Juliette

  “Assuredly, if we believe the universe created and governed by a being whose might, wisdom, and goodness are infinite, we are obliged to conclude that all evil must necessarily be excluded from this universe; well, you will not gainsay that the eternal unhappiness of most of the individuals embraced in the human species would constitute a positive and absolute evil. Fie! what an infamous role you give your infamous God to play by supposing him guilty of such barbarity. To be brief, eternal torturings combine very ill with the infinite goodness of the God you have in mind: so either cease trying to make me believe therein, or get rid of your savage dogma of sufferings everlasting, do one or the other if you seriously wish to see me adopt your God for a single instant. Rejecting the dogma of hell, we may likewise dismiss the other of paradise; both are the wicked inventions of theological despots who by terrorizing men’s minds strove to ensure their obedience to sovereigns. Let us be assured of it: that we are made of matter only, that what is immaterial is inexistent; that all we attribute to the soul is all simply the effect of matter; and this in spite of our human pride which causes us to stress the distinction between ourselves and brute beasts however it be that, like beasts, we yield up to the dust the dust whereof we are made, and when dead shall be no more punished than they for the bad deeds which the kind of organization we have received from Nature has induced us to commit, nor more rewarded for the good deeds we perform simply because we have been otherwise structured. And so, as regards the fate awaiting you after this life, whether you conduct yourself well or ill, it amounts to the same; and if we shall have succeeded in passing every single instant of the term allotted us amidst pleasures, even though this manner of existence may have been unruly, may have caused disturbance to everybody about us, have gone counter to every social convention; if, I say, we shall have shielded ourselves from the law—and this is encumbent upon us, it is the one essential—then most assuredly, most certainly we shall have done far better, been far happier than the fool who, from awful dread of punishments in an afterlife, has in this one rigorously eschewed everything which might have gladdened and afforded him delectation; for it is of infinitely greater importance to achieve happiness in this life whereof we are sure, than to forego the indisputable joys offered us here and now in the hope of acceding to imaginary ones of which we have not, and cannot possibly have, the faintest idea. Eh! he must have been a prodigiously droll fellow, he who attempted to persuade men that they may become unhappier when dead than they were before they were born! Has anyone ever asked to enter into this world? Do men endow themselves with the passions which, according to your gruesome creed, hurl them into eternal woes in the next world? Why no! not at all, none of this is the individual’s doing, it is all done to him, if fault there be it is not his, and it is unthinkable, it is fantastic, it is false that he can be punished therefore.

  “But have we not to cast a glance at our miserable species to ascertain that there is no hint here of immortality? What! this divine quality, or let us rather say, this quality which cannot possibly exist in matter, am I to understand that any such thing could belong to this animal we call man? He who feeds, drinks, and reproduces like beasts, whose superiority over them resides in a somewhat more refined instinct, this creature is able to expect a fate so unlike any of those same beasts? who will accept such nonsense for a minute? But hold, they protest, man has achieved the sublime awareness of his God; this in itself betokens worthiness of the immortality he dreams of. Ah. And what is so sublime about this awareness of a spook, unless you wish to imply that because man has carried his ravings over a particular subject to their final conclusion, he must now rave in connection with everything else? O poor wretch! if thou hast some advantage over animals, how many are their advantages over thee? Art thou not susceptible to a hundred times as many infirmities or diseases? Art thou not the victim of a hundred times as many passions? Weigh it up and tell me whether, in the over-all, man is really better off than the beast. Do you find that the scales still tip in his favor? And this slight advantage you accord him, is it so great as to warrant his proud notion that he is due eternally to outlive his four-footed brethren? O pitiful humanity, look to what lengths of folly thou hast been urged by thine inflated self-esteem! And when thou shalt make riddance of all these chimeras which obstruct thy view, shalt not thou see thyself as no more than a beast, thy God as merely the ne plus ultra of human extravagance, and this life but a road passing from nought to nought, and which thou mayest travel as thou wilst, in vice as confidently as in virtue?

  “But with your leave I shall deepen the discussion and enter more thoroughly into the knotty questions confronting us now.

