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21. Of the Metempsychosis. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul is divided into three branches -- that of pure immortality, that of a simple change of habitation, and that of a metempsychosis, that is, the system of the Christians, that of the Scythians, and that of the Indians. We have just been speaking of the first two, and I shall say of the last that as it has been well or ill explained, it has had good or bad effects. As it inspires men with a certain horror against bloodshed, very few murders are committed in the Indies; and though they seldom punish with death, yet they enjoy a perfect tranquillity.

On the other hand, women burn themselves at the death of their husbands; thus it is only the innocent who suffer a violent death.

22. That it is dangerous for Religion to inspire an Aversion for Things in themselves indifferent. A kind of honour established in the Indies by the prejudices of religion has made the several tribes conceive an aversion against each other. This honour is founded entirely on religion; these family distinctions form no civil distinctions; there are Indians who would think themselves dishonoured by eating with their king.

These sorts of distinctions are connected with a certain aversion for other men, very different from those sentiments which naturally arise from difference of rank; which among us comprehends a love for inferiors.

The laws of religion should never inspire an aversion to anything but vice, and above all they should never estrange man from a love and tenderness for his own species.

The Mahometan and Indian religions embrace an infinite number of people; the Indians hate the Mahometans, because they eat cows; the Mahometans detest the Indians because they eat hogs.

23. Of Festivals. When religion appoints a cessation from labour it ought to have a greater regard to the necessities of mankind than to the grandeur of the being it designs to honour.

Athens was subject to great inconveniences from the excessive number of its festivals.[30] These powerful people, to whose decision all the cities of Greece came to submit their quarrels, could not have time to despatch such a multiplicity of affairs.

When Constantine ordained that the people should rest on the Sabbath, he made this decree for the cities,[31] and not for the inhabitants of the open country; he was sensible that labour in the cities was useful, but in the fields necessary.

For the same reason, in a country supported by commerce, the number of festivals ought to be relative to this very commerce. Protestant and Catholic countries are situated in such a manner that there is more need of labour in the former than in the latter;[32] the suppression of festivals is therefore more suitable to Protestant than to Catholic countries.

Dampier observes that the diversions of different nations vary greatly, according to the climate.[33] As hot climates produce a quantity of delicate fruits, the barbarians easily find necessaries, and therefore spend much time in diversions. The Indians of colder countries have not so much leisure, being obliged to fish and hunt continually; hence they have less music, dancing and festivals. If a new religion should be established among these people, it ought to have regard to this in the institution of festivals.

24. Of the local Laws of Religion. There are many local laws in various religions; and when Montezuma with so much obstinacy insisted that the religion of the Spaniards was good for their country, and his for Mexico, he did not assert an absurdity; because, in fact, legislators could never help having a regard to what nature had established before them.

The opinion of the metempsychosis is adapted to the climate of the Indies. An excessive heat burns up all the country:[34] they can breed but very few cattle; they are always in danger of wanting them for tillage; their black cattle multiply but indifferently;[35] and they are subject to many distempers. A law of religion which preserves them is therefore more suitable to the policy of the country.

While the meadows are scorched, rice and pulse, by the assistance of water, are brought to perfection; a law of religion which permits only this kind of nourishment must therefore be extremely useful to men in those climates.

The flesh of cattle in that country is insipid36 but the milk and butter which they receive from them serve for a part of their subsistence; therefore the law which prohibits the eating and killing of cows is in the Indies not unreasonable.

Athens contained a prodigious multitude of people, but its territory was barren. It was therefore a religious maxim with this people that those who offered some small presents to the gods honoured them more than those who sacrificed an ox.[37]

25. The Inconvenience of transplanting a Religion from one Country to another. It follows hence that there are frequently many inconveniences attending the transplanting a religion from one country to any other.

"The hog," says M. de Boulainvilliers,[38] "must be very scarce in Arabia, where there are almost no woods, and hardly anything fit for the nourishment of these animals; besides, the saltness of the water and food renders the people most susceptible of cutaneous disorders." This local law could not be good in other countries,[39] where the hog is almost a universal, and in some sort a necessary, nourishment.

