* See the Chronology of the Twelve Ages, in which I conceivemyself to have clearly proved that Moses lived about 1,400years before Jesus Christ, and Zoroaster about a thousand.
"Thus," continued the Mobed, turning to the Rabbins, "it was not till after that epoch, that is to say, in the time of your first kings, that these ideas began to appear in your writers; and then their appearance was obscure and gradual, according to the progress of the political relations between your ancestors and ours. It was especially when, having been conquered by the kings of Nineveh and Babylon and transported to the banks of the Tygris and the Euphrates, where they resided for three successive generations, that they imbibed manners and opinions which had been rejected as contrary to their law. When our king Cyrus had delivered them from slavery, their heart was won to us by gratitude; they became our disciples and imitators; and they admitted our dogmas in the revision of their books;* for your Genesis, in particular, was never the work of Moses, but a compilation drawn up after the return from the Babylonian captivity, in which are inserted the Chaldean opinions of the origin of the world.
* In the first periods of the Christian church, not only themost learned of those who have since been denominatedheretics, but many of the orthodox conceived Moses to havewritten neither the law nor the Pentateuch, but that thework was a compilation made by the elders of the people andthe Seventy, who, after the death of Moses, collected hisscattered ordinances, and mixed with them things that wereextraneous; similar to what happened as to the Koran ofMahomet. See Les Clementines, Homel. 2. sect. 51. andHomel. 3. sect. 42.Modern critics, more enlightened or more attentive than theancients, have found in Genesis in particular, marks of itshaving been composed on the return from the captivity; butthe principal proofs have escaped them. These I mean toexhibit in an analysis of the book of Genesis, in which Ishall demonstrate that the tenth chapter, among others,which treats of the pretended generations of the man calledNoah, is a real geographical picture of the world, as it wasknown to the Hebrews at the epoch of the captivity, whichwas bounded by Greece or Hellas at the West, mount Caucasusat the North, Persia at the East, and Arabia and Upper Egyptat the South. All the pretended personages from Adam toAbraham, or his father Terah, are mythological beings,stars, constellations, countries. Adam is Bootes: Noah isOsiris: Xisuthrus Janus, Saturn; that is to say Capricorn,or the celestial Genius that opened the year. TheAlexandrian Chronicle says expressly, page 85, that Nimrodwas supposed by the Persians to be their first king, ashaving invented the art of hunting, and that he wastranslated into heaven, where he appears under the name ofOrion.
"At first the pure followers of the law, opposing to the emigrants the letter of the text and the absolute silence of the prophet, endeavored to repel these innovations; but they ultimately prevailed, and our doctrine, modified by your ideas, gave rise to a new sect.
"You expected a king to restore your political independence; we announced a God to regenerate and save mankind. From this combination of ideas, your Essenians laid the foundation of Christianity: and whatever your pretensions may be, Jews, Christians, Mussulmans, you are, in your system of spiritual beings, only the blundering followers of Zoroaster."
The Mobed, then passing on to the details of his religion, quoting from the Zadder and the Zendavesta, recounted, in the same order as they are found in the book of Genesis, the creation of the world in six gahans,* the formation of a first man and a first woman, in a divine place, under the reign of perfect good; the introduction of evil into the world by the great snake, emblem of Ahrimanes; the revolt and battles of the Genius of evil and darkness against Ormuzd, God of good and of light; the division of the angels into white and black, or good and bad; their hierarchal orders, cherubim, seraphim, thrones, dominions, etc.; the end of the world at the close of six thousand years; the coming of the lamb, the regenerator of nature; the new world; the future life, and the regions of happiness and misery; the passage of souls over the bridge of the bottomless pit; the celebration of the mysteries of Mithras; the unleavened bread which the initiated eat; the baptism of new-born children; the unction of the dead; the confession of sins; and, in a word, he recited so many things analagous to those of the three preceding religions, that his discourse seemed like a commentary or a continuation of the Koran or the Apocalypse.**
