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He whose good fortune has destined him{ to be the sacrifice, is thrown with the greatest violence upon a range of spears, fixed for the purpose. If on falling he receives a mortal wound, it argurs well as to the success of the negociation and the merit of the envoy; but if he survives the wound, he is a wretch, with whom the god would not condescend to hold any communication.

With the majority of idolaters, priests perform the office of executioner at the altar; and among the Siberians, it is the practice to kill the priests, in order to dispatch them to pray in the other world for the fulfilment of the wishes of the people.

But let us turn our attention to other frenzies and other spectacles. All Europe passes into Asia, by a road inundated with the blood of Jews, who commit suicide to avoid falling into the hands of their enemies. This epidemic depopulates one half of the inhabited world; kings, pontiffs, women, the young and the aged, all yield to the influence of the holy madness which, for a series of two hundred years, instigated the slaughter of innumerable nations at the tomb of a god of peace. Then were to be seen lying oracles, and military hermits; mo‐

Sometimes children are demanded, and the respective divinities recal the life they had but just imparted: "Justice," says Montaigne, "thirsting for the blood of innocence!" Sometimes the call is for the dearest and nearest blood: the Carthagenians sacrificed their own sons to Saturn, as if Time did not devour them with sufficient speed. Sometimes the demand was for the blood of the most beautiful. That Amestris, who had buried twelve men alive, in order to ob-narchs in pulpits, and prelates in camps. tain from Pluto, in return for so revolting All the different states constitute one an offering, a somewhat longer life-that delirious populace; barriers of mountains same Amestris farther sacrifices to that and seas are surmounted; legitimate posinsatiable divinity twelve daughters of sessions are abandoned, to enable their the highest personages in Persia; as the owners to fly to conquests which were no sacrificing priests have always taught longer, in point of fertility, the land of men that they ought to offer on the altar { promise; manners become corrupted the most valuable of their possessions. It under foreign skies ; princes, after having is upon this principle that among some exhausted their respective kingdoms to nations the first-born were immolated, redeem a country which had never been and that among others they were redeemed theirs, complete the ruin of them for their by offerings more valuable to the mi- personal ransom; thousands of soldiers, nisters of sacrifice. This it is, unques-wandering under the banners of many tionably, which introduced into Europe the practice prevalent for centuries of devoting children to celibacy at the early age of five years, and shutting up in a cloister the brothers of an hereditary prince, just as in Asia, the practice is to murder them.

chieftains, acknowledge the authority of none, and hasten their defeat by their desertion; and the disease terminates only to be succeeded by a contagion still more horrible and desolating.

The same spirit of fanaticism cherished the rage for distant conquests: scarcely Sometimes it is the purest blood that had Europe repaired its losses, when the is demanded. We read of certain In-discovery of a new world hastened the dians, if I recollect rightly, who hospitably entertain all who visit them, and make a merit of killing every sensible and virtuous stranger who enters their country, that his talents and virtues may remain with them. Sometimes the blood required is that which is most sacred.

ruin of our own. At that terrible injunction, "Go and conquer," America was desolated and its inhabitants exterminated; Africa and Europe were exhausted in vain to repeople it; the poison of money and of pleasure having ener{vated the species, the world became

nearly a desart, and appeared likely: every day to advance nearer to desolation, by the continual wars which were kindled on our continent, from the ambition of extending its power to foreign lands.

Let us now compute the immense number of slaves which fanaticism has made, whether in Asia, where uncircumcision was a mark of infamy, or in Africa, where the Christian name was a crime, or in America, where the pretext of baptism absolutely extinguished the feelings of humanity. Let us compute the thousands who have been seen to perish either on scaffolds in the ages of persecution, or in civil wars by the hands of their fellow citizens, or by their own hands through excessive austerities, and maceration. Let us survey the surface of the earth, and glance at the various standards unfurled and blazing in the name of religion; in Spain against the Moors, in France against the Turks, in Hungary against the Tartars; at the numerous military orders, founded for converting infidels by the point of the sword, and slaughtering one another at the foot of the altar they had come to defend. Let us then look down from the appalling tribunal thus raised on the bodies of the innocent and miserable, in order to judge the living, as God, with a balance widely different, will judge the dead.

