Address to the Catholic clergy. times the necessity of the passions is now confessed; it is found, that by their preservation, that of empires is secured. Passions are, in effect, strong desires, and these desires may be either conformable or contrary to the public welfare. If avarice and intolerance be hurtful and criminal passions, it is not so with the desire to render ourselves illustrious by talents and patriotic virtues (28). By annihilating the desires, you annihilate the mind; every man without passions has within him no principle of action, no motive to act. You are, O catholic clergy! rich and powerful upon the earth, but your power may be destroyed with that of the nations you command. By degrading them still more, they may be conquered by others, and will cease to be under your subjection. Even your own interest requires that men should continue to be excited by passions and wants; to stifle them in man you must change his nature. O venerable theologians! O brutes! O my brethren! abandon the ridiculous project: study the human heart, examine the springs by which it is moved, and if you have not yet any clear idea of morality and politics (22), forbear to teach them. Pride has led you too long astray: remember the ingenious fable of the birth of Momus. The moment he saw the day, says a great poet, the infant god filled Olympus with his cries; the celestial court was stunned to quiet him, each one gave the child a play-thing. Jupiter, who had just then created man, gave him to Momus, and Contradictory precepts inculcated in youth. ever since man has been the puppet of folly. Now among the puppets of this sort, the most rueful, proud, and ridiculous, is a doctor of divinity (23). O theolo gical puppet! do not persist in destroying the passions, they are the vital principles of a state (24). Employ yourself in promoting the general good; endeavour to trace out a plan of instruction, whose clear and simple principles shall all center in the happiness of the public. How far distant are we from such a plan of instruction? Parents and masters, with little harmony among themselves, are equally ignorant of what childre ought to be taught. Their ideas or education are yet confused, and thence arises that glaring contradiction in all their precepts. CHAP. X. EXAMPLES OF CONTRADICTORY PRECEPTS INCULCATED IN EARLY YOUTH. Is, in order to show more sensibly the contradiction in all the precepts of our education, I am obliged to descend to a more familiar style, the subject will plead my excuse. It is in the religious seminaries destined for Contradictory precepts inculcated in youth. for the instruction of young ladies, that these contradictions are most glaring. Suppose therefore I enter a convent: it is eight in the morning, the hour of conference; there is held a discourse on modesty; the superior of the convent proves, that a boarder should never look at a man. The clock strikes nine; the dancing-master is in the parlour. Mind your steps, he says to his scholar, hold up your head, and always look at your partner. Now which of these is she to believe the dancing-master or the mistress of the convent? The scholar does not know; and therefore acquires neither the grace the first would give her, nor the reserve that is preached to her by the other. Now whence do 'these contraditions arise, but from the contradictory desires of the parents, who would have their daughter at once agreeable and reserved, join the prudery of the cloister to the graces of the theatre? That is, they would conciliate irreconcilables*. The Turkish education is, perhaps, the only one that is consistent with what is required of women in their own country (25). The principles of education will be variable and in A girl is required to be sincere and ingenuous. A husband is provided for her; she does not like him; she declares it freely; it is taken amiss. The parents, therefore, would have her true or false, according as it is their interest that she should be the one or the other. determinate Cotradictory precepts inculcated in youth. determinate so long as they do not regard one certain point. What point is that? The greatest public utility; that is, the greatest pleasure, and the greatest happiness, of the largest number of citizens. Do parents lose this point of view? They wander here and there in the paths of instruction. Fashion is their only guide. They know that to make their daughter a musician they must pay a music-master, but they do not know that to give her just ideas of virtue they must in like manner pay a master of morality. When a mother undertakes the education of her daughter, she tells her in the morning, while putting on the rouge, that beauty is nothing; that virtue and talents are all *. At that moment company enters to the mother's toilet; every one praises the young lady's beauty, but not once a twelvemonth a word is said about her talents and virtue +. The only recompence moreover that is promised to her application and her virtue, is the ornaments of dress, and yet they would Do they persuade a girl that without talents she will never get a husband? To-morrow she hears that the most stupid of her companions has made an excellent match, because she had a large fortune, and that without a fortune no one can be married. + If they commonly praise nothing but beauty in a daughter, it is because beauty is really the most interesting and desirable quality in her we visit, and to whom we are neither husband nor friend; and with women the men are always on a visit. Contradictory precepts inculcated in youth. have the young girl be indifferent to her beauty. Into what confusion must her ideas be thrown by such conduct! The education of a youth is not more consistent; the first duty prescribed him is the observance of the laws; the second, their violation, when he is offended in case of an insult, he is to fight, under pain of being dishonoured. Do they prove to him, that it is by services rendered his country, he will obtain the consideration of this world, and the felicity of the next; what models do they propose for his imitation? A monk, a fanatical and slothful dervise, whose intolerance has filled empires with trouble and desolation. A father recommends to his son fidelity to his promise. A theologian then comes and tells the young man, that we are not bound to keep our promise to the enemies of God; for which reason Louis XIV. revoked the edict of Nantz given by his ancestors; that the pope has decided this question, by declaring every treaty made between Catholic princes and heretics to be void, and by giving the former the power of violating those treaties whenever they have sufficient strength. A preacher proves in the pulpit, that the God of the Christians is the God of truth; that it is by their hatred to falsehood his worshippers are known (26). He descends from the pulpit, and then owns, that it is quite prudent to observe certain precautions (27); that he |