* Or periods, or in six gahan-bars, that is six periods oftime. These periods are what Zoroaster calls the thousandsof God or of light, meaning the six summer months. In thefirst, say the Persians, God created (arranged in order) theheavens; in the second the waters; in the third the earth;in the fourth trees; in the fifth animals; and in the sixthman; corresponding with the account in Genesis. Forparticulars see Hyde, ch. 9, and Henry Lord, ch. 2, on thereligion of the ancient Persians. It is remarkable that thesame tradition is found in the sacred books of theEtrurians, which relate that the fabricator of all thingshad comprised the duration of his work in a period of twelvethousand years, which period was distributed to the twelvehouses of the sun. In the first thousand, God made heavenand earth; in the second the firmament; in the third the seaand the waters; in the fourth the sun, moon and stars; inthe fifth the souls of animals, birds, and reptiles; in thesixth man. See Suidas, at the word Tyrrhena; which showsfirst the identity of their theological and astrologicalopinions; and, secondly, the identity, or rather confusionof ideas, between absolute and systematical creation; thatis, the periods assigned for renewing the face of nature,which were at first the period of the year, and afterwardsperiods of 60, of 600, of 25,000, of 36,000 and of 432,000years.** The modern Parses and the ancient Mithriacs, who are thesame sect, observe all the Christian sacraments, even thelaying on of hands in confirmation. The priest of Mithra,says Tertullian, (de Proescriptione, ch. 40) promisesabsolution from sin on confession and baptism; and, if Irightly remember, Mithra marks his soldiers in the forehead,with the chrism called in the Egyptian Kouphi; he celebratesthe sacrifice of bread, which is the resurrection, andpresents the crown to his followers, menacing them at thesame time with the sword, etc.In these mysteries they tried the courage of the initiatedwith a thousand terrors, presenting fire to his face, asword to his breast, etc.; they also offered him a crown,which he refused, saying, God is my crown: and this crown isto be seen in the celestial sphere by the side of Bootes.The personages in these mysteries were distinguished by thenames of the animal constellations. The ceremony of mass isnothing more than an imitation of these mysteries and thoseof Eleusis. The benediction, the Lord be with you, is aliteral translation of the formula of admission chou-k, am,p-ka. See Beausob. Hist. Du Manicheisme, vol. ii.
But the Jewish, Christian, and Mahometan doctors, crying out against this recital, and treating the Parses as idolaters and worshippers of fire, charged them with falsehood, interpolations, falsification of facts; and there arose a violent dispute as to the dates of the events, their order and succession, the origin of the doctrines, their transmission from nation to nation, the authenticity of the books on which they are founded, the epoch of their composition, the character of their compilers, and the validity of their testimony. And the various parties, pointing out reciprocally to each other, the contradictions, improbabilities, and forgeries, accused one another of having established their belief on popular rumors, vague traditions, and absurd fables, invented without discernment, and admitted without examination by unknown, partial, or ignorant writers, at uncertain or unknown epochs.
A great murmur now arose from under the standards of the various Indian sects; and the Bramins, protesting against the pretensions of the Jews and the Parses, said:
"What are these new and almost unheard of nations, who arrogantly set themselves up as the sources of the human race, and the depositaries of its archives? To hear their calculations of five or six thousand years, it would seem that the world was of yesterday; whereas our monuments prove a duration of many thousands of centuries. And for what reason are their books to be preferred to ours? Are then the Vedes, the Chastres, and the Pourans inferior to the Bibles, the Zendavestas, and the Zadders?* And is not the testimony of our fathers and our gods as valid as that of the fathers and the gods of the West? Ah! if it were permitted to reveal our mysteries to profane men! if a sacred veil did not justly conceal them from every eye!"
These are the sacred volumes of the Hindoos; they are sometimes written Vedams, Pouranams, Chastrans, because the Hindoos, like the Persians, are accustomed to give a nasal sound to the terminations of their words, which we represent by the affixes on and an, and the Portuguese by the affixes om and am. Many of these books have been translated, thanks to the liberal spirit of Mr. Hastings, who has founded at Calcutta a literary society, and a printing press. At the same time, however, that we express our gratitude to this society, we must be permitted to complain of its exclusive spirit; the number of copies printed of each book being such as it is impossible to purchase them even in England; they are wholly in the hands of the East India proprietors. Scarcely even is the Asiatic Miscellany known in Europe; and a man must be very learned in oriental antiquity before he so much as hears of the Jones's, the Wilkins's, and the Halhed's, etc. As to the sacred books of the Hindoos, all that are yet in our hands are the Bhagvat Geeta, the Ezour-Vedam, the Bagavadam, and certain fragments of the Chastres printed at the end of the Bhagvat Geeta. These books are in Indostan what the Old and New Testament are in Christendom, the Koran in Turkey, the Zadder and the Zendavesta among the Parses, etc. When I have taken an extensive survey of their contents, I have sometimes asked myself, what would be the loss to the human race if a new Omar condemned them to the flames; and, unable to discover any mischief that would ensue, I call the imaginary chest that contains them, the box of Pandora.
