Part 3 of 3
16: THE NUMBER SIXTEENSIXTEEN is the number of the temple.
Let us say what the temple of the future will be!
When the spirit of intelligence and love shall have revealed itself, the whole trinity will manifest itself in its truth and in its glory.
Humanity, become a queen, and, as it were, risen from the dead, will have the grace of childhood in its poesy, the vigour of youth in its reason, and the wisdom of ripe age in its works.
All those forms, which the divine thought has successively clothed, will be born again, immortal and perfect.
All those features which the art of successive nations has sketched will unite themselves, and form the complete image of God.
Jerusalem will rebuild the Temple of Jehovah on the model prophesied by Ezekiel; and the Christ, new and eternal Solomon, will chant, beneath roofs of cedar and of cypress, the Epithalamium of his marriage with holy liberty, the holy bride of the Song of Songs.
But Jehovah will have laid aside his thunderbolts, to bless with both hands the bridegroom and the bride; he will appear smiling between them, and take pleasure in being called father.
However, the poetry of the East, in its magical souvenirs, will call him still Brahma, and Jupiter. India will teach our enchanted climates the marvellous fables of Vishnu, and we shall place upon the still bleeding forehead of our well-beloved Christ the triple crown of pearls of the mystical Trimurti. From that time, Venus, purified under the veil of Mary, will no more weep for her Adonis.
The bridegroom is risen to die no more, and the infernal boar has found death in its momentary victory.
Lift yourselves up again, O Temples of Delphi and of Ephesus! The God of Light and of Art is become the God of the world, and the Word of God is indeed willing to be called Apollo! Diana will no more reign widowed in the lonely fields of night; her silvern crescent is now beneath the feet of the bride.
But Diana is not conquered by Venus; her Endymion has wakened, and virginity is about to take pride in motherhood!
Quit the tomb, O Phidias, and rejoice in the destruction of thy first Jupiter: it is now that thou wilt conceive a God!
O Rome, let thy temples rise again, side by side with thy basilicas: be once more the Queen of the World, and the Pantheon of the nations; let Vergil be crowned on the Capitol by the hand of St. Peter; and let Olympus and Carmel unite their divinities beneath the brush of Raphael!
Transfigure yourselves, ancient cathedrals of our fathers; dart forth into the clouds your chiselled and living arrows, and let stone record in animated figures the dark legends of the North, brightened by the marvellous gilded apologues of the Qur’an!
Let the East adore Jesus Christ in its mosques, and on the minarets of a new Santa Sophia let the cross rise in the midst of the crescent! [17]
Let Mohammed set woman free to give to the true believer the houris which he has so long dreamt of, and let the martyrs of the Saviour teach chaste caresses to the beautiful angels of Mohammed!
The whole earth, reclothed with the rich adornments which all the arts have embroidered for her, will no longer be anything but a magnificent temple, of which man shall be the eternal priest.
All that was true, all that was beautiful, all that was sweet in the past centuries, will live once more glorified in this transfiguration of the world.
And the beautiful form will remain inseparable from the true idea, as the body will one day be inseparable from the soul, when the soul, come to its own power, will have made itself a body in its own image.
That will be the kingdom of Heaven upon Earth, and the body will be the temple of the soul, as the regenerated universe will be the body of God.
And bodies and souls, and form and thought, and the whole universe, will be the light, the word, and the permanent and visible revelation of God. Amen. So be it.
17: THE NUMBER SEVENTEENSEVENTEEN is the number of the star; it is that of intelligence and love.
Warrior and bold intelligence, accomplice of divine Prometheus, eldest daughter of Lucifer, hail unto thee in thine audacity! Thou didst wish to know, and in order to possess, thou didst brave all the thunders, and affronted every abyss!
Intelligence, O Thou, whom we poor sinners have loved to madness, to scandal, to reprobation! Divine right of man, essence and soul of liberty, hail unto thee! For they have pursued thee, in trampling beneath their feet for thee the dearest dreams of their imagination, the best beloved phantoms of their heart!
For thee, they have been repulsed and proscribed, for thee they have suffered prison, nakedness, hunger, thirst, the desertion of those whom they loved, and the dark temptations of despair! Thou wast their right, and they have conquered thee! Now they can weep and believe, now they can submit themselves and pray!
Repentant Cain would have been greater than Abel: it is lawful pride satisfied which has the right to humiliate itself!
I believe because I know why and how one must believe; I believe because I love, and fear no more.
Love! Love! Sublime redeemer and sublime restorer; thou who makest so much happiness, with so many tortures, thou who didst sacrifice blood and tears, thou who art virtue itself, and the reward of virtue; force of resignation, belief of obedience, joy of sorrow, life of death, hail! Salutation and glory to thee! If intelligence is a lamp, thou art its flame; if it is right, thou art duty; if it is nobility, thou art happiness. Love, full of pride and modesty in thy mysteries, divine love, hidden love, love insensate and sublime, Titan who takest Heaven in both hands, and forcest it to earth, final and ineffable secret of Christian widowhood, love eternal, love infinite, ideal which would suffice to create worlds; love! love! blessing and glory to thee! Glory to the intelligences which veil themselves that they may not offend weak eyes! Glory to right which transforms itself wholly into duty, and which becomes devotion! To the widowed souls who love, and burn up without being loved! To those who suffer, and make none other suffer, to those who forgive the ungrateful, to those who love their enemies! Oh, happy evermore, happy beyond all, are those who embrace poverty, who have drained themselves to the dregs, to give! Happy are the souls who for ever make thy peace! Happy the pure and the simple hearts that never think themselves better than others! Humanity, my mother, humanity daughter and mother of God, humanity conceived without sin, universal Church, Mary! Happy is he who has dared all to know thee and to understand thee, and who is ready to suffer all once more, in order to serve thee and to love thee!
18: THE NUMBER EIGHTEENTHIS number is that of religious dogma, which is all poetry and all mystery.
The Gospel says that at the death of the Saviour the veil of the Temple was rent, because that death manifested the triumph of devotion, the miracle of charity, the power of God in man, divine humanity, and human divinity, the highest and most sublime of Arcana, the last word of all initiations.
