Letters To Eugenia; Or, A Preservative Against Religious Prejudices

by baron d' Paul Henri Thiry Holbach

We may therefore legitimately conclude that the Christian religion is not fitted for this world; that it is not calculated to insure the happiness either of societies or individuals; that the precepts and counsels of its God are impracticable, and more adapted to discourage the human race, and to plunge men into despair and apathy, than to render them happy, active, and virtuous. A Christian is compelled to make an abstraction of the maxims of his religion if he wishes to live in the world; he is no longer a Christian when he devotes his cares to his earthly good; and, in a word, a real Christian is a man of another world, and is not adapted for this.

Thus we see that Christians, to humanize themselves, are constantly obliged to depart from their supernatural and divine speculations. Their passions are not repressed, but on the contrary are often thus rendered more fierce and more calculated to disturb society. Masked under the veil of religion, they generally produce more terrible effects. It is then that ambition, vengeance, cruelty, anger, calumny, envy, and persecution, covered by the deceptive name of zeal, cause the greatest ravages, range without bounds, and even delude those who are transported by these dangerous passions. Religion does not annihilate these violent agitations of the mind in the hearts of its devotees, but often excites and justifies them; and experience proves that the most rigid Christians are very far from being the best of men, and that they have no right to reproach the incredulous either concerning the pretended consequences of their principles, or for the passions which are falsely alleged to spring from unbelief.

Indeed, the charity of the peaceful ministers of religion and of their pious adherents does not prevent their blackening their adversaries with a view of rendering them odious, and of drawing down upon their heads the malevolence of a superstitious community, and the persecution of tyrannical and oppressive laws; their zeal for God's glory permits them to employ indifferently all kinds of weapons; and calumny, especially, furnishes them always a most powerful aid. According to them, there are no irregularities of the heart which are not produced by incredulity; to renounce religion, say they, is to give a free course to unbridled passions, and he who does not believe surely indicates a corrupt heart, depraved manners, and frightful libertinism. In a word, they declare that every man who refuses to admit their reveries or their marvellous morality, has no motives to do good, and very powerful ones to commit evil.

It is thus that our charitable divines caricature and misrepresent the opponents of their supremacy, and describe them as dangerous brigands, whom society, for its own interest, ought to proscribe and destroy. It results from these imputations that those who renounce prejudices and consult reason are considered the most unreasonable of men; that they who condemn religion on account of the crimes it has produced upon the earth, and for which it has served as an eternal pretext, are regarded as bad citizens; that they who complain of the troubles that turbulent priests have so often excited, are set down as perturbators of the repose of nations; and that they who are shocked at the contemplation of the inhuman and unjust persecutions which have been excited by priestly ambition and rascality, are men who have no idea of justice, and in whose bosoms the sentiments of humanity are necessarily stifled. They who despise the false and deceitful motives by which, to the present time, it has been vainly attempted through the other world to make men virtuous, equitable, and beneficent, are denounced as having no real motives to practise the virtues necessary for their well-being here. In fine, the priests scandalize those who wish to destroy sacerdotal tyranny, and impostures dangerous alike to nations and people, as enemies of the state so dangerous that the laws ought to punish them.

But I believe, Madam, that you are now thoroughly convinced that the true friends of the human race and of governments cannot also be the friends of religion and of priests. Whatever may be the motives or the passions which determine men to incredulity, whatever may be the principles which flow from it, they cannot be so pernicious as those which emanate directly and necessarily from a religion so absurd and so atrocious as Christianity. Incredulity does not claim extraordinary privileges as flowing from a partial God; it pretends to no right of despotism over men's consciences; it has no pretexts for doing violence to the minds of mankind; and it does not hate and persecute for a difference of opinion. In a word, the incredulous, have not an infinity of motives, interests, and pretexts to injure, with which the zealous partisans of religion are abundantly provided.

