Declaring the Condemnation of a Book That Has as its Title Emile, or On Education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Citizen of Geneva
Christophe de Beaumont, by Divine Mercy and by the grace of the Holy Apostolic See, Archbishop of Paris, Duke of Saint-Cloud, Peer of France, Commander of the Order of the Holy Spirit, Patron of the Sorbonne, etc; to all the Faithful of our Diocese, salutation and blessing.
I. Saint Paul predicted, My Very Dear Brethren, that perilous days would come when there would be people, lovers of themselves, proud, haughty, blasphemous, impious, slanderers, bloated with pride, lovers of sensual pleasures rather than God; men of corrupt spirit and perverted Faith.1 And in what unfortunate times has this prediction come to pass more literally than in ours! Disbelief, emboldened by all the passions, presents itself in every form, so as to adapt itself in some manner to all ages, to all characters, to all stations. Sometimes, in order to insinuate itself into minds that it finds already bewitched by trifles,2 it assumes a light, pleasant, and frivolous style: from this so many Novels, equally obscene and impious, whose goal is to amuse the imagination in order to seduce the mind and corrupt the heart. Sometimes, feigning an air of profundity and sublimity in its intentions, it pretends to go back to the first principles of our knowledge and claims to found its authority on them in order to shake off a yoke that, according to it, dishonors humanity, even the Divinity. Sometimes it declaims like someone enraged against Religion’s zeal, and heatedly preaches universal tolerance. Sometimes, finally, uniting all these diverse languages, it mixes the serious with playfulness, pure maxims with obscenities, great truths with great errors, Faith with blasphemy; it undertakes, in a word, to harmonize light with shadows, Jesus Christ with Belial. And such is especially, My Very Dear Brethren, the object that appears to have been proposed in a recent Work, which has as its title Emile, or on Education. From the bosom of error, there arose a man full of the language of Philosophy without being a genuine Philosopher; a mind endowed with a multitude of knowledge that did not enlighten him, and that spread darkness in other minds; a character given to paradoxes of opinions and conduct, alloying simplicity of morals with ostentation of thoughts, zeal for ancient maxims with the rage for establishing novelties, the obscurity of retreat with the desire to be known by everyone. He has been seen to rail at the sciences he was cultivating, extol the excellence of the Gospel whose dogmas he was destroying, depict the beauty of virtues he was extinguishing in the soul of his Readers.3 He made himself the Preceptor of the human race in order to deceive it, the public Monitor in order to lead everyone astray, the oracle of the century in order to complete its destruction. In a Work on the inequality of conditions, he lowered man to the level of the beasts;4 in another, more recent production, he had introduced the poison of sensual pleasure while appearing to proscribe it.5 In this work, he seizes upon man’s first moments in order to establish the domain of irreligion.
II. What an enterprise, My Very Dear Brethren! The education of youth is one of the most important objects of the solicitude and zeal of Pastors. We know that, in order to reform the world, as much as the weakness and corruption of our nature permits, it would be enough to observe, under the direction and impression of grace, the first gleams of human reason, to grasp them carefully, and to direct them toward the path that leads to the truth. In that way those minds, still exempt from prejudices, would always be on guard against error; those hearts, still exempt from the great passions, would acquire impressions of all the virtues. But to whom is it better suited than to us, and to those who Cooperate with us in the holy Ministry, to keep watch in this way over the first moments of Christian youth; to dispense to it the spiritual milk of Religion, so that it might grow for salvation6; to prepare in good time, by salutary lessons, sincere Adorers of the true God, faithful Subjects of the Sovereign, Men worthy of being the support and ornament of the Fatherland?
