Dialogue between a Priest and a Dying Man
Donatien Alphonse Francois (Marquis de Sade)

PRIEST  Come to this the fatal hour when at last from the eyes of
  deluded man the scales must fall away, and be shown the cruel
  picture of his errors and his vices  say, my son, do you not
  repent the host of sins unto which you were led by weakness and
  human frailty?

DYING MAN  Yes, my friend, I do repent.

PRIEST  Rejoice then in these pangs of remorse, during the brief
  space remaining to you profit therefrom to obtain Heaven's general
  absolution for your sins, and be mindful of it, only through the
  mediation of the Most Holy Sacrament of penance will you be granted
  it by the Eternal.

DYING MAN  I do not understand you, any more than you have
understood me.

PRIEST  Eh ?

DYING MAN  I told you that I repented.

PRIEST  I heard you say it.

DYING MAN  Yes, but without understanding it.

PRIEST  My interpretation 

DYING MAN  Hold. I shall give you mine.  By Nature created, created
  with very keen tastes, with very strong passions; placed on this
  earth for the sole purpose of yielding to them and satisfying them,
  and these effects of my creation being naught but necessities
  directly relating to Nature's fundamental designs or, if you
  prefer, naught but essential Derivatives proceeding from her
  intentions in my regard, all in accordance with her laws, I repent
  not having acknowledged her omnipotence as fully as I might have
  done,  I am only sorry for the modest use I made of the faculties
  (criminal in your view, perfectly ordinary in mine) she gave me to
  serve her; I did sometimes resist her, I repent it.  Misled by your
  absurd doctrines, with them for arms I mindlessly challenged the
  desires instilled in me by a much diviner inspiration, and thereof
  do I repent: I only plucked an occasional flower when I might have
  gathered an ample harvest of fruit  such are the just grounds for
  the regrets I have, do me the honor of considering me incapable of
  harboring any others.

PRIEST  Lo! where your fallacies take you, to what pass are you
  brought by your sophistries!  To created being you ascribe all the
  Creator's power, and those unlucky penchants which have led you
  astray, ah I do you not see they are merely the products of
  corrupted nature, to which you attribute omnipotence?

DYING MAN  Friend  it looks to me as though your dialectic were as
  false as your thinking.  Pray straighten your arguing or else leave
  me to die in peace.  What do you mean by Creator, and what do you
  mean by corrupted nature ?

PRIEST  The Creator is the master of the universe, 'tis He who has
  wrought everything, everything created, and who maintains it all
  through the mere fact of His omnipotence.

DYING MAN  An impressive figure indeed. Tell me now why this so very
  formidable fellow did nevertheless, as you would have it, create a
  corrupted nature ?

PRIEST  What glory would men ever have, had not God left them free
  will; and in the enjoyment thereof, what merit could come to them,
  were there not on earth the possibility of doing good and that of
  avoiding evil?

DYING MAN  And so your god bungled his work deliberately, in order
  to tempt or test his creature.  Did he then not know, did he then
  not doubt what the result would be?

PRIEST  He knew it undoubtedly but, once again, he wished to leave
  to man the merit of choice.

DYING MAN  And to what purpose, since from the outset he knew the
  course affairs would take and since, almighty as you tell me he is,
    he had but to make his creature choose as suited him?

PRIEST  Who is there can penetrate God's vast and infinite designs
  regarding man, and who can grasp all that makes up the universal
  scheme?

DYING MAN  Anyone who simplifies matters, my friend, anyone, above
  all, who refrains from multiplying causes in order to confuse
  effects all the more.  What need have you of a second difficulty
  when you are unable to resolve the first, and once it is possible
  that Nature may all alone have done what you attribute to your god,
  why must you go looking for someone to be her overlord?  The cause
  and explanation of what you do not understand may perhaps be the
  simplest thing in the world. Perfect your physics and you will
  understand Nature better, refine your reason, banish your
  prejudices and you'll have no further need of your god.

PRIEST  Wretched man! I took you for no worse than a Socinian  arms
  I had to combat you.  But 'tis clear you are an atheist, and seeing
  that your heart is shut to the authentic and innumerable proofs we
  receive every day of our lives of the Creator's existence  I have
  no more to say to you. There is no restoring the blind to the
  light.

DYING MAN  Softly, my friend, own that between the two, he who
  blindfolds himself must surely see less of the light than he who
  snatches the blindfold away from his eyes.  You compose, you
  construct, you dream, you magnify and complicate; I sift, I
  simplify. You accumulate errors, pile one atop the other; I combat
  them all. Which one of us is blind?

PRIEST  Then you do not believe in God at all?

