Chapter 26 Emile (Volume Four) Section Six

Since our senses are our first instruments of knowledge, the only things that we can directly apprehend are corporeal and sensible objects. The word "spirit" means nothing to anyone who has not been trained in philosophy.In the eyes of ordinary people and children, the spirit is also a kind of object.Aren't they saying that the spirit can shout, talk, and fight?So you have to admit that the spirit has arms and a tongue, which is very similar to the body.This is the reason why people all over the world, including the Jews, want to create gods with bodies.Even we ourselves have terms like "Holy Spirit," "Trinity," and "Three Persons of God," so most of us are true anthropomorphists.I admit that we have been told that God is omnipresent; but we also believe that air is omnipresent, at least in the atmosphere; the meaning of.As long as you get people into the habit of often saying incomprehensible words when speaking, you can easily make them say what you want them to say afterwards.

When we act upon other bodies, we first feel that, if those bodies act upon us, the effect is the same as we have upon them.Man, therefore, from the first thought everything that affected him was alive.Since he himself feels inferior to those bodies, and since he does not know how great their power is, he imagines their power to be unlimited, and, when he imagines them as beings with bodies, he sees them as As a god.In ancient times, people were afraid of everything, and believed that nothing in nature was dead.The idea of ​​matter itself is also abstract, so the speed of formation in their minds is no less than that of spirit.They believed that the universe was full of sentient gods.Stars, winds, mountains, rivers, trees, towns, and even houses, all have souls, gods, and life.The household gods of Laban, the "Manitou" of the Indians, the fetish gods of the blacks, and all things created by nature and man have been the first gods of mankind; their earliest religions were polytheistic, and idols It was their first object of worship.It is only when they gradually generalize their ideas that they can trace them back to a Creator, unite the whole into a single idea, and understand the most abstract of all abstractions, Substance, that they understand the only infinite There is only one god in the two lands.Every child who believes in God, therefore, is necessarily an idolater, or at least an anthropomorphist; and if once in his imagination he thinks he sees God, he spends little time thereafter wondering whether he What is it like.Locke's mistake in studying the order of the mind first and then the body lies here.

As soon as I have (I don't know how) abstract ideas of substance, I think that in order to accept a unique substance, it must be assumed to have some mutually exclusive and incompatible properties, such as thought and extension. , one of which is essentially divisible, while the other is not divisible at all.Furthermore, thought, or, to put it another way, sensation, is held to be an original quality, inseparable from the substance to which it belongs; so is the relation of extension to substance.From this it follows that if a living thing loses one of these qualities, it also loses the substance to which it belongs, so that death is but a separation of substance, and life is when these two qualities come together, is composed of entities to which these two properties belong.

Come now to see how far there is between the two conceptions of substance and that of divinity, between the inconceivable idea of ​​what our soul does to our bodies, and the idea of ​​what God does to all living things. distance.Creation, destruction, omnipresence, immortality, omnipotence, and divinity, all these concepts seem confusing and vague to only a few people, and because the average person does not understand at all, they do not feel that they have any meaning. Why do young people who only have preliminary sensory activities and think about what they have to touch seem to struggle so hard, that is to say, why do they seem to have no understanding at all?In vain are infinite chasms dug around us, children have no fear of them, their little eyes cannot see their depths.Everything seems infinite to children, and they do not know what is limited, not because their scales are particularly long, but because their intelligence is short.I even noticed that they thought infinity was less than, not greater than, the size of space as they knew it.They measure a wide space with their feet and not with their eyes; it seems to them that the space is large, but not larger than they can see, but only larger than they can go, if you give them When it comes to the power of God, they may think that it is at best similar to their father's power.They measure everything possible by their knowledge, and therefore they think that what you tell them is always less than what they know.Such is the natural judgment of the ignorant and the weak of mind.The reason why Ajax dared not to compete with Achilles but dared to challenge Jupiter was because he knew Achilles but not Jupiter.A Swiss farmer who thinks he is the richest man in the world, if you tell him what kind of person the king is, he will ask you proudly if the king has a hundred cattle grazing on the mountains.

