John Kilcullen
For most of the last forty years of the sixteenth century there was civil war in France between Catholics and Calvinists, the massacre of St Bartholomew being probably the best-known incident. Eventually the Protestant Henry of Navarre was accepted as king, after becoming a Catholic. The Edict of Nantes (1598) established a religious truce. For their security the Protestants were allowed for a while to garrison certain towns, and in certain places they had permission to maintain churches and schools and to practise their religion publicly. As time went on they abandoned the opinion some Protestants had adopted during the religious wars that Christians may rightly rebel against a persecuting ruler, and took up again Calvin's (and Luther’s) doctrine of non-resistance, that is, that subjects must obey the ruler except when his commands contradict God’s, and even then must not rebel or resist by force.[1] Their security depended on the king's protection against Catholic zealots, and they became his most loyal subjects. During the disorders of Louis XIV's minority their loyalty was appreciated, but later the king needed them less, and once he came into conflict with the pope over the régale, he needed to emphasize his own Catholic orthodoxy; in any case he did sincerely hate the Protestants. From about 1660 the government campaigned more actively against Protestantism, for example by closing churches and schools permitted under the Edict of Nantes. By the end of the 1670s, when the government was also renewing its attack on the Jansenists, the pressure on the Protestants had become intense. In 1680 the practice began of quartering dragoons in Protestant households, which produced a flood of "conversions". Ministers were exiled, lay people who tried to leave the country without permission could be sentenced for life to the galleys. In 1685 the Edict of Nantes was revoked. It had been supposed to be perpetual, but the king explained that it had become unnecessary since there were no longer any Protestants in France.[2]
Pierre Bayle was born in 1647, son of a Calvinist minister. His formal schooling, delayed by his family's poverty, was at first in a Protestant school and later in the Jesuit college at Toulouse. At Toulouse he became a Catholic, and then, characteristically following the argument where it led, a Protestant again. This made him a relapsed heretic, liable to banishment.[3] He left the country, in 1670, and studied at the Calvinist college in Geneva. Four years later he returned to another part of France under an altered form of his name, and in 1675 became professor of philosophy at the Protestant college at Sedan. In 1681 the government closed the college, and (two years after Arnauld went into exile) Bayle left France for Rotterdam, where he became professor of philosophy at a college for French-speaking Protestants. He lived in Rotterdam until his death in 1706. He never became a minister, but to the end of his life belonged as a lay member to the Reformed Church. He was always poor, never married, never had onerous teaching duties, and was almost entirely devoted to reading and writing.[4]
In 1682 he published a Letter (in later editions Miscellaneous Reflections) on the Comet, purportedly written by a Catholic to a doctor of the Sorbonne on the question whether the comet which had appeared in 1680 was a portent of disaster. The real design of the book was perhaps to suggest to the unwary Catholic reader analogies between Catholicism and pagan superstition. It contains a great deal which is philosophically interesting, including a long argument against the claim that atheism threatens the foundations of society; Bayle argues that concern for honour may have the same social effects as zeal for religion. A covert purpose of this argument may have been to suggest that Catholic France might indeed be a society of practical atheists, a proposition with which the Jansenists at least would have agreed.[5] In the same year he published the General Critique of M. Maimbourg's History of Calvinism, in which he defended the Calvinists against a hostile account by a Catholic priest. In 1685 he published New Letters by the Author of the General Critique. From 1694 to 1697 he edited News of the Republic of Letters, a learned journal, in which he published Arnauld's controversy with Malebranche.
