Jean Meslier

Jean Meslier , born with Mazerny (the Ardennes) the June 15th 1664 and died in Étrépigny the June 17th 1729, is a philosophical French which was the first explicit propagandist of the Athéisme.

Biography

Born from a commercial father, Jean Meslier becomes, the January 7th 1689, cleaned of Étrépigny in its the native Ardennes, and will remain it until its death.

Choosing for good women not having reached the venerable age (40 years), its control scandalizes and is worth reprimands and punishments on behalf of the ecclesiastical authorities to him. Its contentions with the lord of the manor of the place will be worth others of them to him. Made indignant by the ill treatments which the lord of Touilly to the peasants of his parish makes undergo, this ultra in all denounces them one day in pulpit of truth. Severely tancé by the évêché, it will not make any more speak about him of alive sound but its posthumous revenge will have considerable repercussions.

Isolated thinker, nourishing ideas that it cannot exchange, his library is composed, beside the Bible, of the Pères of the Church, and the reports of the Concile S, Latin authors like Tite Live, Sénèque, Tacite, Flavius Josèphe as well as Montaigne, Vanini, the Heather, Boétie, Pascal, Malebranche and Fénelon.

Starting from the tests of Montaigne and Démonstration of the existence of God of Fénelon - that it annotates frantically in the margins - it writes its clean Pensées and feelings , bulky handwritten report recopied in three specimens which it clandestinely bequeaths to his parishioners.

This philosophical will makes of him a precursor of the Lumières of very first plan. It is the first to profess there a Athéisme without concession while it develops before the letter a rigorous materialism and also poses in precursor the bases of an anarchistic philosophy, as well as a communist design of the company.

New copies circulated under the coat. Voltaire, of Holbach, Frederic II of Prussia, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Diderot, of Alembert and the whole of the Encyclopédiste S will read them clandestinely and be subject to the influence of Meslier. While remaining in the shade, Voltaire makes publish in 1762 extracts of this work which is so corrosive that it rewrites and edulcorates certain passages until making of them them unrecognizable. The radical Athéisme of the priest is there disguised as a careful Déisme. D' Holbach published, as for him, the good sense of the Priest Jean Meslier followed by his will .

Carried by the rough language of its province, the thought of Meslier announces the French revolution and, well beyond, the Matérialisme, the Communisme and the Anarchisme.

Will of the Meslier abbot

Present a great period of disorder for the Christian faith. But various atheistic criticisms that had known the Christianity of the time were yet nothing vis-a-vis proclamation the Meslier abbot who will influence in-depth the atheistic thinkers to come. All starts with dead of the abbot, at the end of the month of June 1729. Meslier, with the head of the parish of Étrépigny for forty years, had left with his death an envelope containing two documents, the first being in the final analysis only one introduction of the second:

“I do not believe any more to now have to still make difficulty in saying the truth. I do not know well what you will think, nor what will say to you, either which what you will say of me, to have put to me such thought at the head, and such intention in the spirit. Perhaps you will look at this project like a feature of madness and temerity in me…” Inevitably, this letter foreword had to prick with sharp the interest of those which discovered the document, and one can easily imagine which was the reaction of the friends of Meslier learning by the means of its second document that the abbot who had been with the head of their parish for more than forty years, considered that the religion was only error, lie and imposture and invited same breath his fellow-members to give up Christianity… Unexpected inversion, the text of Meslier is also revolutionist for the time since the atheistic proposals which are presented there are hidden under any subterfuge, from the start the author declares himself atheistic and directly tackles the Christian religion there by avoiding the usual precaution which surrounded the texts of the time qualified, wrongly or rightly, of atheists. Much more than one exposure of atheistic theses, the work of Meslier is presented even in the form of a work proselytist attacking directly the faith of the believer:

“Weigh the reasons well that there is to believe or not to believe, which your religion teaches you, and so absolutely obliges you to believe. I make sure that if you follow well the natural lights of your spirit, you will as see at least as well, and certainly as me, as all the religions of the world are only human inventions, and than all that your religion teaches you, and obliges you to believe, like supernatural and divine, is in the content only error, which lie, which illusion and imposture. ”