But the Saviour knew that at first men would not understand him, and he said: “You will not be able to bear at present the full light of my doctrine; but, when the Spirit of Truth shall manifest himself, he will teach you all truth, and he will cause you to understand the sense of what I have said unto you.”
Now the Spirit of Truth is the spirit of science and intelligence, the spirit of force and of counsel.
It is that spirit which solemnly manifested itself in the Roman Church, when it declared in the four articles of its decree of the 12th December, 1845:
1○.—That if faith is superior to reason, reason ought to endorse the inspirations of faith;
2○.—That faith and science have each their separate domain, and that the one should not usurp the functions of the other;
3○.—That it is proper for faith and grace, not to weaken, but on the contrary to strengthen and develop reason;
4○.—That the concourse of reason, which examines, not the decisions of faith, but the natural and rational bases of the authority which decides them, far from injuring faith, can only be useful to it; in other words, that a faith, perfectly reasonable in its principles, should not fear, but should, on the contrary, desire the sincere examination of reason.
Such a decree is the accomplishment of a complete religious revolution, it is the inauguration of the reign of the Holy Ghost upon the earth.
19: THE NUMBER NINETEENIT is the number of light.
It is the existence of God proved by the very idea of God.
Either one must say that Being is the universal tomb where, by an automatic movement, stirs a form for ever dead and corpse-like, or one must admit the absolute principle of intelligence and of life.
Is the universal light dead or alive? Is it vowed fatally to the work of destruction, or providentially directed to an immortal birth?
If there be no God, intelligence is only a deception, for it fails to be the absolute, and its ideal is a lie.
Without God, being is a nothingness affirming itself, life a death in disguise, and light a night for ever deceived by the mirage of dreams.
The first and most essential act of faith is then this.
Being exists; and the Being of beings, the Truth of being, is God.
Being is alive with intelligence, and the living intelligence of absolute being is God.
Light is real and life-giving; now, the reality and life of all light is God.
The word of universal reason is an affirmation and not a negation.
How blind are they who do not see that physical light is nothing but the instrument of thought!
Thought alone, then, reveals light, and creates it in using it for its own purposes.
The affirmation of atheism is the dogma of eternal night: the affirmation of God is the dogma of light!
We stop here at the number Nineteen, although the sacred alphabet has twenty-two letters; but the first nineteen are the keys of occult theology. The others are the keys of Nature; we shall return to them in the third part of this work.
Let us resume what we have said concerning God, by quoting a fine invocation borrowed from the Jewish liturgy. It is a page from the qabalistic poem Kether-Malkuth, by Rabbi Solomon, son of Gabirol:
“Thou art one, the beginning of all numbers, and the foundation of all buildings; thou art one, and in the secret of thy unity the most wise of men are lost, because they know it not. Thou art one, and thy unity neither wanes nor waxes, neither suffers any change. Thou art one, and yet not the one of the mathematician, for thy unity admits neither multiplication, nor change, nor form. Thou art one, and not one of mine imaginations can fix a limit for thee, or give a definition of thee; therefore will I take heed to my ways, lest I offend with my tongue. Thou art one indeed, whose excellence is so lofty, that it may in no wise fall, by no means like that one which may cease to be.
“Thou art the existing one; nevertheless, the understanding and the sight of mortals cannot attain thine existence, nor place in thee the where, the how, the why. Thou art the existing one, but in thyself, since no other can exist beside thee. Thou art the existing one, before time, and beyond space. Thou art indeed the existing one, and thine existence is so hidden, and so deep, that none can discover it, or penetrate its secret.
“Thou art the living one, but not in fixed and known time; thou art the living one, but not by spirit or by soul; for thou art the Soul of all souls. Thou art the living one; but not living with the life of mortals, that is, like a breath, and whose end is to give food to worms. Thou art the living one, and he that can attain thy mysteries will enjoy eternal delight and live for ever.
“Thou art great; before thy greatness all other greatness bows, and all that is most excellent becomes imperfect. Thou art great above all imagination, and thou art exalted above all the hierarchies of Heaven. Thou art great above all greatness, and thou art exalted above all praise. Thou art strong, and not one among thy creatures can do the works that thou dost, nor can his force be compared with thine. Thou art strong, and it is to thee that belongs that strength invincible which changes not and decays never. Thou art strong; by thy loving-kindness thou dost forgive in the moment of thy most burning wrath, and thou showest thyself long-suffering to sinners. Thou art strong, and thy mercies, existing from all time, are upon all thy creatures. Thou art the eternal light, that pure souls shall see, and that the cloud of sins will hide from the eyes of sinners. Thou art the light which is hidden in this world, and visible in the other, where the glory of the Lord is shown forth. Thou art Sovereign, and the eyes of understanding which desire to see thee are all amazed, for they can attain but part of it, never the whole. Thou art the God of gods, and all thy creatures bear witness to it; and in honour of this great name they owe thee all their worship. Thou art God, and all created beings are thy servants and thy worshippers: thy glory is not tarnished, although men worship other gods, because their intention is to address themselves to thee; they are like blind men, who wish to follow the straight road, but stray; one falls into a well, the other into a ditch; all think that they are come to their desire, yet they have wearied themselves in vain. But thy servants are like men of clear sight travelling upon the highroad; never do they stray from it, either to the right hand or the left, until they are entered into the court of the king’s palace. Thou art God, who by thy godhead sustainest all beings, and by thy unity dost being home all creatures. Thou art God, and there is no difference between thy deity, thy unity, thy eternity, and thy existence; for all is one and the same mystery; although names vary, all returns to the same truth. Thou art the knower, and that intelligence which is the source of life emanates from thyself; and beside thy knowledge all the wisest men are fools. Thou art the knower, and the ancient of the ancient ones, and knowledge has ever fed from thee. Thou art the knower, and thou hast learned thy knowledge from none, nor hast acquired it but from thyself. Thou art the knower, and like a workman and an architect thou hast taken from thy knowledge a divine will, at an appointed time, to draw being from nothing; so that the light which falls from the eyes is drawn from its own centre without any instrument or tool. This divine will has hollowed, designed, purified and moulded; it has ordered Nothingness to open itself, Being to shut up, and the world to spread itself. It has spanned the heavens, and assembled with its power the tabernacle of the spheres, with the cords of its might it has bound the curtains of the creatures of the universe, and touching with its strength the edge of the curtain of creation, has joined that which is above to that which was below.”—(Prayers of Kippour.)
