“Just as I thought,” said Clairwil. “I knew that in announcing your libertinage to her you were in no danger of displeasing Juliette.”
Said Noirceuil: “Aye, temperance is a very foolish virtue, that is certain. Man is born for enjoyment, and through his debaucheries alone does he gain access to the sweetest pleasures of life. Only idiots are wont to deny themselves.”
Now Clairwil: “For my part, I believe that we owe it to ourselves to indulge blindly in everything and at all costs to pursue the happiness we situate in the midst of the extremest irregularities.”
And the Comte: “Nature counsels man to seek it nowhere else; the inconstancy that has been provided him, urging him to broaden the range of his sensations every day, conclusively shows that the fairest lie out of the way of onerous routine. Woe betide them who, setting shackles on a man’s passions while he is yet young, develop in him the habit of self-denial and thereby render him the most unfortunate of beings. What a terrifying disservice is thus done to him—”
“Let there be no mistake as to the aims of those who behave in this manner,” Noirceuil interrupted; “doubt not that they are motivated by jealousy, by vindictiveness … by fear lest others be as happy as those same pedants feel when they surrender to their own peculiar passions.”
“Superstition,” said Belmor, “has a large hand in the thing: it had inevitably to compose possible offenses to the God it created; what else could be done? A God who is never cross with anybody, vexed by nothing, instead of appearing omnipotent, soon takes on the air of helplessness; and in what more likely place could the seed of crime be located than in the spurt of passion?”
“Immense are the wrongs religion has done the world,” Noirceuil muttered.
“Of the ills afflicting mankind,” said I, “I regard it as the most dangerous; he who was the first to broach the subject to men was plainly their greatest enemy at the time, and history provides no worse since. No death however atrocious would have equaled his deserts.”
“The necessity to destroy it, to extirpate it,” said Belmor, “is not deeply enough felt in our country.”
“The task will be arduous,” said Noirceuil; “man cleaves to nothing so doggedly as to the principles he is fed in childhood. We shall perhaps someday see the people become prey to another set of prejudices quite as ridiculous as those of religion, and in the name of a new craze topple the idols of the former. But like unto the timid child, our nation will after a little begin to weep for its broken rattles and will soon put them back together again with a thousand times more fervor. No, no, philosophy is not something you shall ever observe in the people, too rude, too dense ever to be softened and refined by the sacred torch of that goddess; sacerdotal authority, perhaps enfeebled temporarily, will only re-establish itself the more forcefully, and ’twill be to the end of time you’ll see superstition supplying its venom to human thirst.”
“That is a horrible prediction.”
“It is horribly apt to be true.”
“Is there no remedy for our plight?”
“One,” said the Comte, “only one, it is violent but it is sure: we must arrest and slaughter all the priests in a single day and deal similarly with all their followers; simultaneously, inside the space of the same minute, destroy every last vestige of Catholicism; and concurrently proclaim atheistic systems, and instantly entrust to philosophers the education of our youth; print, publish, distribute, give out, everywhere display those writings which propagate incredulity, unbelief, and for fifty years prosecute and put to death every individual, without exception, who might think to re-inflate the balloon.11 But, you may hear it insolently objected to this, severity makes proselytes to a cause; intolerance is the soil wherein all martyrs grow. These replies are absurd. All this they are telling me has happened in the past, to be sure, but only because hitherto the process has been conducted far too gently, far too lazily, far too vaguely: the surgery has now and again been attempted, but cautiously, fumblingly, then suspended short of completion, never pursued to the end. You don’t confine yourself to severing one of the Hydra’s heads, it’s the entire monster you must exterminate; if your martyrs have confronted death courageously it is because they were inspired and enheartened by their predecessors. Massacre them all at a stroke, let nothing remain, and from then on you’ll have done with both sectarians and martyrs.”
“This is not an easy operation,” Clairwil hazarded.
“Infinitely easier than one might think,” Belmor replied, “and I am prepared to direct it if the government cares to place twenty-five thousand men under my command; the elements of success are some political support, secrecy, and firmness: no flabbiness, that’s essential, and no keeping people waiting in line. You fear martyrs, you’ll have them so long as a single worshiper of that abominable Christian God is left alive—”
“But,” I declared, “are you not going to be forced to wipe out two-thirds of France?”
“Not even one-third,” Belmor assured us; “but supposing the destruction were to have to be as extensive as you say, would it not be a hundred times better that our fair part of Europe be inhabited by ten million honest folk rather than by twenty-five million rascals? However, I repeat, it is exceedingly doubtful that France counts as many Christians as you seem to imagine; at any rate, separating the sheep from the goats would not take long. Compiling my lists should require no more than a year’s work in shadow and silence; and I’d not unleash the campaign until I was sure of all the objectives it entailed.”
“The bloodshed would be stupendous.”
“Granted; but it would ensure France’s health and happiness forever; it is a potent remedy administered to a vigorous body: repairing matters all at one stroke, it eliminates the need for continual purgings which, become too numerous, finally result in complete exhaustion.