In a word, let us contemplate the horrors of fifteen centuries, all frequently renewed in the course of a single one; unarmed men slain at the feet of altars; kings destroyed by the dagger or by poison; a large state reduced to half its extent by the fury of its own citizens: the nation at once the most warlike and the most pacific on the face of the globe, divided in fierce hostility against itself; the sword unsheathed between the sons and the father; usurpers, tyrants, executioners, sacrilegious robbers and bloodstained parricides violating, under the impulse of religion, every convention divine or human;-such is the deadly picture of fanaticism.

SECTION II.

If this term has at present any connection with its original meaning, it is exceedingly slight.

Fanaticus was an honourable designation. It signified the minister or benefactor of a temple. According to the dictionary of Trevoux, some antiquaries have discovered inscriptions in which Roman citizens of considerable consequence assumed the title of fanaticus.

In Cicero's oration "pro domo sua," a passage occurs in which the word fanaticus appears to me of difficult explanation. The seditious and libertine Clodius, who had brought about the banishment of Cicero for having saved the republic, had not only plundered and demolished the houses of that great man; but in order that Cicero might never be able to return to his city residence, he procured the consecration of the land on which it stood; and the priests had erected there a temple to liberty, or rather to slavery, in which Cæsar, Pompey, Crassus, and Clodius, then held the republic: Thus in all ages has religion been employed as an instrument in the persecution of great men.

When at length, in a happier period, Cicero was recalled, he pleaded before the people, in order to obtain the restor{ation of the ground on which his house had stood, and the rebuilding of the house at the expense of the Roman people. He thus expresses himself in the speech against Clodius (Oratio pro Domo sua, chap. xl.)

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Adspicite, adspicite, pontifices, hominem religiosum.. monete eum, modum quemdam esse religionis; nimium esse superstitiosum non oportere. Quid tibi necesse fuit anili superstitione, homo fanatice, sacrificium, quod aliænæ domi fieret, invisere?"

Does the word fanaticus, as used above, mean senseless, pitiless, abominable fanatic, according to the present acceptation, or does it rather imply the pious religious man, the frequenter and

consecrator of temples? Is it used here in the meaning of decided censure or ironical praise! I do not feel myself competent to determine, but will give a translation of the passage :

"Behold, reverend pontiffs, behold the pious man.... suggest to him, that even religion itself has its limits, that a man ought not to be so over-scrupulous. What occasion was there for a sacred person, a fanatic like yourself, to have recourse to the superstition of an old woman, in order to assist at a sacrifice performed in another person's house?"

Cicero alludes here to the mysteries of the Bona Dea, which had been profaned by Clodius, who, in the disguise of a female, and accompanied by an old woman, had obtained an introduction to them, with a view to an assignation with Cæsar's wife. The passage is, in consequence, evidently ironical.

Cicero calls Clodius a religious man, and the irony requires to be kept up through the whole passage. He employs terms of honourable meaning, more clearly to exhibit Clodius's infamy. It appears to me, therefore, that he uses the word in question, fanaticus, in its respectable sense, as a word conveying the idea of a sacrificer, a pious man, a zealous minister of a temple.

The term might be afterwards applied to those who believed themselves inspired by the gods, who bestowed a somewhat curious gift on the interpreters of their will, by ordaining that, in order to be a prophet, the loss of reason is indispensable.

Les Dienx à leur interprète Out fait un étrange doo; Ne peut on être prophète

Sans qu'on perd la raison?

The same dictionary of Trevoux informs us, that the old chronicles of France call Clovis fanatic and pagan. The reader wonld have been pleased to have had the particular chronicles specified. I have not found this epithet applied to Clovis in any of the few books I possess at my house near Mount Krapak, where I now write.

