A Unique Text by a Great French
Philosopher
of the 18th Century, Praised
in the “Mahatma Letters”
Baron Holbach
Baron Holbach
Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d’Holbach
A
2010 Editorial Note:
It is not without a reason that the German-French philosopher Paul-Henry
Thiry, Baron D’Holbach (1723-1789), was mentioned twice and strongly praised
in one of the most important volumes of the esoteric literature in all times, “The
Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett”.
In the second half of 18th century, Baron D’Holbach played a
major role in the French Enlightenment effort, which happened before the 1789-1793 Revolution.
It was in the Baron’s house that some of
the most important thinkers in those times, including Voltaire, Rousseau
and Diderot, got together in order to exchange ideas. The Baron himself has
been unjustly forgotten by many. Published
anonymously and secretly distributed in order to avoid persecution, the books written
by this powerful thinker have important lessons to teach humanity in the 21st
century, and possibly beyond it.
What exactly can this Western thinker have in common with the Eastern
Mahatmas?
While discussing the false idea of a monotheistic God, a Sage of the Himalayas wrote in the famous
Letter X:
“The God of the Theologians is simply an imaginary power, un loup
garou as D’Holbach expressed it - a power which has never yet manifested
itself. Our chief aim is to deliver humanity of this nightmare, to teach man
virtue for its own sake, and to walk in life relying on himself instead of
leaning on a theological crutch, that for countless ages was the direct cause
of nearly all human misery.”[1]
And again, it is said in another Letter:
“Strangely enough I found a European author - the greatest materialist
of his times, Baron D’Holbach - whose views coincide entirely with the views of
our philosophy. When reading his Essais sur la Nature, I might have imagined
I had our book of Kiu-ti before me.”[2]
One can only conclude that serious students of Esoteric Philosophy must have
an interest in reading this uncommon German-French philosopher. But his books
are equally useful to the general reader and to the common sense citizen who
wants to understand what is conventional and institutionalized religion really about.
The extraordinary text reproduced below is Chapter 1 - Introduction
of the Baron’s book “Christianity Unveiled” [3].
It should be mentioned that, whether by a coincidence or not, the title of
“Christianity Unveiled” partly anticipates that of the first book Helena Petrovna
Blavatsky wrote. Living one century after the Baron, Mrs. Blavatsky was starting
her own Mission to help liberate mankind from religious superstition when she
published, in 1877, her work “Isis
Unveiled”.
(Carlos Cardoso Aveline)
NOTES:
[1] “The Mahatma
Letters to A.P. Sinnett”, transcribed by A. T. Barker, Theosophical University
Press, T.U.P., Pasadena, California,
1992, 494 pp., see Letter X, p. 53.
[2] “The Mahatma
Letters to A.P. Sinnett”, Letter XXIII-B, p. 155.
[3] “Christianity
Unveiled”, Baron D’Holbach, “Rescued From Obscurity Series”, With an
Introduction and Notes by David Holohan, Hodgson Press, Great Britain, 2008,
518 pp., see pp. 15-19.
On the necessity of examining
religion and
the obstacles encountered to
this examination
Baron D’Holbach
Every
action reasonable people take should have as its motivating force their own
happiness and that of their fellows.
Everything conspires toward demonstrating to us that religion is the
most important element for our temporal and eternal bliss, and that it has
advantages for us not only for our passage through this world, but also in the
next, in that its flattering promises offered to us will be honoured. Our
duties towards the god, whom we regard as the master of our destiny, can only
be founded on the benefits which we expect from him, or on the misfortunes we
fear from him. Hence, it is necessary that man examine the grounds for his
hopes and fears. To this end, he must have regard to his experience and reason,
which are his sole guides here below.
The advantages religion procures for Christians in this visible world
they inhabit are the basis on which they will be able to judge the reality of
those advantages dangled before their eyes by religion in the invisible world,
towards which they are ordered to turn their gaze.
For the most part people hold to their religion only by habit. They have
never seriously examined the reasons which bind them to religion or the motives
for their conduct, or the foundations of their opinions. Hence, the thing which
everyone regards as the most important thing in their lives has always been
that which they have been most afraid of digging deeper into. People follow the
paths their forbears have trodden; they believe because they have been told
that they ought to do so from infancy; they hope because their ancestors hoped;
they tremble because their predecessors trembled; they have almost never
deigned to understand the reasons for their beliefs.