We have given to these bold qabalistic speculations the only form which suits them, that is, poesy, or the inspiration of the heart.
Believing souls will have no need of the rational hypotheses contained in this new explanation of the figures of the Bible; but those sincere hearts afflicted by doubt, which are tortured by eighteenth-century criticism, will understand in reading it that even reason without faith can find in the Holy Book something besides stumbling-blocks; if the veils with which the divine text is covered throw a great shadow, this shadow is so marvellously designed by the interplay of light that it becomes the sole intelligible image of the divine ideal.
Ideal, incomprehensible as infinity, and indispensable as the very essence of mystery!
ARTICLE 2: SOLUTION OF THE SECOND PROBLEM
TRUE RELIGIONRELIGION exists in humanity, like love.
Like it, it is unique.
Like it, it either exists, or does not exist, in such and such a soul; but, whether one accepts it or denies it, it is in humanity; it is, then, in life, it is in nature itself; it is an incontestable fact of science, and even of reason.
The true religion is that which has always existed, which exists to-day, and will exist for ever.
Some one may say that religion is this or that; religion is what it is. This is the true religion, and the false religions are superstitions imitated from her, borrowed from her, lying shadows of herself!
One may say of religion what one says of true art. Savage attempts at painting or sculpture are the attempts of ignorance to arrive at the truth. Art proves itself by itself, is radiant with its own splendour, is unique and eternal like beauty.
The true religion is beautiful, and it is by that divine character that it imposes itself on the respect of science, and obtains the assent of reason.
Science dare not affirm or deny those dogmatic hypotheses which are truths for faith; but it must recognize by unmistakable characters the one true religion, that is to say, that which alone merits the name of religion in that it unites all the characters which agree with that great and universal aspiration of the human soul.
One only thing, which is to all most evidently divine, is manifested in the world.
It is charity.
The work of true religion should be to produce, to preserve, and to spread abroad the spirit of charity.
To arrive at this end she must herself possess all the characteristics of charity, in such a manner that one could define her satisfactorily, in naming her, “Organic Charity.”
Now, what are the characteristics of charity?
It is St. Paul who will tell us.
Charity is patient.
Patient like God, because it is eternal as He is. It suffers persecutions, and never persecutes others.
It is kindly and loving, calling to itself the little, and not repulsing the great.
It is without jealousy. Of whom, and of what, should it be jealous? Has it not that better part which shall not be taken away from it?
It is neither quarrelsome nor intriguing.
It is without pride, without ambition, without selfishness, without anger.
It never thinks evil, and never triumphs by injustice; for all its joy is comprehended in truth.
It endures everything, without ever tolerating evil.
It believes all; its faith is simple, submissive, hierarchical, and universal.
It sustains all, and never imposes burdens which it is not itself the first to carry.
GREAT PENTACLE FROM THE VISION OF ST. JOHN
Illustration on page 74 described: This is titled below: “GREAT PENTACLE FROM THE VISION OF ST. JOHN” The figure is contained within a rectangle of width a bit less than half height. The figure itself is taken from Revelations Chapter 10 and is roughly divisible into four parts. The top contains a human head and upraised left hand in a shaded semi-circle under an arch of three curved lines. The hand is palmer, thumb out, first and middle fingers upright and two remaining fingers to palm. “MICROPROSOPUS” is written horizontally above the arch, ”Gnosis” to the left and ”Atziluth” ”Jezirah” ”BRIAH” ”Sulphur” to the right in rows. Following the arch outside to the left is ”EIS THS”. Following the arch outside to the right is ”GR:alpha-iota-omega-nu-alpha-sigma Alpha-mu-eta-nu” — Greek is difficult to tell from Latin letters here, and the first part looks very much like ”aiwvas”, almost Crowley’s ”Aiwass” and very possibly a subconscious inspiration for it. There is a suggestion of a nimbus about the head. The section next down is contained largely within a cloud. To the left, outside ”Psyche”. To the right outside in rows ”Aziah” ”JEZIRAH” ”Mercury”. In the center is a book held open by a right hand flat against the left page and open, palm to book, fingers extending to base of right page. At the top of this portion, just below the chin of the upper section head is the word ” GR:eta delta-omicron-xi-alpha” (the glory). Immediately below this and above the spine of the book is an unrecognizable character a little like GR:mu or Mem from the Alphabet of the Magi, although this is the normal place for ”Alpha”. Immediately below the book is ” GR:eta delta-upsilon-nu-alpha-mu-iota-sigma” (the power). There is a strange character below this, at the bottom of this section and like that noted above — even harder to recognize, but this is the usual position for ”Omega”. The third section from the top and second from the bottom has two pillars issuing from the cloud. These have fluted capitols and ringed bases extending to form trapezoidal forms. The pillar to the left is black and marked at center with ”B”, while that to the right is white with ”J”. To the left is ”Hyle”. To the right in rows ”Briah” ”AZIAH” and a small rectangle. There is a crescent moon between the bases of the drums, horns angled right and slightly upward. The lowest portion shows feet issuing from the bases of the pillars and cocked outward on a mass of rock to the left and a sea to the right. ” GR:eta beta-alpha-sigma-iota-lambda-epsilon-iota-alpha” (the kingdom) is written on the base of this rock. The rectangular frame is broken at the bottom to admit crude Hebrew letters, evidently Yod-Shin-Heh-Vau-Heh or something similar with the doubt being on the HB:Heh ‘s looking like HB:Chet ‘s. Below this is what appears to be GR:Omicron-tau-iota omicron-delta epsilon-delta-iota-nu, but the poor penmanship makes certain identification impossible. The entire figure gives the impression of a man with head in heaven and feet on earth.Religion is patient—the religion of great thinkers and of martyrs.
It is benevolent like Christ and the apostles, like Vincent de Paul, and like Fenelon.
It envies not either the dignities or the goods of the earth. It is the religion of the fathers of the desert, of St. Francis, and of St. Bruno, of the Sisters of Charity, and of the Brothers of Saint-Jean-de-Dieu.