DYING MAN  No. And for one very sound reason: it is perfectly
  impossible to believe in what one does not understand.  Between
  understanding and faith immediate connections must subsist;
  understanding is the very lifeblood of faith; where understanding
  has ceased, faith is dead; and when they who are in such a case
  proclaim they have faith, they deceive.  You yourself, preacher, I
  defy you to believe in the god you predicate to me  you must fail
  because you cannot demonstrate him to me, because it is not in you
  to define him to me, because consequently you do not understand
  him - because as of the moment you do not understand him, you can
  no longer furnish me any reasonable argument concerning him, and
  because, in sum, anything beyond the limits and grasp of the human
  mind is either illusion or futility; and because your god having to
  be one or the other of the two, in the first instance I should be
  mad to believe in him, in the second a fool.  My friend, prove to
  me that matter is inert and I will grant you a creator, prove to me
  that Nature does not suffice to herself and I'll let you imagine
  her ruled by a higher force; until then, expect nothing from me, I
  bow to evidence only, and evidence I perceive only through my
  senses: my belief goes no farther than they, beyond that point my
  faith collapses.  I believe in the sun because I see it, I conceive
  it as the focal center of all the inflammable matter in Nature, its
  periodic movement pleases but does not amaze me.  'Tis a mechanical
  operation, perhaps as simple as the workings of electricity, but
  which we are unable to understand. Need I bother more about it?
  when you have roofed everything over with your god, will I be any
  the better off?  and shall I still not have to make an effort at
  least as great to understand the artisan as to define his
  handiwork? By edifying your chimera it is thus no service you have
  rendered me, you have made me uneasy in my mind but you have not
  enlightened it, and instead of gratitude I owe you resentment.
  Your god is a machine you fabricated in your passions' behalf, you
  manipulated it to their liking; but the day it interfered with
  mine, I kicked it out of my way, deem it fitting that I did so; and
  now, at this moment when I sink and my soul stands in need of calm
  and philosophy, belabor it not with your riddles and your cant,
  which alarm but will not convince it, which will irritate without
  improving it; good friends and on the best terms have we ever been,
  this soul and I, so Nature wished it to be; as it is, so she
  expressly modeled it, for my soul is the result of the dispositions
  she formed in me pursuant to her own ends and needs; and as she has
  an equal need of vices and of virtues, whenever she was pleased to
  move me to evil, she did so, whenever she wanted a good deed from
  me, she roused in me the desire to perform one, and even so I did
  as I was bid.  Look nowhere but to her workings for the unique
  cause of our fickle human behavior, and in her laws hope to find no
  other springs than her will and her requirements.

PRIEST  And so whatever is in this world, is necessary.

DYING MAN  Exactly.

PRIEST  But if everything is necessary  then the whole is
  regulated.

DYING MAN  I am not the one to deny it.

PRIEST  And what can regulate the whole save it be an all- powerful
  and all - knowing hand ?

DYING MAN  Say, is it not necessary that gunpowder ignite when you
  set a spark to it?

PRIEST  Yes.

DYING MAN  And do you find any presence of wisdom in that ?

PRIEST  None.

DYING MAN  It is then possible that things necessarily come about
  without being determined by a superior intelligence, and possible
  hence that everything derive logically from a primary cause,
  without there being either reason or wisdom in that primary cause.

PRIEST  What are you aiming at?

DYING MAN  At proving to you that the world and all therein may be
  what it is and as you see it to be, without any wise and reasoning
  cause directing it, and that natural effects must have natural
  causes: natural causes sufficing, there is no need to invent any
  such unnatural ones as your god who himself, as I have told you
  already, would require to be explained and who would at the same
  time be the explanation of nothing; and that once 'tis plain your
  god is superfluous, he is perfectly useless; that what is useless
  would greatly appear to be imaginary only, null and therefore non-
  existent; thus, to conclude that your god is a fiction I need no
  other argument than that which furnishes me the certitude of his
  inutility.

PRIEST  At that rate there is no great need for me to talk to you
  about religion.

DYING MAN  True, but why not anyhow? Nothing so much amuses me as
  this sign of the extent to which human beings have been carried
  away by fanaticism and stupidity; although the prodigious spectacle
  of folly we are facing here may be horrible, it is always
  interesting. Answer me honestly, and endeavor to set personal
  considerations aside: were I weak enough to fall victim to your
  silly theories concerning the fabulous existence of the being who
  renders religion necessary, under what form would you advise me to
  worship him? Would you have me adopt the daydreams of Confucius
  rather than the absurdities of Brahma, should I kneel before the
  great snake to which the Blacks pray, invoke the Peruvians' sun or
  Moses' Lord of Hosts, to which Mohammedan sect should I rally, or
  which Christian heresy would be preferable in your view?  Be
  careful how you reply.

