TREATISE
ON TOLERANCE
ON THE
OCCASION OF THE DEATH OF JEAN CALAS
I
A BRIEF
ACCOUNT OF THE DEATH OF JEAN CALAS
The murder
of Jean Calas, committed in Toulouse with the sword of justice, the
9th of March, 1762, is one of the most singular events that calls for
the attention of the present age and of posterity. We soon forget the
crowd of victims who have fallen in the course of innumerable battles,
not only because this is a destiny inevitable in war, but because those
who thus fell might also have given death to their enemies, and did
not lose their lives without defending themselves. Where the danger
and the advantage are equal, our wonder ceases, and even pity itself
is in some measure lessened; but where the father of an innocent family
is delivered up to the hands of error, passion, or fanaticism; where
the accused person has no other defense but his virtue; where the arbiters
of his destiny have nothing to risk in putting him to death but their
having been mistaken, and where they may murder with impunity by decree,
then every one is ready to cry out, every one fears for himself, and
sees that no person's life is secure in a court erected to watch over
the lives of citizens, and every voice unites in demanding vengeance.
In this
strange affair, we find religion, suicide, and parricide. The object
of inquiry was, whether a father and a mother had murdered their own
son in order to please God, and whether a brother had murdered his brother,
or a friend his friend; or whether the judges had to reproach themselves
with having broken on the wheel an innocent father, or with having acquitted
a guilty mother, brother, and friend.
Jean Calas,
a person of sixty-eight years of age, had followed the profession of
a merchant in Toulouse for upwards of forty years, and was known by
all as a good parent in his family. He was a Protestant, as was also
his wife, and all his children, one son only excepted, who had abjured
heresy, and to whom the father allowed a small annuity. Indeed, he appeared
so far removed from that absurd fanaticism which destroys the bonds
of society, that he even approved of the conversion of his son, Louis
Calas, and he had for thirty years a maid-servant, who was a zealous
Catholic, and who had brought up all his children.
Another
of his sons, whose name was Marc-Antoine, was a man of letters, but,
at the same time, of a restless, gloomy, and violent disposition. This
young man finding that he could neither succeed nor enter into business
as a merchant, for which indeed he was very unfit, nor be admitted to
the bar as a lawyer, because he lacked the certificates of his being
a Catholic, resolved to end his life, and gave some intimation of his
design to one of his friends. He confirmed himself in his resolution
by reading everything that had been written upon the subject of suicide.
At length,
one day, having lost all his money in gambling, he chose that as a most
proper opportunity for executing his design. A friend named Lavaisse,
a young man of nineteen years of age, the son of a famous lawyer of
Toulouse, and a youth esteemed by every one who knew him, happened to
come from Bordeaux the evening before. He went by chance to dine with
the Calas family at their house. Old Calas, his wife, Marc-Antoine,
their eldest son, and Pierre their second son, all ate together that
evening; after supper was over, they retired into another room, when
Marc-Antoine suddenly disappeared. After some time, young Lavaisse took
his leave, and Pierre Calas accompanied him downstairs; when they came
near the store they saw Marc-Antoine hanging in his shirt behind the
door, and his coat folded up and laid upon the counter. His shirt was
not in the least rumpled, and his hair was well combed. There was no
wound on his body, nor any other mark of violence.
We shall
not here enter into all the minute circumstances with which the lawyers
have filled their briefs; nor shall we describe the grief and despair
of the unhappy parents; their cries were heard by the whole neighborhood.
Lavaisse and Peter Calas, almost beside themselves, ran, the one to
fetch a surgeon, and the other an officer of justice.