I have expected that many readers will be surprised to see that I have followed my pupil from his childhood without speaking to him at all about religion.At fifteen, he didn't know he had a soul, and maybe at eighteen, I don't think he should be told about it, because if he knew before he needed to know If not, maybe he will never really understand. If I were to describe an infuriatingly stupid thing, I would describe a Mr. Don Hoon explaining dogma to children by quizzes; if I wanted to drive a child mad, I would ask him to explain it to me. What did he mean by those dogmas.You may object to me that the dogmas of Christianity are mostly occult, and that if one were to wait until a man's mind could comprehend them, it would be not only until the child was grown up, but until the man was dead. to teach.Regarding this point, the first thing I want to answer is that there are some mystical meanings that are not only incomprehensible to people, but also unbelievable; if it is not to teach children to lie from an early age, I think there is nothing to teach them with dogma benefit.Besides, if you want to admit mystical meanings, you must at least know that they are inconceivable, and it is impossible for children to understand even this concept.When a person is still at an age where everything is considered mysterious, then it doesn't matter how mysterious it is.

"Believe in God to be saved." This misunderstood dogma has led men to destroy dissidents with vicious means, and it has given people a habit of talking empty words, so that they have learned some unreal things, which seriously cripples the reason.Undoubtedly, a little time cannot be wasted in order to be saved forever; but if you can be saved forever by repeating a few words over and over again, I don't see why we can't make magpies and parrots like children That's how they ascended to heaven. The duty of faith involves the possibility of fulfilling this duty.Philosophy without faith is wrong, because it misuses the intellect it cultivates, and rejects the truth it can understand.But what trust is there in a child who professes to be a Christian?He can only believe what he understands; he understands so little of what you teach him, that if you teach him the opposite, he will immediately accept it.The faith of young children and many adults is a matter of geography.Are they better endowed in Rome than in Mecca?You tell this person that Muhammad is a person who speaks for God, and he follows up saying that Muhammad is a person who speaks for God; you tell that person that Muhammad is a villain, and that person then follows that Muhammad is a villain.If you reverse the positions of two people, one person will believe what the other person believes.Can we therefore send two persons so similar in endowment, one to heaven and the other to hell?When a child says he believes in God, what he believes in is not God, but Johnny, because they tell him that there is something that the world calls God; As said:

O Jupiter!For you, I have only heard of your name, but have not seen you as a god. We believe that children who die before they grow up to a sensible age will not lose eternal happiness, because Catholics also believe that children who have been baptized will not lose eternal happiness even if they have not heard of God of.There are cases, therefore, in which unbelief is salvageable; such cases occur in childhood or in insanity, when the mind is incapable of the activities necessary for the knowledge of God.Here, I think the difference between you and me is this: You think children can know God when they are seven years old, and I think they can't know God when they are fifteen years old.Whether I am right or wrong cannot be judged by a creed, but by simply looking at the history of nature.

It can also be seen from the above principles that even if such a person has not believed in God until he is old, as long as he does not intentionally not believe in God, he cannot be deprived of the right to see God in the next life because he has not believed in God; It is not that I am willing to become such a person who deliberately does not believe in God.As far as madmen are concerned, you also admit that although disease deprives them of their spiritual abilities, it does not deprive them of their human qualifications, and therefore cannot deprive them of their right to enjoy God's favor.Why, then, do you not agree with God's favor to those who from childhood have lived a life of extreme savagery isolated from the world, merely because they have not acquired the knowledge which can only be acquired in the intercourse of men?You may say: "That is because it is evidently impossible for such a savage to raise his mind to the point where he can know the real God." He should be punished, and we must never regard a man's irredeemable ignorance as a crime.From this it can be seen that in the face of eternal justice, all those who wish to believe in God, if they have some necessary wisdom, are considered to believe in God, and, except for those who deliberately do not accept the truth, even if a person does not believe God should not punish him for this.