III. Now, My Very Dear Brethren, the author of Emile proposes a plan of education that, far from agreeing with Christianity, is not even suited to making Citizens or Men. Under the vain pretext of restoring man to himself and of making his student into nature’s student, he sets up as a principle an Assertion denied, not only by Religion, but also by the experience of all Peoples and of all ages. Let us set down, he says, as an incontestable maxim that the first movements of nature are always right. There is no original perversity in the human heart.7 From this language one does not at all recognize the doctrine of the Holy Scriptures and of the Church touching the revolution that has happened in our nature: one loses sight of the ray of light that lets us know the mystery of our own heart. Yes, My Very Dear Brethren, there is to be found within us a striking mixture of greatness and baseness, of zeal for truth and taste for error, of inclination to virtue and penchant to vice. Astonishing contrast, which, disconcerting Pagan Philosophy, leaves it to wander in vain speculations! a contrast whose source revelation uncovers for us in the deplorable fall of our first Father! Man feels himself drawn by a fatal inclination, and how would he resist it if his childhood were not directed by Teachers full of virtue, wisdom, vigilance, and if—during the entire course of his life—he himself, under the protection and with the grace of his God, did not make powerful and continual efforts? Alas, My Very Dear Brethren, despite the healthiest and most virtuous principles of education, despite the most magnificent promises of Religion and the most terrible threats, the follies of youth are still only too frequent, too manifold. Left to itself, into what errors, what excesses would youth not throw itself? It is a torrent that overflows despite the powerful dikes built to contain it. What would happen, then, if no obstacle stopped its flow and broke its force?
IV. The author of Emile, who recognizes no Religion, nevertheless indicates, without thinking about it, the way that leads infallibly to the true Religion: “We,” he says, “who want to grant nothing to authority, we who want to teach nothing to our Emile which he could not learn by himself in every country, in what Religion shall we raise him? To what Sect shall we join the Student of nature? We shall join him to neither this one nor that one, but we shall put him in a position to choose the one to which the best use of his reason ought to lead him.”8 I wish to God, My very Dear Brethren, that this object had been well accomplished! If the author had really put his Student in a position to choose among all the Religions the one where the best use of reason ought to lead, he would infallibly have prepared him for the lessons of Christianity. For, My Very Dear Brethren, the natural light leads to the evangelical light; and the Christian worship is essentially a reasonable worship.9 In fact, if the best use of our reason did not lead us to Christian revelation, our Faith would be vain, our hopes would be chimerical. But how does this best use of reason lead us to the inestimable good of Faith, and from that to the precious end of salvation? It is to reason itself that we appeal. As soon as one acknowledges one God, it is no longer a question of anything but knowing whether he has deigned to speak to men other than by the impressions of nature. Thus one must examine whether the facts that verify revelation are not superior to all the efforts of the most cunning quibbling. A hundred times disbelief has attempted to destroy these facts, or at least to weaken their proofs, and a hundred times its criticism has been convicted of impotence. By means of revelation God has testified for himself and this testimony is evidently very worthy of faith.10 What is left then for the man who makes the best use of his reason, but to acquiesce to this testimony? It is thy grace, oh my God! that consummates this work of light; it is what determines the will, which forms the Christian soul: but the development of the proofs and the force of the motives have previously occupied and purified reason; and it is in this labor, as noble as it is indispensable, that this best use of reason consists, about which the author of Emile undertakes to speak without having a settled and genuine notion of it.
V. In order to find young people more docile for the lessons he prepares for them, this Author wants them to be devoid of any principle of Religion. And that is why, according to him, To know good and bad, to sense the reason for man’s duties, is not a child’s affair. . . . I would like as little, he adds, to insist that a ten-year-old be five feet tall as that he possess judgment.
VI. Doubtless, My Very Dear Brethren, human judgment has its progression, and forms itself only by degrees: but does it follow from this that at age ten a child does not know the difference between good and evil at all, that he confuses wisdom with folly, goodness with barbarity, virtue with vice? What! at that age he will not feel that obeying his father is a good, and that disobeying him is an evil! To claim that, My Very Dear Brethren, is to slander human nature, by ascribing to it stupidity it does not have.