While they
were thus employed, and old Calas and his wife were sobbing in tears,
the people of Toulouse gathered in crowds about the house. The Toulousians
are a superstitious and headstrong people; they look upon their brothers
who are not of the same religion as themselves, as monsters. It was
at Toulouse that a solemn thanksgiving was ordered for the death of
Henry III and that the inhabitants took an oath to murder the first
person who should propose to acknowledge that great and good prince
Henry IV for their sovereign. This same city still continues to solemnize,
by an annual procession and bonfires, the day on which, about two hundred
years ago, it ordered the massacre of four thousand of its citizens
as heretics. In vain has the council issued six decrees prohibiting
this detestable holiday. The Toulousians still continue to celebrate
it as a high festival.
Some fanatic
among the mob cried out that Jean Calas had hanged his own son; this
cry, taken up, became in an instant unanimous; some persons added that
the deceased was to have made his abjuration the next day; that his
own family and young Lavaisse had murdered him out of hatred for the
Catholic religion. No sooner was this opinion stated than it was fully
believed by every one; and the whole town was persuaded that it is one
of the articles of the Protestant religion for a father or mother to
murder their own son, if he attempts to change his faith.
When minds
are once aroused, they are not easily appeased. It was now imagined
that all the Protestants of Languedoc had assembled together the preceding
night, and had chosen by a plurality of voices one of their sect for
an executioner; that the choice had fallen upon young Lavaisse; that
this young man had, in less than four and twenty hours, received the
news of his election, and had come from Bordeaux to assist Jean Calas,
his wife, and their son Pierre, to murder a son, a brother, and a friend.
The Sieur
David, magistrate of Toulouse, excited by these rumors, and desirous
of bringing himself into notice by the ready execution of his office,
took a step contrary to all the established fuies and ordinances, by
ordering the Calas family, together with their Catholic maid-servant
and Lavaisse, to be put in irons.
After this
a legal declaration was published which was no less vicious. Matters
were carried still farther; Marc-Antoine Calas had died a Calvinist,
and as such, if he had laid violent hands on himself, his body ought
to have been dragged on a hurdle; he was buried with the greatest funeral
pomp in the church of St. Stephen, in spite of the curate who entered
his protest against this profanation of holy ground.
There are
in Languedoc four orders of penitents, the white, the blue, the gray,
and the black, who wear a long capuchin or hood, having a mask of cloth
falling down over the face, in which are two holes to see through. These
orders wanted the Duke of Fitz-James to become one of their body, but
he refused. On the present occasion the white penitents performed a
solemn service for Marc-Antoine Calas as for a martyr; nor was the festival
of a martyr ever celebrated with greater pomp by any church: but then
this pomp was truly terrible. Beneath a magnificent canopy was placed
a skeleton which was made to move and which represented Marc-Antoine
Calas, holding in one hand a branch of palm, and, in the other, the
pen with which he was to sign his adjuration of heresy, and which in
fact wrote the death-warrant of his father.
And now
nothing more remained to be done for this wretch who had been his own
murderer but the office of canonization; all the people looked on him
as a saint; some invoked him, some went to pray at his tomb, some besought
him to work miracles, while others gravely recounted those he had already
performed: A monk pulled out one or two of his teeth, in order to have
some lasting relics. An old woman, somewhat deaf, declared that she
had heard the sound of bells; and a priest was cured of an apoplectic
fit, after taking a stout emetic. Protocols were drawn up of these stupendous
miracles, and the author of this account has in his possession an affidavit
to prove that a young man of Toulouse went mad for having prayed several
nights successively at the tomb of the new saint, without having been
able to obtain the miracle he requested of him.
Among the
order of the white penitents were some magistrates. The death of Jean
Calas seemed then inevitable.
But what
more particularly hastened his fate was the approach of that singular
festival, which, as I have already observed, the Toulousians celebrate
every year, in commemoration of the massacre of four thousand Huguenots;
the year 1762 happened to be the annum seculare of this deed. The inhabitants
were busied in making preparations for the solemnity; this circumstance
added fresh fuel to the heated imagination of the people; every one
Cried out that a scaffold for the execution of the Calas family would
be the greatest ornament of the ceremony; and that Providence itself
seemed to have brought these victims to be sacrificed to our holy religion.
