o not
bow him down, we raise him up; as Rousseau says, "we compel him to be
free;" we confer on him the greatest boon a human being can receive; we
bring him back to nature and to justice. For this reason, now that he
is warned, if he persists in his resistance, he is a criminal and merits
every kind of chastisements[2125], for, he declares himself a rebel and
a perjurer, inimical to humanity, and a traitor to the social compact.

IV. Two distortions of the natural man.

Two distortions of the natural man.--Positive religion.
--Proscription of the orthodox cult.--Measures against unsworn
priests.--Measures against the loyal orthodox.--Destruction
of the constitutional cult.--Pressure on the sworn priests.
--Churches closed and ceremonies suppressed.--Continuation of
these persecutions until the Consulate.

Let us (Taine lets the Jacobin say) begin by figuring to ourselves the
natural man; certainly we of to-day have some difficulty in recognizing
him; he bears but little resemblance to the artificial being who (in
1789) stands in his shoes, the creature which an antiquated system of
constraint and fraud has deformed, held fast in his hereditary harness
of thralldom and superstition, blinded by his religion and held in check
by prestige, exploited by his government and tamed by dint of blows,
always with a halter on, always put to work in the wrong way and against
nature, whatever stall he may occupy, high or low, however full or
empty his crib may be, now in menial service like the blinded hack-horse
turning the mill-wheel, and now on parade like a trained dog which,
decked with flags, shows off its antics before the public.[2126] But
imagine all these out of the way, the flags and the bands, the fetters
and compartments in the social stable, and you will see a new man
appearing, the original man, intact and healthy in mind, soul and
body.--In this condition, he is free of prejudice, he is not ensnared in
a net of lies, he is neither Jew, Protestant nor Catholic; if he tries
to imagine the universe as a whole and the principle of events, he will
not let himself be duped by a pretended revelation; he will listen only
to his own reason; he may chance, now and then, to become an atheist,
but, generally, he will settle down into a deist.--In this condition
of things he is not fettered by a hierarchy; he is neither noble nor
commoner, land-owner nor tenant, inferior nor superior. Indepen