstances, I would give to innocence a new defender, interesting in a more immediate manner the morality of the judges to search for and examine the truth, and to recal continually all the extent of their obligations; I could wish, that previous to their passing a sentence of condemnation, raising one of their hands towards heaven, they pronounced with earnestness these words: “I attest, that the man accused before us, appears to me guilty, according to the law, and according to my own private judgment.” It is not sufficient, that we command a judge to examine with probity, if the proofs of an offence, are conformable to those required by the statute; it is necessary to inform a magistrate, that he ought to enquire into the truth by all the means that scrupulous anxiety can suggest; he should know, that, called to decide on the life and the honour of men, his understanding and his heart, ought to be enlisted in the cause of humanity, and that there are not any limits opposed to bound his duty; then, without failing in any of the enquiries ordained by the laws, he would force himself to go still further, that no evidence proper to make an impression on a reasonable man might be rejected, at the same time, that none might have so decisive a force, that the examination of circumstances would ever appear useless; the judges then would make use of that sagacity, which seems to discern instinctively; they would not then disdain to read even the looks of the accuser and the accused, and they would not believe it a matter of indifference to observe with attention, all those emotions of nature, where sometimes truth is painted with so much energy; then, in short, innocence would be under the protection of something as pure as itself, the scrupulous conscience of a judge.

We have never, perhaps, sufficiently considered how much a methodical order, when we confine ourselves too servilely to it, contracts the bounds of the mind; it becomes then like a foot-path traced between two banks, which prevents our discovering what is not in a strait line. The strict observance of method diverts us also from consulting that light, sometimes so lively, of which the soul only is the focus; for in subjecting us to a positive course of things always regular, and in making us find pleasure in a determined path, which offers continual repose to our thoughts, it incapacitates for thinking that delicate perception of natural sentiments, which has nothing fixed or circumscribed, but whose free flight often makes us approach to truth, as by a kind of instinct or inspiration.

I should stray too far from my subject, if I extended these reflections, and I hasten to connect them with the subject of this chapter, in repeating again, that if the laws are insufficient, even in those decisions submitted to their authority, and if the they have absolute need of the aid of religion, whenever they impose on their private expounders duties a little complicated; they would be still less able to supply the habitual and daily influence of that motive, the most powerful of all, and the only one at the same time, of which the action will be sufficiently penetrating to follow us in the mazes of our conduct, and in the labyrinth of our thoughts.

I ought now to direct your attention towards other considerations. All that is required by public order, all that is of importance to society, some will say, is, that criminals may not escape the sword of justice, and that an attentive superintendance discover them under the cloud where they seek to conceal themselves. I will not here recal the various obstacles, which are opposed to the plenitude of this vigilance; every one may perceive them, or form an idea of them; but I hasten to observe, that in considering society in its actual state, we ought not to forget, that religious sentiments have greatly diminished the talk of government; a scene quite new would open, if we had for our guide only political morality; it would not then be a few men without principles, who would trouble the public order, more able actors would mix in the throng, some conducted by mature reflection, and others, carried away by seducing appearances, would be incessantly at war with all those, whose fortune excited their jealousy; and then only we should know how many opportunities there are of doing evil, and injuring others. It would also happen, that all these enemies of public order not being disconcerted by the reproaches of their conscience, would become every day more expert in the art of avoiding the observation of justice; and the dangers to which the imprudent exposed themselves, would not discourage the ingenious.

It is then, if I may be permitted so to express myself, because the laws find men in a healthy state, prepared by religious instruction, that they can restrain them; but if a system of education merely political was ever to prevail, new precautions and new chains would become absolutely necessary, and after having freed us from the mild ties of religion, the projectors of such a system would increase our civil slavery, would bend our necks under the hardest of all yokes, that which is imposed by our fellow-creatures.

Religion, whose influence they wish us to reject, is better appropriated than they think, to the mixture of pride and weakness, which constitutes our nature, and for us, such as we are; its action is far preferable to that of the penal laws; it is not, before his equals, armed with the rod of vengeance, that the culprit is made to appear; it is not to their ignorance, or to their inexorable justice, that he is abandoned; it is at the tribunal of his own conscience, that religion informs against him; before a God, sovereign of the world, that it humbles, and in the name of a tender and merciful Father that it comforts him. Alas! while you at once take from us both our consolation and our true dignity, you wish to refer every thing to private interest and public punishment; but permit me to listen to those commands which come from on high; leave me to divert my attention from the menacing sceptre which the potentates of the earth weild in their hand; leave me to account with Him, before whom they shrink into nothing; leave me, in short, to address myself to him who pardons, and who, at the moment I have offended, permits me still to love him, and rely on his grace!—Alas! without the idea of a God,—without this connexion with a Supreme Being, author of all nature, we should only listen to the vile counsels of selfish prudence, we should only have to flatter and adore the rulers of nations, and all those who in an absolute monarchy, are the numerous representatives of the authority of the prince; yes, talents, sentiments, ought to bend before these distributors of so much good and evil, if nothing exists beyond worldly interest; and when once every one cringes, there is no more dignity in the character, men become incapable of any great action, and unequal to any moral excellence.