Is Meslier conscious of the paradoxical character of his life, why declare with his death his atheism? Meslier acknowledges his fear, but presents all the same the veracious character of his atheistic thought, according to him, those which will have to read it will have to try to refute it, if they cannot it, they must line up of its opinion, and if they are afraid to line up side of Meslier of their alive, they will have to do it with their death:

“… (intervene) in favor of the truth even in favor of the people which groan as you see it the every day, under the unbearable yoke of tyranny and the vain superstitions. And if you do not dare either but me to openly declare you during your life against so much of so hateful errors, and so much of so pernicious abuses which reign so strongly in the world, you must at least remain now in silence and declare you at least at the end of your days in favor of the truth. ”

The vain character of the idolatry, the attitude of the priests, exégètes being able to make say what they want “holy” with the Writings, maintaining their influence on the people thanks to the use of the fear and carrying an accessory silence vis-a-vis the abuse of large, here are only some elements skinned by Meslier:

“… you adore indeed weak small images of paste and flour, and you honor plaster and wood the images, and the Money and Gold images. You have fun, Sirs, to interpret and explain figuratively, allegorically and mystically vain writings which you call nevertheless holy, and divine; you give them such direction that you want; you make them say all that you want by the means of these beautiful alleged spiritual and allegorical directions that you forge to them, and that you affect to give them, in order to find there, and to make there find alleged truths who are not there, and who were there never. You warm up to discuss vain questions of sufficient grace and effective. And moreover, you vilify the poor people, you threaten it of the hell eternal for peccadillos, and you known as nothing against public flyings, nor against the injustices shouting of those which control the people, which plunder them, which presses them, which ruin them, which oppress them and which are the cause of all the evils, and of all miseries which overpower them. ”

The atheism of Meslier thus wants to be with some humanistic share, and is thus not, as the libertines accustomed us, set up in order to counter the yoke of Christian ascetic morals. For Meslier, the role of the priests is all the same to teach: “is with you to inform the people, not in the errors of the idolatry, nor in the vanity of the superstitions, but in science of truth, and justice, and in the science of all kinds of virtues, and moralities; you all are paid for that. ” Atheistic, materialist, denouncer of social misery, Meslier had thus matured throughout his life a sharp attack against the religions, Christianity in foreground, without daring to reveal it of alive sound. The letter finishes on the advertisement of the existence of a manuscript deposited at the clerk's office of the justice of the parish, where Meslier detailed in three manuscripts of three hundred sixty-six sheets each one, its theses. The title of this manuscript alone presents the extent of the task to which Meslier wanted to be attacked:

“Memory of the thoughts and the feelings of Jean Meslier, priest, priest of Étrépigny and Balaives, on part of the errors and abuses of control and government of the men where one sees clear and obvious demonstrations of vanity and falseness of all the divinities and all the religions of the world to be addressed to his parishioners after his death, and to be used to them as testimony of truth with them, and all their similar. ”

The work of Meslier is divided into eight parts, of which each one aims at proving the vanity and the falseness of the religions, here is the plan:

They are only human inventions.
the faith, belief plugs, is a principle of errors, illusions and impostures.
Falseness of the “alleged visions and divine revelations”.
“Vanity and falseness of alleged prophecies of the Old Testament”.
Errors of the doctrines and the morals of the Christian religion.
the Christian religion authorizes the abuses and the tyranny of large.
Falseness of the “alleged existence of the gods”.
Falseness of the idea of the spirituality and the immortality of the heart.

Let us try to expose in a concise way the principal theses of this bulky work while starting initially with the thesis which refutes the existence of God. The first argument of Meslier is that of the absence: how God wanting to be loved, adored and been useful could remain so “discrete”? Shouldn't it be rather presented to us like an unquestionable and irrefutable obviousness? :

“If there were truly some divinity or some infinitely perfect being, who wanted to be made like, and be made adore men, it would be reason and justice and even of the duty of this alleged infinitely perfect being, to be done obviously, or at least sufficiently to know of all those and those of which he would like to be liked, adored and been useful. ”

In front of the “discrete” character, the absence of God, Meslier is questioned. Why God doesn't it make us know clearly and directly its will, instead of letting the Men dispute about it, between-to even commit suicide for Byzantines? For Meslier, of two things one, either God exists and makes fun of us of preserving us in ignorance, or God does not exist quite simply. One will surely oppose to Meslier the fact that God appears with the Men through the beauty of the world, work of his servants or by the means of the teaching of his son Jesus-Christ. It with what Meslier answers quite simply that its so-called so obvious signs, is far from the being actually… Moreover, the tendency of the theologists of the time to be reduced to fideism in order to counter the various paradoxes present in the Christian faith represents a coarse error. Who is thus this God, asks he, who would force us to give up our reason in order to believe in him? Doesn't the setting with the oubliettes of the reason in order to justify the Christian faith leave place to all impostures?

