A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 05

Voltaire

François-Marie Arouet (AKA Voltaire)

A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 05

FANATICISM

SECTION I

Fanaticism is the effect of a false conscience, which makes religion subservient to the caprices of the imagination, and the excesses of the passions.

It arises, in general, from legislators entertaining too narrow views, or from their extending their regulations beyond the limits within which alone they were intended to operate. Their laws are made merely for a select society. When extended by zeal to a whole people, and transferred by ambition from one climate to another, some changes of institution should take place, some accommodation to persons, places, and circumstances. But what, in fact, has been the case? Certain minds, constituted in a great degree like those of the small original flock, have received a system with equal ardor, and become its apostles, and even its martyrs, rather than abate a single iota of its demands. Others, on the contrary, less ardent, or more attached to their prejudices of education, have struggled with energy against the new yoke, and consented to receive it only after considerable softenings and mitigations: hence the schism between rigorists and moderates, by which all are urged on to vehemence and madness – the one party for servitude and the other for freedom.

Let us imagine an immense rotunda, a pantheon, with innumerable altars placed under its dome. Let us figure to ourselves a devotee of every sect, whether at present existing or extinct, at the feet of that divinity which he worships in his own peculiar way, under all the extravagant forms which human imagination has been able to invent. On the right we perceive one stretched on his back upon a mat, absorbed in contemplation, and awaiting the moment when the divine light shall come forth to inform his soul. On the left is a prostrate energumen striking his forehead against the ground, with a view to obtain from it an abundant produce. Here we see a man with the air and manner of a mountebank, dancing over the grave of him whom he invokes. There we observe a penitent, motionless and mute as the statue before which he has bent himself in humiliation. One, on the principle that God will not blush at his own resemblance, displays openly what modesty universally conceals; another, as if the artist would shudder at the sight of his own work, covers with an impenetrable veil his whole person and countenance; another turns his back upon the south, because from that quarter blows the devil's tempest. Another stretches out his arms towards the east, because there God first shows His radiant face. Young women, suffused with tears, bruise and gash their lovely persons under the idea of assuaging the demon of desire, although by means tending in fact rather to strengthen his influence; others again, in opposite attitudes, solicit the approaches of the Divinity. One young man, in order to mortify the most urgent of his feelings, attaches to particular parts of his frame large iron rings, as heavy as he can bear; another checks still more effectually the tempter's violence by inhuman amputation, and suspends the bleeding sacrifice upon the altar.

Let us observe them quit the temple, and, full of the inspiration of their respective deities, spread the terror and delusion over the face of the earth. They divide the world between them; and the four extremities of it are almost instantly in flames: nations obey them, and kings tremble before them. That almost despotic power which the enthusiasm of a single person exercises over a multitude who see or hear him; the ardor communicated to each other by assembled minds; numberless strong and agitating influences acting in such circumstances, augmented by each individual's personal anxiety and distress, require but a short time to operate, in order to produce universal delirium. Only let a single people be thus fascinated and agitated under the guidance of a few impostors, the seduction will spread with the speed