A Memoir- the Testament

by Jean Meslier

  And here you see, seriously too, how he presents examples and comparisons, from which he claims draw conclusive arguments for the existence of a supremely perfect intelligence, and an infinitely wise and all-powerful artisan, who created heaven and earth and made everything we see in them, and it may be said that that truly is the best he could offer, and the strongest case all our God-cultists can make, to support and defend their opinion on the supposed certainty of the existence of an all-powerful, supremely perfect God. For, as for the other supposedly conclusive arguments, which they think they can draw from the idea they form of this supremely perfect being, and from the idea we naturally have of infinity and other such arguments, are certainly nothing but pure illusions and pure sophistry.

  This is how they offer them to us. It’s necessary, they say[816], to attribute to something that which is clearly contained in the idea that represents it to us, to wit, the general principle of all sciences. But existence is clearly contained in our idea of God, i.e., in the idea we have of the infinitely perfect being; therefore, God, who is the only infinitely perfect being, exists. Our new Cartesians claim, on the basis of this sole and brief argument, to derive an argument demonstrating the existence of their God. Similarly, they claim to demonstrate His existence from our naturally acquired idea of infinity. Mr. de Cambrai[817] says:

  I have in me the idea of infinity. Not only do I have the idea of infinity, but I also have the idea of an infinite perfection; perfect and good are the same thing, goodness and being are also the same. To be infinitely good and perfect, is to be infinitely...[818] where I’ve taken this idea so far above myself, which infinitely surpasses me, surprises me, makes me vanish in my own eyes, which makes the infinite present to me? Where does it come from? Where did I get it from? From nothingness. Nothing that is finite can give it, for the finite doesn’t represent the infinite, from which it is infinitely dissimilar. If nothing is infinite, the finite, as large as it may be, can’t give me the idea of the true infinite, how can nothingness give it to me? Besides, it is obvious[819], that I haven’t been able to give it myself, for I am finite like all other things of which I can have some idea, far from my being able to understand that I invent the infinite, if none are true, I cannot even understand that a real infinite, outside of myself, could have imprinted on me, I who am limited, an image resembling an infinite nature, it’s necessary, therefore, that the idea of infinite comes to me from without, and I am even quite shocked that it might have got in: once again, where does it come from, this wonderful representation of the infinite, which is infinity itself and is unlike anything finite? It is in me, it is more than me, it seems to be everything and I seem like nothing. I cannot erase it, or obscure it, or diminish it, or contradict it; it is in me, I did not put it there, I found it there only because it was already there before I sought it; it invariably stays there, even when I’m not thinking about it and when I’m thinking about something else; I rediscover it every time I look for it, and it presents itself everywhere, although I’m not looking for it, it doesn’t depend on me, but I depend on it. If I wander off the path, it calls me back, it corrects me, it improves my judgments, and although I examine it, I cannot correct it, or doubt or judge it; but it judges and corrects me. If what I perceive is the infinite present to my mind, then this infinitely perfect being exists[820]: if, instead, it’s only a representation of the infinite which imprints itself in me, this resemblance of the infinite should be infinite; for the finite is far from any resemblance to the infinite, and can’t be its true representation. It’s requisite, then, that that which truly represents the infinite, must have something of the infinite in it to resemble it and to represent it. This image of the Divinity itself will, then, be a second God, similar to the first in infinite perfects; how will it be received and contained in my limited mind? Besides, who will have made this infinite representation of infinite, to give it to me? Will it be made by itself, the infinite image of infinity? Wouldn’t it have an original according to which it would be made, or a real cause that produced it? Where have we come to? And what a pile of extravagance! We must invincibly conclude that it’s the infinitely perfect being who makes Himself present to my mind, when I conceive it[821], and since I conceive it, it is, etc.… But what is shocking and incomprehensible is that I, weak, limited, and defective as I am, can conceive of this. He must not only be the object of my thought, but also the cause that makes me think, as He is the cause that makes me exist, and He raises what is finite to think infinitely.

  This is the vain argument that this famous God-Christ-cultist makes, to show that our naturally acquired knowledge of the infinite can only come to us from infinity itself: i.e., he says that God Himself is the only infinite, and therefore, our natural knowledge of the infinite is a true demonstration of the existence of God Himself; and with respect to the conclusion that I’ve drawn against the existence of said being, from the flaws, imperfections, and defects that are visible in the things of this world, as well as from the miseries and ills which all men and all other animals endure in their lives, our God-cultists and our Christ-cultists will not fail to object that if their infinitely perfect God doesn’t always make all creatures in all suitable perfection; that if He seems to abandon them to the inconstancy and uncertainty of chance, or to the laws of blind necessity; and that if He permits His living creatures to be afflicted with illness and infirmities and even death, if He allows all sorts of vices and dissoluteness among men and lets they carry out all manner of injustice and wickedness; if He allows truth and innocence to be often oppressed, and if He permits the just, who serve Him faithfully, to be overwhelmed so often by all sorts of misery, and that the wicked, on the contrary, and the ungodly, who despise His laws and ordinances and blaspheme against Him on a daily basis, live prosperously, joyfully, in honor and abundance, in a word, if He allows any being or anything that is evil or badly made, in whatever way this may be, they won’t fail to say that their God only allows all the evil in order to get some greater good from it, and consequently that we shouldn’t, they’ll say, be shocked if He allows them, since He is able to turn them to His greater glory and the greatest good of all His creatures too.