VII. “Every child who believes in God,” says this author again, “is an idolater or an anthropomorphite.”11 But, if he is an Idolater, he believes then in several Gods; he attributes, then, divine nature to insensate simulacra? If he is only an Anthropomorphite, while acknowledging the true God he gives him a body. Now, neither one nor the other can be assumed in a child who has received a Christian education. If the education has been faulty in that regard, it is supremely unjust to impute to Religion what is only the fault of those who teach it badly. Moreover, the age of ten is not at all the age of a Philosopher. A child, although well instructed, can express himself badly; but by inculcating in him that the Divinity is nothing perceived or that can be perceived by the senses, that it is an infinite intelligence that, endowed with a supreme Power, performs all that pleases it, one gives him a notion of God suited to the reach of his judgment. It is not doubtful that an Atheist, by means of his Sophisms, will easily succeed in troubling the ideas of this young believer; but all the skill of the Sophist will certainly not make this child, when he believes in God, be an Idolater or Anthropomorphite, that is to say, believe only in the existence of a chimera.
VIII. The Author goes farther, My Very Dear Brethren, he does not even grant that a young man of fifteen has the capacity to believe in God. Man will not know, then, even at that age, whether there is a God or whether there is not one; no matter how much all of nature announces the glory of its Creator, he will understand nothing of its language! He will exist without knowing to what he owes his existence! And it will be healthy reason itself that will plunge him into this darkness! This is how, My Very Dear Brethren, blind impiety would like to be able to obscure with its black haze the flame that Religion presents to all the ages of human life. Saint Augustine reasoned well based on different principles when he said, in speaking about the first years of his youth: “I fell, from that time onwards, Lord, into the hands of some of those who are careful to invoke you; and I understood from what they told me about you, and in accordance with the ideas that I was able to form about it at that age, that you were something great, and that although you might be invisible and beyond the grasp of our senses, you could hear our prayers and help us. Therefore I began from my childhood to pray to you and regard you as my refuge and my support; and to the extent that my tongue became loosened, I used its first movements to invoke you.”12
IX. Let us continue, My Very Dear Brethren, to call attention to the strange paradoxes of the author of Emile. After having reduced young people to such a profound ignorance relative to the attributes and the rights of the Divinity, will he at least grant them the advantage of becoming acquainted with themselves? Will they know whether their soul is a substance absolutely distinguished from matter? or will they regard themselves as purely material beings, and submitted only to the laws of Mechanism! The author of Emile doubts that at eighteen it is yet time for his student to learn whether he has a soul: he thinks that if he learns it sooner, he runs the risk of never knowing it.13 Doesn’t he at least want young people to be susceptible to the knowledge of their duties? No: to take his word for it, only physical objects can interest children, especially those whose vanity has not been awakened, and who have not been corrupted ahead of time by the poison of opinion14: consequently he wants all the cares of the first education to be applied to what is material and earthly in man: Exercise, he says, his body, his organs, his senses, his strength, but keep his soul idle for as long as possible.15 This is because this leisure appeared necessary to him to dispose the soul to the errors that he proposed to inculcate into it. But, isn’t wanting to teach man wisdom only at the time when he is dominated by the fire of the nascent passions to present it to him with the design that he will reject it?
X. How much is such an education, My Very Dear Brethren, opposed to the one prescribed together by the true Religion and sound reason! Both of them want a wise and vigilant Teacher to spy out in some way in his Student the first gleams of intelligence in order to occupy it with the attractions of the truth, the first movements of the heart, in order to arrest it by the charms of virtue. In fact, how much more advantageous is it to avoid obstacles than to have to surmount them? How much is it not to be feared that if the impressions of vice precede the lessons of virtue, man, having reached a certain age, will lack the courage or the will to resist vice? Doesn’t happy experience prove every day that after the disorderliness of an imprudent and quick-tempered youth, one finally returns to the good principles that one received during childhood?