Let us not preach the truth to those who are incapable of understanding it, for to do so is to spread error.He would rather have no idea of ​​God than to have vulgar, absurd, insulting, and disrespectful notions of God: ignorance of God's existence is less harmful than blasphemy.The loyal Plutarch said: "I would rather people think that there is no such a person as Plutarch in the world than people say: 'Plutarch is unjust and jealous, and he is still so bossy. , forcing people to do things that cannot be done.'” The worst thing about picturing God in children's minds is that these images will remain in their minds for life, and even when they grow up, they will think that God is nothing more than what they heard others say when they were children. that way.I once saw a family in Switzerland who believed in this principle so much that the kind and pious mother did not teach her son religion when he was young, lest he should be satisfied with this little knowledge, and when the sensible Age doesn't even require better knowledge.This child is always respectful when people talk about God, but when he wants to talk about God himself, they stop him, as if this matter is too deep for people like him to talk about.Such a taboo aroused his curiosity, and at the same time, out of pride, he yearned for a time to understand the mysterious things that everyone insisted he should not know.The less everyone told him about God, the less he was allowed to talk about God himself, the more he wanted to know about God.The child felt that he saw God everywhere.What worries me is that this pretense of mysticism will so stimulate a young man's imagination, and confuse his mind, that in the end he will not be a believer in God, but a God. blind believers.

We have no fear of Emile becoming like this, because he never asks anything that is beyond his understanding, and he is always absent-minded when he is told about things that he does not understand.There were so many things that he did not think were relevant to him that one more would not have troubled him; and he had begun to wonder about these great questions not because he had heard them asked, but because his The natural development of intellect impelled him to study in this direction. We have observed the roads by which the cultured mind leads to these mystical states; and I am willing to admit that even in society it does not reach them naturally until a little later in life.But as many unavoidable causes in society havetened the development of man's desires, if the wisdom to regulate them were not also rapidly developed, we would really be out of the natural order, and would thus upset its balance.When we cannot control the rapid development of one thing, we must let all kinds of things related to it develop at the same speed, so that the order will not be chaotic, and the things that should be advancing at the same time will not be out of joint, so that Man is so perfect all the time throughout his life that he cannot sometimes be this way because of the rapid development of one ability, and sometimes be that way because of the rapid development of that ability.