The French government discovered that Bayle had written the General Critique and, since they could not reach him, arrested his brother, a Protestant minister, who died after six months in prison. To Bayle at this time religious peace and freedom must have seemed almost a lost cause. This was the year of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the accession of the Catholic James II as king of England. Among the French refugees one party, led by Pierre Jurieu, until then Bayle's friend, began to advocate violent revolution against Louis XIV and the counter-persecution of Catholics. Soon William of Orange, with Jurieu's enthusiastic approval, put himself at the head of a successful rebellion against James II. These developments led Bayle into a complicated series of controversies: against Catholic persecution of Calvinists in France, in favour of toleration as a matter of principle, in favour of the doctrine of non-resistance, and in defence of himself against increasingly bitter attacks from Jurieu. What Wholly Catholic France is Like under the Reign of Louis the Great (1686) criticised French Catholic persecution of Protestants; the Philosophical Commentary on the Words of Jesus Christ, "Compel them to come in" (Parts 1 and 2 in 1686, Part 3 in 1687, Supplement 1688) argued for toleration as a matter of principle; the Reply of a New Convert to the Letters of a Refugee (1689) and the Important Advice to the Refugees (1690) (if that is a genuine work of Bayle’s) were apparently intended to provoke those among the refugees who held Calvin's doctrine of non-resistance, or believed in toleration, to disown Jurieu's calls to rebellion and counter-persecution; and the Chimerical Cabal (1691) and various other pamphlets and books replied to Jurieu's personal attacks. All these writings were published under pseudonyms. The Philosophical Commentary, for example, purports to be a translation from an English work by "John Fox", and the Reply and Advice purport to be by Catholics - they are in fact scornful attacks on Protestants, arguing that they also persecute when they can, that their doctrine of non-resistance was never sincerely held, and that their religious principles lead to republicanism.
In 1693 Bayle was dismissed from his academic post. A Rotterdam publisher came to his rescue with a pension to enable him to write the Historical and Critical Dictionary, his most famous work and the only book to which he attached his name. It is a biographical dictionary in which the facts of the subject's life are briefly outlined in the text of the article, which is glossed with "remarks", relevant and irrelevant, in numerous footnotes, sometimes of enormous length, with marginal notes to the footnotes. Much of the most interesting material is in the Remarks. In the Dictionary Bayle continued most of the lines of thought seen in his earlier writings, but with increased emphasis on the weakness of reason, and in particular on the impossibility of any rational solution to the problem of evil. The existence of evil is a problem for any theism in which God is held to be both good and all-powerful.[6] It is a problem for Christians particularly in connection with the doctrines of original sin, predestination and grace. Why did God permit Adam to sin? Why does he leave the mass of mankind, or for that matter anyone, to be damned eternally? Indeed, why does he permit any sin at all? And why does he permit pain and so many other physical evils? Bayle refutes the various customary answers to these questions, traversing the controversies about freewill and grace among Jesuits, Jansenists, Calvinists, Arminians and others, showing that none of them can do more in the end than say that God permits sin and other evil for reasons we cannot understand. A Christian aware of the weakness of reason and the impossibility of answering these questions must simply refuse to attempt an answer.[7]
Bayle's emphasis on the weakness of reason generally and on the impossibility of answering inescapable philosophical questions about fundamental Christian doctrines have led many readers of the Dictionary to regard him as a sceptic and an infidel. But Bayle always rejects scepticism, and always presents himself as a Calvinist Christian. Doubt about many things, even doubt about everything, does not constitute scepticism in the classical sense of the term. In that sense a sceptic is one who practises suspense of judgement.[8] The ancient sceptics were of two schools. Academic sceptics raised difficulties against every assertion, so as to force suspense of judgement upon the Stoics, who said that a wise man should affirm nothing but what is certain. Pyrrhonian sceptics, according to Sextus Empiricus, began by seeking knowledge, but came to accept suspense of judgement as an equally satisfactory - the only available - way of achieving the real goal of the search for truth, namely peace of mind. Pyrrhonian sceptics set out to counter every argument with another equally plausible, so that no assertion would seem certain, or even more probable than its contradictory.[9] For sceptics of both kinds the purpose of inquiry was to re-establish or strengthen the disposition to suspend judgement by renewed experience of the futility of trying to reach certain (or, for the Pyrrhonians, even probable) conclusions. If the arguments heaped up on either side were criticised, that was not for the purpose of eliminating those which were unsound, but to make the project of arriving at a conclusion seem the more hopeless. Modern philosophy teachers often set out (at least, students think they do) to inculcate this ancient lesson: that since nothing is certain, and no assertion more likely to be true than its contradictory, philosophical thinking (except to learn this lesson, or perhaps as entertainment) is pointless.