  80. A REFUTATION OF THE ARGUMENTS OF THE CARTESIANS, WHICH SUPPOSEDLY DEMONSTRATE THE EXISTENCE OF A SUPREMELY PERFECT GOD.

  But it is easy to refute this answer and to show its folly, weakness, vanity, and falseness. Let’s start with our natural knowledge of infinity. Mr. de Cambrai and his supporters consider this knowledge as something of an order or a nature that’s superior to all our other knowledge, and as if it could only come from the infinitely perfect being, i.e., God Himself; they are also astonished that God Himself could give the knowledge of infinity to limited and finite minds, as all human minds are. But certainly, the knowledge of infinity is no more supernatural or more surprising than any other knowledge that we have; know the finite and the infinite, the material and the immaterial through the same mind and the same mental faculties; we think inwardly and we think of God and all other things with the same mind and the same understanding. I truly do admire this faculty, or this power that we naturally have of thinking, seeing, feeling, or knowing all we do, all that presents itself to us, to our senses, and to our understanding. Nothing is more natural for us than to see, to think, to feel, and to know, at least imperfectly, everything that is presented to us, to our senses and our understanding, and yet I don’t know how I can form any thought, or any knowledge, and thus the least of my thoughts and knowledge inspires wonder and surprise in me, I confess; but for the knowledge of the infinite to be any more supernatural, or any more surprising, and harder to conceive than the knowledge of that which is finite, is not apparent at all, and it’s even contrary to what we each of us can experience every day; for nobody would fail to grasp and easily conceive the spatial extension of a fathom or a league, or two or three leagues. It’s no less easy to grasp or conceive of a length of 1000 leagues or 100 thousand leagues, and finally, a stretch whic
h would have no end, but would be infinite; for, far from being able to claim to conceive of an end to it, or boundaries, nevertheless, one will clearly conceive that there would always be something beyond these boundaries, and that, consequently, there would be spatial extension, even an extension which would have no end, and which would, consequently, be infinite.

  81. WE HAVE NATURALLY ACQUIRED KNOWLEDGE OF INFINITE EXTENSION, DURATION, OR TIME, AND NUMBER, AND IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR EXTENSION, TIME, AND NUMBERS NOT TO BE INFINITE.

  This is how one knows and how one conceives, naturally and rather simply, of infinity in extension. It certainly can’t be denied that the mind naturally and rather readily progresses from the finite to the infinite; we therefore know one as naturally and easily as the other; and thus, the knowledge of the one is no more supernatural, or more surprising, than the knowledge of the other, despite what Mr. de Cambrai says. Since we naturally know infinity in extension, we also naturally know infinity in number; it’s easy for us to know or conceive of a finite number of units. We begin, for example, by knowing 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. We naturally continue to conceive and to know a larger number, such as 100, 200, 1000, 2000, 3000. Etc.; we also pursue this no less naturally, to another, still larger number, until we reach the point of conceiving a number that can no longer name, and which we conceive of as infinity. Here again, as we know that the number, or the whole and total multitude of units, runs on to infinity in another way; for we naturally know infinity in time or infinity in duration. We begin, for example, to naturally now or conceive an hour of time, a day, two days, a month, two months, a year, 2 years, etc., we continue with the same ease to conceive a dozen, twenty or a hundred years, from there we can easily conceive a thousand, two thousand and many, even hundreds of thousands and millions of years; we can’t even stop there; for, in light of such a large number of thousands and millions of years that we can imagine, after they’ve passed, we conceive that there must also be additional time, and even a time that will never end; for after any such imagined span of time, there will necessarily always be an afterwards, which will still be time, a time that will never have an end. We naturally know that being is, we can’t ignore this. Our natural reason clearly shows us that it must always have been, as I’ve said above. Thus, we know clearly that there was never any beginning and that there will never be an end; this is clearly to know infinity in duration; and here also, is how we naturally know infinity in duration, or infinity in time; thus we naturally know infinity in three ways, or there are three sorts of infinities, i.e., infinity in extension, infinity in multitude or in number, and infinity in time or in duration; we are able know it, I say, quite naturally and quite easily.