Very few people have the spare time or the ability to examine and
contemplate the objects of their habitual veneration, of their such
ill-considered attachment and their traditional fears. Nations are always swept
along by a torrent of habits, examples and prejudices. One’s upbringing
habituates one’s mind to the most hideous opinions, just as the body does to
the most embarrassing of attitudes. Everything which has stood the test of time
seems sacred to people who feel guilty if they turn their timid gaze to examine
those things which bear the imprimatur of antiquity.
Predisposed towards the wisdom of their forbears, people are not so
presumptuous as to examine their heritage and they do not see that mankind has
always been duped by prejudices, by hopes and fears, and that the same reasons
have rendered them almost always impervious to inquiry.
The common people, wrapped up in the material necessities of life, place
a blind confidence in those who claim to guide them. They abdicate to them the
bother of thinking for themselves, they subscribe effortlessly to all that is
prescribed for them, and they believe that they will offend God if they doubted
for a moment the faith of those who speak to them in his name. The rich, the
great and the good of this world, find it personally advantageous to conform to
received prejudices and even to maintain the status quo, even though they are more enlightened than the common
people.
Either that, or given over to indolence, to dissipation and pleasures,
they are totally incapable of bothering with a religion which they always
subjugate to their ardour, to their inclinations and to their desire to have a
good time. In infancy we absorb all the impressions given to us, since we do
not have the intellectual capacity, the experience or the courage needed to
question what we are taught by those upon whom our feebleness has cast us. In
adolescence our ardent passions and the constant exhilaration of our senses
stop us from thinking about a religion, which is too problematic and too
depressing to occupy our more agreeable moments.
If, by chance, a young man looks into religion, he does so haphazardly
or with bias - a mere superficial glance at such a disgusting thing soon puts
him off. In our mature years, beset by different cares, with new preoccupations
absorbing our attention, with ambitious plans of grandeur and power, the
pursuit of wealth and the contemplation of occupations followed - all these
things engross people’s full attention, leaving almost no time to contemplate a
religion whose depths one never had the time to plumb in the first place. In
old age, with one’s numbed faculties, mechanical habits and organs weakened by
age and infirmity, there is no longer any opportunity to return to the source
of deep-rooted opinions. Besides, with the fear of death at the forefront of a
mind commonly in the grip of mortal terror, any examination of religion would
appear somewhat suspicious.
Thus it is that religious opinions, once assimilated, stand their ground
for centuries at a stretch. It is thus that, from age to age, nations hand down
ideas that have never been properly examined. They believe that their welfare
is bound to institutions, which a more mature examination would reveal them to
be the source of the majority of their ills. The powers that be yet again
provide support for people’s prejudices and keep them from inquiry, forcing
them towards ignorance, and they are always ready to punish whosoever might try
to disabuse people of their deception.
So let us not be at all surprised if we see error almost inextricably
interwoven with human-kind; everything seems to conspire to perpetuate people’s
blinkered state and all forces conjoin to mask the truth. Tyrants detest truth
and suppress it because it dares challenge their unjust and fanciful titles;
the priesthood denounces truth because it shows their lavish claims to be
bogus; ignorance, passivity and people’s strong emotions make accomplices of
everyone in whose interest it is to blind others, to keep them under the yoke
and to take advantage of their misfortunes. Thus it is that nations travail
under hereditary misfortunes which they never think to remedy, either because
they do not know their source or because habit accustoms them to misfortune,
and it even robs them of the desire to lessen their burden.
If religion be the most important thing in our lives, if it, of
necessity, influences the whole conduct of our life, and if its influence
extends not only to our existence in this world, but also to the world promised
to man hereafter, then undoubtedly there is nothing which demands of us a more
serious examination. However, it is of all things the very issue wherein the
average man in the street shows the most gullibility. A person who is prepared
to conduct the most meticulous examination into the least issue pertaining to
their well-being will not go to the slightest trouble to ascertain the grounds
for belief, or take strides to discover what it is that, by their own
admission, their temporal and eternal happiness depend. People blindly rely on
those whom pure chance has provided as guides; people entrust to them the
bother of thinking on their behalf and they even turn their laziness and
credulity into a merit. In matters of religion, mankind boasts about remaining
forever in an infantilized and barbarous state.
However, in every century there have been men who, disabused of their
fellow citizens prejudices, have dared to bear witness to the truth. But what
could their feeble voice do against such errors, imbibed with their mother’s
milk, reinforced by habit, authorized by example and shored up by a political
power so often complicit in its own ruination? The stentorian uproar of trickery
soon reduced to silence those who clamoured for reason. In vain did the
philosopher try to inspire people to be courageous, whilst priests and kings
forced them to tremble.
