Jean Le Rond d' Alembert

“ Whatever be our strength, or whatever we imagine it to be, we ought never to make ourselves enemies of those who, enjoying the advantage of being read from one end of Europe to the other, are able, with one stroke of their pen, to inflict a signal and lasting vengeance. This is a maxim which favour and power itself ought never to make either individuals, or societies, lose sight of, but which the Jesuits of our times seem to have forgot to their great misfortune. ”

“ Can reason withhold shedding bitter tears, when she sees how many useful talents the quarrels, so often excited in the bosom of Christianity, have buried? how many ages these wretched and scandalous contests have destroyed to the human understanding? and how many geniuses, formed for discovering new truths, have employed (to the great regret of true religion) all their sagacity and abilities, in supporting or giving reputation to ancient absurdities? ”

“ To complete their misfortune, the Jesuits, overwhelmed with the blows which they had imprudently drawn upon themselves, had not one single defender able to repel them: they had no good writers, nor men of merit in any kind; their new enemies, oppressed by them at Versailles, were too strong for them at the pen; and the value of this advantage is sensibly felt in a nation which loves to read only to amuse itself, and which ends always by declaring for that party which succeeds therein the best. ”

“ Nothing more remains then to government and the magistrates, for the honour of religion and the state, than to repress, and render alike contemptible, both parties. We say it with so much the more confidence, as nobody calls in doubt the impartiality of the wise depositaries of justice, and the hearty contempt which they have for these absurd contests, the dangerous effects of which their office has required them to prevent. With what satisfaction will wise and enlightened subjects see them complete their work? ”

“ The manner in which this society established itself in those places where it found the least resistance, discovers very plainly the project which we have attributed to them, of governing mankind, and of making religion subservient to that design.
It is thus that the Jesuits have acquired in Paraguai a monarchical authority, founded, it is said, on persuasion alone, and, on the lenity of their government: sovereigns in that vast country, they render happy, it is assured, the people there who obey them, and whom they have at last effectually subjected to them without employing violence. ”

“ It is almost impossible that a member of any community should become a great philosopher: the spirit of a society, of a monastick society in particular, and more perhaps than any other, the domineering spirit of the Jesuits, that of a servile devotion to their superiors, are so many fetters to reason, repugnant to that freedom of thinking which is so necessary to philosophy. [Pg 38] Malebranche is the only philosopher of eminence that ever belonged to a regular congregation ”

“ The Jansenists, devoid of consideration as well as abilities, will have us think just as they do: if they were masters, they would exercise over our writings, over our understandings, over our discourses, the most violent inquisition. Happily it is not much to be feared, that they will ever acquire much credit: the rigor which they profess will not make its way at court, where folks are very desirous of being Christians, but on condition that it cost them little; and their doctrine of Predestination [Pg 201] and Grace is too harsh and too absurd not to shock their minds. ”

“ I know not which: they told him he was mistaken, for that the officer was an Atheist: “If he be only an Atheist,” replied the prince, “that is another affair, and I have nothing to say to it.” This answer, which some have wanted to turn into ridicule, was however extremely wise: the prince, as head of the state, has nothing to fear from an Atheist, who is silent, and dogmatizes not. Such a wretch, while extremely culpable in the eyes of God and of reason, is hurtful only to himself, and not to others: the party-man, the disputant, disturbs society by his idle controversies. ”

“ How is it possible, that the same species of beings which invented the art of writing, arithmetic, astronomy, algebra, chemistry, watch-work, the art of weaving, so many things in short worthy of admiration in the mechanical and liberal arts, should have invented the philosophy and divinity of the schools, judicial astrology, the concomitant concourse, versatile and congruous grace, the victorious delectation, absolute accidents, and so many other fooleries, as would occasion the suspending, by authority of justice, the person who should first broach them now-a-days? ”

“ Never did republican love his country as every Jesuit loves his society: the very lowest of its members interests himself in its glory, of which he thinks some rays reflect upon himself: there is not (if I may presume to say so) even to their brother the apothecary, or the cook, one among them who is not proud and jealous of it. They are all at once put in action by this single spring, which [Pg 43] one man directs at his pleasure; and it is not without reason that they have been defined “a naked sword, the hilt of which is at Rome.” ”