What a difficulty I found here!And since the difficulty arises not because of the thing itself, but because of the cowardice and incapacity of those who face it, and dare not solve it, the difficulty becomes greater and greater.We must at least dare to raise this difficulty, and we must start from this point.A child is brought up in the religion of his father, and it is often argued to him that this religion is, after all, the only true religion, and that all other religions are absurdities.On this issue, whether this statement is convincing depends purely on which country it is said by.A Turk who says Christianity is ridiculous in Constantinople, let him come to Paris and find out what we think of Islam!Especially in matters of religion, human prejudice is overwhelming.But we, since we do not let him be bound to anything, since we do not submit to authority, and do not teach him what Emile could not learn himself elsewhere, what religion are we going to bring him up for?To what sect do we place this natural man?The answer to this question, I think, is very simple: we call him neither to one party nor to that, but let him make his choice, using his reason correctly. On the fire covered by embers, I step forward. It doesn't matter!I have maintained my enthusiasm and confidence up until now, which more than makes up for my lack of consideration.I hope they will keep me from making mistakes if necessary.Readers, don't worry that I will adopt an air of caution which a man of truth would disdain to adopt. I will never forget my course, but I will always doubt the correctness of my judgment.What I tell you below is not my thoughts, but the thoughts of another person with a higher status than me.I guarantee that the facts in it are all true. They are all the real experience of the author of the article I have copied. Whether you can draw some useful opinions on the issues we are talking about from this article depends on You decide.I suggest that you don't judge by another person's or my feelings, I'm just copying it here for your study. "Thirty years ago, in a city in Italy, there was a young man who had left his hometown and was extremely poor. He was originally a Calvinist, but because of a moment of confusion, he felt that he was living in a foreign land and had no means of living. He was converted for his living. There was a house for converted people in that city, and he was taken there. He was told about religious controversies, and thus aroused in him doubts which he had never had before; He was made aware of evils he did not know, new teachings he heard, and customs still newer; locked up; he murmured, and he was punished. At the mercy of tyrannical people, he found himself being treated as a sinner because he did not want to commit a crime. The first time an inexperienced youth encountered rape and People who have experienced injustice can understand how angry they are in their hearts. Tears of anger flowed from his eyes, and he held grievances in his heart. He told the heaven and the world about his grievances, and he confides the truth to everyone, but No one listened to what he had to say. All he met were thugs or accomplices who did evils he was ashamed of, and they laughed at him for not joining them, and they encouraged him to follow their example. Had it not been for an honest If the Christian pastor went to that apartment on business, and if he thought of a way to advise him secretly, he might be buried there completely. The pastor is poor and needs everyone's help, and the oppressed people need his help even more. Help; he did not hesitate to risk making a vicious enemy for himself by helping him in his attempt to escape. "Escaping disaster and falling into poverty, the young man struggled with his fate in vain. For a time he thought he had overcome it, and when a little luck met him, he forgot his pain and his Benefactor. His ingratitude was soon punished, all his hopes were utterly shattered, his youth was wasted, his romantic thoughts corrupted everything. On the one hand he had neither talent nor means enough. To create a smooth path, neither knowing restraint nor being a bad man, but on the other hand wanting many things that cannot be obtained. He fell into poverty again, had no bread to eat, no place to live, and was dying of starvation Only then did he think of his benefactor. "He went again to his benefactor, who found him, and was well received. The vicar, as soon as he saw him, recalled a good deed he had done; I feel relieved. This pastor is very kind and compassionate by nature. He feels the pain of others through his own pain. A prosperous life has not turned his heart into stone. The edification of knowledge and the virtue of open-mindedness make him He welcomed the young man, found him a lodging, introduced him to live there, and distributed his necessities to him, so as to support the two of them barely. Not only that, but the pastor educated him, comforted him, taught him how to persevere and patiently overcome adversity. You prejudiced people, did you ever think that such a thing would happen to a pastor, would appear in Italy? "This honest Christian was a poor clergyman in Savoy; by an imprudence in his youth, having had a quarrel with his bishop, he crossed the Alps in search of a means of livelihood which he could not find in his native land. Way. He is not a person without wisdom and culture. At the same time, because he is handsome, he has been taken care of by many people, and he has been placed in an official's house to educate his son. He would rather be poor than