  “Certain Church Fathers maintain that Jesus descended into hell. How often this contention has been attacked and refuted! We shall not catalogue and inspect severally the various theses which have treated of this subject: the philosophical spirit—and we address ourselves to no other—would very probably make short work of them. The facts are these: neither Scripture nor any of its commentaries is positively decided either upon the specific whereabouts of hell or upon the precise tortures you undergo there. This being granted, we next find that the Word of God clarifies nothing, whereas the teaching of Scripture, we all agree, ought to be plainly and distinctly set forth, above all as regards a matter of such high consequence. However, research fails to discover either in the Hebrew text or in the Greek and Latin versions, a single word designating hell in its traditionally or still currently accepted meaning: that is, a place reserved for the torture of sinners. Is this not very telling evidence against the soundness of the opinion held by those who maintain that these tortures really exist? If Scripture omits any mention of hell, by what right, pray tell, do they presume to entertain such a notion? Are we bound, in religious questions, to believe anything over and beyond what is written? Well, if this opinion appears nowhere in writing, in pursuance of what are we to adopt it? It does not beseem us to trouble our minds about what has not been revealed; and whatever has not been we cannot legitimately regard as other than fable, vague supposition, human tradition, imposture’s inventions. Scholarship discloses nevertheless that near Jerusalem there was a locality known as the valley of Gehenna, where criminals were put to death and into which the corpses of animals were thrown also. It is to this place Jesus refers in his allegories when he says, Illic erit fletus et stridor dentium. This was a vale of tears, of suffering and horror: and there appears to be no doubt it is to Gehenna he is alluding in his parables, in his unintelligible speeches. Our belief receives further confirmation from the fact that torture by fire was practiced in this valley: there the guilty were burnt alive; at other times they were buried to the knees in dung. Or round their neck was looped a length of cloth whose ends were pulled by two men, so strangling the victim and forcing him to open his mouth into which molten lead was poured—there we have the fire, the torture, whereof the Galilean spoke. We often hear him say that such and such a sin merits punishment by fire, that is, the miscreant deserves to be burnt in the valley of Gehenna or flung upon the dung heap and burned with the animal carrion that was dumped in this noisome awful place. But, you may point out, the adjective eternal Jesus frequently uses to qualify this fire, does it not bear out the contention of those who believe the flames of hell shall burn forever? By no means. Often employed in Scripture, this term eternal always connotes the finite. For example, God concluded an eternal alliance with his chosen people; nevertheless, this alliance came to an end. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were to burn eternally; but that blaze died out a good long while ago.16 Furthermore, it is common knowledge that the fire in the valley of Gehenna, near Jerusalem, was kept lit by night and by day. We also know that great use is made of hyperbole in Scripture, and that not a line of it should be taken literally. These exaggerations are enough; must one go a step farther, as is regularly done, and twist the underlying meaning of things? Indeed, must not such magnifiers be regarded as the most definite enemies of good sense and reason? br />
  “But what then is the nature of the fire they menace us with? (1) It cannot be tangible, because we are told our fire is but a faint image of it; (2) a tangible fire illuminates the area surrounding it, and we are assured that hell is a tenebrous place; (3) tangible fire promptly consumes all combustible materials, and finally consumes itself, instead of which hellfire must last indefinitely and consume eternally; (4) hellfire is invisible, hence it is not at all tangible; (5) tangible fire goes out for lack of fuel, and, according to our absurd religion, hellfire will burn forever; (6) hellfire is eternal, tangible fire is temporary; (7) it is said that the worst of the torments the damned have to endure is the privation of God; however, in this life experience “shows that tangible fire can be far more painful than the absence of God.

  “8) Lastly, tangible fire can have no effect upon spirits, therefore hellfire can have no effect upon them. To say that God can contrive in such a way that a material fire acts upon spiritual beings; that he will make these spirits to live and subsist without sustenance, and that he will make the fire to burn without combustibles—this is to resort to wonderful suppositions for which there is no warrant apart from the idle reveries of theologians, and which consequently prove only their stupidity or their wickedness.

  “To come to the conclusion that, because nothing is impossible for God, God will do everything possible is surely no very logical way of reasoning. Men would be well advised to refrain from basing their fond hopes upon God’s omnipotence, when they do not even know what God is. In order to elude these difficulties, other theologians assure us that hellfire is not tangible at all, no, according to them it is spiritual. Perhaps you will be good enough to tell me, what is a spiritual fire? what is an immaterial, incorporeal, non-substantial fire? Some there are who speak to us of such a thing; what do you fancy they are talking about? do you suppose they themselves have the slightest idea? where, in what connection, upon what occasion does their God explain to them the nature of their fire? Again, however, we find a few doctors who, hunting for a happy medium, assert that this fire is partly spiritual, partly material. Which gives us, oh behold! two different sorts of fire in hell; how preposterous! What devices is superstition not driven to resort to as it constructs its sand-castles of falsehood!

  “And likewise, when pressed to produce something plausible concerning the location of this fabulous hell, what an outrageous higgledy-piggledy of farfetched speculations has been invented! The prevailing feeling had been that hell lay in a region somewhere below the earth; but where is that region in relation to a revolving globe? Others, recognizing the world as round, placed hell at its center, that is, some fifteen hundred leagues from where we are standing now; but if Scripture says true, the world is going to be destroyed, and where will hell be when that comes to pass? Well, you observe the wild nonsense that results when one puts one’s faith in the ravings of others. Less extravagant reasoners claim, as I mentioned a moment ago, that hell consists in being barred from the vision of God; in which case hell starts right here in this world, for hereabouts there’s neither hide nor hair of that God to be seen: and yet this state of affairs can hardly, you’ll agree, be called unendurable. One is tempted to imagine the reverse: if this queer God did truly exist such as he is depicted to us, the mere sight of him would probably constitute a very adequate image of hell.

  “All these incertitudes and the scanty concordance amongst the theologians indicate that the latter are wandering about in a fog and a delusion and, like drunkards, are unable to get their bearings, let alone keep their footing; and nevertheless, is it not curious that they cannot come to some manner of terms over so essential a dogma, and one which, they say, is so clearly expounded in the Word of God?