We understand by fanaticism, at present, a religious madness, gloomy and cruel. It is a malady of the mind, which is taken in the same way as the small-pox. Books communicate it much less than meetings and discourses. We seldom get heated while reading in solitude; for our minds are then tranquil and sedate. But when an ardent man of strong imagination addresses himself to weak imaginations, his eyes dart fire, and that fire rapidly spreads; his tones, his gestures, absolutely convulse the nerves of his auditors. He exclaims, "The eye of God is at this moment upon you; sacrifice every mere human possession and feeling; fight the battles of the Lord:"-and they rush to the fight.

Fanaticism is, in reference to superstition, what delirium is to fever, or rage to anger.

He who is involved in extacies and visions, who takes dreams for realities, and his own imaginations for prophecies, is a fanatical novice of great hope and promise, and will probably soon advance to the highest form, and kill man for the love of God.

Bartholomew Diaz was a fanatical monk. He had a brother at Nuremberg, called John Diaz, who was an enthusiastic adherent to the doctrines of Luther, and completely convinced that the pope was antichrist, and had the sign of the beast. Bartholomew, still more ardently convinced that the pope was god upon earth, quits Rome, determined either to convert or murder his brother; he accordingly murdered him! Here is a perfect case of fanaticism. We have noticed and done justice to this Diaz elsewhere.

Polyeuctes, who went to the temple on a day of solemn festival, to throw down and destroy the statues and ornaments, was a fanatic less horrible than Diaz, but not less foolish. The assassins of Francis Duke of Guise, of William Prince of Orange, of King Henry III. of King Henry IV. and various others, were equally possessed, equally labouring under morbid fury, with Diaz.

it.

The most striking example of fanati-gion, decidedly as religion condemns cism is that exhibited on the night of St. Bartholomew, when the people of Paris rushed from house to house, to stab, slaughter, throw out of the window, and tear in pieces, their fellow citizens not attending mass. Guyon, Patouillet, Chaudon, Nonotte, and the ex-Jesuit Paulian, are merely fanatics in a corner, -contemptible beings, whom we do not think of guarding against. They would, however, on a day of St. Bartholomew, perform wonders.

Laws are yet more powerless against these paroxysms of rage. To oppose laws to cases of such a description, would be like reading a decree of council to a man in a frenzy. The persons in question are fully convinced that the holy spirit which animates and fills them is above all laws; that their own enthusiasm is, in fact, the only law which they are bound to obey.

What can be said in answer to a man, who says he will rather obey God than men, and who consequently feels certain of meriting heaven by cutting your throat?

There are some cold-blooded fanatics; such as those judges who sentence men to death for no other crime than that of thinking differently from themselves; and these are so much the more guilty, and When once fanaticism has gangrened deserving of the execration of mankind, the brain of any man, the disease may be as, not labouring under madness like the regarded as nearly incurable. I have Clements, Chatels, Ravaillacs, and Da-seen Convulsionaries who, while speakmiens; they might be deemed capable of listening to reason.

ing of the miracles of St. Paris, gradually worked themselves up to higher and more vehement degrees of agitation, till their eyes became inflamed, their whole frame shook, their countenance became dis

Yes, I have seen these wretched Convulsionaries writhing their limbs and foaming at their mouths. They were exclaiming, "We must have blood." They effected the assassination of their king by a lacquey, and ended with exclaiming against philosophers.

