But let us abridge these blasphemies. The Hierophant, under pretence of his universal love, may vent his spleen against the distinctions of Greeks or Romans, of French or English, of Italian or Spanish, of Pagan or Jew, of Christians or Mahometans, which denote nations and their religions: he may repeat, if he pleases, that amidst these different denominations that of man is

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overlooked; what will be the result of such declamation?—With our illuminizing doctor, in common with every class of the disorganizing Sophisters, is not this pretended universal love to be a cloak for the most odious hypocrisy? He only pretends to universal philanthropy, that he may dispense with loving his neighbour. He detests the love of one’s country, only because he detests the laws of nations; he cannot even brook the love of one’s family (he has given us a fine specimen in the person of his sister), and he will substitute that universal love because he is no more attached to them than he is to the Chinese, the Tartar, or the Hottentot, which he neither has seen nor ever will see, and that all human nature may be equally indifferent to him. He extends the bond that it may lose its elasticity and discontinue its action.—He calls himself citizen of the universe, that he may cease to be a citizen in his own country, a friend in society, or a fond father and dutiful child in his own family. His love, he tells us, extends from pole to pole, that he may love nothing that is near him. Such is the philanthropy of our Cosmopolites!

The proselyte stands astonished in stupid admiration at these expressions of universal love.—The Hierophant proceeds to the Codes of Nations. Still in extasy at these doctrines, he learns that they are in direct opposition to the laws of nature; nor will he even perceive that his new code is in direct opposition to the very first laws of nature, as it eradicates the love of one’s own family and that of one’s country. Nor will he ask, why the fulfilling of his duty toward his fellow-countrymen should hinder him from treating the barbarian or the savage with proper affection? Then follow new sophisms, to persuade the adept that the original fault of man was, the dereliction of the Equality and Liberty of the savage state by the institution of civil laws.

Here, more than ever, are calumny and hatred blended with enthusiasm by the Hierophant, who, reviewing the different ages of the world since the existence of civil institutions, pictures nations as groaning under oppression, despotism, and slavery, or glutted with the blood of wars and revolutions, which always terminate in tyranny. At one time it is the representation of Kings surrounding themselves with herds or legions called soldiers, in order to gratify their ambition by conquests on strangers, or to reign by terror over their enslaved subjects; at other times, it is the people themselves brandishing their arms, not to attack tyranny in its source, but merely to change their tyrants. If they think of giving themselves representatives, it is these very representatives, who, forgetting that they only hold their missions and powers from the people, form Aristocracies and Oligarchies, which all end by flowing into the general reservoir of Monarchy and Despotism. He never loses sight of his sophism of human nature degraded and vilified under the yoke of tyranny. These declamations, enthusiastically pronounced, at length make the proselyte exclaim, in unison with his master, “Are such then the consequences of the institution of states and of civil society? O folly! oh people! that you did not foresee the fate that awaited you; that you should yourselves have seconded your despots in degrading human nature to servitude, and even to the condition of the brute!

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Could a true Philosopher have been present, his heart must have burst with generous indignation; he would have abruptly challenged the Hierophant to declare whence he had learned to metamorphose the annals of society into those of brigands and monsters? Is the history of man then reduced to the records of plagues, famines, storms, tempests, or of convulsed elements? Have no serene days shone on man? Shall the sun be represented as a malevolent object, because it is sometimes obscured by fogs or clouds? Are we to fly from our habitations because many have been destroyed by fire? Shall we curse life and health because we are subject to pains and infirmities? Why else this fable painting of the disasters which have in the course of ages befallen civil society? Why are we to be silent on the misfortunes from which it has preserved us, or on the advantages which it has heaped on man, in reclaiming him from the forests?

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