Twenty persons heard these speeches, and others still more violent.
And this, in the present age! this at a time when philosophy has made
so great a progress! and while the pens of a hundred academies are employed
in inspiring gentleness of manners. It should seem that enthusiasm enraged
at the recent success of reason, fought under her standard with redoubled
fury.
Thirteen
judges met every day to try this cause; they had not, they could not,
have any proof against this family; but mistaken religion took the place
of proofs. Six of the judges persisted obstinate, resolved to sentence
Jean Calas, his son, and Lavaisse, to be broken on the wheel, and his
wife to be burned at the stake; the other seven judges, rather more
moderate, were at least for having the accused examined. The debates
were frequent and long. One of the judges, convinced in his mind of
the innocence of the accused and of the impossibility of the crime,
spoke warmly in their favor; he opposed the zeal of humanity to that
of cruelty, and openly pleaded the cause of the Calas family in all
the houses of Toulouse where misguided religion demanded with incessant
cries the blood of these unfortunates. Another judge, well known for
his violence, went about the town, raving with as much fury against
the accused as his brother had been earnest in defending them. In short,
the contest became so warm that both were obliged to enter protests
against each other's proceedings, and retire into the country.
But by
a strange fatality, the judge who had been on the favorable side had
the delicacy to persist in his exceptions, and the other returned to
give his vote against those on whom he could no longer sit as judge;
and it was his single vote which carried the sentence to the wheel,
there being eight voices against five, one of the six merciful judges
being at last, after much contestation, brought over to the more rigorous
side.
In my opinion,
in cases of parricide, and where the head of a family is to be given
over to the most dreadful punishment, the sentence ought to be unanimous,
inasmuch as the proofs of so unheard of a crime ought to be of such
a manner as to satisfy all the world: the least shadow of a doubt in
a case of this nature should be sufficient to make the judge tremble
who is about to pass sentence of death. The weakness of our reason,
and the insufficiency of our laws, become every day more obvious; but
surely there cannot be a greater example of this wretchedness than that
a single vote should be sufficient to condemn a fellow-citizen to be
broken alive on the wheel. The Athenians required at least fifty voices,
over and above the majority of the judges, before they would dare to
pronounce sentence of death. What does all this show? That we know,
quite uselessly, that the Greeks were wiser and more humane than ourselves.
It appeared
impossible that Jean Calas, who was an old man of sixty-eight, and had
been long troubled with a swelling and weakness in his legs, should
have been able by himself to have strangled his son and hanged him,
a stout young fellow of eight and twenty, and more than commonly robust;
therefore he must absolutely have been assisted in this act by his wife,
his other son, Pierre Calas, Lavaisse, and by the servant-maid, and
they had been together the whole night of this fatal adventure. But
this supposition is altogether as absurd as the other; for can any one
believe that a servant, who was a zealous Catholic, would have permitted
Huguenots to murder a young man whom she herself had brought up, for
his attachment to a religion to which she herself was devoted? That
Lavaisse would have come purposely from Bordeaux to murder his friend,
of whose pretended conversion he knew nothing? That an affectionate
mother would have joined in laying violent hands on her own son? And
lastly, how could they all together have been able to strangle a young
man stronger than them all, without a long and violent struggle, or
without his making such a noise as must have been heard by the whole
neighborhood, without repeated blows passing between them, without any
marks of violence, or without any of their clothes being torn.
It was
evident that if this murder could have been committed, the accused persons
were all equally guilty, because they did not leave each other's company
an instant the whole night; but then it was equally evident that they
were not guilty, and that the father alone could not be so, and yet,
by the sentence of the judges, the father alone was condemned to expire
on the rack.
The motive
on which this sentence was passed was as unaccountable as all the rest
of the proceeding. Those judges who had given their opinion for the
execution of John Calas persuaded the others that this poor old man,
unable to support the torments, would, under the blows of torturers,
make a full confession of his crime and that of his accomplices. They
were confounded, when the old man, dying on the wheel, called God as
a witness of his innocence, and besought him to forgive his judges!