The surest way to hoodwink people and to perpetuate prejudices is to
dupe them in infancy. Amongst almost all modern peoples upbringing and
education seem to have as their only goal the production of fanatics, staunch
believers and monks, that is to say people harmful or useless to society. No
thought is given to forming citizens. Princes, who themselves are usually
victims of a superstitious upbringing, live their entire lives in the deepest
ignorance of their duties and the real interests of their states. They fancy
that they have done all they can for their subjects when they have filled them
full of religious ideas, which substitute for good laws and which save their
masters from the tiresome bother of governing well. Religion seems to have been
thought up with the sole purpose of turning sovereigns and people equally into
slaves of the priesthood. The latter’s sole intent is to create continuous
obstacles to the welfare of nations; wherever he might reign, the sovereign’s
power is precarious and his subjects are bereft of useful activity, science, a
loftiness of spirit and industry - in a word, of those qualities essential to
sustain a society.
If, in a Christian society, there is some evidence of gainful activity,
or of a scientific approach to matters, or even decent social mores - all this
is produced in spite of religious opinion, because Nature, whenever possible,
restores mankind to reason and forces people to work for their own wellbeing.
Were all Christians nations to be consistent in their principles, they
would be mired in the most profound inertia and our lands would be inhabited by
a small number of pious savages, who would assemble only to harm each other.
In fact, what would be the point of bothering with a world, which
religion portrays to its disciples as a mere stopover? What of the assiduity of
a people who are told repeatedly, on a daily basis, that their god wants them
to pray, to grieve, and to live in a state of constant fear, which it laments
without ceasing? How could a society survive, composed of people persuaded to
be zealous for religion and convinced that they have a duty to hate and destroy
their fellows on account of their opinions?
In fact, how can we expect to find humanity, justice and virtue from a
crowd of fanatics, whose model is a god who is cruel, secretive and nasty, who
takes delight in witnessing the tears of his unfortunate creatures, who sets
traps for them and then punishes them for falling into them, and who orders
theft, crime and carnage?
Such are the characteristics described by Christianity of their god,
whom they inherited from the Jews. This god was a sultan, a despot, a tyrant at
liberty to do anything. However, this god was portrayed as the model of
perfection, and the most revolting crimes and most heinous atrocities were
committed and justified in his name to support his cause, or to merit his
favour.
Thus it is that the Christian religion, which boasts of lending
steadfast support to morality and setting before people the strongest
motivation to spur them on towards virtue, has been a source of divisions, fits
of fury and crimes - all on the pretext of bringing about peace, yet it has
only ever produced furious violence, hate, discord and war. Religion has given
mankind a thousand ingenious motives for people to needle each other and it has
lavished upon them scourges unknown to their forebears: had they known about
this in advance, they would have sorely hankered after the peaceful ignorance
of their idolatrous ancestors a thousand times over.
If people’s mores had nothing to gain from Christianity, the power of
kings, who purport to support religion, would not have derived great benefit
from it. Two distinct powers were established in all states - that of religion,
founded upon God himself, which almost always outshone the sovereign, and the
sovereign’s own power, forced into a subservient role under the priesthood, and
every time he refused to bend his knee before them, he was outlawed, stripped
of his rights and exterminated by subjects spurred on to revolt by religion or
by fanatics, whose hands it used to wield the knife.
Before Christianity, a sovereign of a state was also the ruler over the
priesthood, but since the world has turned Christian, the sovereign is no more
than the first amongst their slaves, a mere henchman carrying out their
vengeful decrees.
So let us conclude that the Christian religion has no grounds whatsoever
to boast of its superiority in promoting morality or a political society.
Therefore, let us tear from it the Veil with
which it has shrouded itself. Let us go back to first principles and analyse its
sources. Let us follow in its footsteps and we shall find that, rooted in
deception, ignorance and credulity, it has never been, and never will be,
useful to society, apart from being advantageous to men who believe they have
an interest in hoodwinking humankind. Religion will never cease causing the
greatest misfortunes for nations, and rather than furnishing the happiness it
promises, it serves only to fuel frenzied rages, to drown nations in blood, to
immerse them in lunacy and crime, and make people misjudge their true interests
and their most holy duties. [1]
NOTE:
[1] Holbach
courageously criticizes conventional religion and teaches universal ethics. He
was not able to see at the same time the inner wisdom present in every great
religion, or to perceive the true and universal spirituality present in Eastern
philosophies. Theosophical literature teaches the middle path between
conventional religious dogmatism and Holbach’s total denial of religion. Yet
Holbach’s point is of great importance in real Theosophy. (CCA)
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