“ But why should persons of a religious order inspire a minister of state with hatred against them, unless it be because they have rendered themselves formidable to that minister by their intrigues? Why should Mr. Carvalho, who detested the Jesuits, leave in peace the Cordeliers, the Jacobins, and the Recollects, unless because he found the Jesuits in his way, and that the others vegetated in peace in their convents, without doing the state either [Pg 145] good or harm? Every religious and turbulent society merits, on that account alone, that a state should be purged of them ”

“ If it were not known that hatred makes arms of every thing, we should have some difficulty to believe, that during their great and fatal law-suit, it was gravely objected [Pg 34] to them as a crime, in some of the Jansenist pamphlets, that they did not assemble together so often as other monks, to say, in common, matins and prayers; as if a religious society (the first duty of which is to be useful) had nothing better to do than to chant over heavily bad Latin several hours in the day. ”

“ The philosophers, as they are called, whom they sought to maltreat, forgot, on their side, no opportunity of avenging themselves in their works; and this they did in a manner the most mortifying to the Jesuits, without too much engaging and exposing themselves. They did not say to them as the Jansenists did, “You are ambitious, intriguing, and knaves:” this accusation would not have humbled the society: they said to them, “You are blockheads; you have not among you a single man of learning, whose name is famous in Europe, and worthy of being so: you boast of your credit ”

“ The Jansenists even doubt not but, if he had lived, he would have availed himself of the circumstance of their destruction in Portugal and France, to annihilate the society: but whatever they may say, it is not probable that a pope, be he what he will, should ever forget so far his own true interests. The Jesuits are the sovereign Pontif’s Janissaries, formidable sometimes to their master, like those of the Ottoman Porte, but necessary like them to the support of the empire. ”

“ Nobody moreover could imagine that a society, lately so powerful, could ever be annihilated: their very enemies dared not flatter themselves with it fully; but they wished at least to deprive them, if it were possible, of the two principal branches of their credit, the place of confessor to their kings, and the education of the gentry. ”

“ These adversaries were much more to be dreaded by the society than plain theologists, whom the common run of mankind listen not to, understand not, and have no esteem for: they were great philosophers (as great at least as could be in those days) men of the first class in literature, excellent writers, and men of an irreproachable conduct. They had in the kingdom, and even at court, respectable and zealous friends, whom they acquired by their talents, their virtues, and the signal services for which literature was indebted to them. ”

“ In less than eight years we have seen the earth shaken, swallow up a part of Portugal, Spain, Africa, and Hungary, and terrify by its shocks several other nations; a war kindled from Lisbon to Petersbourg, for some almost uncultivated tracts in North-America; the system of Europe changing suddenly its appearance at the end of two centuries by the strict and unhoped-for union of the houses of France and Austria ”

“ If they had found in Europe as few obstacles to their domination, as in that vast country of America, it is to be believed that they would rule there at this day with the same empire: France, and the states into which philosophy has penetrated for the happiness of mankind, would without doubt have lost greatly thereby; but some other nations perhaps would not have been more to be pityed for it. The people know but one thing only, the wants of nature, and the necessity of satisfying them ”

“ To speak seriously, and without circumlocution, it is time that the laws should lend reason their aid for the annihilation of that party-spirit, which has so long disturbed the kingdom with ridiculous controversies; controversies, we are not afraid to assert it, more fatal to the state than infidelity itself, when it seeks not to make proselytes. ”

“ Jansenism, in the Port-Royal, was a blemish which it effaced by great merit: in its pretended successors it is their sole existence; and what, in the age wherein we live, is an existence so poor and ridiculous?
Accordingly it need not be doubted but the destruction of their enemies will soon bring on theirs, not with violence, but by slow degrees, by insensible transpiration, and through a necessary consequence of the contempt [Pg 205] with which that sect inspires all sensible people. ”

“ Disputes concerning religion will be despised, and fanaticism will be held in horror. The magistrates, who proscribed the fanaticism of the Jesuits, are men of too much understanding, too good subjects, too much fitted for the age they live in, to suffer another fanaticism to succeed it: even already some of them (among others Mr. de la Chalotais) have explained themselves so openly as to displease the Jansenists, and to merit the honour of being placed by them in the rank of philosophers. ”