They were
afterwards obliged to pass a second decree, which contradicted the first,
namely to set at liberty the mother, her son Pierre, young Lavaisse,
and the maid-servant; but one of the counsellors having made them aware
that this latter decree contradicted the other, and that they condemned
themselves, inasmuch as it was proved that all the accused parties had
been constantly together during the whole time the murder was supposed
to be committed, the setting at liberty of the survivors was an incontestable
proof of the innocence of the master of the family whom they had ordered
to be executed. They then determined to banish Pierre Calas, the son,
which was an act as ill-grounded and absurd as any of the rest, for
Pierre Calas was either guilty or not guilty of the murder; if he was
guilty, he should have been broken on the wheel in the same manner as
his father; if he was innocent, there was no reason for banishing him.
But the judges, frightened by the punishment of the father, and by that
tender piety with which he had died, thought to save their honor by
making people believe that they showed mercy to the son; as if this
was not a new degree of prevarication; and they thought that no bad
consequences could arise from banishing this young man, who was poor
and destitute of friends. His exile was not a great injustice after
that which they had been already so unfortunate as to commit.
They began
by threatening Pierre Calas in his prison cell that they would treat
him as they had his father, if he would not abjure his religion. This
the young man has declared on oath.
As Pierre
was going out of the town, he was met by one of the abbés with
a converting spirit, who made him return back to Toulouse, where he
was shut up in a convent of Dominicans, and there compelled to perform
all the functions of a convert to the Catholic religion; this was in
part what his persecutors wanted; it was the price of his father's blood,
and the religion they thought they were avenging seemed satisfied.
The daughters
were taken from their mother, and shut up in a convent. This unhappy
woman, who had been, as it were, sprinkled with the blood of her husband,
who had held her eldest son lifeless within her arms, had seen the other
banished, her daughters taken from her, herself stripped of her property,
and left alone in the world destitute of bread, and bereft of hopes,
was almost weighed down to the grave by the excess of her misfortunes.
Some persons, who had maturely weighed all the circumstances of this
horrible adventure, were so struck with them that they pressed Madame
Calas, who now led a life of retirement and solitude, to exert herself,
and go and demand justice at the foot of the throne. At this time she
was scarcely able to sustain herself; besides, having been born in England
and brought over to a distant province in France when very young, the
very name of the city of Paris frightened her. She imagined that in
the capital of the kingdom they must be still more savage than in Toulouse;
at length, however, the duty of avenging the memory of her husband got
the better of her weakness. She arrived in Paris half dead, and was
surprised to find herself received with tenderness, sympathy, and offers
of assistance.
In Paris
reason always triumphs over fanaticism, however great, whereas in the
provinces fanaticism almost always triumphs over reason.
M. de Beaumont,
a famous lawyer of the Parliament of Paris, immediately took up her
cause and drew up an opinion, which was signed by fifteen other lawyers.
M. Loiseau, equally famous for his eloquence, likewise drew up a brief
in favor of the family; and M. Mariette, solicitor to the council, drew
up a formal statement of the case, which struck every one who read it
with conviction.
These three
generous defenders of the laws and of innocence made the widow a present
of all the profits arising from the publication of these pleas,47 which
filled not only Paris but all Europe with pity for this unfortunate
woman, and every one cried aloud for justice to be done her. The public
passed sentence on this affair long before it was determined by the
council.
This pity
made its way even to the Cabinet, notwithstanding the continual round
of business, which often excludes pity and the familiarity of seeing
unhappiness, which too frequently steels the heart even more. The daughters
were restored to their mother, and all three in deep mourning, and in
sobs, drew sympathetic tears from the eyes of their judges.
Nevertheless,
this family had still some enemies for this was an affair of religion.
