Juliette

by Marquis de Sade

  “And so it was very correctly that the Celts, our earliest ancestors, held that the highest and most sacred of our rights was that of might, which is to say, that of Nature; and they considered that when Nature deems wise to assign a superior quality of potential to some one of us, she does so only to confirm the prepotency over the weak which she invests in us strong. Thus, it was by no means mistakenly that these same people, whence we descend, claimed not only that this right was sacred, but that Nature’s express intent, in granting it to us, was that we exploit it; that, in order to conform to her wishes, the greater had perforce to despoil the lesser; and that these latter ought best bow before what was irresistible and relinquish what they were in no position to defend. If since Celtic days matters have changed physically, they haven’t morally. The opulent man represents what is mightiest in society; he has bought up all the rights; he ought therefore to enjoy them; with their enjoyment in view, he ought to the fullest possible extent pave the way for the satisfaction of his caprices by exacting discipline, forbearance, and compliance from the other, the subordinate, class of men; and this he may, he must, do without in any sense wronging Nature, since he but uses the right he has been either materially or conventionally awarded. Let me repeat: had Nature intended to bar us from crime, she would have been very able to withhold from us the means for committing it. She furnished us those means at the outset, and she gives them to us still: for she is nothing loath that we possess them; she looks upon our crimes as either of no account or as necessary: as of no account if they be petty; as always and eminently desirable if they be capital; for ’tis all the same thing, whether I filch my neighbor’s purse, rape his son, his wife, or his daughter: these are mere pranks, of too slight importance and scope ever to be of any major utility to Nature; but it is very necessary to her that I kill that son, that wife, or that daughter when, giving me the idea, Nature suggests the crime. And that is why the penchants—the desires we sense—to undertake great crimes are always more intense than those we sense for the small ones, and why the pleasure we reap from enormities is always a thousand times keener. Would she have composed a gradated schedule of the pleasure afforded by all crimes if it were not to her interest that we commit them? does she not indicate by the regularly mounting charm she has attached to progressively awful crimes that her intention is to encourage us ever farther up the slope? These unspeakable quiverings of delectation we are subject to when we prepare a crime; this wild intoxication which possesses us when we perform it; this secret joy which lingers in us long after it has been perpetrated: does all this not prove that she has so cunningly baited the deed because she yearns to have us commit it? and that, since our reward increases in proportion to the magnitude of its wickedness, ’tis because the crime of destruction, conventionally regarded as the most atrocious of all, is howbeit the very one which most contents her?16 For whether the crime results from vengeance, or from ambition, or from lubricity, we shall, if we scrutinize ourselves clear-sightedly, see that this attractiveness I speak of is always greater or lesser depending upon the greater or lesser violence or blackness of the deed; and when the destruction of our fellow beings is the effect of the cause, murder’s charm becomes limitless, because this is the necessary and very grave form of mischief which most benefits Nature.”

  “Oh, Noirceuil!” I cried, unable to contain myself, “it is certainly true that what we have just done has given me vast pleasure, but I’d have had ten times more had I seen her hang—”

  “Come now, admit the whole truth: had you hanged her yourself.”

  “Christ, yes, yes! I admit it! The mere thought is making me discharge.”

  “And the pleasure you have felt was doubled, wasn’t it, Juliette, by your knowledge of her innocence? Had she been guilty, our deed would have been in the service of the law: and we would have been cheated of all that is delicious in evil.

  “Ah!” Noirceuil continued, “it cannot be overstressed: would Nature have given us passions if she had not known that these passions’ results would enact her will, enforce her laws, further her aims? So well did man recognize this that he too felt moved to compose laws whose object would be to check this invincible urge which, driving him to crime, would bring about the ruination of everything; but man behaved unjustly, for his laws are repressive, taking away infinitely more than they bestow; in return for the scanty security they afford him, they deprive him, perhaps, of all that is worth having.

  “But these laws, originating with mere mortals, merit no consideration from the philosopher; never shall they be allowed to halt or influence the gestures Nature dictates to him; the one effect they can have upon a man of intelligence is to encourage him to cover up his movements and maintain vigilance: laws? let’s use them for our own purposes, as a shield, never as a brake.”

  “But, my friend,” I remarked to Noirceuil, “if that were everybody’s attitude, there’d be no shield.”

  “Very well,” my lover replied, “in that case we shall revert to the state of uncivilization in which Nature created us: that, surely, would be no great misfortune. It will then be up to the weak man to devise a policy for avoiding collisions with the strong and for averting open warfare; he will at least have a clear view of what’s to be dreaded, and shan’t be any the more unhappy for that, since as things now stand he has the same struggle to wage but, in his self-defense, he is unable to employ the meager store of weapons Nature has armed him with. Institute this little regression, and every State would be far better off, it’s been proven, and there would be no further necessity for laws. But we stray afield.17

  “One of our foremost prejudices attaching to the subject under discussion is bred of the sort of tie we gratuitously suppose to exist between other men and ourselves: an illusory tie—an absurd tie whence we have confectioned this curious sort of brotherhood sacralized by religion. I should now make a few elucidating observations, about this brotherhood affair, for the course of my entire experience has shown me that the fabulous notion of fraternity hinders and hobbles the passions a great deal more than one would suppose; owing to the weight it exerts upon human reason, I’d best lose no time discrediting it in your eyes.