“Our piles and dévotieux “christicoles” will not fail to say here simply that their God wants mainly to make known himself, to like, adore and be useful by the dark lights of the faith, and by a pure reason of love and charity conceived by the faith and not by the clear lights of the human reason, so as they say to humiliate the spirit of the man, and to confuse his pride. ”

Moreover why so perfect God be done would so distant, if distant? :

“The first thought which initially arises to my spirit, about such a being, that one says so good being, so beautiful, if wise, if large, so excellent, if admirable, if perfect and so pleasant, etc, is that if there were truly such a being, it appears so clearly and so obviously in our eyes and our feeling that nobody could by no means doubt the truth of his existence. It on on the contrary any subject there to believe and say that it is not. ”

The antique problem of the evil is taken again by Meslier in order to give in doubt the existence of God; how but especially why a perfect being would create a so imperfect world, or côtoient evils, defects, diseases, violence, etc? Wonders of nature? Balivernes according to Meslier, which wild world that of the nature or the survival of the one is made only with the detriment life of the other. The evil would be a consequence of the original sin will say one, not! Once again Meslier rejects the usual stereotypes which are used as arguments to the theists, the evil is for Meslier an element structural of the nature, which proves to be essential in order to contain the multiplication of the men and the animals. Meslier also tries to raise two paradoxes vis-a-vis the so-called evidence of the existence of God. Initially, it raises their incapacity to prove anything, the ontological argument itself seems only pure joke since it is based on a definition of God who remains obscure for the Men. In the second place, Meslier rejects the fideism in which the theologists try to make plunge the Men:

“(Religions) want that one believes absolutely, and simply all that they say, not only without having of it any doubt, but also without seeking, and even still without wishing to know the reasons of them, because it would be, according to them, an impudent temerity, and a crime of divine lese-majesty to curiously want to seek reasons. ” The attack of the “evidence” of the existence of God, whom Meslier makes is based on a book of Fénelon, Démonstration of the existence of God , whose Meslier took time to tackle each proposal one by one. One of its refutations of Fénelon will enable him to enter its exposure properly materialist of the world. Let us see it in detail more. Fénelon presents the fact that God is a being which is by itself (it is necessary), and which thus exceeds all the degrees to be (it is perfect). For Meslier, this reasoning is not worth anything: “the being is by itself what it is, and could not be more to be that it is not, but it does not follow from there that it is infinitely perfect in its gasoline. ” The being necessary is thus not obligatorily perfect, and besides, the only being necessary is the matter. Taking as a starting point Descartes, Meslier comes from there him also to pose the existence of eternal truths, but those do not refer to creative God, they exist of any eternity, just like the world and the matter. Although Meslier does not call in question the cogito, it presents the body as well as the thought itself like single fruit of the matter:

“We do not see, we do not feel, and we do not know certainly anything in us who is not matter. Remove our eyes! What will we see? Nothing. Remove our ears! What will we hear? Nothing. Remove our hands! what will we touch? Nothing, if it is not extremely improperly by the other parts of the body. Remove our head and our brain! What will we think, which we will know? Nothing. ”

For Meslier, out of the matter not of hello, without it we are nothing, and it is useless to believe that something can exist out of it, the being is the matter. Is the matter, we said it, undoubtedly eternal, how to justify creation? It is impossible to create something from nothing, how to create time if this creation forms part of time? How to create space? Where was God before creating space? How long did that take to him to create time? etc Here are only some nonsenses which Meslier raises. The heart is material and mortal, since if it is agreed that:

“… all our thoughts, all our knowledge, all our perceptions, all our desires and all our wills are modifications of our heart. It as should be recognized as it is prone to various deteriorations, which are principles of corruption, and consequently that it is not incorruptible, nor immortal. ”

