Human reason reduced to its own resources is perfectly useless, not only for the creation, but also for the conservation of any religious or political association, because it produces nothing but disputes, and because for man to conduct himself well, he needs not problems but beliefs. His cradle must be surrounded by dogmas, and when his reason awakens, he must find all his opinions formed, at least on all things relating to his conduct. There is nothing so important to him as prejudices. Let us not take this word in its bad aspect. It does not necessarily mean false ideas, but only, in the strict sense of the word, opinions adopted before any examination. Now, these kinds of opinions are the man’s greatest need, the true elements of his happiness, and the Palladium of empires. Without them there can be no worship, no morality, no government. There must be a state religion as there is a state policy; or, rather, it is necessary that the religious and political dogmas be mingled and fused together to form a universal or national reason strong enough to repress the aberrations of individual reason which is, of its nature, the mortal enemy of any association whatever, because it produces only divergent opinions.
All known peoples have been happy and powerful to the extent that they have faithfully obeyed this national reason, which is nothing but the annihilation of individual dogmas and the absolute and general reign of national dogmas, that is to say, of useful prejudices. Let every man rely on his individual reason in the matter of worship, and you will immediately see the birth of anarchy of belief or the annihilation of religious sovereignty. Similarly, if everyone thinks himself judge of the principles of government, you will immediately see the birth of civil anarchy or the annihilation of political sovereignty. Government is a true religion: it has its dogmas, its mysteries, and its ministers; to annihilate it or to subject it to the discussion of each individual is the same thing; it lives only through national reason, that is, through political faith, which is a creed. Man’s primary need is that his nascent reason be bent under this double yoke, that it be extinguished, that it lose itself in the national reason, so that it changes its individual existence into another common existence, like a river that rushes into the ocean exists everywhere in the mass of waters, but without name and without a distinct reality.1
What is patriotism? It is this national reason of which I speak, it is individual abnegation. Faith and patriotism are the two great thaumaturges of this world. Both are divine: all their deeds are miracles, speak not to them of scrutiny, choice, or discussion; they will say that you blaspheme; they know two words only: submission and belief: with these two levers they raise the world; their very errors are sublime. These two children of Heaven prove their origin in the eyes of all by creating and conserving; but if they come together, join forces, and seize upon a nation together, they exalt it, they make it divine, they multiply its forces a hundredfold. We shall see a nation of five or six million men seat upon the barren rocks of Judea the most superb city of superb Asia,2 withstand shocks that would have pulverized nations ten times more numerous, brave the torrent of centuries, the sword of conquerors, and the hatred of nations, to astonish the masters of the world by its resistance,3 in fine, to survive all conquering nations, and still, after forty centuries, to hold forth its lamentable remains to the eyes of the surprised observer.
We shall see another people, emerging from the deserts of Arabia, become, in the twinkling of an eye, a prodigious colossus; to range over the world, a scimitar in one hand, and the Koran in the other, shattering empires in its triumphal march, redeeming the evils of war through its institutions. Great, generous, and sublime, it shall shine forth at once with reason and imagination, it shall bear the sciences, the arts, and poetry amid the night of the Middle Ages; and from the Euphrates to the Guadalquivir, twenty prostrate nations will lower their heads under the peaceful sceptre of Harun-al-Rashid.
But this sacred fire which animates nations, is it you who can light it, insignificant man? Can you give a common soul to several million men? Can you make only one will of all these wills? join them together under your laws? gather them around a single centre? impress your thought upon men yet unborn? make future generations to obey you, and create those venerable customs, those conserving prejudices, fathers of the laws and stronger than the laws? — Hold your tongue.
1 Rousseau has said that one must not speak of religion to children, and that their reason must be relied upon in choosing one. This maxim can be placed side by side with this other: “The constitution of man is the work of nature; that of the state is the work of art.” (Contrat social) It would take little more to establish that this Jean-Jacques, so superficial, under a vain appearance of depth, had not the slightest idea of human nature and of the true bases of politics.
2 Hierosolyma longe clarissima urbium orientis, non Judaeae modo [“Jerusalem, by far the most famous city of the East, not of Judea alone”]. (Pliny, Historia naturalis, 5, 14)
3 Josephus, de Bello Judaico, 6, 9.