It is neither quarrelsome nor intriguing. It prays, does good, and waits.
It is humble, it is sweet-tempered, it inspires only devotion and sacrifice. It has, in short, all the characteristics of Charity because it is Charity itself.
Men, on the contrary, are impatient, persecutors, jealous, cruel, ambitious, unjust, and they show themselves as such, even in the name of that religion which they have succeeded in calumniating, but which they will never cause to life. Men pass away, but truth is eternal.
Daughter of Charity, and creator of Charity in her own turn, true religion is essentially that which realizes; she believes in the miracles of faith, because she herself accomplishes them every day when she practises charity. Now, a religion which practises charity may flatter herself that she realizes all the dreams of divine love. Moreover, the faith of the hierarchical church transforms mysticism into realism by the efficacy of her sacraments. No more signs, no more figures whose strength is not in grace, and which do not really give what they promise! Faith animates all, makes all in some sort visible and palpable; even the parables of Jesus Christ take a body and a soul. They show, at Jerusalem, the house of the wicked rich man!! The thin symbolisms of the primitive religions overturned by science, and deprived of the life of faith, resemble those whitened bones which covered the field that Ezekiel saw in his vision. The Spirit of the Saviour, the spirit of faith, the spirit of charity, has breathed upon this dust; and all that which was dead has taken life again so really that one recognizes no more yesterday’s corpses in these living creatures of to-day. And why should one recognize them, since the world is renewed, since St. Paul burned at Ephesus the books of the hierophants? Was then St. Paul a barbarian, and was he committing a crime against science? No, but he burned the winding-sheets of the resuscitated that they might forget death. Why, then, do we to-day recall the qabalistic origins of dogma? Why do we join again the figures of the Bible to the allegories of Hermes? Is it to condemn St. Paul, is it to bring doubt to believers? No, indeed, for believers have no need of our book; they will not read it, and they will not wish to understand it. But we wish to show to the innumerable crowd of those who doubt, that faith is attached to the reason of all the centuries, to the science of all the sages. We wish to force human liberty to respect divine authority, reason to recognize the bases of faith, so that faith and authority, in their turn, may never again proscribe liberty and reason.
ARTICLE 3: SOLUTION OF THE THIRD PROBLEM
THE RATIONALE OF THE MYSTERIESFAITH being the aspiration to the unknown, the object of faith is absolutely and necessarily this one thing — Mystery.
In order to formulate its aspirations, faith is forced to borrow aspirations and images from the known.
But she specializes the employment of these forms, by placing them together in a manner which, in the known order of things, is impossible. Such is the profound reason of the apparent absurdity of symbolism.
Let us give an example:
If faith said that God was impersonal, one might conclude that God is only a word, or, at most, a thing.
If it is said that God was a person, one would represent to oneself the intelligent infinite, under the necessarily bounded form of an individual.
It says, “God is one in three persons,” in order to express that one conceives in God both unity and multiplicity.
The formula of a mystery excludes necessarily the very intelligence of that formula, so far as it is borrowed from the world of known things; for, if one understood it, it would express the known and not the unknown.
It would then belong to science, and no longer to religion, that is to say, to faith.
The object of faith is a mathematical problem, whose x escapes the procedures of our algebra.
Absolute mathematics prove only the necessity, and, in consequence, the existence of this unknown which we represent by the untranslatable “x.”
Now science progresses in vain; its progress is indefinite, but always relatively finite; it will never find in the language of the finite the complete expression of the infinite. Mystery is therefore eternal.
To bring into the logic of the known the terms of a profession of faith is to withdraw them from faith, which has for positive bases anti-logic, that is to say, the impossibility of logically explaining the unknown.
For the Jew, God is separate from humanity; He does not live in His creatures, He is infinite egoism.
For the Mussulman, God is a word before which one prostrates oneself, on the authority of Mohammed.
For the Christian, God has revealed himself in humanity, proves Himself by charity, and reigns by virtue of the order which constitutes the hierarchy.
The hierarchy is the guardian of dogma, for whose letter and spirit she alike demands respect. The sectarians who, in the name of their reason or, rather, of their individual unreason, have laid hands on dogma, have, in the very act, lost the spirit of charity; they have excommunicated themselves.
The Catholic, that is to say the universal, dogma merits that magnificent name by harmonizing in one all the religious aspirations of the world; with Moses and Mohammed, it affirms the unity of God; with Zoroaster, Hermes and Plato, it recognizes in Him the infinite trinity of its own regeneration; it reconciles the living numbers of Pythagoras with the monadic Word of St. John; [18] so much, science and reason will agree. It is then in the eyes of reason and of science themselves the most perfect, that is to say the most complete, dogma which has ever been produced in the world. Let science and reason grant us so much; we shall ask nothing more of them.
“God exists; there is only one God, and He punishes those who do evil,” said Moses.
“God is everywhere; He is in us, and the good that we do to me we do it to God,” said Jesus.
“Fear” is the conclusion of the dogma of Moses.
“Love” is the conclusion of the dogma of Jesus.
The typical ideal of the life of God in humanity is incarnation.
Incarnation necessitates redemption, and operates it in the name of the reversibility of solidarity, [19] or, in other words, of universal communion, the dogmatic principle of the spirit of charity.
To substitute human arbitrament for the legitimate despotism of the law, to put, in other words, tyranny in the place of authority, is the work of all Protestantism and of all democracies. What men call liberty is the sanction of illegitimate authority, or, rather, the fiction of power not sanctioned by authority.
John Calvin protested against the stakes of Rome, in order to give himself the right to burn Michael Servetus. Every people that liberates itself from a Charles I, or a Louis XVI, must undergo a Robespierre or a Cromwell and there is a more or less absurd anti-pope being all protestations against the legitimate papacy.
The divinity of Jesus Christ only exists in the Catholic Church, to which He transmits hierarchically His life and His divine powers. This divinity is sacerdotal and royal by virtue of communion; but outside of that communion, every affirmation of the divinity of Jesus Christ is idolatrous, because Jesus Christ could not be an isolated God.
The number of Protestants is of no importance to Catholic truth.