The Bramins stopping short at these words: "How can we admit your doctrine," said the legislator, "if you will not make it known? And how did its first authors propagate it, when, being alone possessed of it, their own people were to them profane? Did heaven reveal it to be kept a secret?"*
* The Vedas or Vedams are the sacred volumes of the Hindoos,as the Bibles with us. They are three in number; the RickVeda, the Yadjour Veda, and the Sama Veda; they are soscarce in India, that the English could with greatdifficulty find an original one, of which a copy isdeposited in the British Museum; they who reckon four Vedas,include among them the Attar Veda, concerning ceremonies,but which is lost. There are besides commentaries namedUpanishada, one of which was published by Anquetil du Peron,and entitled Oupnekhat, a curious work. The date of thesebooks is more than twenty-five centuries prior to our era;their contents prove that all the reveries of the Greekmetaphysicians come from India and Egypt. Since the year1788, the learned men of England are working in India a mineof literature totally unknown in Europe, and which provesthat the civilization of India ascends to a very remoteantiquity. After the Vedas come the Chastras amounting tosix. They treat of theology and the Sciences. Afterwardseighteen Pouranas, treating of Mythology and History. Seethe Bahgouet-guita, the Baga Vadam, and the Ezour-Vedam,etc.
But the Bramins persisting in their silence: "Let them have the honor of the secret," said a European: "Their doctrine is now divulged; we have their books, and I can give you the substance of them."
Then beginning with an abstract of the four Vedes, the eighteen Pourans, and the five or six Chastres, he recounted how a being, infinite, eternal, immaterial and round, after having passed an eternity in self-contemplation, and determining at last to manifest himself, separated the male and female faculties which were in him, and performed an act of generation, of which the Lingam remains an emblem; how that first act gave birth to three divine powers, Brama, Bichen or Vichenou, and Chib or Chiven;* whose functions were—the first to create, the second to preserve, and the third to destroy, or change the form of the universe. Then, detailing the history of their operations and adventures, he explained how Brama, proud of having created the world and the eight bobouns, or spheres of probation, thought himself superior to Chib, his equal; how his pride brought on a battle between them, in which these celestial globes were crushed like a basket of eggs; how Brama, vanquished in this conflict, was reduced to serve as a pedestal to Chib, metamorphosed into a Lingam; how Vichenou, the god mediator, has taken at different times to preserve the world, nine mortal forms of animals; how first, in shape of a fish, he saved from the universal deluge a family who repeopled the earth; how afterwards, in the form of a tortoise,** he drew from the sea of milk the mountain Mandreguiri (the pole); then, becoming a boar, he tore the belly of the giant Ereuniachessen, who was drowning the earth in the abyss of Djole, from whence he drew it out with his tusks; how, becoming incarnate in a black shepherd, and under the name of Christ-en, he delivered the world of the enormous serpent Calengem, and then crushed his head, after having been wounded by him in the heel.
* These names are differently pronounced according to thedifferent dialects; thus they say Birmah, Bremma, Brouma.Bichen has been turned into Vichen by the easy exchange of aB for a V, and into Vichenou by means of a grammaticalaffix. In the same manner Chib, which is synonymous withSatan, and signifies adversary, is frequently written Chibaand Chiv-en; he is called also Rouder and Routr-en, that is,the destroyer.** This is the constellation testudo, or the lyre, which wasat first a tortoise, on account of its slow motion round thePole; then a lyre, because it is the shell of this reptileon which the strings of the lyre are mounted. See anexcellent memoir of M. Dupuis sur l'Origine desConstellations.
Then, passing on to the history of the secondary Genii, he related how the Eternal, to display his own glory, created various orders of angels, whose business it was to sing his praises and to direct the universe; how a part of these angels revolted under the guidance of an ambitious chief, who strove to usurp the power of God, and to govern all; how God plunged them into a world of darkness, there to undergo the punishment for their crimes; how at last, touched with compassion, he consented to release them, to receive them into favor, after they should undergo a long series of probations; how, after creating for this purpose fifteen orbits or regions of planets, and peopling them with bodies, he ordered these rebel angels to undergo in them eighty-seven transmigrations; he then explained how souls, thus purified, returned to the first source, to the ocean of life and animation from which they had proceeded; and since all living creatures contain portions of this universal soul, he taught how criminal it was to deprive them of it. He was finally proceeding to explain the rites and ceremonies, when, speaking of offerings and libations of milk and butter made to gods of copper and wood, and then of purifications by the dung and urine of cows, there arose a universal murmur, mixed with peals of laughter, which interrupted the orator.