“Be well persuaded of it, eighteen hundred years of thorns in France’s side have been planted there only by religious factions.”12
“From what you say, Comte, are we to infer that you think poorly of religion in general?”
“I see it weigh upon nations like a plague. Had I not such love for my country I would perhaps be less opposed to those forces which tend to maim and ruin it—”
“May the government charge you with the mission you desire,” said Noirceuil, “I too would be delighted by the results, since it would cleanse out of the portion of the globe where I live an abominable confession which I hate at least as much as you do.”
We had completed a most sumptuous meal and the hour being late, we went straight to the Sodality after coffee.
The inauguration of a president was accompanied by a curious traditional custom. The presidential chair was, as you know, upon an elevated platform; now, before and below it, a large pouf was placed, over it the new chief officer bent, and each Sodality member stepped forward in turn to kiss his ass. When he had gathered homage from everyone, the Comte rose and mounted to his throne.
“Fellow members,” he began, “love is the subject of the speech I have prepared for this august occasion. Although my remarks may appear to be addressed to men only, I believe I may venture to say that they contain virtually everything a woman need hear to ensure her protection against this grave peril.”
Then, adjusting his dress, and silence descending upon the assembly, he expressed himself in the following terms:
“The word love is used to designate that deep-seated feeling which propels us, as it were despite ourselves, toward some foreign object or other; which provokes in us a keen desire to become united to it, to ever lessen the distance between it and ourselves … which delights us, ravishes us … renders us ecstatic when we achieve that union, and which casts us into despond, which tears us asunder, whenever the intrusion of external considerations constrain us to rupture this union. If only this extravagance never led to anything more serious than pleasure intensified by the ardor, the abandon, inherent in it, it would merely be ridiculous; but as it leads us into a cer
tain metaphysic, which, confounding us with the loved object, transforming us into it, making its actions, its needs, its desires quite as vital and dear to us as our own—through this alone it becomes exceedingly dangerous, by detaching us from ourselves, and by causing us to neglect our interests in favor of the beloved’s; by identifying us, so to speak, with this object, it causes us to assume its woes, its griefs, its chagrins, and thus consequently adds to the sum of our own. Meanwhile, the dread of losing that object, or of seeing its feelings for us pale and vanish, harries us unceasingly; and though at the outset we be in the serenest of states, this cross once become our burden we gradually sink into what is doubtless the cruelest that can be imagined on earth. If the reward for so many pains, or their counterpart, were anything beyond an ordinary spasm, I might perhaps recommend risking it; but all the cares, all the torments, all the anguishes and nuisances of love never yield anything but what might be conveniently obtained without it; why then must one put on these chains! When a beautiful woman offers herself to me, and when I fall in love with her, my ambitions in her regard nevertheless remain no different from those of another who claps eyes on her and who desires her without feeling for her any sort of love at all; both he and I want to lie with her—he, ’tis but her body he desires; and I, by a fallacious and always perilous metaphysic blinding myself to the veritable motive which, howbeit, is not one whit different from my rival’s, I persuade myself that it’s only her heart I want, that all carnal possession of her is quite aside from the question, banished therefrom, and of this I persuade myself so thoroughly that I would gratefully come to an arrangement with this woman, whereby I would love her only for her self and purchase her heart at the price of sacrificing all my physical desires. There is the cruel cause of my error; there is what is about to drag me down into a frightful abyss of unhappiness, there is what is about to spoil my life: I am in love, from now on everything is going to change: suspicions, jealousies, alarms, worries are going to become my eternal fare, the very substance of my wretched existence; and the nearer I come to the day when happiness shall be mine, the greater shall be the store I set by it, and the worse shall become the fatal terror of losing it.
“By refusing the thorns of this dangerous sentiment you must not think that I deprive myself of its roses; no, this will enable me to pluck them without danger; I’ll retain only the nectar in the flower, discarding the dross of extraneous matter; likewise I’ll have possession of the body I desire and shall not have that of the soul, which is of no use to me at all. Were man to reflect more carefully upon his true interests in pleasure-taking, he would spare his heart this cruel fever that burns and wastes it: if he could but realize that there is no need to be loved in order to be satisfied, and that love acts rather to hinder than to promote the transports of enjoyment, he would disdain this metaphysic of sentiment which beclouds his understanding, confine himself to the simple enjoyment of bodies, would make acquaintance of true happiness, and would deliver himself forever from the anxieties inseparable from his baneful fineness of feeling.