If all men were blind, would that be a reason for denying the existence of the sun?
Reason, in protesting against dogma, proves sufficiently that she has not invented it; but she is forced to admire the morality which results from that dogma. Now, if morality is a light, it follows that dogma must be a sun; light does not come from shadows.
Between the two abysses of polytheism, and an absurd and ignorant theism, there is only one possible medium: the mystery of the most Holy Trinity.
Between speculative theism, and anthropomorphiosm, there is only one possible medium: the mystery of incarnation.
Between immoral fatality, and Draconic responsibility, which would conclude the damnation of all beings, there is only one possible mean: the mystery of redemption.
The trinity is faith.
The incarnation is hope.
The redemption is charity.
The trinity is the hierarchy.
Incarnation is the divine authority of the Church.
Redemption is the unique, infallible, unfailing and Catholic priesthood.
The Catholic Church alone possesses an invariable dogma, and by its very constitution is incapable of corrupting morality; she does not make innovations, she explains. Thus, for example, the dogma of the immaculate conception is not new; it was contained in the theotokon of the Council of Ephesus, and the theotokon is a rigorous consequence of the Catholic dogma of the incarnation.
In the same way the Catholic Church makes no excommunications, she declares them; and she alone can declare them, because she alone is guardian of unity.
Outside the vessel of Peter, there is nothing but the abyss. Protestants are like people who have thrown themselves into the water in order to escape sea-sickness.
It is of Catholicity, such as it is constituted in the Roman Church, that one must say what Voltaire so boldly said of God: “If it did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it.” But if a man had been capable of inventing the spirit of charity, he also would have invented God. Charity does not invent itself, it reveals itself by its works, and it is then that one can cry with the Saviour of the world: ”Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God!”
To understand the spirit of charity is to understand all mysteries.
ARTICLE 4: SOLUTION OF THE FOURTH PROBLEM
RELIGION PROVED BY THE OBJECTIONS WHICH PEOPLE OPPOSE TO IT.THE objections which one may make against religion may be made either in the name of science, or in the name of reason, or in the name of faith.
Science cannot deny the facts of the existence of religion, of its establishment and its influence upon the events of history.
It is forbidden to it to touch dogma; dogma belongs wholly to faith.
Science ordinarily arms itself against religion with a series of facts which it is her duty to appreciate, which, in fact, she does appreciate thoroughly, but which she condemns still more energetically than science does.
In doing that, science admits that religion is right, and herself wrong; she lacks logic, manifests the disorder which every angry passion introduces into the spirit of man, and admits the need that it has of being ceaselessly redressed and directed by the spirit of charity.
Reason, on its side, examines dogma and finds it absurd.
But, if it were not so, reason would understand it; if reason understood it, it would no longer be the formula of the unknown.
It would be a mathematical demonstration of the infinite.
It would be the infinite finite, the unknown known, the immeasurable measured, the indicible named.
That is to say that dogma could only cease to be absurd in the eyes of reason to become, in the eyes of faith, science, reason and good sense in one, the most monstrous and the most impossible of all absurdities.
Remain the objections of dissent.
The Jews, our fathers in religion, reproach us with having attacked the unity of God, with having changed the immutable and eternal law, with adoring the creature instead of the Creator.
These heavy reproaches are founded on their perfectly false notion of Christianity.
Our God is the God of Moses, unique, immaterial, infinite God, sole object of worship, and ever the same.
Like the Jews, we believe Him to be present everywhere, but, as they ought to do, we believe Him living, thinking and loving in humanity, and we adore Him in His works.
We have not changed His law, for the Jewish Decalogue is also the law of Christians.
The law is immutable because it is founded on the eternal principles of Nature; but the worship necessitated by the needs of man may change, and modify itself, parallel with the changes in men themselves.
This signifies that the worship itself is immutable, but modifies itself as language does.
Worship is a form of instruction; it is a language; one must translate it when nations no longer understand it.
We have translated, and not destroyed, the worship of Moses and of the prophets.
In adoring God in creation, we do not adore the creation itself.
In adoring God in Jesus Christ, it is God alone whom we adore, but God united to humanity.
In making humanity divine, Christianity has revealed the human divinity.
The God of the Jews was inhuman, because they did not understand Him in His works.
We are, then, more Israelite than the Israelites themselves. What they believe, we believe with them, and better than they do. They accuse us of having separated ourselves from them, and, on the contrary, it is they who wish to separate from us.
We wait for them, the heart and the arms wide open.
We are, as they are, the disciples of Moses.
Like them, we come from Egypt, and we detest its slavery. But we have entered into the Promised Land, and they obstinately abide and die in the desert.
Mohammedans are the bastards of Israel, or rather, they are his disinherited brothers, like Esau.
Their belief is illogical, for they admit that Jesus is a great prophet, and they treat Christians as infidels.
They recognize the Divine inspiration of Moses, yet they do not look upon the Jews as their brothers.
They believe blindly in their blind prophet, the fatalist Mohammed, the enemy of progress and of liberty.
Nevertheless, do not let us take away from Mohammed the glory of having proclaimed the unity of God among the idolatrous Arabs.
There are pure and sublime pages in the Qur’an.
In reading those pages, one may say with the children of Ishmael, “There is no other God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet.”
There are three thrones in heaven for the three prophets of the nations; but, at the end of time, Mohammed will be replaced by Elias.
The Mussulmans do not reproach the Christians; they insult them.
They call them infidels and “giaours,” that is to say, dogs. We have nothing to reply to them.
One must not refute the Turks and the Arabs; one must instruct and civilize them.
Remain dissident Christians, that is to say, those who, having broken the bond of unity, declare themselves strangers to the charity of the Church.
Greek orthodoxy, that twin of the Roman Church which has not grown greater since its separation, which counts no longer in religion, which, since Photius, has not inspired a single eloquence, is a church become entirely temporal, whose priesthood is no more than a function regulated by the imperial policy of the Tsar of All the Russias; a curious mummy of the primitive Church, still coloured and gilded with all its legends and all its rites, which its popes no longer understand; the shadow of a living church, but one which insisted on stopping when that church moved on, and which is now no more than its bloated-out and headless silhouette.
