E — Enfer
Original French
Dès que les hommes vécurent en societé, ils durent s’apercevoir que plusieurs coupables échapaient à la sévérité des loix; ils punissaient les crimes publics; il falut établir un frein pour les crimes secrets; la religion seule pouvait être ce frein. Les Persans, les Caldéens, les Egyptiens, les Grecs, imaginèrent des punitions après la vie, & de tous les peuples anciens que nous connaissons, les Juifs furent les seuls qui n’admirent que des châtiments temporels. Il est ridicule de croire, ou de feindre de croire, sur quelques passages très obscurs, que l’enfer était admis par les anciennes loix des Juifs, par leur Lévitique, par leur décalogue, quand l’auteur de ces loix ne dit pas un seul mot qui puisse avoir le moindre raport avec les châtiments de la vie future. On serait en droit de dire au rédacteur du Pentateuque, Vous êtes un homme inconséquent & sans probité, comme sans raison, très indigne du nom de législateur que vous vous arrogez. Quoi, vous connaissez un dogme aussi réprimant, aussi nécessaire au peuple que celui de l’enfer, & vous ne l’annoncez pas expressément! & tandis qu’il est admis chez toutes les nations qui vous environnent, vous vous contentez de laisser deviner ce dogme par quelques commentateurs qui viendront quatre mille ans après vous, & qui donneront la torture à quelques-unes de vos paroles pour y trouver ce que vous n’avez pas dit? Ou vous êtes un ignorant qui ne savez pas que cette créance était universelle en Egypte, en Caldée, en Perse; ou vous êtes un homme très mal avisé, si étant instruit de ce dogme vous n’en avez pas fait la baze de vôtre religion.
Les auteurs des loix Juives pouraient tout au plus répondre, Nous avoüons que nous sommes excessivement ignorants, que nous avons apris à écrire fort tard, que nôtre peuple était une horde sauvage & barbare, qui de nôtre aveu erra près d’un demi-siècle dans des déserts impraticables, qu’elle usurpa enfin un petit pays par les rapines les plus odieuses, & par les cruautés les plus détestables dont jamais l’histoire ait fait mention. Nous n’avions aucun commerce avec les nations policées; comment voulez-vous que nous pussions (nous les plus terrestres des hommes) inventer un systême tout spirituel?
Nous ne nous servions du mot qui répond à ame, que pour signifier la vie; nous ne connûmes nôtre Dieu & ses ministres, ses anges, que comme des êtres corporels; la distinction de l’ame & du corps, l’idée d’une vie après la mort, ne peuvent être que le fruit d’une longue méditation, & d’une philosophie très fine. Demandez aux Hotentots, & aux négres, qui habitent un païs cent fois plus étendu que le nôtre, s’ils connaissent la vie à venir? Nous avons cru faire assez de persuader à nôtre peuple, que Dieu punissait les malfaiteurs jusqu’à la quatrième génération, soit par la lépre, soit par des morts subites, soit par la perte du peu de bien qu’on pouvait posséder.
On repliquerait à cette apologie, Vous avez inventé un systême dont le ridicule saute aux yeux, car le malfaiteur qui se portaient bien, & dont la famille prospérait, devait nécessairement se moquer de vous.
L’apologiste de la loi judaïque répondrait alors, Vous vous trompez; car pour un criminel qui raisonnait juste, il y en avait cent qui ne raisonnaient point du tout. Celui qui ayant commis un crime ne se sentait puni ni dans son corps, ni dans celui de son fils, craignait pour son petit-fils. De plus, s’il n’avait pas aujourd’hui quelque ulcère puant, auquel nous étions très sujets, il en éprouvait dans le cours de quelques années: il y a toujours des malheurs dans une famille, & nous faisions aisément accroire que ces malheurs étaient envoyés par une main divine, vengeresse des fautes secrettes.
Il serait aisé de repliquer à cette réponse, & de dire, Vôtre excuse ne vaut rien, car il arrive tous les jours que de très honnêtes gens perdent la santé & leurs biens; & s’il n’y a point de famille à laquelle il ne soit arrivé des malheurs, si ces malheurs sont des châtiments de Dieu, toutes vos familles étaient donc des familles de fripons.
Le prêtre Juif pourait repliquer encor; il dirait qu’il y a des malheurs attachés à la nature humaine, & d’autres qui sont envoyés de Dieu expressément. Mais on ferait voir à ce raisonneur combien il est ridicule de penser que la fiévre & la grêle sont tantôt une punition divine, tantôt un effet naturel.
Enfin, les Pharisiens & les Esséniens chez les Juifs, admirent la créance d’un enfer à leur mode: ce dogme avait déja passé des Grecs aux Romains, & fut adopté par les chrétiens.
