Albert Réville

“ Peru, in the sixteenth century, had become one enormous convent, in which everything was mechanically regulated, in which no one could take the smallest initiative, in which everything depended absolutely upon the will of the reigning Inca; so that the moment Pizarro succeeded in laying hold of this Inca, this "father Abbé," everything collapsed in a moment, and nothing was left of the edifice constructed with such sagacity but a heap of sand. And indeed this is the fatal result of every theocracy, for it can never really be anything but a hierocracy or rule of priests. ”

“ The wise men do not live in houses, but when it rains they summon a cloud and shelter under it. They wear their hair long, have white mitres on their heads, and are clothed in linen garments, woven from a peculiar kind of flax which it is only lawful for themselves to gather. Their prodigious wisdom overwhelmed even Apollonius, who was not frequently astonished, They are in possession of absolute science; they know at once the past history of every one they see; they can answer all questions. When asked, "Who are you?" they answer, "We are gods." ”

“ In the northern regions of Mexico, the humming-bird is the messenger of spring, as the swallow is with us. At the beginning of May, after a cold and dry season that has parched the soil and blighted all verdure, the atmosphere becomes pregnant with rain, the sun regains his power, and a marvellous transformation sets in. The land arrays itself, before the very eyes, with verdure and flowers, the air is filled with perfumes, the maize comes to a head, and hosts of humming-birds appear, as if to announce that the fair season has returned. ”

“ Those thousands of functionaries who spent their lives in superintending the furniture, the dress, the work, the very cookery, of the families under their charge, and inflicting corporal chastisement on those whom they surprised in a fault, might succeed in forming a correct and regular society, drilled like the bees in a hive, might form a nation of submissive slaves, but could never make a nation of men; and this is the deep cause that explains the irremediable collapse of this Peruvian society under the vigorous blows of a handful of unscrupulous Spaniards. ”

“ Apollonius, on the contrary, a Greek by birth, had stored his vast intellect with the religious doctrines of the whole world, from India to Spain; his life extended over a century. Like a luminous meteor he traversed the universe, in constant intercourse with kings and the powerful ones of the earth, who venerate and fear him; and if he ever meets with hostility and opposition, he triumphs over it majestically, always stronger than his tyrants, never subject to humiliations, never brought into contact with public executioners. ”

“ It was an axiom amongst the Aztecs that none but human sacrifices were truly efficacious. They were continually making war in order to get a supply of victims. They regarded the victim, when once selected, as a kind of incarnation of the deity who was ultimately to consume his flesh, or at any rate his heart. They retained the practice of cannibalism as a religious rite, and, as though they had had some of the Red-skins' blood in their veins, they refined upon the tortures to which they forced those victims, whom they had almost adored the moment before, to undergo at last. ”

“ It was the theocratic and sacerdotal conception that maintained and enforced the religious butchery of which you have heard in Mexico, and which transformed Peru into one enormous convent, where no one had any will or any initiative of his own. For the same reason, asceticism, the principle that confuses, through an illusion we can easily understand, the moral act itself with the suffering that accompanies it, shows itself in both religions, but especially in that of Mexico; and convents that startle us by their resemblance to those of Buddhism and Christianity rise in either realm. ”

“ That faith was transformed without being radically changed when it was no longer the phenomenon itself, but the personal and directing spirit, the genius, the deity that was behind the phenomenon, but distinct from it and capable of detaching itself from it, which drew to itself the worship of the faithful. But in his turn this god, shaped in the image of man, must either be refined into pure spirit, or must fall below the rational and moral ideal ultimately conceived by man himself. When all is said and done, Gentlemen, Buddhism is still a religion of Nature. ”

“ I may be mistaken, but when I look at Apollonius the sage, with his everlasting maxims, the foolish Damis, and Philostratus the rhetorician, and all those emperors and empresses who, in the quietness of their domestic circles, decide how the world is to be restored to virtue—when I look at all those councils of women, and men of letters, and others well versed in the ritualisms of the age, I seem to have before me a picture of Chinese life with all its most characteristic traits. They wish to appear as though they were in earnest, they wish to look imposing, but they are simply absurd. ”

“ And when the natives saw the fearful tribunal at work, when the fires of the autos-da-fé were kindled on the plain of Mexico and consumed by tens or hundreds the victims condemned by the Holy Office, do you suppose that the new converts felt well assured in their own hearts that the God of the Gospel was, after all, much better than Uitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca? [38]
But we are stepping beyond the domain of history we have marked out for ourselves. The religion of Mexico is dead, and we cannot desire a resurrection for it. ”

“ For neither philosophy nor science can make us other than the poor creatures we are, with an unquenchable thirst for blessedness and life, yet constantly broken, crushed at every moment, by the very elements on the bosom of which we are forced to live. Philosophy and science may guide religion, may reveal its true object in ever-growing purity, may cleanse it from the pollutions in which ignorance and sin still plunge it, but they cannot replace and they cannot destroy it. ”

“ This is the price which we have had to pay for the illimitable progress of humanity in knowledge and in power. If we understand the Gospel rightly we shall find that it has taught us more than a knowledge of certain great and vital truths; it has created in us a thirst for truth itself, and it is with truth as it is with righteousness, the blessed are not those who think they possess it, but who are continually hungering and thirsting after it. ”

“ The priests marched at the head of the soldiers, and bore Aztec idols on their backs. On the eve of a battle they kindled fresh fire by the friction of wood; and it was they who gave the signal of attack. These wars had pillage and conquest as their object, but also and very specially the capture of victims to sacrifice to the Aztec gods. For the Aztecs pushed the superstitious practice of human sacrifice to absolute frenzy. It was to these horrible sacrifices that they attributed their successes in war and the prosperity of their empire. ”

“ The evolutions of philosophy may seem to make the heavens void, and inspire man with the idea that all is over with the poetic or terrific visions that rocked the cradle of his infancy. But stay! Nature, human nature, is still there; and under the impulse of the indestructible thirst for religion, human nature renews her efforts, looks deeper and looks higher, and finds her God once more. ”