Several persons, whom in France we call devout, declared publicly that
it was much better to suffer an old Calvinist, though innocent, to be
broken upon the wheel, than to force eight counsellors of Languedoc
to admit that they had been mistaken; these people made use of this
very expression: "That there were more magistrates than Calases";
by which they inferred that the Calas family ought to be sacrificed
to the honor of the magistracy. They never reflected that the honor
of a judge, like that of another man, consists in making reparation
for his faults. In France no one believes that the pope, assisted by
his cardinals, is infallible. One may also believe that eight judges
of Toulouse are not. Every sensible and disinterested person declared
that the decree of the court of Toulouse would be quashed anywhere in
Europe, even though particular considerations might prevent it from
being declared void by the council.
Such was
the state of this surprising affair when it caused certain impartial,
but sensible, persons to form the design of laying before the public
a few reflections upon tolerance, indulgence, and commiseration, which
the Abbé Houtteville in his bombastic and declamatory work, which
is false in all the facts, calls a monstrous dogma, but which reason
calls the portion of human nature. Either the judges of Toulouse, carried
away by the fanaticism of the mob, caused the innocent head of a family
to be tortured to death, a thing which is without example; or this father
and his wife murdered their eldest son, with the assistance of another
son and a friend, which is altogether contrary to nature. In either
case, the abuse of the most holy religion has produced a great crime.
It is therefore to the interest of mankind to examine if religion should
be charitable or savage.
XXI
VIRTUE
IS BETTER THAN LEARNING
The fewer
dogmas, the fewer disputes; and the fewer disputes, the fewer misfortunes:
if this is not true, I am mistaken.
Religion
is instituted to make us happy in this life and the next. But what is
required to make us happy in the life to come? To be just.
To be happy
in this life, as much as the wretchedness of our nature will permit,
what do we need? To be indulgent.
It would
be the height of madness to pretend to bring all mankind to think exactly
in the same manner about metaphysics. We might, with much greater ease,
conquer the whole universe by force of arms than subject the minds of
all the inhabitants of one single village.
Euclid
found no difficulty in persuading every one of the truths of geometry.
And why? Because there is not one of them which is not a self-evident
corollary of this simple axiom: "Two and two make four." But
is it not altogether the same for the mixture of metaphysics and theology.
When Bishop
Alexander and Arius the priest began first to dispute in what manner
the Logos proceeded from the Father, the Emperor Constantine wrote to
them in the following words reported by Eusabius and Socrates: "You
are great fools to dispute about things you can not understand."
If the
two contending parties had been wise enough to agree that the emperor
was right, Christendom would not have been drenched in blood for three
hundred years.
And, indeed,
what can be more foolish, or more horrible than to address mankind in
this manner: "My friends, it is not sufficient that you are faithful
subjects, dutiful children, tender parents, and good neighbors; that
you practice every virtue; that you are friendly, grateful, and worship
Jesus-Christ in peace; it is furthermore required of you that you should
know how a thing is begotten from all eternity and if you cannot distinguish
the omousian in the hypostasis, we declare to you that you will be burned
for all eternity; and in the meantime we will begin by cutting your
throats"?
If such
a decision as this had been presented to Archimedes, Posidonius, Varro,
Cato, or Cicero, what answer do you think they would have made?
Constantine,
however, did not persevere in silencing the two parties; he might easily
have summoned the chiefs of the disputes before him, and have demanded
of them by what authority they disturbed the peace of mankind. "Are
you," he might have said, "members of the divine family? What
is it to you whether the Logos Son was made or begotten, provided that
you are faithful to it; that you preach a virtuous morality and practise
it if you can? I have committed many faults in my lifetime, and so have
you; you are ambitious, and so am I; it has cost me many falsehoods
and cruelties to gain the empire; I have murdered almost all my relatives;
but I now repent: I want to expiate my crimes by restoring peace to
the Roman Empire; do not prevent me from doing the only good action
which can possibly make my former cruel ones forgotten; help me to end
my days in peace." Perhaps Constantine might not have prevailed
over the disputants, and perhaps he might have been pleased with presiding
over a council in a long crimson robe, with his forehead glittering
with jewels.
