The Philosophy of Voltaire - Collected Works: Treatise On Tolerance, Philosophical Dictionary, Candide, Letters on England, Plato's Dream, Dialogues, The Study of Nature, Ancient Faith and Fable…. Вольтер
of it. Naboth having been proceeded against, 'quia maledixerat regi,' King Ahab took possession of his inheritance. David, being apprised that Mephibosheth had taken part in the rebellion, gave all his goods to Sheba, who brought him the news—'Tibi sunt omnia quæ fuerunt Mephibosheth.'"
The question here was, who should inherit the property of Mademoiselle de Canillac—property formerly confiscated from her father, abandoned by the king to a keeper of the royal treasure, and afterwards given by this keeper of the royal treasure to the testatrix. And in this case of a woman of Auvergne a lawyer refers us to that of Ahab, one of the petty kings of a part of Palestine, who confiscated Naboth's vineyard, after assassinating its proprietor with the poniard of Jewish justice—an abominable act, which has become a proverb to inspire men with a horror for usurpation. Assuredly, Naboth's vineyard has no connection with Mademoiselle de Canillac's inheritance. Nor do the murder and confiscation of the goods of Mephibosheth, grandson of King Saul, and son of David's friend Jonathan, bear a much greater affinity to this lady's will.
With this pedantry, this rage for citations foreign to the subject; with this ignorance of the first principles of human nature; with these ill-conceived and ill-adapted prejudices, has jurisprudence been treated on by men who, in their sphere, have had some reputation.
CONSCIENCE.
SECTION I.
Of the Conscience of Good and of Evil.
Locke has demonstrated—if we may use that term in morals and metaphysics—that we have no innate ideas or principles. He was obliged to demonstrate this position at great length, as the contrary was at that time universally believed. It hence clearly follows that it is necessary to instil just ideas and good principles into the mind as soon as it acquires the use of its faculties.
Locke adduces the example of savages, who kill and devour their neighbors without any remorse of conscience; and of Christian soldiers, decently educated, who, on the taking of a city by assault, plunder, slay, and violate, not merely without remorse, but with rapture, honor, and glory, and with the applause of all their comrades.
It is perfectly certain that, in the massacres of St. Bartholomew, and in the "autos-da-fé" the holy acts of faith of the Inquisition, no murderer's conscience ever upbraided him with having massacred men, women, and children, or with the shrieks, faintings, and dying tortures of his miserable victims, whose only crime consisted in keeping Easter in a manner different from that of the inquisitors. It results, therefore, from what has been stated, that we have no other conscience than what is created in us by the spirit of the age, by example, and by our own dispositions and reflections.
Man is born without principles, but with the faculty of receiving them. His natural disposition will incline him either to cruelty or kindness; his understanding will in time inform him that the square of twelve is a hundred and forty-four, and that he ought not to do to others what he would not that others should do to him; but he will not, of himself, acquire these truths in early childhood. He will not understand the first, and he will not feel the second.
A young savage who, when hungry, has received from his father a piece of another savage to eat, will, on the morrow, ask for the like meal, without thinking about any obligation not to treat a neighbor otherwise than he would be treated himself. He acts, mechanically and irresistibly, directly contrary to the eternal principle.
Nature has made a provision against such horrors. She has given to man a disposition to pity, and the power of comprehending truth. These two gifts of God constitute the foundation of civil society. This is the reason there have ever been but few cannibals; and which renders life, among civilized nations, a little tolerable. Fathers and mothers bestow on their children an education which soon renders them social, and this education confers on them a conscience.
Pure religion and morality, early inculcated, so strongly impress the human heart that, from the age of sixteen or seventeen, a single bad action will not be performed without the upbraidings of conscience. Then rush on those headlong passions which war against conscience, and sometimes destroy it. During the conflict, men, hurried on by the tempest of their feelings, on various occasions consult the advice of others; as, in physical diseases, they ask it of those who appear to enjoy good health.
This it is which has produced casuists; that is, persons who decide on cases of conscience. One of the wisest casuists was Cicero. In his book of "Offices," or "Duties" of man, he investigates points of the greatest nicety; but long before him Zoroaster had appeared in the world to guide the conscience by the most beautiful precept, "If you doubt whether an action be good or bad, abstain from doing it." We treat of this elsewhere.
Whether a Judge Should Decide according to his Conscience, or according to the Evidence.
Thomas Aquinas, you are a great saint, and a great divine, and no Dominican has a greater veneration for you than I have; but you have decided, in your "Summary," that a judge ought to give sentence according to the evidence produced against the person accused, although he knows that person to be perfectly innocent. You maintain that the deposition of witnesses, which must inevitably be false, and the pretended proofs resulting from the process, which are impertinent, ought to weigh down the testimony of his own senses. He saw the crime committed by another; and yet, according to you, he ought in conscience to condemn the accused, although his conscience tells him the accused is innocent. According to your doctrine, therefore, if the judge had himself committed the crime in question, his conscience ought to oblige him to condemn the man falsely accused of it.
In my conscience, great saint, I conceive that you are most absurdly and most dreadfully deceived. It is a pity that, while possessing such a knowledge of canon law, you should be so little acquainted with natural law. The duty of a magistrate to be just, precedes that of being a formalist. If, in virtue of evidence which can never exceed probability, I were to condemn a man whose innocence I was otherwise convinced of, I should consider myself a fool and an assassin.
Fortunately all the tribunals of the world think differently from you. I know not whether Farinaceus and Grillandus may be of your opinion. However that may be, if ever you meet with Cicero, Ulpian, Trebonian, Demoulin, the Chancellor de l'Hôpital, or the Chancellor d'Aguesseau, in the shades, be sure to ask pardon of them for falling into such an error.
Of a Deceitful Conscience.
The best thing perhaps that was ever said upon this important subject is in the witty work of "Tristram Shandy," written by a clergyman of the name of Sterne, the second Rabelais of England. It resembles those small satires of antiquity, the essential spirit of which is so piquant and precious.
An old half-pay captain and his corporal, assisted by Doctor Slop, put a number of very ridiculous questions. In these questions the French divines are not spared. Mention is particularly made of a memoir presented to the Sorbonne by a surgeon, requesting permission to baptize unborn children by means of a clyster-pipe, which might be introduced into the womb without injuring either the mother or the child. At length the corporal is directed to read to them a sermon, composed by the same clergyman, Sterne.
Among many particulars, superior even to those of Rembrandt and Calot, it describes a gentleman, a man of the world, spending his time in the pleasures of the table, in gaming, and debauchery, yet doing nothing to expose himself to the reproaches of what is called good company, and consequently never incurring his own. His conscience and his honor accompany him to the theatres, to the gaming houses, and are more particularly present when he liberally pays his lady under protection. He punishes severely, when in office, the petty larcenies of the vulgar, lives a life of gayety, and dies without the slightest feeling of remorse.
Doctor Slop interrupts the reading to observe that such a case was impossible with respect to a follower of the Church of England, and could happen only among papists. At last the sermon adduces