Meslier poses the significant experiment like only criterion of formation of the right ideas, which, we imagine it well, represents a heat attacks against the idea of “revelation”. Meslier is caught some initially with the biblical writings. Who can truly guarantee the authenticity of it? On what does rest the authority which one grants to Mathieu, Marc, Luc and Jean? Who guarantees to us that their text was not disguised, modified during the centuries? Why the biblical texts are not subjected to the same prudence vis-a-vis their authenticity as any other document writes layman? Why the apocryphal books were not preserved and vice versa? How can one accept the divergences between testimonys that they present to us? The Old Testament is also put at evil, qualified stories the insane ones, Meslier questions the need for posing so many carnages and sacrifices in this text supposed to represent supreme wisdom and supreme kindness. The allegorical direction of the text does not seem to be an argument which convinces Meslier, since in this case, it would be possible to make say what one wants with the religious texts:

“… which forges as they want, or which forged as they wanted, all these beautiful alleged spiritual, allegorical and mystical directions of which they maintain and repaissent vainly the ignorance of the poor people. It is not any more the word of God whom they propose to us and whom they output us under this direction; but they are only their own thoughts, their own imaginations, and the hollow ideas their false imaginations; and thus, they do not deserve that no regard there is had, nor that one pays no attention there. ”

Moreover, what a subterfuge is thus this recourse to the allegorical direction of the texts! Indicator that the promises of the texts were not carried out, Paul would have been the first to resort to the allegorical direction in order to preserve the Christian lie:

“Our christicoles looks like an ignorance, or a coarseness of spirit, to want to literally take the aforesaid promises and prophecies as they are expressed, and believe to make the subtle ones well and the clever interpreters of the intentions and the wills of their god, to leave the literal and natural direction words, to give them a direction which they call mystic and spiritual and which they name allegorical, anagogic and topological. ”

With its shingling irony, Meslier overbids:

“If one wanted in the same way to interpret allegorically and figuratively all the speeches, all the actions and all the adventures of the famous Don Quichotte of the English Channel, one would find there if one wanted a wisdom very supernatural and divine. ”

Biblical prophecies are only falsenesses which were never carried out, the most outstanding example according to Meslier is alliance with the Jews, populates having suffered from all the times:

“Since it is not seen now, and that one even never saw, no mark of this alleged alliance, and that on the contrary they obviously are seen, since many centuries, excluded from the possession from the grounds and countries whom they claim to them to be promised and to be given to them on behalf of God to enjoy it forever. ”

Finally, Meslier comes from there to point out the rules however essential of historical criticism and invites us to pose this grid of analysis on the Christian texts:

“So that there is some certainty in the accounts which one has, it would be necessary to know:

. If those which one says to being the first authors of these kinds of accounts are truly authors.
. If these authors were people of probity and worthy of faith.
. If those which bring back these alleged miracles examined all the circumstances of the facts well that they pay.
. If the books or the old stories which bring back these facts were not falsified and were corrupted in the continuation of time, like quantity of other books. ”

Another major attack of Meslier goes against the character of Jesus himself. It is not that Meslier calls in question its historical existence, but it presents it like: “a man of nothing, which had neither talent, neither spirit, neither science, nor addresses, and which was completely scorned in the world; insane, foolish, a fanatic poor wretch and an unhappy pendard. ” The glorification of the suffering, the paradoxical message of Jesus who says that it will save the Men while presenting the fact that others will be subjected to the eternal judgment, the consent of Jesus to come to put the disorder in our world and the promise in a non-existent kingdom, here are only some reasons of the judgment of Jesus made by Meslier. Another element denounced by Meslier is the incoherent doctrines of Christ, hatred of the body, to leave it for account of the terrestrial concerns such clothing and food, the belief in divine providence:

“The weather would be certainly nice to see the men trusting with such a promise that one! what would they become? If they were only one year or two without working, without plowing? Without sowing? Without harvesting and making attics? To imitate in that the birds of the sky. They in vain then make the excessively pious people, and piously would seek this alleged its justice and kingdom of heaven! The celestial father would provide it for that more particularly for their needs. ”