Then, the Protestants, those eternal regulators of anarchy, who have broken down dogma, and are trying always to fill the void with reasonings, like the sieve of the Danaides; these weavers of religious fantasy, all of whose innovations are negative, who have formulated for their own use an unknown calling itself better known, mysteries better explained, a more defined infinite, a more restrained immensity, a more doubting faith, those who have quintessentialized the absurd, divided charity, and taken acts of anarchy for the principles of an entirely impossible hierarchy; those men who wish to realize salvation by faith alone, because charity escapes them, and who can no longer realize it, even upon the earth, for their pretended sacraments are no longer anything but allegorical mummeries; they no longer give grace; they no longer make God seen and touched; they are no longer, in a word, the signs of the almighty power of faith, but the compelled witnesses of the eternal impotence of doubt.
It is, then, against faith itself that the Reformation protested! Protestants were right only in their protest against the inconsiderate and persecuting zeal which wished to force consciences. They claimed the right to doubt, the right to have less religion than others, or even to have none at all; they have shed their blood for that sad privilege; they conquered it, they possess it; but they will not take away from us that of pitying them and loving them. When the need to believe again takes them, when their heart revolts against the tyranny of a falsified reason when they become tired of the empty abstractions of their arbitrary dogma, of the vague observances of their ineffective worship; when their communion without the real presence, their churches without divinity, and their morality without grace finally frighten them; when they are sick with the nostalgia of God—will they not rise up like the prodigal son, and come to throw themselves at the feet of the successor of Peter, saying: “Father, we have sinned against heaven and in thy sight, and we are no more worthy to be called thy sons, but count us among the humblest of thy servants”?
We will not speak of the criticism of Voltaire. That great mind was dominated by an ardent love of truth and justice, but he lacked that rectitude of heart which the intelligence of faith gives. Voltaire could not admit faith, because he did not know how to love. The spirit of charity did not reveal itself to that soul which had no tenderness, and he bitterly criticized the hearth of which he did not feel the warmth, and the lamp of which he did not see the light. If religion were such as he saw it, he would have been a thousand times right to attack it, and one would be obliged to fall on one’s knees before the heroism of his courage. Voltaire would be the Messiah of good sense, the Hercules destructor of fanaticism. ... But he laughed too much to understand Him who said: “Happy are they who weep,” and the philosophy of laughter will never have anything in common with the religion of tears.
Voltaire parodied the Bible, dogma and worship; and then he mocked and insulted that parody.
Only those who recognize religion in Voltaire’s parody can take offence at it. The Voltaireans are like the frogs in the fable who leap upon the log, and then make fun of royal majesty. They are at liberty to take the log for a king, they are at liberty to make once more that Roman caricature of which Tertullian once made mirth, that which represented the God of the Christians under the figure of a man with an ass’s head. Christians will shrug their shoulders when they see this knavery, and pray God for the poor ignorants who imagine that they insult them.
M. the Count Joseph de Maistre, after having, in one of his most eloquent paradoxes, represented the hangman as a sacred being, and a permanent incarnation of divine justice upon earth, suggested that one should raise to the old man of Ferney a statue executed by the hangman. There is depth in this thought. Voltaire, in effect, also was, in the world, a being at the same time providential and fatal, endowed with insensibility for the accomplishment of his terrible functions. He was, in the domain of intelligence, a hangman, an extirminator armed by the justice of God Himself.
God sent Voltaire between the century of Bossuet and that of Napoleon in order to destroy everything that separates those two geniuses and to unite them in one alone.
He was the Samson of the spirit, always ready to shake the columns of the temple; but in order to make him turn in spite of himself the mill of religious progress, Providence made him blind of heart.
ARTICLE 5: SOLUTION OF THE LAST PROBLEM
TO SEPARATE RELIGION FROM SUPERSTITION AND FANATICISMSUPERSTITION, from the Latin word superstes, surviving, is the sign which survives the idea which it represents; it is the form preferred to the thing, the rite without reason, faith become insensate through isolating itself. It is in consequence the corpse of religion, the death of life, stupefaction substituted for inspiration.
Fanaticism is superstition become passionate, its name comes from the word fanum, which signifies ”temple,” it is the temple put in place of God, it is the human and temporal interest of the priest substituted for the honour of priesthood, the wretched passion of the man exploiting the faith of the believer.
In the fable of the ass loaded with relics, La Fontaine tells us that the animal thought that he was being adored; he did not tell us that certain people indeed thought that they were adoring the animal. These people were the superstitious.
If any one had laughed at their stupidity, he would very likely have been assassinated, for from superstition to fanaticism is only one step.
Superstition is religion interpreted by stupidity; fanaticism is religion serving as a pretext to fury.
Those who intentionally and maliciously confound religion itself with superstition and fanaticism, borrow from stupidity its blind prejudices, and would borrow perhaps in the same way from fanaticism its injustices and angers.
Inquisitors or Septembrisors, [20] what matter names? The religion of Jesus Christ condemns, and has always condemned, assassins.
RÉSUMÉ OF THE FIRST PART
IN THE FORM OF A DIALOGUE
FAITH, SCIENCE, REASON.SCIENCE. You will never make me believe in the existence of God.
FAITH. You have not the privilege of believing, but you will never prove to me that God does not exist.
SCIENCE. In order to prove it to you, I must first know what God is.
FAITH. You will never know it. If you knew it, you could teach it to me; and when I knew it, I should no longer believe it.
SCIENCE. Do you then believe without knowing what you believe?
FAITH. Oh, do not let us play with words! It is you who do not know what I believe, and I believe it precisely because you do not know it. Do you pretend to be infinite? Are you not stopped at every step by mystery? Mystery is for you an infinite ignorance which would reduce to nothing your finite knowledge, if I did not illumine it with my burning aspirations; and if, when you say, “I no longer know,” I did not cry, “As for me, I begin to believe.”
SCIENCE. But your aspirations and their object are not (and cannot be for me) anything but hypotheses.
FAITH. Doubtless, but they are certainties for me, since without those hypotheses I should be doubtful even about your certainties.
SCIENCE. But if you begin where I stop, you begin always too rashly and too soon. My progress bears witness that I am ever advancing.