  “All living creatures are born isolated; from birth, they have no need one of the other: abstain from tampering with men, leave them in their pristine natural state, refrain from civilizing them, and each will find his own way, his food, his shelter, without his fellow beings’ help. The strong will see to their livelihoods wholly unaided; the weak alone may need some assistance; but Nature has given us these weak individuals to be our slaves: they are her gift to us, a sacrifice: their condition is proof thereof; the strong man may hence use the weak as he sees fit; may he not aid them in some instances? No; for if he does, he acts contrary to Nature’s will. If he enjoys this inferior object, if he harnesses him into the service of his whims, if he tyrannizes him, oppresses, vexes, sports with him, wears him out, or finally destroys him, then he behaves as Nature’s friend; but, I say unto you once again, if, in reverse, he aids the abject, raises the lowly to a level of parity with himself by sharing some of his power or some of his substance or placing some of his authority at the disposal of the mean, then he necessarily disrupts the natural order and perverts the natural law: whence it results that pity, far from being a virtue, becomes a real vice once it leads us to meddle with an inequality prescribed by Nature’s laws and lacking which she cannot function properly; and that the ancient philosophers, who behold it as a flaw in the soul, as one of those illnesses one had speedily to cure oneself of, were not in error, since pity’s effects are diametrically opposed to those produced by Nature’s laws, whereof the fundamental bases are differences, discriminations, inequalities.18 This fanciful bond of brotherhood could have been dreamt up only by some feeble individual; for it to have occurred to one of the mighty, in need of nothing, would not have been natural: to bind the weak to his will, he already had what the task required: his strength; what to him would have been the u
tility of this bond? ’twas invented by some puny wretch, and it is founded upon arguments quite as futile as would be this one addressed by the lamb to the wolf: You mustn’t eat me, I am four-footed too.

  “The weak, proclaiming the existence of the bond of brotherhood, were bidden by such obvious motives as to eliminate in advance any possibility that the pact established by this bond be taken seriously. Moreover, no pact ever acquires any force save through the sanction of the two contracting parties; and this pact has been proposed and decreed unilaterally; what could be plainer than that the strong would never have consented and never will consent to it: what in the devil’s name was that remote pygmy thinking of when he imagined this bond! What good did he suppose it would do him? When one gives something, it’s to receive something in return: that’s the law of Nature; and, here, in giving assistance to the weak, in stripping off some quantity of one’s strength so as to clad one’s inferior in it, what does the strong get from the bargain? How can one ascribe any reality to a contract when, essentially, one of the parties must, in the light of his own highest interests, denounce it for a hoax or a joke beforehand? For, by taking it seriously and accepting it, the strong cedes a lot and gains nothing; which is why he never once subscribed to this nonsense; it being nonsense, some sort of misbegotten notion, it deserves no respect from us. We may unhesitatingly repudiate an arrangement proposed by our inferiors, by which we would only be in a way to lose.

  “The religion of that wily little sneak Jesus—feeble, sickly, persecuted, singularly desirous to outmaneuver the tyrants of the day, to bully them into acknowledging a brotherhood doctrine from whose acceptance he calculated to gain some respite—Christianity sanctioned these laughable fraternal ties; what else could have been expected? Here we see Christianity in the role of the weaker party; Christianity represents the weak and must speak and sound like them; nothing surprising in this, either. But that he who is neither weak nor Christian subject himself to such restrictions, voluntarily entangle himself in this mythical snarl of brotherly relationships which without benefiting him in the least deprive him enormously—it’s unthinkable; and from these arguments we must conclude that not only has the bond of fraternity never authentically existed amongst men, but that it never could have, for it is even contrary to Nature, who could never for an instant have intended to have men equalize that which she had differentiated so energetically. We may, we should, be persuaded that this bond was, in truth, proposed by the weak, was sanctioned by them when, as it so happened, sacerdotal authority passed into their hands; but we must also be persuaded that its existence is frivolous and that we must not under any circumstances submit to it.”

  “Therefore, it is false that men are brothers?” I interrupted excitedly. “There is then no kind of real bond between another human being and myself? Is it then so, that the only manner in which I need act with this other individual is to wrest from him all I possibly can and cede him as little?”

  “Precisely,” Noirceuil replied. “For whatever you give to him is lost to you, and you gain proportionately as you take.