“’Tis an intellectual construction … a mystification, an entirely fictitious, chimerical sensation, this delicacy we would introduce into the desire of enjoyment; it sometimes assumes considerable importance in the metaphysic of love; it’s the same here as with all illusions, they embellish one another reciprocally. But delicacy is useless, even disruptive, in all that pertains to the satisfaction of the senses: the complete inutility of love now becomes very evident, and the rational individual can no longer behold the object of his pleasures as anything more than an object which causes a sharp rise in the temperature of the neural fluids, than a creature of precious little account per se, a creature whose function is simply to contribute to the purely physical satisfaction of the desires that have caught fire from the heat it has provoked in this neural fluid, and which, this satisfaction once given and received, loses, in the thinking man’s eyes, all particular attributes, returning to its former anonymous place within its general class. It is not unique in its species, he will be able to find other samples of the same thing, equally good, equally compliable; he was living well before this encounter, why should he not live just as well after it? In what possible way could he be disturbed by this woman’s infidelity? When she lavishes her favors upon somebody else, will she be robbing her lover of anything? He has had his fair turn, what is he complaining about now? Why should somebody else not have his turn too, and what will he lose in this creature that he cannot immediately find in another? Put case that she is false to him and lies with a rival, she can quite as easily deceive that rival and get back into bed with him; she is thus no more in love with this second lover than with the first; wherefore should either of them be jealous, since neither is treated better than the other? Such regrets might, at the very most, be pardonable if this cherished woman were the only one in the world; they are preposterous once loss of her is reparable. Imagining myself for a moment in our first lover’s place, what is there about this creature, I wonder, that can give rise to my dolor? She made some fuss over my person, to my feelings made some responses; if they seemed emphatic at all, it was because illusion supplied nine-tenths of their force; mere eagerness to possess this woman, my curiosity about her, my stratagems to gain her, these embellished her in my eyes, and if the having of her does not make the scales drop away, it is either because I yet want experience in these things or am still laboring under the effects of my earlier mistakes, it is the blindfold I used to wear and was accustomed to in the days before I came to know anything about women, which, in spite of me, now returns to obscure my vision and befuddle my brain again; and I do not snatch it off and fling it away! It is weakness, it is most unmanly; the romping over with, let’s consider her analytically, this Aphrodite who dazzled us a short while ago. Here, in this moment of calm and weariness, here is the opportunity for a scientific survey; as Lucretius says, let’s have a glance into the backstage of life. Well, we shall find her, this celestial object we were enthralled by, entranced by, we shall find her endowed with the same desires, the same needs, the same shape of body, the same appetites, afflicted by the same infirmities as all the other creatures of her sex; and cold-blooded examination dispelling the ridiculous enthusiasm that drove us toward this object, in no particular different from all the rest of its kind, we shall see that in having it no more we lack nothing that cannot be easily replaced. Amenities of character comprise an element that is not relevant to our discussion; these virtues falling entirely inside the domain of friendship, they ought only be appreciated there; but, in love, I am wrong if I believe it was that which attracted me: no, it’s solely the body I love, and it’s the body alone whose loss I lament, though I can get another as good, just like it, whenever I please; how pointless now are my whinings, and how superfluous my regrets!
“Let us have the courage to acknowledge the truth: in no case is a woman designed to ensure the exclusive happiness of one man; viewed from the angle of his enjoyment, she can hardly be said to render it complete, for he obtains better and livelier in conversation with his fellows; while if now she be regarded in the role of a friend, her duplicity and her servility, or rather her baseness, scarcely favor the perfection of the sentiment of friendship; friendship requires openness and equality; when one of two friends dominates the other, friendship is destroyed; now, this preponderance of one of the two sexes over the other, fatal to friendship, exists necessarily where two friends are of unlike sex; thus, woman is good neither as a mistress nor as a friend; she is only where she belongs when in the servitude where the Orientals keep her; her usefulness extends no farther than the pleasure she can afford, after which, as good King Chilperic used to say, best have away with her as promptly as ever you can.
“If it is easy to demonstrate that love is nothing but a national superstition; that three-fourths of the world’s societies, whose custom is to keep their females under lock and key, have never been subject to the ravages of this imaginative disorde
r; so now, in tracing this superstition back to its sources, we shall have little trouble assuring ourselves that it is merely an ailment and arriving at the sure means for curing it. Now, it is certain that this our chivalric gallantry, which ridiculously proposes as the object for our veneration that object which is made only for our needs, it is certain, I say, that this attitude comes from the respect our ancestors used long ago to have for women owing to the witchcraft and the prophetic trades they exercised in the towns and rural places; terror turned respect into worship, and gallantry was born from the womb of ignorant superstition. But this respect was not natural, you’ll waste your time scanning Nature for any sign of it; the inferiority of females to males is established and patent, there is nothing in their sex which can constitute a solid title to our respect; and love, begot of this blind respect, is, like it, a superstition: respect for women increases the farther the principles animating a given government depart from those of Nature; so long as men remain obedient to her fundamental laws, however, they are bound to hold women in supremest contempt; women become gods when those laws cease to be heeded, for when Nature’s voice grows faint in men they become enfeebled, and the weaker must inevitably command where the stronger degrade themselves: wherefore it is that government is always debilitated when women reign; cite not to me the example of Turkey, if her government is weak today this was not the case before harem intrigues began to regulate its workings: the Turks destroyed the Byzantine Empire in the days when they dragged that sex in chains, and when in the presence of his marshaled army Mahomet II beheaded Irene, who was suspected of having overmuch influence upon him. Woman-worship, however mild, attests baseness and sore depravation; for it is impossible even in the moment of ecstasy, how can it be possible afterward? If because something proves serviceable this be reason for deifying it, you owe a like reverence to your bull, your donkey, your chamberpot, etc.