XI. Moreover, My Very Dear Brethren, let us not be surprised that the Author of Emile postpones the knowledge of God’s existence to such a distant time. He does not believe it is necessary for salvation. “It is clear,” he says through the organ of a chimerical character, “it is clear that a man who has come to old age without believing in God, will not for that be deprived of his presence in the other, if his blindness was not voluntary, and I say that it is not always voluntary.”16 Note, My Very Dear Brethren, that the issue here is not a man who would be deprived of the use of his reason, but solely of someone whose reason would not be aided by instruction. Such a claim is supremely absurd, especially within the system of an Author who maintains that reason is absolutely sound. Saint Paul guarantees that, among the pagan Philosophers, several arrived at knowledge of the true God through the strength of reason alone. “What may be known of God,” says that Apostle, “has been manifested to them; for God having made it known to them. For the consideration of things that have been made since the creation of the world having made visible what is invisible in God, even his eternal power and his divinity; so that they are without excuse. Because, having known God, they have not glorified him as God and have not given him thanks, but are lost in the vanity of their reasoning, and their foolish mind has become darkened. Calling themselves wise, they have become mad.”17
XII. Now, if such has been the crime of these men, who, although subjected by the prejudices of their education to the worship of Idols, did not fail to attain knowledge of God, how would those who have not had similar obstacles to overcome be innocent and just to the point of deserving to enjoy the presence of God in the other life? How would they be excusable (with a sound reason such as the Author assumes) for having enjoyed during this life the great spectacle of nature, and for having nevertheless refused to recognize the one who created it, who preserves and governs it?
XIII. The same Writer, My Very Dear Brethren, openly embraces Skepticism relative to the creation and the unity of God. “I know,” he makes the assumed character who serves him as mouthpiece say, “I know that the world is governed by a powerful and wise will. I see it, or rather, I sense it; and that is something important for me to know. But is this same world eternal or created? Is there a single principle of things? Or, are there two, or many of them, and what is their nature? I know nothing about all this, and what does it matter to me. I renounce idle questions which may agitate my amour-propre but are useless for my conduct and are beyond my reason.”18 What does this reckless Author want to say then? He believes that the world is governed by a powerful and wise will; he admits that that is something important for him to know and nevertheless he does not know, he says, whether there is a single principle of things or if there are many, and he claims that it doesn’t matter to him very much to know. If there is a powerful and wise will that governs the world, is it conceivable that it not be the only principle of things? and can it be more important to know the one than the other? What contradictory language! He does not know what the nature of God is, and shortly thereafter he acknowledges that this supreme Being is endowed with intelligence, power, will, and goodness. Isn’t that having an idea of the divine nature? The unity of God appears to him an idle question and beyond his reason, as though the multiplicity of Gods were not the greatest of absurdities. The plurality of Gods, Tertullian states forcefully, is a nullifying of God19; to acknowledge a God is to acknowledge a supreme and independent Being, to which all other Beings are subordinate. He implies then that there are several Gods.
XIV. It is not surprising, My Very Dear Brethren, that a man who has a taste for such errors touching the Divinity protests against the Religion It has revealed to us. To hear him speak, all revelations in general have only the effect of degrading God by giving Him human passions. I see that particular dogmas, far from clarifying the notions of the great Being, he continues, confuse them; that far from ennobling them, they debase them; that to the inconceivable mysteries surrounding them they add absurd contradictions.20 This author is very much more the one, My Very Dear Brethren, who can be reproached with inconsistency and absurdity. It is he, mind you, who degrades God, who confuses and debases the notions of the great Being, since he attacks its essence directly by calling into question its Unity.