Plusieurs pères de l’église ne crurent point les peines éternelles; il leur paraissait absurde de brûler pendant toute l’éternité un pauvre homme pour avoir volé une chèvre. Virgile a beau dire dans son sixiéme chant de l’Enéide,
Sedet æternumque sedebit infelix Theseus.
Il prétend en vain, que Thésée est assis pour jamais sur une chaise, & que cette posture est son supplice. D’autres croyaient que Thésée est un héros qui n’est point assis en enfer, & qu’il est dans les champs Elisées.
Il n’y a pas longtemps qu’un bon & honnête ministre huguenot prêcha & écrivit que les damnés auraient un jour leur grace, qu’il falait une proportion entre le péché & le supplice, & qu’une faute d’un moment ne peut mériter un châtiment infini. Les prêtres ses confrères déposèrent ce juge indulgent; l’un d’eux lui dit, Mon ami, je ne crois pas plus l’enfer éternel que vous; mais il est bon que vôtre servante, vôtre tailleur & même vôtre procureur le croyent.
Musean translation
Mouseia’s complete machine-assisted Musean translation of the 73 articles in the 1764 first edition, made directly from the French and reviewed against the scan-collated French text. The author’s notes, quotations and verse are retained. Historical ethnic labels, including offensive terms, are retained from the 1764 text.
As soon as men lived in society, they must have noticed that many guilty people escaped the severity of the laws. They punished public crimes; a restraint had to be established for secret crimes, and religion alone could supply it. The Persians, Chaldeans, Egyptians, and Greeks imagined punishments after life; and of all the ancient peoples we know, the Jews alone admitted only temporal punishments. It is ridiculous to believe, or pretend to believe, on the strength of a few very obscure passages, that hell was admitted in the Jews’ ancient laws, their Leviticus, their Decalogue, when the author of these laws says not one word with the slightest relation to punishments in a future life. One would be entitled to tell the compiler of the Pentateuch: “You are an inconsistent man, without honesty or reason, very unworthy of the name of legislator that you claim. What! You know a doctrine as restraining and as necessary to the people as hell, and you do not announce it expressly! While it is admitted among every nation around you, you content yourself with leaving this doctrine to be guessed at by a few commentators who will come four thousand years after you and torture some of your words to find in them what you did not say? Either you are an ignoramus who did not know this belief was universal in Egypt, Chaldea, and Persia, or you are a very ill-advised man if, knowing this doctrine, you did not make it the basis of your religion.”
The authors of the Jewish laws could at most answer: “We admit that we are exceedingly ignorant, that we learned to write very late, that our people was a savage, barbarous horde which, by our own admission, wandered nearly half a century through impassable deserts and finally usurped a little country through the most odious plunder and most detestable cruelties history has ever mentioned. We had no dealings with civilized nations. How do you expect that we, the most earthly of men, could invent an entirely spiritual system?
“We used the word corresponding to soul only to mean life. We knew our God and his ministers, the angels, only as corporeal beings. The distinction between soul and body, the idea of life after death, can be only the fruit of long meditation and very subtle philosophy. Ask the Hottentots and the Negroes, who inhabit a country a hundred times larger than ours, whether they know the life to come. We thought we had done enough by persuading our people that God punished wrongdoers to the fourth generation, whether by leprosy, sudden deaths, or the loss of what little property one might possess.”
The reply to this defense would be: “You invented a system whose absurdity leaps to the eye; for a wrongdoer in good health whose family prospered necessarily had to laugh at you.”
The apologist for the Jewish law would then answer: “You are mistaken; for every criminal who reasoned soundly, there were a hundred who did not reason at all. A man who had committed a crime and felt no punishment in either his own body or his son’s feared for his grandson. Moreover, if he had no stinking ulcer today (we were very prone to them), he would suffer one within a few years. There are always misfortunes in a family, and we easily persuaded people that these misfortunes were sent by a divine hand avenging secret faults.”
It would be easy to reply to that answer: “Your excuse is worthless, for very honest people lose their health and property every day; and if there is no family that has not suffered misfortunes, and these misfortunes are God’s punishments, then all your families were families of rogues.”
The Jewish priest could reply again. He would say there are misfortunes attached to human nature, and others sent expressly by God. But this reasoner would be shown how ridiculous it is to think that fever and hail are sometimes a divine punishment, sometimes a natural effect.
At last the Pharisees and Essenes among the Jews admitted a belief in a hell of their own fashion. This doctrine had already passed from the Greeks to the Romans and was adopted by Christians.
Several Church Fathers did not believe punishments eternal; it seemed absurd to them to burn a poor man for all eternity for stealing a goat. In vain does Virgil say in the sixth canto of the Aeneid:
Unhappy Theseus sits, and will sit forever.
In vain he maintains that Theseus sits forever on a chair and that this posture is his punishment. Others believed Theseus a hero who is not sitting in hell, but is in the Elysian Fields.