There is no other remedy for this epidemical malady, than that spirit of philosophy, which, extending itself from one to another, at length civilises and softenstorted by rage; and had any man contrathe manners of men, and prevents the dicted them, he would inevitably have access of the disease. For when the been murdered. disorder has made any progress, we should, without loss of time, fly from the seat of it, and wait till the air has become purified from contagion. Law and religion are not completely efficient against the spiritual pestilence. Religion, indeed, so far from affording proper nutriment to the minds of patients labouring under Fanatics are almost always under the this infectious and infernal distemper, is direction of knaves, who place the dagger converted, by the diseased process of their in their hands. These knaves resemble mind, into poison. These malignant de- Montaigne's Old Man of the Mountain; votees have incessantly before their eyes who, it is said, made weak persons imathe example of Ehud, who assassinated gine, under his treatment of them, that the King of Eglon; of Judith, who cut they really had experienced the joys of off the head of Holofernes while in bed Paradise, and promised them a whole with him; of Samuel, hewing in pieces eternity of such delights, if they would King Agag; of Jehoiada the priest, who go and assassinate such as he should point murdered his queen at the horse-gate, out to them. There has been only one &c. &c. They do not perceive that these religion in the world which has not been instances, which are respectable in anti-polluted by fanaticism, and that is the quity, are in the present day abomin-religion of the learned in China. The able. They derive their fury from reli- different sects of ancient philosophers were

not merely exempt from this pest of human society, but they were antidotes to it for the effect of philosophy is to render the soul tranquil, and fanaticism and tranquillity are totally incompatible. That our own holy religion has been so frequently polluted by this infernal fury, must be imputed to the folly and madness of mankind. Thus Icarus abused the wings which he received for his benefit. They were given him for his salvation, and they ensured his destruction :

Ainsi du plumage qu'il eut
Icare pervertit l'usage;

Il le reçut pour son salut,

Il s'en servit pour son dommage.
Berland, Bishop of Sez.

SECTION III.

then judge whether Scapin or Trevelin can be compared with them..

One of the most curious theological knaveries ever practised is, in my opinion, that of a small bishop, (the narrative asserts that he was a Biscayan bishop; however, we shall certainly, at some future period, find out both his name and his bishopric), whose diocese was partly in Biscay and partly in France.

In the French division of his diocese, there was a parish which had formerly been inhabited by some Moors. The lord of the parish or manor was no Mahometan; he was perfectly Catholic, as the whole universe should be, for the meaning of Catholic is universal. My lord the bishop had some suspicions concerning this unfortunate seigneur, whose

Fanatics do not always fight the battles of the Lord. They do not always assas-whole occupation consisted in doing good, sinate kings and princes. There are tigers among them, but there are more foxes.

What a tissue of frauds, calumnies, and robberies, has been woven by fanatics of the court of Rome against fanatics of the court of Calvin, by Jesuits against Jansenists, and vice versá! And if you go farther back, you will find ecclesiastical history, which is the school of virtues, to be that of atrocities and abominations, which have been employed by every sect against the others. They all have the same bandage over their eyes, whether marching out to burn down the cities and towns of their adversaries, to slaughter the inhabitants, or condemn them to judicial execution; or when merely engaged in the comparatively calm occupation of deceiving and defrauding, of acquiring wealth and exercising domination. The same fanaticism blinds them; they think? that they are doing good. Every fanatic is a conscientious knave, but a sincere and honest murderer for the good cause.

and conceived that in his heart he entertained bad thoughts, and sentiments savouring not a little of heresy. He even accused him of having said, in the way of pleasantry, that there were good people in Morocco as well as in Biscay, and that an honest inhabitant of Morocco might absolutely not be a mortal enemy of the Supreme Being, who is the father of all mankind.

The fanatic, upon this, wrote a long letter to the King of France, the paramount sovereign of our little manorial lord. In this letter he intreated his majesty to transfer the manor of this stray and unbelieving sheep either to low Bretagne or low Normandy, according to his good pleasure, that he might be no longer able to diffuse the contagion of heresy among his Biscayan neighbours, by his abominable jests.

The King of France and his council smiled, as may naturally be supposed, at the extravagance and folly of the demand.

Our Biscayan pastor learning, some Read, if you are able, the five or six time afterwards, that his French sheep thousand volumes in which, for a hundred was sick, ordered public notices to be years together, the Jansenists and Moli- fixed up at the church gates of the cannists have dealt out against each otherton, prohibiting any one from administertheir reproaches and revilings, their mu- ing the communion to him, unless he tual exposures of fraud and knavery, and should previously give in a bill of con

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