XV. He has felt that the truth of Christian Revelation was proven by the facts; but since miracles form one of the principal proofs of this revelation, and since these miracles have been transmitted to us by means of testimony, he cries out: What! Always human testimony? Always men who report to me what other men have reported! So many men between God and me!21 For this complaint to make sense, My Very Dear Brethren, it would be necessary to be able to conclude that Revelation is false as long as it has not been made to each man individually. It would be necessary to be able to say: God cannot require me to believe what I am assured he said, unless he has addressed his word directly to me. But aren’t there an infinite number of facts, even prior to that of Christian Revelation, that it would be absurd to doubt? By what means other than human testimony, then, has the Author himself come to know this Sparta, this Athens, this Rome whose laws, morals, and heroes he praises so often and with so much certainty? How many men there are between him and the events that concern the origins and fortune of these ancient Republics! How many men between him and the Historians who have preserved the memory of these events! His skepticism is based here, then, only on the interest of his unbelief.
XVI. “Let a man,” he adds later, “come and use this language with us: ‘Mortals, I announce the will of the Most High to you. Recognize in my voice Him who sends me. I order the Sun to change its course, the Stars to form another arrangement, the Mountains to become level, the Waters to rise up, the Earth to change its aspect.’ At these marvels who will not instantly recognize the Master of nature?”22 Who would not believe, My Very Dear Brethren, that someone who expresses himself like that wants only to see miracles to become Christian? Listen, however, to what he adds. He says, “the most important examination of the proclaimed Doctrine remains. . . . After the Doctrine has been proved by the miracle, the miracle has to be proved by the doctrine. What can be done in such a case? One thing only. Return to reasoning and leave aside the miracles. It would have been better not to have had recourse to them.”23 That is to say: show me miracles and I will believe. Show me miracles, and I will still refuse to believe. What inconsistency, what absurdity! But learn then once and for all, My Very Dear Brethren, that in the question of Miracles the Sophism reproached by the author of the book On Education is not allowed at all. When a Doctrine is recognized to be true, divine, and based on sure Revelation, it is used to judge miracles, that is to say to reject the alleged marvels with which Impostors would want to oppose this Doctrine. When it is a matter of a new Doctrine announced as emanating from God’s bosom, miracles are produced as proofs. That is, the person who takes on the role of Envoy of the Most High confirms his mission and his preaching by miracles, which are the very testimony of the Divinity. Thus doctrine and miracles are arguments used respectively according to the differing points of view adopted in the study and teaching of Religion. There is in this neither abuse of reason, nor ridiculous sophism, nor vicious circle. This has been demonstrated a hundred times; and it is probable that the author of Emile is not at all unaware of these demonstrations: but, in the plan he has made for himself of enveloping every revealed Religion, every supernatural operation, in clouds, he cunningly imputes to us dealings that dishonor reason; he represents us as Enthusiasts, whom a false zeal blinds to the point of proving each of two principles by the other without diversity of objects or of methods. Where then, My Very Dear Brethren, is the philosophic good faith this Writer parades?