Not long ago a good, honest Huguenot minister preached and wrote that the damned would one day receive their pardon, that sin and punishment must be proportionate, and that a moment’s fault cannot deserve infinite punishment. His fellow priests deposed this indulgent judge. One of them told him: “My friend, I believe in eternal hell no more than you; but it is good for your maid, your tailor, and even your attorney to believe in it.”
Plain English translation
Mouseia’s complete machine-assisted Plain English translation of the same 73 articles, made directly from the French and reviewed against the scan-collated French text. The author’s notes, quotations and verse are retained. Historical ethnic labels, including offensive terms, are retained from the 1764 text.
People must have noticed something as soon as they started living together. Plenty of guilty people escaped punishment under the law. Public crimes could be punished, but secret crimes needed something to hold them back. Only religion could do that. The Persians, Chaldeans, Egyptians, and Greeks came up with punishments after death. Among all the ancient peoples we know about, the Jews alone accepted punishments only in this life. Some people believe, or pretend to believe, that ancient Jewish law recognized hell. They base this on a few very unclear passages in Leviticus and the Ten Commandments. That’s ridiculous. The writer of these laws never mentions anything remotely connected with punishment after death. We could rightly tell the compiler of the Pentateuch: “You’re inconsistent. You lack both honesty and reason. You’ve claimed the title of lawgiver, but you’re completely unworthy of it. What? You know about hell, a belief so necessary for keeping people in check, yet you never plainly announce it! Every nation around you accepts it. But you leave a few commentators to guess it four thousand years later? They’ll have to twist your words painfully to find something you never said. Either you’re ignorant, unaware that everyone in Egypt, Chaldea, and Persia held this belief, or your judgment is very poor. If you knew about it, why didn’t you build your religion on it?”
The writers of Jewish law could, at best, give this answer: “We admit we’re extremely ignorant. We learned to write only very late. Our people were a wild, barbarous horde. We admit they spent nearly half a century wandering in deserts no one could cross. They finally took over a small country. History has never recorded more hateful plunder or more detestable cruelty than theirs. We had no contact with civilized nations. We’re the most earthbound people alive. How could you expect us to invent a purely spiritual system?
“For us, the word corresponding to soul meant nothing but life. We thought of our God and his servants, his angels, only as beings with bodies. Separating soul from body takes long reflection and very subtle philosophy. So does the idea of living after death. Ask the Hottentots and the black people whether they know about life to come. Their country is a hundred times larger than ours. We thought we’d done enough by getting our people to believe in God’s punishments. He punished wrongdoers down to the fourth generation, we said. He sent leprosy or sudden deaths, or took away what little property people had.”
We could answer that defense like this: “Your invented system is obviously absurd. What about a wrongdoer who stayed healthy and whose family did well? He couldn’t help laughing at you.”
The defender of Jewish law would answer: “You’re wrong. For every criminal who thought things through correctly, a hundred didn’t think at all. Suppose a man committed a crime without suffering any bodily punishment. His son suffered none either. He’d still be afraid for his grandson. Besides, he might have no stinking sore today, but he’d get one in a few years. We were very prone to them. Families always have troubles. We easily persuaded people that a divine hand sent these troubles to punish secret sins.”
That answer would be easy to challenge: “That’s no excuse at all. Perfectly honest people lose their health and property every day. Every family has suffered some trouble. If God sent all those troubles as punishments, every family of yours was a family of crooks.”
The Jewish priest could try another answer. Some troubles, he’d say, are part of being human; God deliberately sends others. But we could show him how absurd his reasoning is. A fever or hailstorm is sometimes God’s punishment and sometimes just a natural event?
Eventually, the Jewish Pharisees and Essenes came to believe in their own kind of hell. The Greeks had already passed this belief on to the Romans. Christians adopted it too.
Several Church Fathers didn’t believe the punishments would last forever. To them, burning a poor man for eternity because he’d stolen a goat seemed absurd. Virgil can say what he likes in Book Six of the Aeneid:
Theseus sits in misery, and he’ll sit there forever.
He gains nothing by claiming that Theseus sits forever on a chair, punished by that position. Others thought Theseus was a hero who wasn’t sitting in hell at all. He was in the Elysian Fields.
Not long ago, a kind, honest Huguenot minister made a claim in sermons and in writing. The damned would be pardoned someday, he said. Punishment had to fit the sin. A passing fault couldn’t deserve a punishment without end. His fellow clergymen dismissed this forgiving judge. A colleague told him: “My friend, I don’t believe hell lasts forever any more than you do. But it’s good if your maid and tailor believe it—even your legal agent.”
About this section
E — Enfer is part of Pocket Philosophical Dictionary by Voltaire. This page sets the French original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is article 35 of 73 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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