Each of the different groups began to reason on that religion: "They are idolators," said the Mussulmans; "and should be exterminated." "They are deranged in their intellect," said the followers of Confucius; "we must try to cure them." "What ridiculous gods," said others, "are these puppets, besmeared with grease and smoke! Are gods to be washed like dirty children, from whom you must brush away the flies, which, attracted by honey, are fouling them with their excrements!"
But a Bramin exclaimed with indignation: "These are profound mysteries,—emblems of truth, which you are not worthy to hear."
"And in what respect are you more worthy than we?" exclaimed a Lama of Tibet. "Is it because you pretend to have issued from the head of Brama, and the rest of the human race from the less noble parts of his body? But to support the pride of your distinctions of origin and castes, prove to us in the first place that you are different from other men; establish, in the next place, as historical facts, the allegories which you relate; show us, indeed, that you are the authors of all this doctrine; for we will demonstrate, if necessary, that you have only stolen and disfigured it; that you are only the imitators of the ancient paganism of the West; to which, by an ill assorted mixture, you have allied the pure and spiritual doctrine of our gods—a doctrine totally detached from the senses, and entirely unknown on earth till Beddou taught it to the nations."*
* All the ancient opinions of the Egyptian and Greciantheologians are to be found in India, and they appear tohave been introduced, by means of the commerce of Arabia andthe vicinity of Persia, time immemorial.
A number of groups having asked what was this doctrine, and who was this god, of whom the greater part had never heard the name, the Lama resumed and said:
"In the beginning, a sole-existent and self-existent God, having passed an eternity in the contemplation of his own being, resolved to manifest his perfections out of himself, and created the matter of the world. The four elements being produced, but still in a state of confusion, he breathed on the face of the waters, which swelled like an immense bubble in form of an egg, which unfolding, became the vault or orb of heaven, enclosing the world.* Having made the earth, and the bodies of animals, this God, essence of motion, imparted to them a part of his own being to animate them; for this reason, the soul of everything that breathes being a portion of the universal soul, no one of them can perish; they only change their form and mould in passing successively into different bodies. Of all these forms, the one most pleasing to God is that of man, as most resembling his own perfections. When a man, by an absolute disengagement from his senses, is wholly absorbed in self-contemplation, he then discovers the divinity, and becomes himself God. Of all the incarnations of this kind that God has hitherto taken, the greatest and most solemn was that in which he appeared thirty centuries ago in Kachemire, under the name of Fot or Beddou, to preach the doctrines of self-denial and self-annihilation."
* This cosmogony of the Lamas, the Bonzes, and even theBramins, as Henry Lord asserts, is literally that of theancient Egyptians. The Egyptians, says Porphyry, call Kneph,intelligence, or efficient cause of the universe. Theyrelate that this God vomited an egg, from which was producedanother God named Phtha or Vulcan, (igneous principle or thesun) and they add, that this egg is the world. Euseb.Proep. Evang. p. 115.They represent, says the same author in another place, theGod Kneph, or efficient cause, under the form of a man indeep blue (the color of the sky) having in his hand asceptre, a belt round his body, and a small bonnet royal oflight feathers on his head, to denote how very subtile andfugacious the idea of that being is. Upon which I shallobserve that Kneph in Hebrew signifies a wing, a feather,and that this color of sky-blue is to be found in themajority of the Indian Gods, and is, under the name ofNarayan, one of their most distinguishing epithets.
Then, pursuing the history of Fot, the Lama continued:
"He was born from the right flank of a virgin of royal blood, who did not cease to be a virgin for having become a mother; that the king of the country, uneasy at his birth, wished to destroy him, and for this purpose ordered a massacre of all the males born at that period, that being saved by shepherds, Beddou lived in the desert till the age of thirty years, at which time he began his mission to enlighten men and cast out devils; that he performed a multitude of the most astonishing miracles; that he spent his life in fasting and severe penitence, and at his death, bequeathed to his disciples a book containing his doctrines."
And the Lama began to read:
"He that leaveth his father and mother to follow me," says Fot, "becomes a perfect Samanean (a heavenly man).
"He that practices my precepts to the fourth degree of perfection, acquires the faculty of flying in the air, of moving heaven and earth, of prolonging or shortening his life (rising from the dead).
"The Samanean despises riches, and uses only what is strictly necessary; he mortifies his body, silences his passions, desires nothing, forms no attachments, meditates my doctrines without ceasing, endures injuries with patience, and bears no malice to his neighbor.
"Heaven and earth shall perish," says Fot: "despise therefore your bodies, which are composed of the four perishable elements, and think only of your immortal soul.