XVII. One would believe that after the greatest efforts to discredit the human testimony attesting to Christian Revelation, the same Author nonetheless defers to it in the most positive, most solemn manner. To convince you of this, My Very Dear Brethren, and at the same time to edify you, this part of his Work must be put before your eyes. “I admit that the majesty of the Holy Scripture amazes me, and the holiness of the Holy Scripture speaks to my heart. Look at the books of the Philosophers with all their pomp. How petty they are next to this one! Can it be that a book at the same time so sublime and so simple is the work of men? Can it be that he whose history it presents is only a man himself? Is his the tone of an enthusiast or an ambitious Sectarian? What gentleness, what purity in his morals! What touching grace in his teachings! What elevation in his maxims! What profound wisdom in his speeches! What presence of mind, what finesse, and what exactness in his responses! What a dominion over his passions! Where is the man, where is the sage who knows how to act, to suffer, and to die without weakness and without ostentation. . . . Yes if the life and death of Socrates are those of a wise man, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God. Shall we say that the story of the Gospel was wantonly contrived? . . . It is not thus that one contrives; the facts about Socrates, which no one doubts, are less well attested than those about Jesus Christ. . . . It would be more inconceivable that many men in agreement had fabricated this Book than that a single one provided its subject. Never would Jewish Authors have found either this tone or this morality; and the Gospel has characteristics of truth that are so great, so striking, so perfectly inimitable that its contriver would be more amazing than its Hero.”24 It would be difficult, My Very Dear Brethren, to pay a more beautiful homage to the authenticity of the Gospel. However, the Author believes this only as a result of human testimonies. It is always men who report to him what other men have reported. How many men are there between God and himself! Behold him, then, manifestly contradicting himself. Behold him, confounded by his own admissions. What strange blindness, then, enabled him to add, “With all that, this same Gospel is full of unbelievable things, of things repugnant to reason and impossible for any sensible man to conceive or to accept. What is to be done amidst all these contradictions? One ought always to be modest and circumspect . . . to respect in silence what one can neither reject nor understand, and to humble oneself before the great Being who alone knows the truth. This is the involuntary Skepticism in which I have remained.”25 But can Skepticism, My Very Dear Brethren, be involuntary then, when one refuses to submit to the Doctrine of a Book that cannot have been invented by men? When this Book bears such large, striking, perfectly inimitable hallmarks of truth that the book’s inventor would be more astounding than its Hero? Surely here we may say that iniquity has given itself the lie.26
XVIII. It seems, My Very Dear Brethren, that this author has rejected Revelation only in order to limit himself to natural religion: “What God wants a man to do,” he says, “He does not have told to him by another man. He tells it to him Himself, He writes it in the depths of his heart.”27 What! Hasn’t God written in the depth of our hearts the obligation to submit to him as soon as we are sure that it is he who has spoken? Now, what certainty do we not have about his divine word? The facts about Socrates about which no one doubts are, by the very admission of the author of Emile, less attested than those about Jesus Christ. Natural Religion thus leads itself to revealed Religion. But is it very certain that he acknowledges even natural Religion, or that at least he recognizes its necessity? No, My Very Dear Brethren: “If I am mistaken, it is in good faith. That is enough for my error not to be imputed to a crime. If you were to be similarly mistaken, there would be little evil in that.”28 Which is to say that according to him it is sufficient to be persuaded that one possesses the truth; that this persuasion, even if it were accompanied by the most enormous errors, can never be a subject of reproach. That one must always consider as a wise and religious man a person who, adopting the very errors of Atheism, will say he is of good faith. Now, isn’t that opening the door to all superstitions, to all fanatical systems, to all the deliriums of the human mind? Doesn’t that allow there to be as many religions, forms of divine worship, in the world as there are Inhabitants? Ah! My Very Dear Brethren, do not be led astray on this point. Good faith is worthy of esteem only when it is enlightened and docile. We are ordered to study our Religion, and to believe with simplicity. We have the authority of the Church as guarantee for promises. Let us learn to know it well, and afterward to cast ourselves into its bosom. Then we will be able to count on our good faith, to live in peace, and to reach without perturbation the moment of eternal light.
XIX. What glaring bad faith does not burst forth again in the manner in which the Disbeliever, whom we are refuting, makes the Christian and the Catholic reason! What speeches full of absurdities does he not give to both to make them despicable! He imagines a Dialogue between a Christian, whom he calls the Inspired man, and the Disbeliever, whom he qualifies as Reasoner; and this is how he makes the first talk: “Reason teaches you that the whole is greater than its part, but I teach you on behalf of God that it is the part which is greater than the whole.” To which the Disbeliever answers: “And who are you to dare tell me that God contradicts Himself, and whom would I prefer to believe—Him who teaches me eternal truths by reason, or you who proclaim an absurdity on His behalf?”29
XX. But with what effrontery, My Very Dear Brethren, does one dare to make the Christian speak such language? The God of Reason, we say, is also the God of Revelation. Reason and Revelation are the two organs by which it pleased Him to make Himself understood by men, either to teach them about the truth, or to intimate His orders to them. If one of these two organs were opposed to the other it is certain that God would be in contradiction with himself. But does God contradict himself because he commands belief in incomprehensible truths? You say, oh Impious people, that the Dogmas we consider to be revealed combat the eternal truths; but saying that is not sufficient. If it were possible for you to prove it, you would have done so long ago, and you would have uttered shouts of victory.
