Contradictions in education.

tirely abandoned to chance. To render it perfect, the plan must be directed by public utility, and founded on simple and invariable principles; this is the only method to diminish the influence it receives from chance, and to obviate the contradictions that are found, and must necessarily be found, among all the various precepts of modern education.

CHAP. IX.

OF THE PRINCIPAL CAUSES OF THE CONTRADICTIONS IN THE PRECEPTS OF EDUCATION.

IN Europe, and especially in the catholic countries, if all the precepts of education are contradictory, it is because public instruction is there confided to two powers, whose interests are opposite, and whose precepts therefore must be different and contradictory: The one is the spiritual power,

The other is the temporal power.

The strength and grandeur of the latter depends on the strength and grandeur of the empire it commands. The real strength of a prince consists in the strength

of

Pernicious influence of the clergy in Catholic countries.

of the nation; when that ceases to be respected the prince ceases to be powerful. He desires, and ought to desire, that his subjects be brave, industrious, learned, and virtuous. Is it the same with the spiritual power? No; its interest is not the same. The power of the priest depends on the superstition and stupid credulity of the people. It is of little significance to him that they be learned; the less they know the more docile they will be to his dictates. The interest of the spiritual power is not connected with that of a nation, but with that of a sect.

Two nations are at war; what is it to the pope which is the master and which the slave, if the conqueror and conquered are both to be subject to him? If the French sink under the power of the Portuguese; if the house of Braganza mounts the throne of the Bourbons, the pope sees nothing in it but an increase of his authority. What does the sacerdotal power require of a nation? A blind submission, a credulity without bounds, a puerile and contagious fear. Whether the nation renders itself renowned for its talents and patriotic virtues, is what the clergy concern themselves little about. Great talents and great virtues are almost unknown in Spain, Portugal, and in all parts where the spiritual power is most formidable.

Ambition, it is true, is common to both powers, but the means by which it is gratified are very different. To raise itself to the highest point of grandeur, the one must exalt the passions of men, and the other debase them.

Ambition and artifices of ecclesiastics.

If it be to a love of the public good, to justice, to riches, and glory, that the temporal power owes its warriors, its magistrates, its merchants, and men of letters; if it be by the commerce of its towns, the valour of its troops, the equity of its senate, and the genius of its literati, that the prince renders his nation respectable among others, the strong passions directed to the general good then serve as the basis of his grandeur.

The ecclesiastical body, on the contrary, found their grandeur on the destruction of those very passions. The priest is ambitious, but ambition is odious to him in the laity; it thwarts his designs. The project of the priest is to extinguish every desire in man, to make him disgusted with wealth and power, and by that disgust to appropriate both of them to himself (19). Of this we are certain, that the system of religion has been constantly directed by this plan.

At the time that christianity was established, what did they preach? The community of property. Who offered himself as the depository of the goods that were to be in common? The priest. Who violated the deposit, and made himself the proprietor? The priest. When the rumour of the end of the world was spread abroad, by whom was it authenticated? The priest. The report was favourable to his designs, he hoped, that struck with a panic, mankind would be anxious about one matter only (a matter in reality of importance) that of their salvation. Life, they said, is but

a pas

Ambition and artifices of ecclesiastics.

a passage heaven is our inheritance; why then should we give ourselves up to earthly pleasures? If discourses of this kind did not entirely detach the laity from earthly enjoyments, it at least weaned them from the love of their relations, of glory, of the public good, and of their country. Heroes then became rare; and sovereigns, struck with the hope of mighty possessions in Heaven, consented sometimes to commit to a priest a part of their terrestrial authority. The priest seized it, and to preserve it depreciated true glory and true virtue. It was no longer permitted to honour such characters as Minos, Lycurgus, Codrus, Aristides, Timoleon; in a word, the defenders and benefactors. of their country. Other models were proposed, other names were inscribed in the calendar; and instead of the ancient heroes, were seen the names of St. Anthony, St. Crispin, St. Claire, St. Fiacre, St. Francis (20); in short, the names of all those solitary wretches, who dangerous to society by the example of their stupid religion, retired to cloisters and deserts, there to vegetate and end their useless days.

By such models the priests hoped to accustom mankind to regard this life as a short journey. They then hoped that being without desires for terrestrial goods, and without friendship for those they should meet on their journey, they would become equally indifferent to their own happiness and that of their posterity. In fact, if life be nothing more than a baiting-place, why should we be so interested in the affairs that con

Contradictory action of the spiritual and temporal power.

cern it? A traveller does not repair the walls of an inn where he is to pass one night only.

To secure their grandeur, and satisfy their ambition, the spiritual and temporal powers must, therefore, in every country, employ very different means. Charged in common with the instruction of the public, they must engrave on the hearts and minds of men precepts that are contradictory, and relative to the interest that one has in kindling, and the other in extinguishing the passions*.

That these two powers, however, equally preach probity, I allow. But they do not attach the same meaning to the word; and modern Rome, under the government of the pope, has not certainly the same idea of virtue that the ancient Romans had under the consulate of the elder Brutus. The dawn of reason begins to appear; men now know that the same words do not every where convey the same ideas. What therefore is now required of an author? That he annex clear ideas to the terms he uses. The reign of the dark scholastics may disappear; the theologians will not perhaps always impose on the people and govern ments. Of this we may rest assured, that they will not at least preserve their power by the means they have acquired it. Circumstances have changed with the

To attempt to destroy the passions of men, is to attempt to destroy their action. Does the theologian rail at the passions? he is the pendulum that mocks its spring, and the effect that mistakes its cause.