be sent to the fence. , he was not good at dealing with rich men. He did not stay long in the official's house, but when he left there he did not lose his respect; All he wanted was to go back with dignity to the bishop, and to ask him to spend his life there as a little priest in the mountains, and that was all he wanted in the end. "He took a natural interest in this young man in exile, and studied him carefully. He found that the youth's heart had been disheartened by his unfortunate fate, that shame and contempt had completely unnerved him. , his pride has turned into hatred of the world, and he believes that people's inhumane behavior is all due to their natural evil and moral hypocrisy. He believes that religion is a selfish mask, and sacred worship has become a hypocritical shield. In his opinion, heaven and hell have become objects of verbal and verbal manipulation in empty debates, and the solemn and simple concept of God has been distorted by people's random imagination; and when he believes that belief in God must be In throwing away God-given reason, he scorns our absurd meditations as much as the purpose for which we meditate. Lacking knowledge of things as they are and why they happen, he sinks into ignorance. He deeply looks down on those who think they are more knowledgeable than him. "Forgetting religion completely will result in forgetting the duties of being a man. The heart of the prodigal son is already halfway in the process. Although he is not a born bad boy, doubt and poverty gradually consume him. and so quickly dragged him down the path of destruction, infecting him with the ways of villains and atheistic moral views. "Such an almost inescapable evil has not yet reached the point of no return. The young man has some knowledge, and is not entirely uneducated. He is in the prime of his life, and the boiling blood is beginning to make him His heart tends to be more active, not enslaved by the violent senses. His heart is still like a blank sheet of paper. His natural sense of shame and shyness have fettered his soul for a long time, and the situation is like yours. Your student. The utter depravity and indignity which he sees, instead of stimulating, chokes his imagination. For a long time he was able to preserve his innocence only by his understanding of things. abhorred and not by virtue of his own; the innocent heart is corrupted only by intoxicating temptations. "The vicar saw the danger, and thought of a way of relief. Difficulty did not hold him back. He was glad that he could do the work, and he was determined to finish it, and to save him from his sin." Virtue was restored to this man. He carried out his plans by means of preemptive pursuit. Noble motives inspired him to devise means in harmony with his zeal. Whatever the result, he believed that he would All the time will not be wasted in vain. When a person does a good job wholeheartedly, he is bound to succeed in the end. "He starts by gaining the confidence of the new convert, he doesn't brag about his favors, he doesn't make him do this or that, he doesn't lecture him, he always Make yourself understandable to him, and lower yourself to be on an equal footing with him. When we see a serious person willing to be the companion of a naughty person, when we see a moral person trying to completely defeat an indulgent person, Just follow the steps of the indulgent people, I think we must be moved by this scene. When the young man came to tell him some messy things in his mind, he listened attentively, Let him have a good talk; he is deeply interested in all that he says, except that he disapproves of bad things; and found that, while the vicar listened to him, he willingly said all that was on his mind. Thus he explained all that he had done from beginning to end, and he thought there was nothing wrong with it. Didn't say anything. "Having carefully studied the sentiments and character of the young man, the minister judged that, though he could not be said to be an ignorant man in his age, he had completely forgotten everything he ought to know, and suffered from the eccentricity of fate. The humiliation of his heart has killed the true concept of good and evil in his heart. A stage of depravity can take away the life of the soul. When a person spends all his time racking his brains for food and clothing, he cannot hear the voice of his heart. In order to save this man who is on the verge of morality For the young man who died, the pastor first started to arouse his self-love and self-esteem: he pointed out to him that as long as he made good use of his talents, he could have a bright future, and he used the good behavior of others to arouse the honest enthusiasm in his heart. ;and as he aroused in the young man an admiration for those who were well behaved, he also aroused in him a desire to learn them. To liberate him unconsciously from a life of indolence and profligacy, the minister chose by telling him to copy the points from some books, and by pretending that he himself needed to read these excerpts, thus cultivating in him a noble feeling of gratitude. The pastor indirectly used those books to educate him, to make himself fully Value yourself instead of condescendingly thinking that you are a worthless person. "One small incident shows how skillfully this good man, though apparently uneducated, managed to free his pupils from a state of depravity. The minister was always a man He was considered a very honest and prudent man, so some people preferred to give to him what they were happy to donate to the rich priest