XXI. The bad faith of the Author of Emile is no less revolting in the language he puts into the mouth of a supposed Catholic: “Our Catholics,” he has him say, “make a great to-do about the authority of the Church; but what do they gain by that, if they need as great an apparatus of proofs to establish this authority as other Sects need to establish their doctrine directly? The Church decides that the Church has the right to decide. Is that not an authority based on good proofs?”30 Hearing this Imposter, who would not believe, My Very Dear Brethren, that the authority of the church is proved only by its own decisions, and that it goes about it in this way: “I decide that I am infallible; therefore I am.” A slanderous imputation, My Very Dear Brethren. The constitution of Christianity, the Spirit of the Gospel, even the errors and the weakness of the human mind lead to the demonstration that the Church established by Jesus Christ is an infallible Church. We affirm that since this divine Legislator has always taught the truth, his Church also teaches it always. Thus we prove the authority of the Church, not by the authority of the Church, but by that of Jesus Christ; a method no less precise than the one for which we are reproached is ridiculous and senseless.
XXII. My Very Dear Brethren, the spirit of irreligion did not begin today to be a spirit of independence and of revolt. And how in effect could these audacious men, who refuse to submit to the authority of God himself, respect that of Kings who are the images of God, or that of the Magistrates, who are the images of Kings? “Be aware,” says the author of Emile to his student, “that it (the human species) is composed essentially of a collection of peoples; that if all the Kings . . . were taken away, their absence would hardly be noticeable; and that things would not be any the worse.” He says later, “The multitude will always be sacrificed to the few, and the public interest to particular interest. Those specious names, justice and order, will always serve as instruments of violence and as arms of iniquity. From this it follows,” he continues, “that the distinguished orders who claim they are useful to the others are actually useful only to themselves at the expense of their subordinates; it is on this basis that one ought to judge the consideration which is due them according to justice and reason.”31 Thus, then, My Very Dear Brethren, impiety dares to criticize the intentions of the one through whom Kings reign32; thus it takes pleasure in poisoning the sources of public felicity, by inspiring maxims that tend only to produce anarchy and all the calamities that follow from it. But what does Religion say to you? Fear God, respect the King . . .33 Let every man submit to superior Powers: for there is no Power that does not come from God: and it is He who has established all those that are in the world. Whoever, then, resists the Powers resists the order of God, and those who resist it draw damnation upon themselves.34
XXIII. Yes, My Very Dear Brethren, in everything that belongs to the civil order you must obey the Prince and those who exercise his authority, as God himself. Only the interests of the supreme Being can set limits to your submission; and if someone wished to punish you for your fidelity to his orders, you should still suffer with patience and without murmur. The Neros, the Domitians themselves, who preferred to be the scourges of the Earth rather than fathers of their peoples, were accountable only to God for the abuse of their power. Christians, says Saint Augustine, obeyed them within time because of the God of Eternity.35
XXIV. We have exposed before you, My Very Dear Brethren, only a portion of the impieties contained in this Treatise On Education, a Work equally worthy of the Anathemas of the Church and of the severity of the Laws. And what more is needed to inspire in you a just horror for it? Woe to you, woe to society, if your children were brought up in accordance with the principles of the Author of Emile! Just as there is nothing but Religion that has taught us to know man, his greatness, his misery, his future destiny, it also belongs to it alone to form his reason, to perfect his morals, to procure for him a solid happiness in this life and in the other. We know, My Very Dear Brethren, how delicate and laborious a truly Christian education is: how much enlightenment and prudence does it not demand! What an admirable mixture of gentleness and firmness! What sagacity in order to proportion itself to the