I shall here make a reflection. Sanctorius has observed that pork transpires but little,[40] and that this kind of meat greatly binders the transpiration of other food; he has found that this diminution amounts to a third.[41] Besides, it is known that the want of transpiration forms or increases the disorders of the skin. The feeding on pork ought rather to be prohibited in climates where the people are subject to these disorders, as in Palestine, Arabia, Egypt, and Libya.

26. The same Subject continued. Sir John Chardin says[42] that there is not a navigable river in Persia, except the Kur, which is at the extremity of the empire. The ancient law of the Gaurs which prohibited sailing on rivers was not therefore attended with any inconvenience in this country, though it would have ruined the trade of another.

Frequent bathings are extremely useful in hot climates. On this account they are ordained in the Mahometan law and in the Indian religion. In the Indies it is a most meritorious act to pray to God in the running stream;[43] but how could these things be performed in other climates?

When a religion adapted to the climate of one country clashes too much with the climate of another it cannot be there established; and whenever it has been introduced it has been afterwards discarded, it seems to all human appearance as if the climate had prescribed the bounds of the Christian and the Mahometan religions.

It follows hence, that it is almost always proper for a religion to have particular doctrines, and a general worship. In laws concerning the practice of religious worship there ought to be but few particulars; for instance, they should command mortification in general and not a certain kind of mortification. Christianity is full of good sense; abstinence is of divine institution; but a particular kind of abstinence is ordained by human authority and therefore may be changed.

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1. Thoughts on the Comet, Continuation of Thoughts on the Comet, ii.

2. Description of Ethiopia, by M. Ponce, Physician. Edifying Letters, coll. iv, p. 290.

3. See Diodorus, i. 18.

4. Dupin, Ecclesiastical Library of the Sixth Century, v.

5. Collection of Voyages that Contributed to the Establishment of the East India Company, iii, part I, p. 63.

6. Prideaux, History of the Jews.

7. This is the inconvenience of the doctrine of Foe and Laockium.

8. De Leg., ii. 22.

9. Sacrum commissum, quod neque expiari potent, impie commissum est; quod expiari potent publici sacerdotes expianto.

10. See the account of John Duplan Carpin, sent to Tartary by Pope Innocent IV in the year 1246.

11. Collection of Voyages that Contributed to the Establishment of the East India Company, v, part I, p. 192.

12. Edifying Letters, coll. xv.

13. Politics, vii. 17.

14. Suetonius, Life of Augustus, 31.

15. Ibid.

16. Collection of Voyages that Contributed to the Establishment of the East India Company, iv, part I p. 127.

17. See Prideaux, life of Mahomet, p. 64.

18. Koran, i, chapter "Of the Cow."

19. On renouncing the law of retaliation.

20. De Moribus Germanorum, 21.

21. Collection of Voyages that Contributed to the Establishment of the East India Company, vii, p. 303. See also Memoirs of the Count de Forbin, and what he says of the people of Macassar.

22. Plato, Laws, ix.

23. Tragedy of Oedipus at Colonus.

24. Plato, Laws, ix.

25. A Chinese philosopher reasons thus against the doctrine of Foe: "It is said in a book of that sect, that the body is our dwelling-place and the soul the immortal guest which lodges there; but if the bodies of our relatives are only a lodging, it is natural to regard them with the same contempt we should feel for a structure of earth and dirt. Is not this endeavouring to tear from the heart the virtue of love to one's own parents? This leads us even to neglect the care of the body, and to refuse it the compassion and affection so necessary for its preservation; hence the disciples of Foe kill themselves by thousands." -- Work of an ancient Chinese philosopher, in the Collection of Father Du Halde, iii, p. 52.