in the city. One day, some money was given to him to distribute to the poor, and the young man A man has the audacity to say that he is poor, and ask him to give him some money." No," said the priest, "we have become brothers, and you are my family, and I should not take this money for my own use. ' Then, according to the amount of money the young man asked, he took out the money in his own pocket and gave him. Such a lesson cannot but be remembered by those young people who have not yet been completely corrupted. "I have grown impatient with speaking in the third person, and such caution is quite superfluous; for, my dear friends, you have already perceived that this unfortunate fugitive is myself. I now think that I Won't mess around like I did in my youth, so I dare to admit the shit I did before; and the man who saved me from my depravity deserves a little more humiliation here for his kindness of. "In the personal life of this venerable teacher, what impresses me most is that he was virtuous without hypocrisy, his heart was kind without soft-hearted, he spoke frankly, and his words and deeds were consistent. I never saw him ask what he helped. whether those of his family prayed vespers, whether they often confessed, whether they fasted on appointed days, whether they fasted or fasted; If so, even if he starved to death, he would never expect other believers to help him. "I was so encouraged by his behavior that, instead of showing him the feigned zeal of a newly converted man, I kept my thoughts from him, and I was never hurt by them." I sometimes said to myself: 'The reason why he doesn't ask me why I don't care so much about the sect I converted to is because he finds that I don't care about the religion I grew up with, so He doesn't think my contemptuous attitude is a matter of sect.' But what is in my mind when I occasionally hear him espousing a doctrine contrary to Catholic teaching, and when I see him seem to despise it in all its forms? If I had once seen him take care of ceremonies which he apparently seemed to take lightly, I might have thought him a hypocrite Christian; but, as I deeply Knowing that he performed his priestly duties even when no one was present, as in public, I don't know how to judge these contradictions. His life was an example to us, his conduct was beyond reproach, his words were sincere and reasonable, except that he could not be completely redeemed. As I was so intimate with him, I was more and more fond of him every day. His respect grew more day by day; and his deeds of solicitude won my heart, and I longed for an opportunity to know by what principles he had consistently led such a strange life. "The opportunity was long overdue. Before he could confide in his heart, he worked to germinate the seeds of reason and goodwill he had sown in the minds of his disciples. The most difficult thing to overcome in me was a cynicism. Vulgar pride is a kind of hatred for the rich and lucky people in the world, as if they all sacrificed me to get rich and lucky, as if their so-called happiness was taken from me. Youth The arrogant vanity of the period met the nail of humiliation, which made me more prone to angry temper; my teacher tried his best to restore my self-esteem, but this self-esteem psychology made me proud, I feel that the world is more evil than before, I not only look down on them, but also hate them. "He does not strike at my pride directly, but only prevents it from turning my heart to stone; he does not prevent me from respecting myself, but only prevents me from despising my neighbor because of pride. show me the real pain that lies beneath the surface, and thus make me regret the faults of my companions, pity their sufferings, sympathize with them and not envy them. Knowing his own weaknesses, he felt great sympathy for those of others, and thought that all men were victims of their own sins as well as those of others; 'Believe me,' he said, 'our illusions not only fail to cover but add to our suffering, because they make treasures of what would otherwise be worthless, and make me feel that I lack this and that. , but in fact, without those illusions, we would not feel that we lack anything. Peace of mind is to ignore everything that disturbs this peace. Put life first in everything The man who is least able to enjoy life is the last; and a man who strives for happiness is often the most miserable.' "'Ah!' I exclaimed bitterly, 'how bleakly you paint things! Why are we born into the world if everything is to be renounced? Who can count the good life as dung? Do you think you are happy?" "I," replied the pastor one day in a tone that astonished me. "You are happy too! Are you so unlucky, so poor, exiled, and persecuted? What happiness! What have you done to achieve this happiness? My child,' he went on, 'I will tell you.' "I then understood that after he listened to my confession, he also wanted to express his heart to me. 'I want to tell you the truth frankly,' and he hugged me and told me, 'What you are about to see , if not the real me, at least it is me in my own mind. When you listen to my entire confession of faith, when you understand my spiritual realm in detail, you will know why I think I am very幸福的，如果你也象我一样想法的话，你就会明白应当怎样做才能获得幸福。不过，这些话不是一时说得完的，要向你陈述我对人的命运和生命的真正价值是怎样看法的，需要一些时间，让我们找一个合适的时间和地方安安静静地谈一谈。' “我流露出急于要他告诉我的心情。于是，便约定我们至迟也不能迟过明天的早晨。那时候正当夏天，我们天亮就起身。他把我带到城外的一个小山上，山脚下波河的水蜿蜿蜒蜒地冲洗着肥沃的河岸，阿尔卑斯山的巨大的山脉远远地俯瞰着田园，旭日照耀着原野，在地上投下树木、丘陵和房屋的长长的阴影，用千万道光辉装点着这幅我们人类的眼睛所能看到的最美丽的画图。我们可以说，大自然之所以这样把它整个的灿烂景象展现在我们眼前，就为的是要我们以它作为我们的话题。我们在这里默默地观赏一会儿景色之后，这位心地平和的人就开始向我这样讲了。”