PRIEST  Can it be doubtful?

DYING MAN  Then tis egoistical.

PRIEST  No, my son, tis as much out of love for thee as for myself I
  urge thee to embrace my creed.

DYING MAN  And I wonder how the one or the other of us can have much
  love for himself, to deign to listen to such degrading nonsense.

PRIEST  But who can be mistaken about the miracles wrought by our
  Divine Redeemer?

DYINC MAN  He who sees in him anything else than the most vulgar of
  all tricksters and the most arrant of all impostors.

PRIEST  O God, you hear this and your wrath thunders not forth!

DYING MAN  No my friend, all is peace and quiet around us, because
  your god, be it from impotence or from reason or from whatever you
  please, is a being whose existence I shall momentarily concede out
  of condescension for you or, if you prefer, in order to accommodate
  myself to your sorry little perspective; because this god, I say,
  were he to exist, as you are mad enough to believe, could not have
  selected as means to persuade us, anything more ridiculous than
  those your Jesus incarnates.

PRIEST  What! the prophecies, the miracles, the martyrs  are they
  not so many proofs ?

DYING MAN  How, so long as I abide by the rules of logic, how would
  you have me accept as proof anything which itself is lacking proof?
  Before a prophecy could constitute proof I should first have to be
  completely certain it was ever pronounced; the prophecies history
  tells us of belong to history and for me they can only have the
  force of other historical facts, whereof three out of four are
  exceedingly dubious; if to this I add the strong probability that
  they have been transmitted to us by not very objective historians,
  who recorded what they preferred to have us read, I shall be quite
  within my rights if I am skeptical. And furthermore, who is there
  to assure me that this prophecy was not made after the fact, that
  it was not a stratagem of everyday political scheming, like that
  which predicts a happy reign under a just king, or frost in
  wintertime? As for your miracles, I am not any readier to be taken
  in by such rubbish. All rascals have performed them, all fools have
  believed in them; before I'd be persuaded of the truth of a miracle
  I would have to be very sure the event so called by you was
  absolutely contrary to the laws of Nature, for only what is outside
  of Nature can pass for miraculous; and who is so deeply learned in
  Nature that he can affirm the precise point where her domain ends,
  and the precise point where it is infringed upon?  Only two things
  are needed to accredit an alleged miracle, a mountebank and a few
  simpletons; tush, there's the whole origin of your prodigies; all
  new adherents to a religious sect have wrought some; and more
  extraordinary still, all have found imbeciles around to believe
  them. Your Jesus' feats do not surpass those of Apollonius of
  Tyana, yet nobody thinks to take the latter for a god; and when we
  come to your martyrs, assuredly, these are the feeblest of all your
  arguments.  To produce martyrs you need but have enthusiasm on the
  one hand, resistance on the other; and so long as an opposed cause
  offers me as many of them as does yours, I shall never be
  sufficiently authorized to believe one better than another, but
  rather very much inclined to consider all of them pitiable.  Ah my
  friend I were it true that the god you preach did exist, would he
  need miracle, martyr, or prophecy to secure recognition? and if, as
  you declare, the human heart were of his making, would he not have
  chosen it for the repository of his law? Then would this law,
  impartial for all mankind because emanating from a just god, then
  would it be found graved deep and writ clear in all men alike, and
  from one end of the world to the other, all men, having this
  delicate and sensitive organ in common, would also resemble each
  other through the homage they would render the god whence they had
  got it; all would adore and serve him in one identical manner, and
  they would be as incapable of disregarding this god as of resisting
  the inward impulse to worship him.  Instead of that, what do I
  behold through-out this world?  As many gods as there are
  countries; as many different cults as there are different minds or
  different imaginations; and this swarm of opinions among which it
  is physically impossible for me to choose, say now, is this a just
  god's doing? Fie upon you, preacher, you outrage your god when you
  present him to me thus; rather let me deny him completely, for if
  he exists then I outrage him far less by my incredulity than do you
  through your blasphemies.  Return to your senses, preacher, your
  Jesus is no better than Mohammed, Mohammed no better than Moses,
  and the three of them combined no better than Confucius, who did
  after all have some wise things to say while the others did naught
  but rave; in general, though, such people are all mere frauds:
  philosophers laughed at them, the mob believed them, and justice
  ought to have hanged them.

PRIEST  Alas, justice dealt only too harshly with one of the four.