"Listen not to the flesh: fear and sorrow spring from the passions: stifle the passions and you destroy fear and sorrow.
"Whoever dies without having embraced my religion," says Fot, "returns among men, until he embraces it."
The Lama was going on with his reading, when the Christians interrupted him, crying out that this was their own religion adulterated—that Fot was no other than Jesus himself disfigured, and that the Lamas were the Nestorians and the Manicheans disguised and bastardized.*
* This is asserted by our missionaries, and among others byGeorgi in his unfinished work of the Thibetan alphabet: butif it can be proved that the Manicheans were butplagiarists, and the ignorant echo of a doctrine thatexisted fifteen hundred years before them, what becomes ofthe declarations of Georgi? See upon this subject, Beausob.Hist. du Manicheisme.
But the Lama, supported by the Chamans, Bonzes, Gonnis, Talapoins of Siam, of Ceylon, of Japan, and of China, proved to the Christians, even from their own authors, that the doctrine of the Samaneans was known through the East more than a thousand years before the Christian era; that their name was cited before the time of Alexander, and that Boutta, or Beddou, was known before Jesus.*
* The eastern writers in general agree in placing the birthof Beddou 1027 years before Jesus Christ, which makes himthe contemporary of Zoroaster, with whom, in my opinion,they confound him. It is certain that his doctrinenotoriously existed at that epoch; it is found entire inthat of Orpheus, Pythagoras, and the Indian gymnosophists.But the gymnosophists are cited at the time of Alexander asan ancient sect already divided into Brachmans andSamaneans. See Bardesanes en Saint Jerome, Epitre a Jovien.Pythagoras lived in the ninth century before Jesus Christ;See chronology of the twelve ages; and Orpheus is of stillgreater antiquity. If, as is the case, the doctrine ofPythagoras and that of Orpheus are of Egyptian origin, thatof Beddou goes back to the common source; and in reality theEgyptian priests recite, that Hermes as he was dying said:"I have hitherto lived an exile from my country, to which Inow return. Weep not for me, I ascend to the celestialabode where each of you will follow in his turn: there Godis: this life is only death."—Chalcidius in Thinaeum.Such was the profession of faith of the Samaneans, thesectaries of Orpheus, and the Pythagoreans. Farther, Hermesis no other than Beddou himself; for among the Indians,Chinese, Lamas, etc., the planet Mercury and thecorresponding day of the week (Wednesday) bear the name ofBeddou, and this accounts for his being placed in the rankof mythological beings, and discovers the illusion of hispretended existence as a man; since it is evident thatMercury was not a human being, but the Genius or Decan, who,placed at the summer solstice, opened the Egyptian year;hence his attributes taken from the constellation Syrius,and his name of Anubis, as well as that of Esculapius,having the figure of a man and the head of a dog: hence hisserpent, which is the Hydra, emblem of the Nile (Hydor,humidity); and from this serpent he seems to have derivedhis name of Hermes, as Remes (with a schin) in the orientallanguages, signifies serpent. Now Beddou and Hermes beingthe same names, it is manifest of what antiquity is thesystem ascribed to the former. As to the name of Samanean,it is precisely that of Chaman, still preserved in Tartary,China, and India. The interpretation given to it is, man ofthe woods, a hermit mortifying the flesh, such being thecharacteristic of this sect; but its literal meaning is,celestial (Samaoui) and explains the system of those who arecalled by it.—The system is the same as that of thesectaries of Orpheus, of the Essenians, of the ancientAnchorets of Persia, and the whole eastern country. SeePorphyry, de Abstin. Animal.These celestial and penitent men carried in India theirinsanity to such an extreme as to wish not to touch theearth, and they accordingly lived in cages suspended fromthe trees, where the people, whose admiration was not lessabsurd, brought them provisions. During the night therewere frequent robberies, rapes and murders, and it was atlength discovered that they were committed by those men,who, descending from their cages, thus indemnifiedthemselves for their restraint during the day. The Bramins,their rivals, embraced the opportunity of exterminatingthem; and from that time their name in India has beensynonymous with hypocrite. See Hist. de la Chine, in 5vols. quarto, at the note page 30; Hist. de Huns, 2 vols.and preface to the Ezour-Vedam.
