Jean le Rond d'Alembert

“ 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? ”

“ 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 ”

“ In 1714 she abandoned her conventual life and went to Paris, where she rose to influence as the mistress of Cardinal Dubois and of the regent, the Duke of Orléans. At Paris her real activity began; she arrived at that gay capital with no other collateral than a pretty face and an extraordinary cunning, which soon brought her a fortune. Fertile in resources of all kinds, she succeeded immediately, and gained for her nephew the cardinal's hat. In 1717 was born to her the afterward famous d'Alembert, whom she left upon the steps of the church Saint-Jean-le-Rond ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is perhaps the only one of all the societies, as the house of Austria is the only one of all the powers of Europe, which has observed an uniform and constant policy; an inestimable advantage to societies and sovereign houses. Individuals only pass away, and are subject in that short space to a small circle of events, which by no means permit them to have any immutable system. Bodies and great houses subsist for a long time ”

“ 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 ”

“ What pity that those writers of the Port-Royal, those men of such superior [Pg 82] merit, should have thrown away so much genius and time in ridiculous controversies on the good or bad doctrine of Jansenius, on idle and endless discussions on free-will and grace, and on the important question, Whether five unintelligible propositions be in a book which nobody reads? Tormented, imprisoned, exiled for these vain disputes, and employed perpetually in defending so futile a cause, how many years of their lives have philosophy and letters to regret as lost! ”

“ 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 ”

“ But there are other tenets, as those of Predestination and of Grace, which border on practical religion, and which, preached in all their rigour to minds that are unprepared, would be little adapted to make proselytes. We must take great care, said the wise and pious Fleury, not to propose at once to infidels, those articles of our belief, which might shock them too much. ”

“ The pope thought he might permit Norbert to remain at Rome under his protection. He had not the power to do it: the Jesuits took their measures so well, that in the end they drove the Capuchin not only out of the pope’s territories, but even out of all the Catholick states: he was obliged to fly to London, and found not till 1759 an asylum in Portugal, when the society were driven from thence: he had the satisfaction, as he tells us himself, to assist at the execution of Malagrida, and to say mass for the repose of his soul, while they finished burning his body. ”

“ 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] .” ”

“ 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 ”

“ The war which he has made with so much success upon the society, is only the signal of the examination to which he appears desirous of having the constitutions of the other orders submitted, with a proviso of preserving those, which on such examination shall be judged useful. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What lights would they not have added to those with which they had already illumined their age, if they had not been carried away by these unhappy and pitiful distractions, so unworthy of taking up the thoughts of men like them! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Have not the professed monks, who shall renounce the institution, and who are bound besides, by their vow of poverty, and by the renunciation of their effects, a right to require the state to charge itself with their subsistence? ”

“ In exciting against the society the zeal of the magistrates, you have not [Pg iv] neglected to fix their enlightened attention on all those men, who may have with this alien society any marks of resemblance, and who, arrayed in black, gray, or white, may acknowledge like it, in the very bosom of France, another country, and another sovereign. ”

“ Nay, if any thing ought to humble them, it is that they have perished so pitifully, so obscurely, without lustre and without glory. Nothing better discovers a real weakness, which had only the appearance of strength. ”

“ The parliaments, when they began to attack the society, found this disposition in all minds. It was properly philosophy, which by the mouth of the magistrates, issued the decree against the Jesuits: Jansenism was only the sollicitor in it. The nation, and the philosophers at its head, wished the annihilation of these fathers, because they are intolerant, persecutors, turbulent, and formidable: the Jansenists desired it, because the Jesuits maintain versatile grace, [Pg 190] and themselves efficacious grace. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Provincials would be perhaps more assured of the immortality which they merit in so many respects, if their illustrious author, that genius so elevated, so universal, and so little formed for taking an interest in scholastick trumpery, had turned alike both parties into ridicule. The shocking doctrine of Jansenius, and of St. Cyran, afforded at least as much room for it as the pliant doctrine of Molina, Tambourin, and Vasquez. Every work, in which we sacrifice with success to the publick laughter fanaticks who worry one another, subsists even after those fanaticks are no more. ”

“ The society owes to the form of its institution (so decried in other respects) this variety of talents which [Pg 31] distinguish it. They reject no sort of abilities, and require no other condition, in order to be admitted among its members, but a capacity of being useful. To engage our liberty, we must pay every where, even among the Mendicants. The Jesuits know nothing of this paltry interest; they receive with pleasure and gratuitously every person from whom they hope to draw any good; nobody is useless among them ”

“ This friend represented to the Jesuit the inconsistency of his zeal: “Ah!” replied the missionary, “you have no idea of the pleasure which is felt in commanding the attention of twenty thousand people, and in persuading them to what we believe not ourselves.”
Such is the spirit of the method which the Jesuits have followed, for teaching with success to mankind what they called religion and Christian morality. Such was the moderate doctrine which they preached at the court of Louis XIV. and by means of which they succeeded in rendering themselves so agreeable. ”