The promise of the kingdom of heaven (which still did not arrive after more than 2000 years) also presents for Meslier another proof of the non-validity of the teaching of Jesus-Christ. The passage of Jesus of did not improve anything besides our world, always according to Meslier, the world made only worsen, the evil, the sin are always present, and this same among the Christians. The idea of decline is also present at Meslier:

“The men become the every increasingly vicious and malicious day, and there is like a flood of defects and iniquities in the world. It is not even seen as our christicoles can glorifier be healthier, wiser and more virtuous, or regulated better in their police force and their manners that the other people of the Earth. ”

For Meslier, if Jesus had truly been God he would have rendered a great service to humanity, he would have made all the Men healthy of body and spirit, wise and virtuous. He would have banished world all the defects, the sins, the injustices, etc Finalement, another nonsense, if Jesus had truly saved all the Men by his sacrifice, if he really had exonerates all the sins of the world, why devil Christianity he did preserve the use of penitences? It still damnés why there? Because God does not want to harm our freedom and does not want to save those which do not want the being? Baliverne for Meslier. How perfect God let would precipitate with the hells of the thousands of human which it is supposed to like?

“One can to as say them as God being the Almighty and infinitely wise as they suppose it, it could, without removing freedom with the men, leading and to direct always so well their hearts and their spirits, their thoughts and their desires, their slopes and their wills, than they would like to never make any evil, nor no sin, and as it could easily prevent all kinds of defects and sins, without removing and wounding freedom. ”

Another nonsense, the Man is seen condemning by God supposément right to pay for an original sin that only two human made, and how such a sin can assign with as much force perfect and immutable God? In addition to that, God did not find of more effective means to erase the original sin (which is not unobtrusive apparently at all since we always undergo the consequences of them) to send his/her son to be made kill by the Men, i.e., to let the Men make a sin still worse than that to crunch the forbidden fruit. Without would crucifixion, not of redemption, Judas and Pilate be thus the large savers of humanity? If everyone had loved and listened to Jesus, would we have lost any chance of redemption? Final paradox:

“It is as if it were said that infinitely wise God and infinitely good would have offended himself against the men and that it would have rigorously irritated against them for one anything (to crunch in a fruit) and for a trifle, and that it miséricordieusement would have calmed down and reconciled with them by largest of all the crimes? By a horrible deicide that they would have made, while crucifiant and while making cruelly and shamefully to die its expensive and divine son? ”

The acceptance of Christianity remains for Meslier an impenetrable mystery: how judicious men did make to adhere to similar ideas? What it is thus this strange morals which côtoie love of next and search of pains and sufferings, “which declares happy those which cry and those suffer, which places the perfection in what is contrary with the nature's needs, which requires not to resist the malicious ones, but to let them make? ” Nonsense according to Meslier. And what to say evil? Why God does it impose it on the goods and the wise ones? To test their patience, to purify them, improve their virtue, to make them happier in the sky? Re-balivernes, exclaims Meslier. And about which right do we speak about the kingdom of heaven?

“(The “christicoles ones”) were Y to see? To know some of the news? Who their said that was thus? Which experiment do they have some? Which proof do they have some? Certainly no, if it isn't that which they claim to draw from their faith, which is only one blind belief of the things that they do not see, that nobody forever considering and that nobody will never see? ”

Confessor during nearly forty years, let us recall it, Meslier came from there to wonder whether people believed still truly in various “the balivernes” Christian or if they did not play them also the comedy, a little as him which did not dare to declare at the great day, of alive sound, its thought, by fear of all the repression which would fall down on him:

“As for the majority of men, one well also sees by their manners and their control which the majority of them hardly are better persuaded of the truth of their religion nor of what it to them teaches that those from which I come to speak, though they make of it more payment the exercises. And those which among the people have so much is little spirit and of good sense, any ignoramuses which they are besides in the social sciences, do not only leave foresee, and feel even in some way, the vanity and the falseness of what one wants to do to them accroire on this subject, so that it is only like force, in spite of them, as against their own lights, as their own reason, and as against their own feelings which they believe or rather than they endeavor to believe what one them of known as. ”