  This knowledge is, as it were, born within us, and if follows our reason, as it were, naturally, by which it is easy to see the ineptitude, the weakness, or the vanity of all the arguments made by Mr. de Cambrai on this mysterious and imaginary supposed super-naturalness, which he finds in the idea, and in the knowledge we naturally have of infinity. He supposes, vainly and baselessly, that the infinity, of which he has the idea and knowledge, should be infinite in all senses, in all ways, and in all imaginable, and even more than imaginable, perfections. This is what tricks him, for by forming the idea of an infinity in this way, which is not and cannot be, he forms the idea of an infinity which is only imaginary and chimerical. This is also why he goes awry and gets lost, as he himself puts it, in the vanity of his thoughts; the idea he forms of infinity shocks and overwhelms him[822], his mind succumbs under the weight of such majesty[823], he’s happy, he says, to lower his eyes, since they’re unable to endure the brightness of this glory[824]. “Where do we end up?” He asks, after many vain arguments. And what a pile of nonsense! “We must therefore conclude,” he adds, “that it’s the infinitely perfect Being who makes Himself present to my mind when I conceive of it[825], but what is surprising and incomprehensible,” he adds, “is that I, as weak, limited, defective as I am, am able to conceive of it. It must be,” he says, “not only the object of my thought, but also the cause that lets me think, as it is also the cause that makes me exist, and it raises what is finite to think of infinity. Here,” he continues, “the wonder that I always carry within. I myself am a wonder, I embrace all things, although I am nothing; I am a nothing which knows infinity; words fail me,” he adds, “to admire and despise myself all at once.”

  The main subject of his astonishment and admiration is having the idea of infinity and of being able to conceive of it, although his mind is only bounded and limited, as if he never had, besides, conceived of anything more extensive than his brain, and as if he’d never seen or ever should see anything larger than his eyes. Our mind would be quite limited, if we couldn’t conceive of anything more extensive than our brain, and our sight likewise would be quite short and narrow if we couldn’t see anything bigger than our eyes. But no, fortunately, things aren’t this way; we see every day, and we easily see every day, a near-infinite number of objects, which are incomparably larger than our eyes, and we conceive and form every day, with the same ease, the idea of a near-infinite number of things which are incomparably more extensive than our brain; it isn’t therefore, precisely the idea or the knowledge of the infinite, as infinite, which should both astonish and surprise us, since this idea, or this knowledge, is as natural and easy for us to have as any other knowledge; but it’s rather thought itself that should astonish and surprise us; because we don’t understand, we can’t even comprehend, how we can form any thought, or any knowledge, such that the least of our thoughts, or our knowledge, should surprise us even more than the strongest and most sublime knowledge that we can have.

  But if we cannot understand how, or in what way thoughts or feelings are formed in us, it seems at least that we can conceive the reason why we can’t comprehend it, and the very reason why we shouldn’t comprehend it, is that it’s by thought itself and by feeling that we feel and we perceive all other things; thus, we shouldn’t see, or know by our own thoughts, or by our feelings, what our thoughts or our feelings are, and we shouldn’t see, or know, or feel, the way in which they are formed in us. It’s sufficient for us to know and to be sure and certain that we think and that we have feelings, but it’s not necessary for us to know in what manner, or how they are formed in us. I imagine that things are similar in a way with our mind, i.e., the power and faculty we naturally have of thinking and feeling, as the faculty and power we naturally have of seeing with the eyes of our body and to grasp all things with our hands themselves. Similarly, we also conceive, we comprehend, and we grasp, so to speak, all things with our mind, although our mind cannot grasp, comprehend, or conceive itself. And just as we also see all things with our eyes, although our eyes can’t see themselves, in the same way we see all and perceive all with our feelings, although we don’t know the nature of our thoughts, or our feelings.

  But why should the hand, which grasps all things, be unable to grasp itself, if it’s only because it itself grasps everything else, and it is itself the principle of all grasping, so to speak? And the eyes, which see everything, but which, nevertheless, can’t see themselves, why is that? If not because they themselves see everything else and they themselves are the organ and principle of sight; yes, certainly, this is why they can’t see themselves, unless they see themselves in a mirror; for in this case they appear to be outside themselves, and then they can see themselves, but without that they could never see themselves, because they are, as I’ve said, the organ and principle of sight; the same should also be said of the mind of man and of his thought; it’s by his mind and his thought itself that he thinks, knows, and perceives everything; why, then, doesn’t he himself clearly know the nature of his mind, or the nature of his thoughts and of his feelings? Unless it’s because it’s his mind itself which is the first principle of all his thoughts, of all his knowledge, and all his feelings, and it’s by his thoughts and by his feelings that he knows and perceives everything? Yes, without doubt, this is the reason why. />