[222] Aulard, Culte, pp. 19–20. [↑]
[223] Michelet, Hist. de la révolution française, ed. 8vo 1868 and later, i, 16. Cp. Proudhon’s De la justice, 1858. [↑]
[224] “Tout jugement religieux ou politique est une contradiction flagrante dans une religion uniquement fondée sur un dogme étranger à la justice.” Ed. cited, introd. p. 60. [↑]
[225] The grave misstatement of Michelet on this head is exposed by Aulard, Culte, p. 60. [↑]
[226] Yet it is customary among Christians to speak of this lady in the most opprobrious terms. The royalist (but malcontent) Marquis de Villeneuve, who had seen the Revolution in his youth, claimed in his old age to have afterwards “conversed with the Goddess Reason of Paris and with the Goddess Reason of Bourges” (where he became governor); but, though he twice alludes to those women, he says nothing whatever against their characters (De l’Agonie de la France, 1835, i, 3, 19). Prof. W. M. Sloane, with all his religious prejudice, is satisfied that the women chosen as Goddesses of Reason outside of Paris were “noted for their spotless character.” Work cited, p. 198. [↑]
[227] Mémoires, ed. 1841, ii, 166. [↑]
[228] Père F.-J.-F. Fortin, Souvenirs, Auxerre, 1867, ii, 41. [↑]
[229] See the speech in Aulard, Culte, p. 240; and cp. pp. 79–85. [↑]
[230] “Le peuple aura des fêtes dans lesquelles il offrira de l’encens à l’Être Suprême, au maître de la nature, car nous n’avons pas voulu anéantir la superstition pour établir le règne de l’athéisme.” Speech of Nov. 26, 1793, in the Moniteur. (Discours de Danton, ed. André Fribourg, 1910, p. 599.) [↑]