“ Our gloomy theological quarrels confine not to the limits of the kingdom the injury and hurt they do us: they debase, in the eyes of Europe, our nation, already too much humiliated by her misfortunes: they make strangers, and even the Italians, say, “that the French know not how to be warm, excepting for billets of confession, or for buffoons, for the bull Unigenitus, or for the comick opera [20] .” ”

“ Such is the very unjust idea which a handfull [Pg 208] of fanaticks give to all Europe of the French nation, at a time nevertheless when the truely estimable part of that nation are more enlightened than ever, more taken up about useful objects, and fuller of contempt for the follies and the men that disgrace it.
It is not only the honour of France which is interested in the annihilation of these vain disputes; the honour of religion is still more concerned in it, on account of the obstacles which they oppose to the conversion of unbelievers. ”

“ The society had furnished the same motives for hatred. The publick were justly displeased at seeing persons of a religious order, devoted by their very profession to humility, to retirement and silence, directing the consciences of kings, educating the gentry, caballing at court, in the city, and in the provinces. Nothing irritates reasonable people more, than men who have renounced the world, and yet [Pg 139] seek to govern it. ”

“ As long as this spirit shall subsist among us, the maxim of which fanaticks make an ill use so often, “That it is better to obey God than man,” will be an invincible obstacle to the most prudent measures of government and of magistrates for stifling religious quarrels; because men like better to obey a master of their own chusing (and who, after all, commands them to do only what they please) than a master whom they have not chosen, and who enjoins them what they dislike. ”

“ If the culture of the sciences and of letters has contributed to render the society commendable, and intrigue to make it powerful, another circumstance has not a little served to render it formidable to its enemies: and that is the union of all its members for the good of the common cause. In other societies, the interests and reciprocal hatred of individuals almost always hurt the good of the corps ”

“ A second reason of the superiority of the Jesuits over the other orders, in respect to the sciences and knowledge, is, that they have sufficient time for resigning themselves up to study, enjoying in this point as much liberty as can possibly be enjoyed in a regular community, not being subjected, as the other orders are, to the minute practices of devotion, and to offices which absorb the greatest part of the day. ”

“ But individuals, how numerous and animated soever they be, have very little force against a body: accordingly the Jesuits so decryed, so attacked, so detested, would subsist perhaps still with more lustre than ever, if they had not had for irreconcileable enemies other bodies still subsisting as well as them, and as constantly taken up with the project of exterminating them, as they have been with that of aggrandizing themselves. ”

“ There is no cause, however, for blaming with severity this apparent contradiction; though we should disapprove, in logical rigour, of what it is not our province to decide upon, we ought still more to excuse it, on account of the law of nature which existed before there were Jansenists and Jesuits. Those who have hampered themselves in the institution of the society, did it altogether under the protection of the publick faith and the laws: if they have refused to renounce it, it may be thro’ a delicacy of conscience ever to be respected, even in men who are wrong. ”

“ The heresy of that monk did not meet with the success it might have had, because it stuck half way. Pelagius, while he restored to freedom her rights, imposed on her severe ties, by the morality which he recommended to practice: this morality was that of the Christian religion in all its austerity, the renouncing of one’s-self, a penitence the most rigorous, and an eternal warfare [Pg 53] against the passions. The Jesuits perceived that these painful duties were not made for the common run of mankind, and it was the multitude they wanted to attract to them. ”

“ I say reason, and not irreligion: this is a precaution necessary to be taken; for the theology of the Jansenists is, as we have seen, so reasonable, that they are apt to consider the words reason and irreligion as synonimous. It is certain that the annihilation of the society may be productive of great advantages to reason, provided the intolerant spirit of Jansenism succeed not in credit to Jesuitical intolerance ”

“ Mankind indeed are seldom led by cold and calm spirits. Tranquill reason has not, of herself alone, the warmth so necessary to enforce her opinions, and make us enter into her views: she is content with instructing her age silently, and without bustle, and to become afterwards a mere spectatress of the effect, whether good or bad, which her lessons shall have produced. ”