26. See Tho. Bartholin, Antiquities of the Danes.

27. An Account of Japan, in the Collection of Voyages that Contributed to the Establishment of the East India company.

28. Forbin, Memoirs.

29. Hyde, Religion of the Persians.

30. Xenophon, On the Republic of Athens, 3, § 8.

31. Leg. 3. Cod. de feriis. This law was doubtless made only for the Pagans.

32. The Catholics lie more toward the south, and the Protestants towards the north.

33. Dampier, Voyages, ii.

34. See Bernier, Travels, ii, p. 137.

35. Edifying Letters, coll. xii, p. 95.

36. Bernier, Travels, ii, p. 137.

37. Euripides, in Athen?us, ii, p. 40.

38. Life of Mahomet.

39. As in China.

40. Medicina Statica, § 3, aphor. 22.

41. Ibid., aphor. 23.

42. Travels into Persia, ii.

43. Bernier, Travels, ii.

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Book XXV. Of Laws in Relation to the Establishment of Religion and its External Polity

1. Of Religious Sentiments. The pious man and the atheist always talk of religion; the one speaks of what he loves, and the other of what he fears.

2. Of the Motives of Attachment to different Religions. The different religions of the world do not give to those who profess them equal motives of attachment; this depends greatly on the manner in which they agree with the turn of thought and perceptions of mankind.

We are extremely addicted to idolatry, and yet have no great inclination for the religion of idolaters; we are not very fond of spiritual ideas, and yet are most attached to those religions which teach us to adore a spiritual being. This proceeds from the satisfaction we find in ourselves at having been so intelligent as to choose a religion which raises the deity from that baseness in which he had been placed by others. We look upon idolatry as the religion of an ignorant people, and the religion which has a spiritual being for its object as that of the most enlightened nations.

When with a doctrine that gives us the idea of a spiritual supreme being we can still join those of a sensible nature and admit them into our worship, we contract a greater attachment to religion; because those motives which we have just mentioned are added to our natural inclinations for the objects of sense. Thus the Catholics, who have more of this kind of worship than the Protestants, are more attached to their religion than the Protestants are to theirs, and more zealous for its propagation.

When the people of Ephesus were informed that the fathers of the council had declared they might call the Virgin Mary the Mother of God, they were transported with joy, they kissed the hands of the bishops, they embraced their knees, and the whole city resounded with acclamations.[1]

When an intellectual religion superadds a choice made by the deity, and a preference for those who profess it over those who do not, this greatly attaches us to religion. The Mahometans would not be such good Mussulmans if, on the one hand, there were not idolatrous nations who make them imagine themselves the champions of the unity of God; and on the other Christians, to make them believe that they are the objects of his preference.

A religion burdened with many ceremonies[2] attaches us to it more strongly than that which has a fewer number. We have an extreme propensity to things in which we are continually employed: witness the obstinate prejudices of the Mahometans and the Jews,[3] and the readiness with which barbarous and savage nations change their religion, who, as they are employed entirely in hunting or war, have but few religious ceremonies.

Men are extremely inclined to the passions of hope and fear; a religion, therefore, that had neither a heaven nor a hell could hardly please them. This is proved by the ease with which foreign religions have been established in Japan, and the zeal and fondness with which they were received.[4]

In order to raise an attachment to religion it is necessary that it should inculcate pure morals. Men who are knaves by retail are extremely honest in the gross; they love morality. And were I not treating of so grave a subject I should say that this appears remarkably evident in our theatres: we are sure of pleasing the people by sentiments avowed by morality; we are sure of shocking them by those it disapproves.

When external worship is attended with great magnificence, it flatters our minds and strongly attaches us to religion. The riches of temples and those of the clergy greatly affect us. Thus even the misery of the people is a motive that renders them fond of a religion which has served as a pretext to those who were the cause of their misery.

3. Of Temples. Almost all civilised nations dwell in houses; hence naturally arose the idea of building a house for God in which they might adore and seek him, amidst all their hopes and fears.

And, indeed, nothing is more comfortable to mankind than a place in which they may find the deity peculiarly present, and where they may assemble together to confess their weakness and tell their griefs.

But this natural idea never occurred to any but such as cultivated the land; those who have no houses for themselves were never known to build temples.

This was the cause that made Jenghiz Khan discover such a prodigious contempt for mosques.[5] This prince examined the Mahometans;[6] he approved of all their doctrines, except that of the necessity of going to Mecca; he could not comprehend why God might not be everywhere adored. As the Tartars did not dwell in houses, they could have no idea of temples.