Bayle was not a sceptic of this description. My impression is that he had a sharp eye for bad argument, a good memory for fact or alleged fact, a settled habit of testing every theory or assertion on any subject he cared about by seeing what could be said on the other side, a great inventiveness in devising objections, and a compulsive urge to upset the complacency of people who think they know and do not: a latter-day Socrates, in fact.[10] When all the theories of philosophy and speculative theology, and a good part of what passed for history,[11] disintegrated under test Bayle concluded (for the time being at least) that on the matters in question certainty is not attainable. But this is not scepticism. He never says that absolutely everything is uncertain[12] and that contradictories are equally probable; he says that in religion and in other matters we must make affirmations (and not merely for practical purposes).[13] He did not substitute suspense of judgement or peace of mind for the original goal of knowledge. He did not adopt an attitude of "carelessness", as Hume later did: he always cared a great deal to avoid errors of fact and fallacies.[14] He was - as I am myself, and as I think many students of these subjects are - a so far mostly disappointed and no longer very hopeful truth-seeker, rather than a contented practitioner of suspense of judgement. His unsparing criticism of theories and historical assertions was perhaps not motivated by much hope of arriving at sure and positive truth, but his purpose seems to have been at least to eliminate error masquerading as truth, not to show that thought is futile.
As for infidelity, Bayle's criticism of Christians and their philosophical and theological theories is not evidence of loss of faith. Any Christian who also cares about truth and righteousness will want to dissociate Christianity from fallacy, falsehood and wicked behaviour. Believers sometimes criticise their own creed gently, not mentioning its difficulties until they can also present the solutions, being conscious of the politics of public discussion. The politic apologist for Christianity may regard Bayle as irresponsible, or suspect that he is an enemy in disguise. He never seems to care whether his criticisms of theories meant to harmonize reason and faith may destroy his readers' faith. But then a Calvinist may think that no real harm can be done by the destruction of theories, since faith and salvation are decided by God's eternal decrees and everything is under God's providence. He criticised the behaviour of all sorts of Christians, Protestants and Calvinists included, pretty freely,[15] but it was never a Calvinist principle that those who call themselves Christians or Calvinists cannot be evil- doers. There seems to be nothing, then, in the general character of Bayle's late writings inconsistent with the hypothesis that he remained until his death in 1706 the Calvinist he had been all his life, but for the short time he was a Catholic as a student of the Jesuits at Toulouse.
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Bayle's arguments on the rights of conscience grew out of a small point in letters 20 and 21 of his General Critique, namely that the true religion (whichever that is) has no more right to persecute than the false. When this was challenged as "an impious paradox" Bayle argued for it at length in letter 9 of the New Letters, maintaining that those who believe an error are morally obliged to do whatever they would be obliged to do if their belief were true, and therefore, since people have a right to do their duty, can do it without blame. The same point is argued again in his Philosophical Commentary, part II, chs. 8-10, and again in the Supplement. If God commanded the orthodox to impose orthodoxy by force, then all who think themselves orthodox - that is, all who hold their beliefs seriously - would be obliged and morally entitled to carry out the command, and heretics would do a good act in persecuting the true Church; since God cannot have intended this he cannot have given such a command.
In this essay I will examine in section 1 the arguments on the rights of conscience given in New Letters, and in the other sections those given in the Philosophical Commentary. I do not think that in these matters Bayle changed his mind in any important way, but ideas which he only sketched out at first he later developed elaborately.[16]
A critic of the General Critique found it strange that anyone would dare to say that the truth and a lie have the same privileges: has not God given the right of entering our hearts and minds to truth alone?[17] In the Critique Bayle had written of the rights of Churches, but in the New Letters, following this critic, he writes of the rights of truth and error, as if these were persons. Later the figure can be eliminated, but for the time being let truth and error be personified. Bayle maintains that if the truth appears to us in the guise of error, and an error in the guise of truth, then the truth has no jurisdiction over us and the error succeeds to all its rights.
