who do not know what to do; they mock
at themselves, and in doing so prove the correctness of their view. And
then it is pleasant to believe one's self unhappy when one is only idle
and tired. Debauchery, moreover, the first result of the principles of
death, is a terrible millstone for grinding the energies.

The rich said: "There is nothing real but riches, all else is a dream;
let us enjoy and then let us die." Those of moderate fortune said:
"There is nothing real but oblivion, all else is a dream; let us
forget and let us die." And the poor said: "There is nothing real but
unhappiness, all else is a dream; let us blaspheme and die."

Is this too black? Is it exaggerated? What do you think of it? Am I a
misanthrope? Allow me to make a reflection.

In reading the history of the fall of the Roman Empire, it is impossible
to overlook the evil that the Christians, so admirable when in the
desert, did to the State when they were in power. "When I think," said
Montesquieu, "of the profound ignorance into which the Greek clergy
plunged the laity, I am obliged to compare them to the Scythians of whom
Herodotus speaks, who put out the eyes of their slaves in order that
nothing might distract their attention from their work.... No affair
of State, no peace, no truce, no negotiations, no marriage could be
transacted by any one but the clergy. The evils of this system were
beyond belief."

Montesquieu might have added: Christianity destroyed the emperors but
it saved the people. It opened to the barbarians the palaces of
Constantinople, but it opened the doors of cottages to the ministering
angels of Christ. It had much to do with the great ones of earth. And
what is more interesting than the death-rattle of an empire corrupt
to the very marrow of its bones, than the sombre galvanism under the
influence of which the skeleton of tyranny danced upon the tombs of
Heliogabalus and Caracalla? How beautiful that mummy of Rome, embalmed
in the perfumes of Nero and swathed in the shroud of Tiberius! It had
to do, my friends the politicians, with finding the poor and giving
them life and peace; it had to do with allowing the worms and tumors
to destroy the monuments of shame, while drawing from the ribs of this
mummy a virgin as beautiful as the mother of the Redeemer, Hope, the
friend of the oppressed.

That is what Christianity did; and now, after many years, what have they
done who destroyed it? They saw that the poor allowed t