Religious opinions have the double merit of maintaining us in the obedience due to the laws and the soveriegn, and of nourishing in our hearts a sentiment which sustains our courage, and which reminds men of their true grandeur; teaches submission without meanness, and prevents, above all, cowardly humiliations before transitory idols, in showing at a distance the last period, when all must return to an equality before the Master of the World.

The idea of a God, at the same distance from all men, serves also to console us for that shocking superiority of rank and fortune under the oppression of which we live; it is necessary to transport ourselves to the heights religion discovers, to consider with a kind of calmness and indifference the frivolous pretentions of some, and the confident haughtiness of others; and such objects of regret, or of envy, which appeared a Colossus to our imagination, are changed into a grain of sand, when we contrast them with the grand prospects which such sublime meditations display to our view.

They are then blind, or indifferent to our interest, who wish to substitute, instead of religious instructions, political and worldly maxims; and in like manner, those are inflexible and unfeeling, who believe they shall be able to conduct men only by terror; and who, in contesting the salutary influence of religious opinions, expect less from them than the axe of the lictors, and the apparatus of execution. What is then this wretched system? For supposing even that the different means of securing public tranquillity were equal in their effect, should we not prefer religious principles, which prevent crimes, to the strict laws which punish them? I understand not besides, how, with the same hand that they repel religious sentiments, they wish to raise every where scaffolds, and multiply, without scruple, those frightful theatres of severity; for if men, hurried onwards to crimes, were only governed by blind necessity, alas! what do they deserve? And if we still determine to destroy them as examples, we should assist at their execution, as at that of beings devoted for the good of society, as Iphigenia was sacrificed at Aulis for the salvation of Greece.

Religion is, in another respect, superior to the laws, which are ever armed for vengeance; instead of that, religion, even when threatening, nourishes also the hopes of pardon and felicity; and I believe, contrary to the generally received opinion, that man, by his nature, is more constantly animated by hope, than restrained by fear; the former of these sentiments compose the tenor of our life, whilst the latter is the effect of an extraordinary circumstance, or particular situation; in short, courage, or want of consideration, turns our attention from danger, whilst ideas of happiness are perpetually present, and blended, if I may use the expression, with our whole existence.

I perceive, however, that some may say to me, it is not only of civil and penal laws that we mean to speak, when we maintain that good public institutions would be an efficacious substitute for the influence of religion; it would be necessary to introduce laws of education, proper to modify, beforehand, the mind and form the character. But they have not explained, and I am ignorant that there are such laws, which they wish to distinguish from the general doctrines we are acquainted with; doctrines susceptible, undoubtedly, of different degrees of perfection, which, before instructing us not only in the virtues simple and real, but in all those mixed and conventional, have necessarily a vague character, and could not separate themselves from the support that they borrow from the fixed and precise ideas of religion. They may cite the example of Sparta, where the state undertook the education of the citizens, and formed by laws the extraordinary manners which history has delineated; but that government, aided in this enterprize by all the influence of paternal authority, nevertheless proposed but two great objects, the encouragement of martial qualities, and the maintenance of liberty: morality was not made interesting, though among us it requires so much application; and it was rendered less necessary, as every institution tended to introduce a perfect equality of rank and fortune, and opposed all kind of communication with foreigners. In short, it was, after all, a religious opinion which subjected the Spartans to the authority of their legislator; and without their confidence in the oracle of Delphos, Lycurgus had only been a celebrated philosopher.

We are still further, at present, from the disposition and situation which would allow laws of education to govern us, supported only by a political spirit; in order to make the trial, we must be divided into little associations; and by some means, not yet discovered, be able to oppose invincible obstacles to the enlargement of them, and to preserve us from the desires and voluptuousness which are the inevitable consequence of an augmentation of wealth, and the progress of the arts and sciences: in short, and it is a singular remark, at a period when man is become a being the most compounded, on account of these social modifications, he has need, more than ever, of a principle which will penetrate to the very source of his numerous affections; consequently it would be necessary suddenly to carry him back to his primitive simplicity, to make him agree, in some measure, with the limited extent of an education purely civil. Let me add, that a like education could not be adapted to the commonalty, as in Sparta; they must be separated from the citizens, and kept in servitude: an observation which leads me to a very important reflection; it is, that in a country where slavery would be introduced, where the most numerous class would be governed by the continual fear of the severest chastisement, they would be able to confide more in the mere ascendency of political morality; for this morality only having to keep in order the part of society represented by those who have property, the task would not be difficult; but among us, where happily all men, without any distinction, are subject to the yoke of the law, an authority so extensive, must necessarily be strengthened and seconded by the universal influence of religious opinions.