Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/234

222 of the sovereign, never, most surely, can they be prevented from thinking as they will. What, then, must ensue? That men will think one way and speak another; that, consequently, good faith—a virtue most necessary to the state—will become corrupted; that adulation—a detestable thing—and perfidy will be had in repute, entailing the decadence of all good and healthy morality. What can be more disastrous to a state than to exile honest citizens as evil-doers, because they do not share the opinions of the crowd and are ignorant of the art of feigning? What more fatal than to treat as enemies and doom to death men whose only crime is that of thinking independently? The scaffold, which should be the terror of the wicked, is thus turned into the glorious theatre where virtue and toleration shine out in all their lustre, and publicly cover the sovereign majesty with opprobrium. Beyond question there is only one thing to be learned from such a spectacle: to imitate those noble martyrs; or, if one fears death, to become the cowardly flatterers of power. Nothing, then, is so full of peril as to refer and submit to divine rights matters of pure speculation, and to impose laws on opinions which are, or may be, subjects of discussion among men. If the authority of the state limited itself to the repression of actions while allowing impunity to words, controversies would less often turn into seditions."

More sagacious than many so-called practical men, our speculator sees perfectly well that the only durable governments are the reasonable, and that the only reasonable governments are the constitutional. Far from absorbing the individual in the state, he gives him solid guarantees against the state's omnipotence. He is no revolutionary, but a moderate; he transforms, explains, but does not destroy. His God is not indeed one who takes pleasure in ceremonies, sacrifices, odor of incense, yet Spinoza has no design whatever to overthrow religion; he entertains a profound veneration for Christianity, a tender and a sincere respect. The supernatural, however, has no meaning in his doctrine. According to his principles, anything out of Nature would be out of being, and therefore inconceivable. Prophets, revealers, have been men like others:

Was not this exactly what Schleiermacher said? And as to