The unbeliever in Christianity, who reflects, perceives that without going out of this world there are pressing and real motives which invite to virtuous conduct; he feels the interest that he has in self-preservation, and of avoiding whatever is calculated to injure another; he sees himself united by physical and reciprocal wants with men who would despise him if he had vices, who would detest him if he was guilty of any action contrary to justice and virtue, and who would punish him if he committed any crimes, or if he outraged the laws. The idea of decency and order, the desire of meriting the approbation of his fellow-citizens, and the fear of being subjected to blame and punishment, are sufficient to govern the actions of every rational man. If, however, a citizen is in a sort of delirium, all the credulity in the world will not be able to restrain him. If he is powerful enough to have no fear of men on this earth, he will not regard the divine law more than the hatred and the disdain of the judges he has constantly before his eyes.

But the priests may perhaps tell us that the fear of an avenging God at least serves to repress a great number of latent crimes that would appear but for the influence of religion. Is it true, however, that religion itself prevents these latent crimes? Are not Christian nations full of knaves of all kinds, who secretly plot the ruin of their fellow-beings? Do not the most ostensibly credulous persons indulge in an infinity of vices for which they would blush if they were by chance brought to light? A man who is the most persuaded that God sees all his actions frequently does not blush to commit deeds in secret from which he would refrain if beheld by the meanest of human beings.

What, then, avails the powerful check on the passions which religion is said to interpose? If we could place any reliance on what is said by our priests, it would appear that neither public nor secret crimes could be committed in countries where their instructions are received; the priests would appear like a brotherhood of angels, and every religious man to be without faults. But men forget their religious speculations when they are under the dominion of violent passions, when they are bound by the ties of habit, or when they are blinded by great interests. Under such circumstances they do not reason. Whether a man is virtuous or vicious depends on temperament, habit, and education. An unbeliever may have strong passions, and may reason very justly on the subject of religion, and very erroneously in regard to his conduct. The religious dupe is u poor metaphysician, and if he also acts badly he is both imbecile and wicked.

It is true the priests deny that unbelievers ever reason correctly, and pretend they must always be in the wrong to prefer natural sense to their authority. But in this decision they occupy the place of both judges and parties, and the verdict should be rendered by disinterested persons. In the mean time the priests themselves seem to doubt the soundness of their own allegations; they call the secular arm to the aid of their arguments; they marshal on their side fines, imprisonment, confiscation of goods, boring and branding with hot irons, and death at the stake, at this time in France, and in other and in most countries of Christendom; they use the scourge to drive men into paradise; they enlighten men by the blaze of the fagot; they inculcate faith by furious and bloody strokes of the sword; and they have the baseness to stand in dread of men who cannot announce themselves or openly promulgate their opinions without running the risk of punishment, and even death. This conduct does not manifest that the priests are strongly persuaded of the power of their arguments. If our clerical theologians acted in good faith, would they not rejoice to open a free course to thorough discussion? Would they not be gratified to allow doubters to propose difficulties, the solution of which, if Christianity is so plain and clear, would serve to render it more firm and solid? They find it answers their ends better to use their adversaries as the Mexicans do their slaves, whom they shackle before attacking, and then kill for daring to defend themselves.

It is very probable unbelievers may be found whose conduct is blamable, and this is because they in this respect follow the same line of reasoning as the devotee. The most fanatical partisans of religion are forced to confess that among their adherents a small number of the elect only are rendered virtuous. By what right, then, do they exact that incredulity, which pretends to nothing supernatural, should produce effects which, according to their own admissions, their pretended divine religion fails to accomplish? If all believers were invariably good men, the cause of religion would be provided with an adamantine bulwark, and especially if unbelievers were persons without morality or virtue. But whatever the priests may aver, the unbelievers are more virtuous than the devotees. A happy temperament, a judicious education, the desire of living a peaceable life, the dislike to attract hatred or blame, and the habit of fulfilling the moral duties, always furnish motives to abstain from vice and to practise virtue more powerful and more true than those presented by religion. Besides, the incredulous person has not an infinity of resources which Christianity bestows upon its superstitious followers. The Christian can at any time expiate his crimes by confession and penance, and can thus reconcile himself with God, and give repose to his conscience; the unbeliever, on the other hand, who has perpetrated a wrong, can reconcile himself neither with society, which he has outraged, nor with himself, whom he is compelled to hate. If he expects no reward in another life, he has no interest but to merit the homage that in all enlightened countries is rendered to virtue, to probity, and to a conduct constantly honest; he has no inducement but to avoid the penalties and the disdain that society decrees against those who trouble its well-being, and who refuse to contribute to its welfare.