“I hear that the Parliament of Toulouse and some other courts of justice have a method of proceeding peculiar to themselves. They admit fourths, thirds, and sixths of a proof; so that with six hearsays on one side, three on the other, and four-fourths of a presumption, they frame three complete proofs; and in consequence of this curious demonstration will condemn you a man to be broken upon the wheel without mercy. Now, the least acquaintance with the art of logic or reasoning would point out a different method of proceeding to them. What we call a half proof can never amount to more than a suspicion; but there is no such thing in reality as a half proof; for a thing must either be proved or not proved; there is no medium.
“A million of suspicions put together can no more frame a regular proof than a million of ciphers can compose an arithmetical number.
“There are fourths of tones or sounds in music, and these are to be expressed; but there are no fourths in truths, nor in reasoning.
“Two witnesses agreeing in the same deposition, are esteemed to make a proof; but this is not enough; these two witnesses should be clear of all passion and prejudice, and, above all, their testimony should be in every part consonant with reason.
“Suppose four persons of the most respectable appearance were to come and swear in a court of justice that they saw an infirm old man take a vigorous young fellow by the collar and toss him out of a window, to the distance of six or seven feet; certainly such deponents ought to be sent to a madhouse.
“But the eight judges of Toulouse condemned John Calas upon a much more improbable accusation; for there was no one appeared to swear that he had actually seen this feeble old man of seventy seize a stout young fellow of twenty-eight, and hang him up. Indeed, certain enthusiastic wretches said that they had been told by other enthusiasts like themselves that they had been told by some of their own sect that they had heard that John Calas had by a supernatural strength overcome his son and hanged him. And thus was the most absurd of all sentences passed upon the most absurd of all evidence.
“In fine, there is no remedy against such kind of proceedings but that those who purchase their seats in a court of justice should, for the future, be obliged to study a little better.”
This treatise on toleration is a petition which humanity with all submission presents to power and prudence. I have sowed a grain that may perhaps produce a rich harvest. We may hope everything from time, from the goodness of the heart of our gracious monarch, the wisdom of his ministers, and the spirit of sound reason, which begins to diffuse its salutary influence over all minds.
Nature addresses herself thus to mankind: “I have formed you all weak and ignorant, to vegetate a few moments on that earth which you are afterwards to fatten with your carcasses. Let your weakness then teach you to succor each other, and as you are ignorant, bear with and endeavor mutually to instruct each other. Even if ye were all of the same way of thinking, which certainly will never come to pass, and there should be one single person only found amongst you who differed from you in belief, you ought to forgive him, for it is I who make him think in the manner he does. I have given you hands to cultivate the earth, and a faint glimmering of reason to conduct yourselves by, and I have planted in your hearts a spirit of compassion, that you may assist each other under the burden of life. Do not smother that spark, nor suffer it to be corrupted, for know it is of divine origin; neither substitute the wretched debates of the schools in the place of the voice of nature.
“It is I alone who unite you all, in despite of yourselves, by your mutual wants, even in the midst of those bloody wars that you undertake for the slightest causes, and that afford a continual scene of error, chances, and misfortunes. It is I alone who, in a nation, prevent the fatal effects of the inextinguishable differences that subsist between the sword and the law, between those two professions and the clergy, and between even the citizen and the husbandman. Though ignorant of the limits of their own prerogatives, they are in spite of themselves obliged to listen to my voice, which speaks to their hearts. It is I alone who maintain equity in the courts of judicature, where otherwise everything would be determined by error and caprice, in the midst of a confused heap of laws, framed too often at a venture and to supply an immediate call, differing from each other in every province and town, and almost always contradictory in the same place. I alone can inspire the love and knowledge of justice, while the laws inspire only chicanery and subterfuge. He who listens to me seldom forms a wrong judgment, while he who seeks only to reconcile contradictory opinions loses himself in the fruitless labor.