difference of conditions, ages, temperaments, and characters without ever deviating in anything from the rules of duty! What zeal and what patience in order to make the precious seed of innocence bear fruit in young hearts, in order to uproot from it, as much as it is possible, those vicious inclinations that are the sad effects of our hereditary corruption! in a word, in order to teach them, following the Morality of Saint Paul, to live in this world with temperance, according to justice and with piety, while waiting for the beatitude for which we hope!36 We say then to all those who are charged with the care, equally arduous and honorable, of bringing up the youth: Plant and water, in the firm hope that the Lord—seconding your labor—will grant growth; insist seasonably and unseasonably, according to the advice of the same Apostle, employ reproof, exhortation, severe words, without losing patience and without ceasing to teach.37 Above all, join example to instruction: instruction without example is a disgrace for the one who gives it and a subject of scandal for the one who receives it. Let the pious and charitable Tobias be your model: Carefully recommend to your children to perform acts of justice and charity, to be mindful of God, and to bless him at all times in truth and with all their strength,38 and your posterity, like that of this holy Patriarch, will be beloved of God and of men.39
XXV. But at what age should education begin? With the first gleams of intelligence: and these gleams are sometimes premature. Form the child at the beginning of his way, says the wise man; even in his old age he will not swerve from it.40 Such is in fact the ordinary course of human life: in the midst of the delirium of the passions and in the bosom of libertinism, the principles of a Christian education are a light that flares up by intervals, in order to uncover for the sinner all the horror of the abyss into which he has plunged, and to show him the exits from it. How many, once again, who, after the lapses of a licentious youth, have returned, from the impression of that light, to the paths of wisdom, and have honored, by means of belated but sincere virtues, humanity, the Fatherland, and Religion.
XXVI. In concluding, it remains for us, My Very Dear Brethren, to entreat you, in the name of the bowels of the mercy of God, to fasten yourselves inviolably to this holy Religion in which you have the happiness of being brought up; to sustain yourselves against the dissolution of an insane Philosophy, which proposes nothing less for itself than to overrun the legacy of Jesus Christ; to render his promises vain, and to put him in the rank of those Founders of Religion whose frivolous or pernicious doctrine has proven their imposture. Faith is not despised, abandoned, insulted except by those who do not know it, or whose disorders it impedes. But the gates of Hell will never prevail against it. The Christian and Catholic Church is the beginning of the eternal Empire of Jesus Christ. Nothing is stronger than she is, cries out Saint John Damascene; she is a rock which floods do not overturn; she is a mountain which nothing can destroy.41
XXVII. For these causes, considering the Book that has as its title, Emile or On Education, by J.-J. Rousseau, citizen of Geneva, at Amsterdam, from Jean Néaulme, Publisher, 1762; after having sought the advice of a number of people distinguished by their piety and by their knowledge, the holy Name of God invoked, We condemn the said Book as containing an abominable doctrine, suited to overturning natural Law and to destroying the foundations of the Christian Religion; establishing maxims contrary to Evangelical Morality; tending to disturb the peace of States, to stir up Subjects against the authority of their Sovereign; as containing a very great number of propositions respectively false, scandalous, full of hatred against the Church and its Ministers, departing from the respect due to Sacred Scripture and the Tradition of the Church, erroneous, impious, blasphemous, and heretical. In consequence We very expressly forbid all people of our Diocese to read or possess said Book, under penalty of law. And our present Pastoral Letter will be read at the Sermon of the Parish Masses of the Churches of the City, outskirts and Diocese of Paris; published and posted everywhere there will be need.
Given at Paris, in our Archepiscopal Palace, the twentieth day of August one thousand seven hundred and sixty-two.
Signed: CHRISTOPHE
Archbishop of Paris,
By Monseigneur,
De la Touche