This, however,
opened the way to all those dreadful calamities which overran the West
from Asia. Out of every contested verse there issued a fury armed with
an interpretation and a dagger, who made men stupid and cruel. The Huns,
the Heruli, the Goths, and Vandals, who came afterwards, did infinitely
less harm, and the greatest they did was that of afterwards engaging
in the same fatal disputes.
XXII
OF UNIVERSAL
TOLERANCE
It does
not require any great art or studied elocution to prove that Christians
ought to tolerate one another. I will go even further and say that we
ought to look upon all men as our brothers. What! call a Turk, a Jew,
and a Siamese, my brother? Yes, of course; for are we not all children
of the same father, and the creatures of the same God?
But these
people despise us and call us idolaters! Well, then, I should tell them
that they are very wrong. And I think that I could stagger the headstrong
pride of an imaum, or a talapoin, were I to speak to them something
like this:
"This
little globe, which is no more than a point, rolls, together with many
other globes, in that immensity of space in which we are lost. Man,
who is about five feet high, is certainly a very inconsiderable part
of the creation; but one of those hardly visible beings says to some
of his neighbors in Arabia or South Africa: Listen to me, for the God
of all these worlds has enlightened me. There are about nine hundred
millions of us little insects who inhabit the earth, but my ant-hill
alone is cherished by God who holds all the rest in horror for all eternity;
those who live with me upon my spot will alone be happy, and all the
rest eternally wretched."
They would
stop me and ask, "What madman could have made so foolish a speech?"
I should then be obliged to answer them, "It is yourselves."
After which I should try to pacify them, but that would not be very
easy.
I might
next address myself to the Christians and venture to say, for example,
to a Dominican, one of the judges of the inquisition: "Brother,
you know that every province in Italy has a jargon of its own and that
they do not speak in Venice and Bergamo as they do in Florence. The
Academy della Crusca has fixed the standard of the Italian language;
its dictionary is an absolute rule, and Buonmattei's Grammar is an infallible
guide, from neither of which we ought to depart; but do you think that
the president of the Academy, or in his absence Buonmattei, could in
conscience order the tongues of all the Venetians and Berga-mese, who
persisted in their own dialect, to be cut out?"
The inquisitor
would reply: "There is a very wide difference; here the salvation
of your soul is concerned; and it is entirely for your good that the
directory of the inquisition orders that you be seized, upon the deposition
of a single person, though of the most infamous character; that you
have no lawyer to plead for you, nor even be acquainted with the name
of your accuser; that the inquisitor promise you favor, and afterwards
condemn you; that he make you undergo five different kinds of torture,
and that afterwards you be either whipped, sent to the galleys, or burned
at the stake. Father Ivonet, and the doctors, Cuchalon, Zanchinus Campegius,
Roias, Felynus, Gomarus, Diabarus, and Gemelinus are exactly of this
opinion, and this pious practice will not admit of contradiction."
To all
of which I should take the liberty of making the following reply: "My
brother, you may perhaps be in the right; I am perfectly well convinced
of the great good you would do me; but may I not be saved without all
this?"
It is true
that these absurd horrors do not daily stain the face of the earth;
but they have been frequent, and one might easily collect instances
enough to make a volume much larger than that of the Holy Gospels, which
condemn such practices. It is not only very cruel to persecute in this
short life those who do not think in the same way as we do, but I very
much doubt if there is not an impious boldness in pronouncing them eternally
damned. In my opinion, it little befits such insects of a summer's day
as we are thus to anticipate the decrees of the Creator. I am very far
from opposing the maxim, "outside the church there is no salvation;"
I respect it and all that it teaches, but, after all, do we know all
the ways of God, and all the extent of his mercy? Are we not permitted
to hope in him, as well as to fear him? Is it not sufficient if we are
faithful to the Church? Must every individual usurp the rights of Divinity
and determine, before it, the eternal fate of all men?
