第69章

I said to myself : " One must be blind not to be dazzled by this spectacle;one must be stupid not to recognize the author of it; one must be mad not to worship Him.What tribute of worship should I render Him? Should not this tribute be the same in the whole of space, since it is the same supreme power which reigns equally in all space? Should not a thinking being who dwells in a star in the Milky Way offer Him the same homage as the thinking being on this little globe where we are? Light is uniform for the star Sirius and for us; moral philosophy must be uniform.If a sentient, thinking animal in Sirius is born of a tender father and mother who have been occupied with his happiness, he owes them as much love and care as we owe to our parents.If someone in the Milky Way sees a needy cripple, if he can relieve him and if he does not do it, he is guilty toward all globes.Everywhere the heart has the same duties: on the steps of the throne of God, if He has a throne; and in the depth of the abyss, if He is an abyss."I was plunged in these ideas when one of those genii who fill the intermundane spaces came down to me.I recognized this same aerial creature who had appeared to me on another occasion to teach me how different God's judgments were from our own, and how a good action is preferable to a controversy.

He transported me into a desert all covered with piled up bones; and between these heaps of dead men there were walks of ever-green trees, and at the end of each walk a tall man of august mien, who regarded these sad remains with pity." Alas! my archangel," said I, " where have you brought me? "" To desolation," he answered." And who are these fine patriarchs whom I see sad and motionless at the end of these green walks? they seem to be weeping over this countless crowd of dead."" You shall know, poor human creature," answered the genius from the intermundane spaces; " but first of all you must weep."He began with the first pile." These," he said, " are the twenty-three thousand Jews who danced before a calf, with the twenty-four thousand who were killed while lying with Midianitish women.The number of those massacred for such errors and offences amounts to nearly three hundred thousand." In the other walks are the bones of the Christians slaughtered by each other for metaphysical disputes.They are divided into several heaps of four centuries each.One heap would have mounted right to the sky; they had to be divided."" What! " I cried, " brothers have treated their brothers like this, and I have the misfortune to be of this brotherhood!"" Here," said the spirit, " are the twelve million Americans killed in their fatherland because they had not been baptized."" My God! why did you not leave these frightful bones to dry in the hemisphere where their bodies were born, and where they were consigned to so many different deaths? Why assemble here all these abominable monuments to barbarism and fanaticism? "" To instruct you."" Since you wish to instruct me," I said to the genius, " tell me if there have been peoples other than the Christians and the Jews in whom zeal and religion wretchedly transformed into fanaticism, have inspired so many horrible cruelties."" Yes," he said." The Mohammedans were sullied with the same inhumanities, but rarely; and when one asked amman , pity, of them, and offered them tribute, they pardoned.As for the other nations there has not been one right from the existence of the world which has ever made a purely religious war.Follow me now." I followed him.

A little beyond these piles of dead men we found other piles; they were composed of sacks of gold and silver, and each had its label: Substance of the heretics massacred in the eighteenth century, the seventeenth and the sixteenth.And so on in going back: Gold and silver of Americans slaughtered , etc., etc.And all these piles were surmounted with crosses, mitres, croziers, triple crowns studded with precious stones." What, my genius! it was then to have these riches that these dead were piled up? "" Yes, my son."

I wept; and when by my grief I had merited to be led to the end of the green walks, he led me there." Contemplate," he said, " the heroes of humanity who were the world's benefactors, and who were all united in banishing from the world, as far as they were able, violence and rapine.Question them."I ran to the first of the band; h# had a crown on his head, and a little censer in his hand; I humbly asked him his name." I am Numa Pompilius,"he said to me." I succeeded a brigand, and I had brigands to govern: Itaught them virtue and the worship of God; after me they forgot both more than once; I forbade that in the temples there should be any image, because the Deity which animates nature cannot be represented.During my reign the Romans had neither wars nor seditions, and my religion did nothing but good.All the neighbouring peoples came to honour me at my funeral:

that happened to no one but me."

I kissed his hand, and I went to the second.He was a fine old man about a hundred years old, clad in a white robe.He put his middle-finger on his mouth, and with the other hand he cast some beans behind him.I recognized Pythagoras.He assured me he had never had a golden thigh, and that he had never been a cock; but that he had governed the Crotoniates with as much justice as Numa governed the Romans, almost at the same time; and that this justice was the rarest and most necessary thing in the world.

I learned that the Pythagoreans examined their consciences twice a day.

The honest people! how far we are from them! But we who have been nothing but assassins for thirteen hundred years, we say that these wise men were arrogant.