Then, retorting the pretensions of the Christians against themselves: "Prove to us," said the Lama, "that you are not Samaneans degenerated, and that the man you make the author of your sect is not Fot himself disguised. Prove to us by historical facts that he even existed at the epoch you pretend; for, it being destitute of authentic testimony,* we absolutely deny it; and we maintain that your very gospels are only the books of some Mithriacs of Persia, and the Essenians of Syria, who were a branch of reformed Samaneans."**
* There are absolutely no other monuments of the existenceof Jesus Christ as a human being, than a passage in Josephus(Antiq. Jud. lib. 18, c.3,) a single phrase in Tacitus(Annal. lib. 15, c. 44), and the Gospels. But the passagein Josephus is unanimously acknowledged to be apocryphal,and to have been interpolated towards the close of the thirdcentury, (See Trad. de joseph, par M. Gillet); and that ofTacitus in so vague and so evidently taken from thedeposition of the Christians before the tribunals, that itmay be ranked in the class of evangelical records. Itremains to enquire of what authority are these records."All the world knows," says Faustus, who, though aManichean, was one of the most learned men of the thirdcentury, "All the world knows that the gospels were neitherwritten by Jesus Christ, nor his apostles, but by certainunknown persons, who rightly judging that they should notobtain belief respecting things which they had not seen,placed at the head of their recitals the names ofcontemporary apostles." See Beausob. vol. i. and Hist. desApologistes de la Relig. Chret. par Burigni, a sagaciouswriter, who has demonstrated the absolute uncertainty ofthose foundations of the Christian religion; so that theexistence of Jesus is no better proved than that of Osirisand Hercules, or that of Fot or Beddou, with whom, says M.de Guignes, the Chinese continually confound him, for theynever call Jesus by any other name than Fot. Hist. de Huns.** That is to say, from the pious romances formed out of thesacred legends of the mysteries of Mithra, Ceres, Isis,etc., from whence are equally derived the books of theHindoos and the Bonzes. Our missionaries have long remarkeda striking resemblance between those books and the gospels.M. Wilkins expressly mentions it in a note in the BhagvatGeeta. All agree that Krisna, Fot, and Jesus have the samecharacteristic features: but religious prejudice has stoodin the way of drawing from this circumstance the proper andnatural inference. To time and reason must it be left todisplay the truth.
At these words, the Christians set up a general cry, and a new dispute was about to begin; when a number of Chinese Chamans, and Talapoins of Siam, came forward and said that they would settle the whole controversy. And one of them speaking for the whole exclaimed: "It is time to put an end to these frivolous contests by drawing aside the veil from the interior doctrine that Fot himself revealed to his disciples on his death bed.*
* The Budsoists have two doctrines, the one public andostensible, the other interior and secret, precisely likethe Egyptian priests. It may be asked, why this distinction?It is, that as the public doctrine recommends offerings,expiations, endowments, etc., the priests find their profitin preaching it to the people; whereas the other, teachingthe vanity of worldly things, and attended with no lucre, itis thought proper to make it known only to adepts. Can theteachers and followers of this religion be better classedthan under the heads of knavery and credulity?
"All these theological opinions," continued he, "are but chimeras. All the stories of the nature of the gods, of their actions and their lives, are but allegories and mythological emblems, under which are enveloped ingenious ideas of morals, and the knowledge of the operations of nature in the action of the elements and the movement of the planets.
"The truth is, that all is reduced to nothing—that all is illusion, appearance, dream; that the moral metempsychosis is only the figurative sense of the physical metempsychosis, or the successive movement of the elements of bodies which perish not, but which, having composed one body, pass when that is dissolved, into other mediums and form other combinations. The soul is but the vital principle which results from the properties of matter, and from the action of the elements in those bodies where they create a spontaneous movement. To suppose that this product of the play of the organs, born with them, matured with them, and which sleeps with them, can subsist when they cease, is the romance of a wandering imagination, perhaps agreeable enough, but really chimerical.
"God itself is nothing more than the moving principle, the occult force inherent in all beings—the sum of their laws and properties—the animating principle; in a word, the soul of the universe; which on account of the infinite variety of its connections and its operations, sometimes simple, sometimes multiple, sometimes active, sometimes passive, has always presented to the human mind an unsolvable enigma. All that man can comprehend with certainty is, that matter does not perish; that it possesses essentially those properties by which the world is held together like a living and organized being; that the knowledge of these laws with respect to man is what constitutes wisdom; that virtue and merit consist in their observance; and evil, sin, and vice, in the ignorance and violation of them; that happiness and misery result from these by the same necessity which makes heavy bodies descend and light ones rise, and by a fatality of causes and effects, whose chain extends from the smallest atom to the greatest of the heavenly bodies."*
* These are the very expressions of La Loubre, in hisdescription of the kingdom of Siam and the theology of theBronzes. Their dogmas, compared with those of the ancientphilosophers of Greece and Italy, give a completerepresentation of the whole system of the Stoics andEpicureans, mixed with astrological superstitious, and sometraits of Pythagorism.