When we
wear mourning for a king of Sweden, Denmark, England or Prussia, do
we say that we are in mourning for a damned soul that is burning eternally
in hell? There are about forty millions of inhabitants in Europe who
are not members of the Church of Rome; should we say to every one of
them, "Sir, since you are infallibly damned, I shall neither eat,
converse, nor have any connections with you?"
Is there
an ambassador of France who, when he is presented to the Grand Seigneur
for an audience, will seriously say to himself, his highness will infallibly
burn for all eternity for having submitted to circumcision? If he really
thought that the Grand Seigneur was a mortal enemy of God, and the object
of his vengeance, could he converse with such a person; ought he to
be sent to him? With what man could we carry on any commerce, or perform
any of the civil duties of society, if we were indeed convinced that
we were conversing with persons destined to eternal damnation?
O different
worshippers of a peaceful God! if you have a cruel heart, if, while
you adore he whose whole law consists of these few words, "Love
God and your neighbor," you have burdened that pure and holy law
with false and unintelligible disputes, if you have lighted the flames
of discord sometimes for a new word, and sometimes for a single letter
of the alphabet; if you have attached eternal punishment to the omission
of a few words, or of certain ceremonies which other people cannot comprehend,
I must say to you with tears of compassion for mankind: "Transport
yourselves with me to the day on which all men will be judged and on
which God will do unto each according to his works.
"I
see all the dead of past ages and of our own appearing in his presence.
Are you very sure that our Creator and Father will say to the wise and
virtuous Confucius, to the legislator Solon, to Pythagoras, Zaleucus,
Socrates, Plato, the divine Antonins, the good Trajan, to Titus, the
delights of mankind, to Epictetus, and to many others, models of men:
Go, monsters, go and suffer torments that are infinite in intensity
and duration. Let your punishment be eternal as I am. But you, my beloved
ones, John Châtel, Ravaillac, Damiens, Cartouche, etc. who have
died according to the prescribed rules, sit forever at my right hand
and share my empire and my felicity."
You draw
back with horror at these words; and after they have escaped me, I have
nothing more to say to you.
XXIII
PRAYER
TO GOD
No longer
then do I address myself to men, but to you, God of all beings, of all
worlds, and of all ages; if it may be permitted weak creatures lost
in immensity and imperceptible to the rest of the universe, to dare
to ask something of you, you who have given everything, and whose decrees
are immutable as they are eternal. Deign to look with pity on the errors
attached to our nature; let not these errors prove ruinous to us. You
have not given us hearts to hate ourselves with, and hands to kill one
another. Grant then that we may mutually aid each other to support the
burden of a painful and transitory life; that the trifling differences
in the garments that cover our frail bodies, in our insufficient languages,
in our ridiculous customs, in our imperfect laws, in our idle opinions,
in all our conditions so disproportionate in our eyes, and so equal
in yours, that all the little variations that differentiate the atoms
called men not be signs of hatred and persecution; that those who light
candles in broad daylight to worship you bear with those who content
themselves with the light of your sun; that those who dress themselves
in a white robe to say that we must love you do not detest those who
say the same thing in cloaks of black wool; that it may be all the same
to adore you in a dialect formed from an ancient or a modern language;
that those whose coat is colored red or violet, who rule over a little
parcel of a little heap of mud of this world, and who possess a few
round fragments of a certain metal, enjoy without pride what they call
grandeur and riches, and may others look on them without envy: for you
know that there is nothing in all these vanities to inspire envy or
pride.
May all
men remember that they are brothers! May they hold in horror tyranny
exerted over souls, just as they do the violence which forcibly seizes
the products of peaceful industry! And if the scourge of war is inevitable,
let us not hate one another, let us not destroy one another in the midst
of peace, and let us use the moment of our existence to bless, in a
thousand different languages, from Siam to California, your goodness
which has given us this moment.