  “So, shavepate rabble, own that this gigantic grisly dogma of yours is utterly baseless, all made up, that it is the product of your greed, your ambition, and sired by your unhinged mentalities; that it cannot stand unless crutched up by the ignorant terrors of the vulgar simpleton you train to swallow, uncritically, everything you are pleased to serve up to him. Admit that this hell exists nowhere but in your brain, and that the infernal tortures you brandish are so many anxieties it suits your political convenience to inflict upon the mortals who let themselves be guided by you. Aware of these facts, let us forever abjure a doctrine which only affrights men, constitutes an insult to the godhead, and, in a word, must be repudiated by any reasoning person.

  “Various arguments are yet put forward; I think it incumbent upon me to combat them. (1) The fear which, they say, everyone senses inwardly of some punishment to come is an indubitable proof of that punishment’s reality. But this fear is by no means innate; it is inculcated, fostered by education; it is not in every land the same, nor the same in all men; it is not found amongst those in whom passions have annihilated prejudice; the conscience is never modified save by instruction, by ruling passions, by habit.

  “2) The pagans acknowledged the dogma of hell…. Surely not as do we; and supposing that they might have acknowledged it, we who reject their religion, must we not reject their dogmas as well? But it is very certain the pagans never believed in an afterlife of everlasting sufferings; nor in the pathetic claptrap of the resurrection of bodies, which they burned on pyres, and whose ashes they preserved in urns; they did believe in metempsychosis, in the transmigration also of bodies, ideas for which there is a great deal to be said arid which natural studies repeatedly confirm; but the absurd conceit of bodily resurrection, very worthy of Christianity, belongs entirely to it. It would strongly appear that our doctors got their notions of a nether world, of paradise, and of purgatory out of Plato and Virgil, and that they then shaped them to suit their own purposes: nebulous vagaries of poetical fancy were in time changed into articles of faith.

  “3) If there is such a thing as sanity and healthy reason, then the dogma of a hell and of eternal punishment is necessarily proven true. God is just, therefore he must punish men for their crimes…. No, and no again; never could sanity, never could healthy reason subscribe to a dogma which so blatantly outrages it.

  “4) But God is a judge, his justice must be done…. Another atrocity: evil is necessary on earth. I say unto you that if your God exists, his justice cannot consist in punishing deeds he has himself prescribed; if he is omnipotent, your God, has he need of punishing the evildoer in order to prevent the doing of evil? Could he not, can he not today, deprive men altogether of the capacity for evil? If he did not do this originally, if he will not do it tomorrow, it is because he considers evil necessary to the maintenance of general harmony; and in the light of this, how, vile blasphemers! how dare you say God can punish a mode of behavior which must exist if the universe is to run aright?

  “5) All theologians concur in believing and preaching the existence of the punishments of hell…. Does this prove anything except that the priests, usually so disunited, are nonetheless very able to reach an understanding whenever it is a question of deceiving their flocks? Furthermore, must the ambitious and calculating inventions of Romish clerics dictate what the opinions of other sects are to be? Is it reasonable to expect the whole of mankind to believe what a grubby little minority found it advantageous to devise and proclaim? Must one then rather place one’s faith in these cheats than in reason, common sense, and truth? It is by truth we should be ruled, not by the mob; far better to rely upon one man who speaks true than to heed the knaves who have been spouting lies for centuries.

  “The other arguments they advance are all so patently weak that one has difficulty taking them seriously and little inclination to waste one’s time refuting them; none of them reposing either upon Scripture or upon tradition, they all necessarily collapse of themselves. For example, unanimous consent is alleged; but can it be, when it is impossible to find any two individuals who follow the same line of reasoning about what is apparently one of the most important things in life?

  “Realizing they have not a single sound argument on their side, these fierce priests are
always fully prepared to threaten you; despite the fact that, as everybody knows by now, threats are the weapons of the simple-minded, the feeble, and the defeated. Come, come, silly little children of Jesus! give us reasons, yes, it is reasons we want out of you, not bluster, rant, and fist-shakings: we do not wish to be told, ‘Since you do not choose to believe in these tortures, you are going to feel them’; we merely ask, and with this request you cannot successfully comply: demonstrate to us that by virtue of which you would have us believe in your fictions.

  “The fear of hell, in short, is no sure guarantee against sin…. Nothing, anywhere, authorizes any such fear…. It is only too obviously the fruit of the diseased imagination of priests, of, that is, those personages who comprise the vilest and the most mischievous class in society. So what purpose does the hell myth serve? I put anyone at defiance to tell me. They assure us that sin is an infinite wrong and ought hence to be punished infinitely. Rubbish. God himself chose to prescribe a finite punishment for this crime, and that punishment is death.

  “And so we conclude that the puerile dogma of hell is a fairy tale of sacerdotal contrivance, a cruel supposition hazarded by gowned rascals who began by fabricating a dreary, a disgusting God in their own image, in order then to have this loathsome dummy repeat what sorted best with their own passions and, above all, to repeat whatever was most likely to procure them whores or money, the sole objects ambitioned by that covetous, that shiftless lot, that crew of social outcasts whereof society would be wonderfully well advised to purge itself definitively.17