If I had to depict the most heart-breaking stupidity, I would paint a pedant teaching children the catechism; if I wanted to drive a child crazy I would set him to explain what he learned in his catechism. You will reply that as most of the Christian doctrines are mysteries, you must wait, not merely till the child is a man, but till the man is dead, before the human mind will understand those doctrines. To that I reply, that there are mysteries which the heart of man can neither conceive nor believe, and I see no use in teaching them to children, unless you want to make liars of them. Moreover, I assert that to admit that there are mysteries, you must at least realise that they are incomprehensible, and children are not even capable of this conception! At an age when everything is mysterious, there are no mysteries properly so-called.
“We must believe in God if we would be saved.” This doctrine wrongly understood is the root of bloodthirsty intolerance and the cause of all the futile teaching which strikes a deadly blow at human reason by training it to cheat itself with mere words. No doubt there is not a moment to be lost if we would deserve eternal salvation; but if the repetition of certain words suffices to obtain it, I do not see why we should not people heaven with starlings and magpies as well as with children.
The obligation of faith assumes the possibility of belief. The philosopher who does not believe is wrong, for he misuses the reason he has cultivated, and he is able to understand the truths he rejects. But the child who professes the Christian faith—what does he believe? Just what he understands; and he understands so little of what he is made to repeat that if you tell him to say just the opposite he will be quite ready to do it. The faith of children and the faith of many men is a matter of geography. Will they be rewarded for having been born in Rome rather than in Mecca? One is told that Mahomet is the prophet of God and he says, “Mahomet is the prophet of God.” The other is told that Mahomet is a rogue and he says, “Mahomet is a rogue.” Either of them would have said just the opposite had he stood in the other’s shoes. When they are so much alike to begin with, can the one be consigned to Paradise and the other to Hell? When a child says he believes in God, it is not God he believes in, but Peter or James who told him that there is something called God, and he believes it after the fashion of Euripides—
“O Jupiter, of whom I know nothing but thy name.”
[Footnote: Plutarch. It is thus that the tragedy of Menalippus originally began, but the clamour of the Athenians compelled Euripides to change these opening lines.]
We hold that no child who dies before the age of reason will be deprived of everlasting happiness; the Catholics believe the same of all children who have been baptised, even though they have never heard of God. There are, therefore, circumstances in which one can be saved without belief in God, and these circumstances occur in the case of children or madmen when the human mind is incapable of the operations necessary to perceive the Godhead. The only difference I see between you and me is that you profess that children of seven years old are able to do this and I do not think them ready for it at fifteen. Whether I am right or wrong depends, not on an article of the creed, but on a simple observation in natural history.
From the same principle it is plain that any man having reached old age without faith in God will not, therefore, be deprived of God’s presence in another life if his blindness was not wilful; and I maintain that it is not always wilful. You admit that it is so in the case of lunatics deprived by disease of their spiritual faculties, but not of their manhood, and therefore still entitled to the goodness of their Creator. Why then should we not admit it in the case of those brought up from infancy in seclusion, those who have led the life of a savage and are without the knowledge that comes from intercourse with other men. [Footnote: For the natural condition of the human mind and its slow development, cf. the first part of the Discours sur Inegalite.] For it is clearly impossible that such a savage could ever raise his thoughts to the knowledge of the true God. Reason tells that man should only be punished for his wilful faults, and that invincible ignorance can never be imputed to him as a crime. Hence it follows that in the sight of the Eternal Justice every man who would believe if he had the necessary knowledge is counted a believer, and that there will be no unbelievers to be punished except those who have closed their hearts against the truth.
Let us beware of proclaiming the truth to those who cannot as yet comprehend it, for to do so is to try to inculcate error. It would be better to have no idea at all of the Divinity than to have mean, grotesque, harmful, and unworthy ideas; to fail to perceive the Divine is a lesser evil than to insult it. The worthy Plutarch says, “I would rather men said, ‘There is no such person as Plutarch,’ than that they should say, ‘Plutarch is unjust, envious, jealous, and such a tyrant that he demands more than can be performed.’”
The chief harm which results from the monstrous ideas of God which are instilled into the minds of children is that they last all their life long, and as men they understand no more of God than they did as children. In Switzerland I once saw a good and pious mother who was so convinced of the truth of this maxim that she refused to teach her son religion when he was a little child for fear lest he should be satisfied with this crude teaching and neglect a better teaching when he reached the age of reason. This child never heard the name of God pronounced except with reverence and devotion, and as soon as he attempted to say the word he was told to hold his tongue, as if the subject were too sublime and great for him. This reticence aroused his curiosity and his self-love; he looked forward to the time when he would know this mystery so carefully hidden from him. The less they spoke of God to him, the less he was himself permitted to speak of God, the more he thought about Him; this child beheld God everywhere. What I should most dread as the result of this unwise affectation of mystery is this: by over-stimulating the youth’s imagination you may turn his head, and make him at the best a fanatic rather than a believer.
But we need fear nothing of the sort for Emile, who always declines to pay attention to what is beyond his reach, and listens with profound indifference to things he does not understand. There are so many things of which he is accustomed to say, “That is no concern of mine,” that one more or less makes little difference to him; and when he does begin to perplex himself with these great matters, it is because the natural growth of his knowledge is turning his thoughts that way.