DYING MAN  If he alone got what he deserved it was he deserved it
  most richly; seditious, turbulent, calumniating, dishonest,
  libertine, a clumsy buffoon, and very mischievous; he had the art
  of overawing common folk and stirring up the rabble; and hence came
  in line for punishment in a kingdom where the state of affairs was
  what it was in Jerusalem then.  They were very wise indeed to get
  rid of him, and this perhaps is the one case in which my extremely
  lenient and also extremely tolerant maxims are able to allow the
  severity of Themis; I excuse any misbehavior save that which may
  endanger the government one lives under, kings and their majesties
  are the only things I respect; and whoever does not love his
  country and his king were better dead than alive.

PRIEST  But you do surely believe something awaits us after this
  life, you must at some time or another have sought to pierce the
  dark shadows enshrouding our mortal fate, and what other theory
  could have satisfied your anxious spirit, than that of the
  numberless woes that betide him who has lived wickedly, and an
  eternity of rewards for him whose life has been good?

DYING MAN  What other, my friend?  that of nothingness, it has never
  held terrors for me, in it I see naught but what is consoling and
  unpretentious; all the other theories are of pride's composition,
  this one alone is of reason's. Moreover, 'tis neither dreadful nor
  absolute, this nothingness.  Before my eyes have I not the example
  of Nature's perpetual generations and regenerations? Nothing
  perishes in the world, my friend, nothing is lost; man today, worm
  tomorrow, the day after tomorrow a fly; is it not to keep steadily
  on existing? And what entitles me to be rewarded for virtues which
  are in me through no fault of my own, or again punished for crimes
  wherefore the ultimate responsibility is not mine?  how are you to
  put your alleged god's goodness into tune with this system, and can
  he have wished to create me in order to reap pleasure from
  punishing me, and that solely on account of a choice he does not
  leave me free to determine?

PRIEST  You are free.

DYING MAN  Yes, in terms of your prejudices; but reason puts them to
  rout, and the theory of human freedom was never devised except to
  fabricate that of grace, which was to acquire such importance for
  your reveries.  What man on earth, seeing the scaffold a step
  beyond the crime, would commit it were he free not to commit it?
  We are the pawns of an irresistible force, and never for an instant
  is it within our power to do anything but make the best of our lot
  and forge ahead along the path that has been traced for us.  There
  is not a single virtue which is not necessary to Nature and
  conversely not a single crime which she does not need and it is in
  the perfect balance she maintains between the one and the other
  that her immense science consists; but can we be guilty for adding
  our weight to this side or that when it is she who tosses us onto
  the scales?  no more so than the hornet who thrusts his dart into
  your skin.

PRIEST  Then we should not shrink from the worst of all crimes.

DYING MAN  I say nothing of the kind.  Let the evil deed be
  proscribed by law, let justice smite the criminal, that will be
  deterrent enough; but if by misfortune we do commit it even so,
  let's not cry over spilled milk; remorse is inefficacious, since it
  does not stay us from crime, futile since it does not repair it,
  therefore it is absurd to beat one's breast, more absurd still to
  dread being punished in another world if we have been lucky to
  escape it in this. God forbid that this be construed as
  encouragement to crime, no, we should avoid it as much as we can,
  but one must learn to shun it through reason and not through false
  fears which lead to naught and whose effects are so quickly
  overcome in any moderately steadfast soul.  Reason, sir - yes, our
  reason alone should warn us that harm done our fellows can never
  bring happiness to us; and our heart, that contributing to their
  felicity is the greatest joy Nature has accorded us on earth; the
  entirety of human morals is contained in this one phrase: Render
  others as happy as one desires oneself to be, and never inflict
  more pain upon them than one would like to receive at their hands.
  There you are, my friend, those are the only principles we should
  observe, and you need neither god nor religion to appreciate and
  subscribe to them, you need only have a good heart. But I feel my
  strength ebbing away; preacher, put away your prejudices, unbend,
  be a man, be human, without fear and without hope forget your gods
  and your religions too: they are none of them good for anything but
  to set man at odds with man, and the mere name of these horrors has
  caused greater loss of life on earth than all other wars and all
  other plagues combined. Renounce the idea of another world; there
  is none, but do not renounce the pleasure of being happy and of
  making for happiness in this. Nature offers you no other way of
  doubling your existence, of extending it.  My friend, lewd
  pleasures were ever dearer to me than anything else, I have
  idolized them all my life and my wish has been to end it in their
  bosom; my end draws near, six women lovelier than the light of day
  are waiting in the chamber adjoining, I have reserved them for this
  moment, partake of the feast with me, following my example embrace
  them instead of the vain sophistries of superstition, under their
  caresses strive for a little while to forget your hypocritical
  beliefs.

  NOTE

  The dying man rang, the women entered; and after he had been a
little while in their arms the preacher became one whom Nature has
corrupted, all because he had not succeeded in explaining what a
corrupt nature is.