At these words, a crowd of theologians of every sect cried out that this doctrine was materialism, and that those who profess it were impious atheists, enemies to God and man, who must be exterminated. "Very well," replied the Chamans, "suppose we are in error, which is not impossible, since the first attribute of the human mind is to be subject to illusion; but what right have you to take away from men like yourselves, the life which Heaven has given them? If Heaven holds us guilty and in abhorrence, why does it impart to us the same blessings as to you? And if it treats us with forbearance, what authority have you to be less indulgent? Pious men! who speak of God with so much certainty and confidence, be so good as to tell us what it is; give us to comprehend what those abstract and metaphysical beings are, which you call God and soul, substance without matter, existence without body, life without organs or sensation. If you know those beings by your senses or their reflections, render them in like manner perceptible to us; or if you speak of them on testimony and tradition, show us a uniform account, and give a determinate basis to our creed."
There now arose among the theologians a great controversy respecting God and his nature, his manner of acting, and of manifesting himself; on the nature of the soul and its union with the body; whether it exists before the organs, or only after they are formed; on the future life, and the other world. And every sect, every school, every individual, differing on all these points, and each assigning plausible reasons, and respectable though opposite authorities for his opinion, they fell into an inextricable labyrinth of contradictions.
Then the legislator, having commanded silence and recalled the dispute to its true object, said: "Chiefs and instructors of nations; you came together in search of truth. At first, every one of you, thinking he possessed it, demanded of the others an implicit faith; but perceiving the contrariety of your opinions, you found it necessary to submit them to a common rule of evidence, and to bring them to one general term of comparison; and you agreed that each should exhibit the proofs of his doctrine. You began by alleging facts; but each religion and every sect, being equally furnished with miracles and martyrs, each producing an equal number of witnesses, and offering to support them by a voluntary death, the balance on this first point, by right of parity, remained equal.
"You then passed to the trial of reasoning; but the same arguments applying equally to contrary positions—the same assertions, equally gratuitous, being advanced and repelled with equal force, and all having an equal right to refuse his assent, nothing was demonstrated. What is more, the confrontation of your systems has brought up more and extraordinary difficulties; for amid the apparent or adventitious diversities, you have discovered a fundamental resemblance, a common groundwork; and each of you pretending to be the inventor, and first depositary, have taxed each other with adulterations and plagiarisms; and thence arises a difficult question concerning the transmission of religious ideas from people to people.
"Finally, to complete your embarrassment: when you endeavored to explain your doctrines to each other, they appeared confused and foreign, even to their adherents; they were founded on ideas inaccessible to your senses; you consequently had no means of judging of them, and you confessed yourselves in this respect to be only the echoes of your fathers. Hence follows this other question: how came they to the knowledge of your fathers, who themselves had no other means than you to conceive them? So that, on the one hand, the succession of these ideas being unknown, and on the other, their origin and existence being a mystery, all the edifice of your religious opinions becomes a complicated problem of metaphysics and history.
"Since, however, these opinions, extraordinary as they may be, must have had some origin; since even the most abstract and fantastical ideas have some physical model, it may be useful to recur to this origin, and discover this model—in a word, to find out from what source the human understanding has drawn these ideas, at present so obscure, of God, of the soul, of all immaterial beings, which make the basis of so many systems; to unfold the filiation which they have followed, and the alterations which they have undergone in their transmissions and ramifications. If, then, there are any persons present who have made a study of these objects, let them come forward, and endeavor, in the face of nations, to dissipate the obscurity in which their opinions have so long remained."
At these words, a new group, formed in an instant by men from various standards, but not distinguished by any, came forward into the circle; and one of them spoke in the name of the whole:
"Delegates, friends of evidence and virtue! It is not surprising that the subject in question should be enveloped in so many clouds, since, besides its inherent difficulties, thought itself has always been encumbered with superadded obstacles peculiar to this study, where all free enquiry and discussion have been interdicted by the intolerance of every system. But now that our views are permitted to expand, we will expose to open day, and submit to the judgment of nations, that which unprejudiced minds, after long researches, have found to be the most reasonable; and we do this, not with the pretension of imposing a new creed, but with the hope of provoking new lights, and obtaining better information.
"Doctors and instructors of nations! You know what thick darkness covers the nature, the origin, the history of the dogmas which you teach. Imposed by authority, inculcated by education, and maintained by example, they pass from age to age, and strengthen their empire from habit and inattention. But if man, enlightened by reflection and experience, brings to mature examination the prejudices of his childhood, he soon discovers a multitude of incongruities and contradictions which awaken his sagacity and excite his reasoning powers.
