CLXII A Society of Saints Would Be Impossible
In what consists the saint of all religions? It is a man who prays, fasts, who torments himself, who avoids the world, who, like an owl, is pleased but in solitude, who abstains from all pleasure, who seems frightened at every object which turns him a moment from his fanatical meditations. Is this virtue? Is a being of this stamp of any use to himself or to others? Would not society be dissolved, and would not men retrograde into barbarism, if each one should be fool enough to wish to be a saint?
It is evident that the literal and rigorous practice of the Divine morality of the Christians would lead nations to ruin. A Christian who would attain perfection, ought to drive away from his mind all that can alienate him from heaven—his true country. He sees upon earth but temptations, snares, and opportunities to go astray; he must fear science as injurious to faith; he must avoid industry, as it is a means of obtaining riches, which are fatal to salvation; he must renounce preferments and honors, as things capable of exciting his pride and calling his attention away from his soul; in a word, the sublime morality of Christ, if it were not impracticable, would sever all the ties of society.
A saint in the world is no more useful than a saint in the desert; the saint has an unhappy, discontented, and often irritable, turbulent disposition; his zeal often obliges him, conscientiously, to disturb society by opinions or dreams which his vanity makes him accept as inspirations from Heaven. The annals of all religions are filled with accounts of anxious, intractable, seditious saints, who have distinguished themselves by ravages that, for the greater glory of God, they have scattered throughout the universe. If the saints who live in solitude are useless, those who live in the world are very often dangerous. The vanity of performing a role, the desire of distinguishing themselves in the eyes of the stupid vulgar by a strange conduct, constitute usually the distinctive characteristics of great saints; pride persuades them that they are extraordinary men, far above human nature; beings who are more perfect than others; chosen ones, which God looks upon with more complaisance than the rest of mortals. Humility in a saint is, is a general rule, but a pride more refined than that of common men. It must be a very ridiculous vanity which can determine a man to continually war with his own nature!