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Updated: May 27, 2025
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: 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.
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.
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.
He requires that a square tower shall appear round to us from a distance; he requires that fire shall seem hot to us, although it is neither hot nor cold; in fine, he surrounds us with errors suited to our nature. OUANG: What you name error is not one at all. The sun, placed as it is at millions of millions of lis beyond our globe, is not the sun we see.
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.
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.
We make them believe that if they do not buy the nails we have blessed, if they do not expiate their sins by giving us money, they will become, in another life, post-horses, dogs or lizards. That intimidates them, and they become honest people. OUANG: Do you not see that you are perverting these poor people?
OUANG: I have two sons; I have never deceived them; when they have been ill I have told them that there was a very bitter medicine, and that they must have the courage to take it; "it would harm you if it were sweet." I have never allowed their masters and teachers to make them afraid of spirits, ghosts, goblins, sorcerers; by this means I have made brave, wise young citizens of them.
OUANG: That is where you are mistaken. You imagine that people will shake off the yoke of an honest, probable idea that is useful to everyone, of an idea in accordance with human reason, because people reject things that are dishonest, absurd, useless, dangerous, that make good sense shudder.
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