Announcing Marx already, Meslier also reproaches the Church its support for tyrannies like for the exploitation of the people. The Church, instead of defending the poor one, blesses the various “parasites” which were stuck to the work of the poor in order to better exploit them: soldiers, ecclesiastics, lawyers, police officers, noble, etc the king (who should be assassinated according to Meslier) dominates this tyranny and enjoys besides thanks to the clergy one supposed sovereignty which comes to him from God, still an extra effort to subject the people thanks to the reference to the divine one. Meslier hopes that his message will be heard, diffused, and that the Men will learn how to live without the Christian lie and this, it does not matter the consequences:

“After that, that one thinks of it, that one judges some, that one says of it and that one does of them all that one will want in the world, I hardly embarrasses oneself any; that the men adapt and that they control as they want, than they are wise or than they are insane, than they are good or than they are malicious, than they say or than they do even to ego what they will want after my death; I am concerned with it very little: I do not take already almost more part in what is done in the world; deaths with which I am on the point of going do not embarrass any more anything, they do not mix any more anything, and do not worry any more anything. I will thus finish this by nothing, as I am hardly more as one nothing, and soon I will be nothing. ”

What is necessary to retain of the Meslier abbot? Initially let us say that his texts, though, it will be guessed, considered to be very dangereous because of those who discovered them, will know a relatively broad diffusion for a text if iconoclast which fell under one time when the Christian religion preserved a rather strong seizure on the company and the European culture. The text was however used with bad use, Voltaire published of it a summary, rather popular, which was however extremely diluted by this last; atheism materialist conscious and intransigent of Meslier had been transformed into a careful profession of faith deist where Meslier was excused with God to have professed lies on its account throughout its life of ecclesiastic. At all events, the thought of Meslier, first frankly atheistic, free text modern of usual (and confusing) the literary prudence which surrounded the texts known as atheistic of the time, is revealing presence of a true atheistic thought (can be discrete certainly) at the eighteenth century.

The posthumous frankness from Meslier, which does not hesitate to affirm that good number of its parishioners and, still worse, of ecclesiastics (as those of the others) do not believe any more and pretend to have the faith, is revealing for us difficulty which had the Men of the 18th century to express with complete freedom their major feeling vis-a-vis the concept of God. The diffusion of the theses of Meslier, first true systematic, clearly and frank atheistic text, will obviously not help the ecclesiastics of the time in their fight against the atheism, which they lent, wrongly or through, with very philosopher posing a new system. The frank atheism of Meslier will know only very little imitateurs during the 18th century, surely, if it is necessary to believe of it the example of Meslier because of the rigid framework which always the structures politico-nuns of the century posed. However, Meslier had crossed a limit, its text announced that the ground was from now on ready for the setting-up of a systematic atheistic speech and without compromise, speech still contained by political structures certainly, but whose imminent disappearance (the French revolution, just like vast the running liberal one which will shake Europe is close) will allow the expression of a true systematic and combative atheism, carried out of their alive by intellectuals who do not move back in front of the fear of the Church or the ontological argument.

Quotations

I would like, and it will be the last and burning of my wishes, I would like that the last of the kings was strangled with the bowels of the last priest.
All the men are equal by nature, they also have all the right to life and to go on the ground, and to have share with the goods of the ground by usefully working all and sundry to have the things necessary and useful to the life.
It would be right that the large ones of the ground and that all the noble ones were hung and strangled with the bowels of priests.
You raise, link you against your enemies, those which overpower you misery and of ignorance. Entirely reject all the vain ones and superstitious practices of the religions. Do not add any faith to the false mysteries, make fun you of all that the interested priests say to you. because it is there the cause disastrous and true of all your evils… Your safety is between your hands, your delivery depends only on you, because they is you only whom the tyrants obtain their force and their power.
Make odious everywhere the tyrannical government of the princes and priests. Help you in a cause so right and if necessary and where it is about the shared interest of all the people…
Retain for yourselves these richnesses and these goods which you make come to sweat from your body, give anything of it to all these superb and useless lazy, nothing with all these monks and these ecclesiastics who live unnecessarily on the ground, nothing with these proud tyrants who scorn you…
Ci-to lie an honest fort man, priest of Champagne village which, while dying, was sorry God to have been Christian and which proved by there that ninety-nine sheep and Champagne do not make hundred animals. , epitaph of of Alembert.

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