FAITH. What does your progress matter, if I am always walking in front of you?
SCIENCE. You, walking! Dreamer of eternity, you have disdained earth too much; your feet are benumbed.
FAITH. I make my children carry me.
SCIENCE. They are the blind carrying the blind; beware of precipices!
FAITH. No, my children are by no means blind; on the contrary, they enjoy twofold sight: they see, by thine eyes, what thou canst show them upon earth, and they contemplate, by mine, what I show them in Heaven.
SCIENCE. What does Reason think of it?
REASON. I think, my dear teachers, that you illustrate a touching fable, that of the blind man and the paralytic. Science reproaches Faith with not knowing how to walk upon the earth, and Faith says that Science sees nothing of her aspirations and of eternity in the sky. Instead of quarrelling, Science and Faith ought to unite; let Science carry Faith, and let Faith console Science by teaching her to hope and to love!
SCIENCE. It is a fine ideal, but Utopian. Faith will tell me absurdities. I prefer to walk without her.
FAITH. What do you call absurdities?
SCIENCE. I call absurdities propositions contrary to my demonstrations; as, for example, that three make one, that a God has become man, that is to say, that the Infinite has made itself finite, that the Eternal died, that God punished his innocent Son for the sin of guilty men. ...
FAITH. Say no more about it. As enunciated by you, these propositions are in fact absurdities. Do you know what is the number of God, you who do not know God? Can you reason about the operations of the unknown? Can you understand the mysteries of charity? I must always be absurd for you; for, if you understood them, my affirmations would be absorbed by your theorems; I should be you, and you would be me; or, to put it better, I should no longer exist, and Reason, in the presence of the infinite, would halt, blinded for evermore by your doubts, which are as infinite as space.
SCIENCE. At least, you should never usurp my authority, or give me the lie in my own domains.
FAITH. I have never done so, and I could never do so.
SCIENCE. So! You have never believed, for example, that a virgin could become a mother, without ceasing to be a virgin, in the physical, natural, positive order of things, in spite of all the laws of Nature; you do not affirm that a piece of bread is not only a God, but a real human body with its bones and its veins, its organs, its blood; such, in short, that you make of your children who eat this bread a little race of cannibals.
FAITH. There is not a single Christian who would not be revolted by what you have just said. That sufficiently proves that they do not understand my teachings in this positive and gross sense. The supernatural which I affirm is above Nature, and consequently could never oppose itself to her; the words of Faith are understood only by Faith; Science has only to repeat them to pervert their proper sense. I employ these words because I have no others; but since you find my remarks absurd, you should conclude from that that I give to the same words a meaning which escapes you. When the Saviour revealed the dogma of the real presence, did he not say: “The flesh profiteth nothing, but my words are spirit and life.” I do not give you the mystery of the incarnation for an anatomical phenomenon, nor that of transubstantiation for a chemical manipulation. By what right do you exclaim “Absurd!”? I do not reason about any of the things you know; by what right do you say that I talk unreasonably?
SCIENCE. I begin to understand you, or rather, I see that I shall never understand you. This being so, let us remain separate; I shall never have need of you.
FAITH. I am less proud, and I recognize that you may be useful to me perhaps. Perhaps, too, you will be very sad and very desperate without me, and I will not leave you unless Reason consents.
REASON. Be well ‘ware of doing so! I am necessary to both of you. And I, what should I do without you? In order to be just, I need to know and to believe. But I must never confound what I know with what I believe. To know is to believe no longer; to believe is not to know as yet. The object of Science is the known; Faith does not occupy itself with that, and leaves it all to Science. The object of Faith is the unknown; Science may seek it, but not define it; she is then obliged, at least provisionally, to accept the definitions of Faith which it is impossible for her even to criticize. Only, if Science renounces Faith, she renounces hope and love, whose existence and necessity are as evident for Science as for Faith. Faith, as a psychological fact, pertains to the realm of Science; and Science, as the manifestation of the light of God within the human intelligence, pertains to the realm of Faith. Science and Faith must then admit each other, respect each other mutually, support each other, and bear each other aid in case of need, but without ever encroaching the one upon the other. The means of uniting them is—never to confound them. Never can there be contradiction between them, for although they use the same words,, they do not speak the same language.
FAITH. Oh, well, Sister Science; what do you say about it?
SCIENCE. I say that we are separated by a deplorable misunderstanding, and that henceforward we shall be able to walk together. But to which of your different creeds do you wish to attach me? Shall I be Jewish, Catholic, Mohammedan, or Protestant?
FAITH. You will remain Science, and you will be universal.
SCIENCE. That is to say, Catholic, if I understand you correctly. But what should I think of the different religions?
FAITH. Judge them by their works. Seek true Charity, and when you have found her, ask her to which religion she belongs.
SCIENCE. It is certainly not to that of the Inquisition, and of the authors of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.
FAITH. It is to that of St. John the Almoner, of St. Francois de Sales, [21] of St. Vincent de Paul, of Fenelon, and so many more.
SCIENCE. Admit that if religion has produced much good, she has also done much evil.
FAITH. When one kills in the name of the God who said, “Thou shalt not kill," [22] when one persecutes in the name of Him who commands us to forgive our enemies, when one propagates darkness in the name of Him who tells us not to hide the light under a bushel, is it just to attribute the crime to the very law which condemns it? Say, if you wish to be just, that in spite of religion, much evil has been done upon earth. But also, to how many virtues has it not given birth? How many are the devotions, how many the sacrifices, of which we do not know! Have you counted those noble hearts, both men and women, who renounced all joys to enter the service of all sorrows? Those souls devoted to labour and to prayer, who have strewn their pathways with good deeds? Who founded asylums for orphans and old men, hospitals for the sick, retreats for the repentant? These institutions, as glorious as they are modest, are the real works with which the annals of the Church are filled; religious wars and the persecution of heretics belong to the politics of savage centuries. The heretics, moreover, were themselves murderers. Have you forgotten the burning of Michael Servetus and the massacre of our priests, renewed, still in the name of humanity and reason, by the revolutionaries who hated the Inquisition and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew? Men are always cruel, it is true, but only when they forget the religion whose watchwords are blessing and pardon.
