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Updated: May 26, 2025
It is necessary that all men should be just; and the surest way of inspiring all men with justice is to inspire in them religion without superstition. BAMBABEF: It is a fine project, but it is impracticable. Do you think that men will be satisfied to believe in a God who punishes and rewards?
BAMBABEF: You would be very foolish; it is as if you wanted them to have the same courtesy, to be lawyers; that is neither possible nor proper. There must be white bread for the masters, and brown bread for the servants. OUANG: I admit that all men should not have the same learning; but there are some things necessary to all.
It is not necessary to say precisely how God will punish and reward; it suffices that people believe in His justice. I assure you I have seen entire towns which have had barely any other dogma, and that it is in those towns that I have seen most virtue. BAMBABEF: Take care; in those towns you will find philosophers who will deny you both your pains and your recompenses.
Bambabef the fakir one day met one of the disciples of Confutzee, whom we call "Confucius," and this disciple was named "Ouang," and Bambabef maintained that the people had need of being deceived, and Ouang claimed that one should never deceive anybody; and here is the summary of their dispute: BAMBABEF: We must imitate the Supreme Being who does not show us things as they are; he makes us see the sun in a diameter of two or three feet, although this star is a million times bigger than the earth; he makes us see the moon and the stars set on the same blue background, whereas they are at different depths.
Ouang, who was very patient, explained to him the theory of optics; and Bambabef, who had a quick understanding, surrendered to the demonstrations of Confutzee's disciple, then he resumed the argument.
BAMBABEF: Not at all, for we do not teach them anything but good morality. OUANG: You would have yourselves stoned by the people if you taught them impure morality. Men are so made that they want to do evil, but that they do not want it preached to them.
BAMBABEF: Willingly; but do not tell the fakirs. OUANG: Let us think above all that, if a philosopher wishes to be useful to human society, he must announce a God. Ever since men have reasoned, the philosophers have obscured this matter: but the theologians have rendered it unintelligible by absurd subtleties about grace.
BAMBABEF: If God does not deceive us through the medium of our senses, as I believed, avow at least that doctors always deceive children for their good; they tell them that they are giving them sugar, and in fact they are giving them rhubarb. I, a fakir, may then deceive the people who are as ignorant as the children.
BAMBABEF: The people are not born so happily as your family. OUANG: All men are alike, or nearly so; they are born with the same dispositions. One must not corrupt men's natures. BAMBABEF: We teach them errors, I admit, but it is for their good.
We perceive in reality, and we can perceive, only the sun which is depicted in our retina at a determined angle. Our eyes have not been given us for appreciating sizes and distances, we need other aids and other operations to appreciate them. Bambabef seemed very astonished at this proposition.
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