"At first, remarking the diversity and opposition of the creeds which divide the nations, he takes courage to question the infallibility which each of them claims, and arming himself with their reciprocal pretensions, he conceives that his senses and his reason, derived immediately from God, are a law not less holy, a guide not less sure, than the mediate and contradictory codes of the prophets.
"If he then examines the texture of these codes themselves, he observes that their laws, pretended to be divine, that is, immutable and eternal, have arisen from circumstances of times, places, and persons; that they have issued one from the other, in a kind of genealogical order, borrowing from each other reciprocally a common and similar fund of ideas, which every lawgiver modifies according to his fancy.
"If he ascends to the source of these ideas, he finds it involved in the night of time, in the infancy of nations, even to the origin of the world, to which they claim alliance; and there, placed in the darkness of chaos, in the empire of fables and traditions, they present themselves, accompanied with a state of things so full of prodigies, that it seems to forbid all access to the judgment: but this state itself excites a first effort of reason, which resolves the difficulty; for if the prodigies, found in the theological systems, have really existed—if, for instance, the metamorphoses, the apparitions, the conversations with one or many gods, recorded in the books of the Indians, the Hebrews, the Parses, are historical events, he must agree that nature in those times was totally different from what it is at present; that the present race of men are quite another species from those who then existed; and, therefore, he ought not to trouble his head about them.
"If, on the contrary, these miraculous events have really not existed in the physical order of things, then he readily conceives that they are creatures of the human intellect; and this faculty being still capable of the most fantastical combinations, explains at once the phenomenon of these monsters in history. It only remains, then, to find how and wherefore they have been formed in the imagination. Now, if we examine with care the subjects of these intellectual creations, analyze the ideas which they combine and associate, and carefully weigh all the circumstances which they allege, we shall find that this first obscure and incredible state of things is explained by the laws of nature. We find that these stories of a fabulous kind have a figurative sense different from the apparent one; that these events, pretended to be marvellous, are simple and physical facts, which, being misconceived or misrepresented, have been disfigured by accidental causes dependent on the human mind, by the confusion of signs employed to represent the ideas, the want of precision in words, permanence in language, and perfection in writing; we find that these gods, for instance, who display such singular characters in every system, are only the physical agents of nature, the elements, the winds, the stars, and the meteors, which have been personified by the necessary mechanism of language and of the human understanding; that their lives, their manners, their actions, are only their mechanical operations and connections; and that all their pretended history is only the description of these phenomena, formed by the first naturalists who observed them, and misconceived by the vulgar who did not understand them, or by succeeding generations who forgot them. In a word, all the theological dogmas on the origin of the world, the nature of God, the revelation of his laws, the manifestation of his person, are known to be only the recital of astronomical facts, only figurative and emblematical accounts of the motion of the heavenly bodies. We are convinced that the very idea of a God, that idea at present so obscure, is, in its first origin, nothing but that of the physical powers of the universe, considered sometimes as a plurality by reason of their agencies and phenomena, sometimes as one simple and only being by reason of the universality of the machine and the connection of its parts; so that the being called God has been sometimes the wind, the fire, the water, all the elements; sometimes the sun, the stars, the planets, and their influence; sometimes the matter of the visible world, the totality of the universe; sometimes abstract and metaphysical qualities, such as space, duration, motion, intelligence; and we everywhere see this conclusion, that the idea of God has not been a miraculous revelation of invisible beings, but a natural offspring of the human intellect—an operation of the mind, whose progress it has followed and whose revolutions it has undergone, in all the progress that has been made in the knowledge of the physical world and its agents.
"It is then in vain that nations attribute their religion to heavenly inspirations; it is in vain that their dogmas pretend to a primeval state of supernatural events: the original barbarity of the human race, attested by their own monuments,* belies these assertions at once. But there is one constant and indubitable fact which refutes beyond contradiction all these doubtful accounts of past ages. From this position, that man acquires and receives no ideas but through the medium of his senses,** it follows with certainty that every notion which claims to itself any other origin than that of sensation and experience, is the erroneous supposition of a posterior reasoning: now, it is sufficient to cast an eye upon the sacred systems of the origin of the world, and of the actions of the gods, to discover in every idea, in every word, the anticipation of an order of things which could not exist till a long time after. Reason, strengthened by these contradictions, rejecting everything that is not in the order of nature, and admitting no historical facts but those founded on probabilities, lays open its own system, and pronounces itself with assurance.