SCIENCE. O Faith! Pardon me, then, if I cannot believe; but I know now why you believe. I respect your hopes, and share your desires. But I must find by seeking; and in order to seek, I must doubt.
REASON. Work, then, and seek, O Science, but respect the oracles of Faith! When your doubt leaves a gap in universal enlightenment, allow Faith to fill it! Walk distinguished the one from the other, but leaning the one upon the other, and you will never go astray.
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Notes:1. A dog has six legs. Definition. It is no answer to this to show that all dogs have four.—O.M.
2. Who, however, had the word laid aside against the time when Paul should give it a meaning.—O.M.
3. Sublime houmour of sophistry! Levi asserts, "Any lie will serve, provided every one acquiesces in it," and reprehends Christianity for disturbing the peace of Paganism. "Or," indicates that Christianity is but syncretic-eclectic Paganism, and defends it on this ground.—O.M.
4. The Priscillianist heresy was disturbing the Church, especially in Spain. The Emperor Maximus, a Spaniard, was inclined to put it down with a strong hand and confiscate the heretics’ property. The Gallic clergy hounded him on, and the Councils of Bordeaux and Saragossa encouraged him. Two Spanish priests, Ithacus and Idacus, clamoured for the heretics’ punishment by the secular arm. But St. Martin of Tours, stalwart champion of orthodoxy as he was, resisted, and in 385 he went to Trèves to plead for the persecuted Priscillianists. He prevailed. So long as Martin stayed at court the Ithacan party was foiled. When he left they had the upper hand again, and Maximus gave the suppression of the heretics into the hands of the unrelenting Evodious. Priscillian was killed. Exile and death were the fate of his followers. Heresy blazed the stronger, and a worse persecution was threatened. Then St. Martin left his cell at Marmontier, and set out a second time to Trèves. News of the old man coming along the road on his ass reached his enemies. They met him at the gate and refused him entrance. "But," said Martin, "I come with the peace of Jesus Christ." And such was the power of this presence that they could not close the city gates against him. But the palace doors were closed. Martin refused to see the Ithacans or to receive the Communion with them, and their fury at this is eloquent testimony of their sense of his power. They appealed to Maximus, who delivered over Martin bound to them. But in the night Maximus sent for Martin, argued, coaxed, persuaded him to compromise. The schism would be great, he persisted, if Martin continued to exasperate the Ithacans. Martin said he had nothing to do with persecutors. In wrath the Emperor let him go, and gave orders to the Tribunes to depart to Spain and carry out a rigorous Inquisition. Then Martin returned to Maximus and bargained. Let this order be revoked, and he would receive Communion with the Ithacans next day at the election of the new Archbishop. The order was revoked, and Martin kept his word. But when he knew the cause of Humanity safe, he departed, and on his way back to Tours experienced a great agony. Why had he had dealings with the Ithacans? In a lonely place he pondered sadly. An angel spoke to him. "Martin, you do right to be sad, but it was the only way." Never again did he go to any council. He was wont to say with tears that if he had saved the heretics he himself had lost power over men and over demons. They have outraged the meaning of the episode who explain Martin’s protest as merely against the surrender of the Church to Secular Power. It was lèse-humanité of which he held the Ithacans guilty. St. Martin of Tours was often called Martin the Thaumaturgist. He was noted for his power over animals.
5. This passage is typical of the sublime irony of Levi, and the key to the whole of his paradoxes.—TRANS.
6. Christianity has fallen, and so Christ has already become the ‘devil’ to such thinkers as Nietzsche and Crowley.—O.M.
7. Right—’droit’— a word much in evidence at the time, with no true English equivalent, save in such phrases as ‘the right to work.’ By itself it is only used in the plural, which will not do here, and throughout this treatise.—TRANS.
8. Almost too visible a sneer of the Atheist and woman-despiser.—O.M.
9. 2 Thess. ii. 7,8. This passage is presumably that referred to by the author. Cf. 1 John iv. 3, and ii, 18.—TRANS.
10. Actual priests. Levi’s ideal priest, of whom ‘bad; is an impossible epithet, is not to be looked for in the Church. He is in that ‘Church’ which is also Ark, Rose, Font, Altar, Cup, and the rest. He is that Word of Truth which is ‘established’ by two witnesses.—O. M.
11. This is the true clairvoyant Levi. The Levi who prophesied Universal Empire for Napoleon III was either the Magus trying to use him as a tool, or a Micaiah unadjured.—O. M.
12. A mistranslation by monotheists. The Greek is πνευμα ο Θεοσ “Spirit is God.”—TRANS
13. Monasteries in Paris which were used as prisons in the Reign of Terror.—TRANS
14. Proudhon.—TRANS
15. Written about the time of the Crimean War, this indicates Levi’s attempt to use Imperialism as his magical weapon, just as Allan Bennett tried to use Buddhism. All these second-hand swords break, as Wagner saw when he wrote Siegfried, and invented a new Music, a Nothung which has shorn asunder more false sceptres than Wotan’s.—O.M.
16. “I do not say that Voltaire died a good Catholic, but he died a Catholic.”&mdashlE. L. Christian authors unanimously hold that, like all ‘heretics,’ he repented on his death-bed, and died blaspheming. What on earth does it matter? Life, not death, reveals the soul.—TRANS
17. It is amusing to remark that this very symbol is characteristic of the Greek Church which he has been attacking. Levi should have visited Moscow.—TRANS
18. The author had perhaps no space to continue with a demonstration that the Gospel legend itself is a macedoine of those of Bacchus, Adonis, Osiris, and a hundred others, and that the Mass, and Christian ceremonies generally, have similarly pagan sources.—O.M.
19. This and many similar phrases employed in the controversies of the period are to-day practically unintelligible. Levi was at one time a kind of Socialist.—TRANS
20. Those who took part in the massacres of the Revolution of the 4th September, 1792.—TRANS
21. Levi was certainly never the dupe of this boudoir Theologian. He accepted him without perusal, as the Englishman accepts Shakespeare and Milton.—O.M.
22. And habitually commanded the rape of virgins and the massacre of children. 1 Sam. xv. 3, etc.—O.M.