  “I may add, indeed, that, searching into my soul for the laws of comportment which are signed there in the indelible script of Nature, I find this the most primary, the most fundamental injunction: do not love, certainly do not give aid to, these so-called brothers; instead, make them serve your passions. And that is the text I heed. According to it, if the money, if the enjoyment, if the lives of these purported brothers are instrumental to my well-being or useful to my existence, then, my dear, as quick as ever I can, I grab what I want by main force if I am the stronger, and if I am the weaker, by stealth; if for these things I want I am obliged to pay something, then I try to get them for the lowest possible price if I have no way of stealing them; for I tell you once again, this neighbor is nought to me, between him and myself there is no positive relationship whatever, and if I establish one, it’s with the object of having from him, by cunning, what I cannot wring from him by violence; but if I can succeed through violence, I use no artifice, since artifices are nuisances and where they can be dispensed with I personally feel they should be.

  “Oh, Juliette! study then to seal your heart against the fallacious accents of woe and indigence. If the bread that this wretch eats is wet by his tears, if a day’s drudgery scarcely enables him to carry home at eventide enough to keep his exhausted family’s body and soul together, if the taxes he must pay soak up the better part of his meager savings, if his naked, untaught children are driven into the depths of the forest in search of a vile aliment whose having they must dispute with wild beasts, if his own helpmeet’s breast, withered from toil, dried by want, cannot furnish her suckling that initial subsistence capable of giving him size enough and strength to go tear the rest from the jaws of wolves, if, bent under the weight of the years, of ills, of griefs, he sees nothing but the doom-sped end of his career lunge his way in great sure strides, and if in all his life he has never beheld a single star for one instant rise pure and serene above his downcast head; why, tush, it is a simple matter, common enough, altogether natural, nothing in it that doesn’t sit appropriately within the order and the law of that great universal mother who governs us all, and if you have decided that this man is unhappy, ’tis because you have compared his lot with yours; but, at bottom, he isn’t, you’re mistaken. Were he to tell you that he so considers himself, then he too is wrong. He likewise has made an instant’s comparison between his case and yours: let him crawl away, and once he’s in the company of his peers, there’s an end to his whimperings. Under the feudal regime, treated like an animal, domesticated and beaten like one, sold like the dirt he trudged upon and delved, was not his plight a good deal sorrier? Instead of taking pity on his sufferings, of mitigating them and turning them ridiculously into a burden to be borne by your own sympathies, be sensible, my dear, and view him merely as a creature Nature has designed for your entertainment, as one she offers for whatever use you deign to put him to; rather than wipe his tears, redouble the cause of his weepings, if you like, if it amuses you: lo! here are human beings Nature’s readied for the scythe of your passions; reap a goodly harvest, dear Juliette, Nature is bountiful; emulate the spider, spin your webs, and mercilessly devour everything that Nature’s wise and liberal hand casts into the meshes.”

  “My beloved!” I cried, hugging Noirceuil to me, “how enormous is my debt to you for dissipating the miasmas of ignorance childhood instruction and prejudice brewed in my spirit! Your sublime lessons are unto my heart what the healing dew is to sun-scorched vegetation. O, light of my life, I see no more, I comprehend no more save through your eyes, with your mind; but, annihilating the fear I had of its danger, you kindle in me an ardent desire to hurl myself into crime. Will you be my guide in this delicious journey? Will you hold aloft the lamp of philosophy to light the way? Or perhaps you’ll abandon me—after having led me far astray; and then, putting myself in jeopardy by having put in action principles as stern as these you’ve taught me to cherish, ringed round by the exceeding peril of these maxims, and alone, in this fair land of roses I’ll be exposed only to thorns, unshielded by your influence, undirected by your advice. I wonder….”

  “Juliette,” said Noirceuil, “these reflections demonstrate your weakness—and betray your sensibility. My child, one must be strong and hard when one decides to be wicked.

  “You will never be the victim of my passions; but neither shall I ever assure your status nor serve as your protector; one has got to learn to manage by oneself, to rely upon one’s own solitary resources if one is to travel the road of your choosing; one must, all alone, discover the means for eluding the pitfalls thick-strewn the whole length of the way, one must develop keen perceptions to spy them out in advance, one must know what to do in case of miscarriage and indeed how to face the ultimate catastrophe if it cannot be averted; no matter what, Juliette, you will never be threatened by anything worse than the scaffold and, in truth, it’s not so very dreadful. Once one h
as realized that we must all die someday, does it make any real difference whether it be on a platform or in a bed? Shall I make you a little confession, Juliette? Then I’ll tell you that execution, a minute’s affair, terrifies me infinitely less than dying what they are pleased to call a peaceful death accompanied by what may very well be hideous circumstances. To hang is shameful? Not in my view; and even if it were, in order of their importance, I’d rate shame last on the list of factors involved. And so, my dear, put your mind at rest and to fly depend only upon your own wings. It’s safer, always.”

  “Ah, Noirceuil, you’ll not, even for my sake, set your principles aside.”

  “In all of Nature there is not a single creature in whose favor I can turn my back upon them.

  “However, let’s proceed with the demonstration of crime’s inexistence. I should like now to cite some examples in support of my thesis, that’s the likeliest way to convince you. We’ll cast a quick glance at how matters stand in this world and we’ll see whether what is termed criminal in one area doesn’t crop up as virtuous somewhere else.