24.14. 14. In what Manner Religion has an Influence on Civil Laws.
As both religion and the civil laws ought to have a peculiar tendency to render
men good citizens, it is evident that when one of these deviates from
this end, the tendency of the other ought to be strengthened. The less
severity there is in religion, the more there ought to be in the civil
laws.
Thus the reigning religion of Japan having few doctrines, and
proposing neither future rewards nor punishments, the laws to supply
these defects have been made with the spirit of severity, and are
executed with an extraordinary punctuality.
When the doctrine of necessity is established by religion, the
penalties of the laws ought to be more severe, and the magistrate more
vigilant; to the end that men who would otherwise become abandoned might
be determined by these motives; but it is quite otherwise where religion
has established the doctrine of liberty.
From the inactivity of the soul springs the Mahometan doctrine of
predestination, and from this doctrine of predestination springs the
inactivity of the soul. This, they say, is in the decrees of God; they
must therefore indulge their repose. In a case like this, the magistrate
ought to waken by the laws those who are lulled asleep by religion.
When religion condemns things which the civil laws ought to permit,
there is danger lest the civil laws, on the other hand, should permit
what religion ought to condemn. Either of these is a constant proof of a
want of true ideas of that harmony and proportion which ought to subsist
between both.
Thus the Tartars under Jenghiz Khan,
[10]
among whom it was a sin and
even a capital crime to put a knife in the fire, to lean against a whip,
to strike a horse with his bridle, to break one bone with another, did
not believe it to be any sin to break their word, to seize upon another
man's goods, to do an injury to a person, or to commit murder. In a
word, laws which render that necessary which is only indifferent have
this inconvenience, that they make those things indifferent which are
absolutely necessary.
The people of Formosa believe
[11]
that there is a kind of hell, but
it is to punish those who at certain seasons have not gone naked, who
have dressed in calico and not in silk, who have presumed to look for
oysters, or who have undertaken any business without consulting the song
of birds; while drunkenness and debauchery are not regarded as crimes.
They believe even that the debauches of their children are agreeable to
their gods.
When religion absolves the mind by a thing merely accidental, it
loses its greatest influence on mankind. The people of India believe
that the waters of the Ganges have a sanctifying virtue.
[12]
Those who
die on its banks are imagined to be exempted from the torments of the
other life, and to be entitled to dwell in a region full of delights;
and for this reason the ashes of the dead are sent from the most distant
places to be thrown into this river. Little then does it signify whether
they had lived virtuously or not, so they be but thrown into the Ganges.
The idea of a place of rewards has a necessary connection with the
idea of the abodes of misery; and when they hope for the former without
fearing the latter, the civil laws have no longer any influence. Men who
think themselves sure of the rewards of the other life are above the
power of the legislator; they look upon death with too much contempt.
How shall the man be restrained by laws who believes that the greatest
pain the magistrate can inflict will end in a moment to begin his
happiness?
Footnotes
[10]
See the account of John Duplan Carpin, sent to Tartary by Pope
Innocent IV in the year 1246.
[11]
"Collection of Voyages that Contributed to the Establishment of
the East India Company," vol. v, part I, p. 192.
[12]
"Edifying Letters," coll. xv.