Bayle's notions of right and duty can be gathered from the way he relates these terms to one another and to certain others, namely "ought", "responsible", "culpable", "blameworthy" and "punishable".[18] If I have a duty to do something I have no right not to do it. A right may be absolute or relative. My right is absolute if I have it in relation to every human being (Bayle never mentions rights against God and no doubt thought there are none). If I have a right in relation to you to do something then I am not responsible to you for that act, and you cannot rightly blame or punish[19] me for it; conversely, if you cannot blame or punish me for it then to do it is my right in relation to you. Thus liability to and immunity from blame and punishment are the core of Bayle's conception of duty and right. Of the two duty seems to be fundamental; rights arise out of duties,[20] and consist in duties on the part of others. If I have a duty to do something then I have a right to do it,[21] consisting in other human beings' having a duty not to try to persuade me voluntarily not to do it, and not to blame or punish me if I do it. This is a crucial premiss of Bayle's case for the rights of heretics: people have a moral right to do their duty. If, as Bayle believes, those who believe they have a duty (even if the belief is mistaken) really have it,[22] then it follows that they have the corresponding rights against other people, even against those who know that a mistake is being made. Suppose a man pretends to be a woman's husband and she believes him. The true husband may know that his rights are being usurped, and in relation to him the impostor has no right; but in relation even to the true husband the wife has a right to do what - because of her mistake - is her duty. The husband has no right to dissuade her from doing this duty except by revealing the mistake, and no right to blame her then or afterwards.[23]
According to Bayle the exercise of a right may be unjust. Sometimes a right has been acquired wrongly (for example, by the impostor) and cannot rightly be exercised; it is not "absolutely speaking" and in God's sight a right, but is nevertheless "effectively" and "relatively" a moral right because there is someone (the woman) who genuinely has some corresponding duty.[24] Sometimes a genuine right may be exercised unjustly; the right is not wrongly acquired and is a right absolutely and in God's sight, but it is unjustly exercised. For example, a king has a genuine right, in general terms, to levy taxes, but he may exercise it unjustly by demanding too much. Even as wrongly exercised it is, in relation to his subjects, effectively a right, because (on Bayle's political theory[25]) they have no right to call him to account; he is answerable only to God. "Right" has two senses, the power of doing something without being (rightly) punishable for it, and the justice with which it is done: the king has a right in the first sense in relation to his subjects, though his act is not right in the second sense.[26] Since God will rightly punish those who exercise wrongly acquired rights, or exercise their own rights unjustly, the distinction is irrelevant to God; but in relation to human beings who have no jurisdiction over him, and therefore no right to punish, the king effectively has a right in the first sense to do something which is unjust.
As we will see shortly, Bayle holds that those who believe they have a duty do have it. If I mistakenly believe I have a duty to you then I do have that duty. Do you therefore have the corresponding right? Yes and no. Absolutely speaking and in God's sight you do not. But there must be a sense in which there is a right, because "it would be self-contradictory to be obliged to do something for someone who has no right to exact it".[27] It is a right you should not exercise. A right that cannot rightly be exercised may seem strange, and it might seem better to say that you have no right and I have no duty. But Bayle wants to say that the duty is genuine because that implies the genuineness of the right against a third party to which it gives rise, consisting in a duty on their part not to blame or punish me for doing it. So if my duty is genuine, but it is self- contradictory to have a duty to someone who has no right, Bayle must say that you have a genuine right that you can never rightly exercise. To avoid paradox we can say this: if I mistakenly believe I have a duty to you then I do wrong if I voluntarily omit to do it,[28] and not if I do it, and others do wrong if they blame or punish me for doing it, but (unless you share the mistake) you do wrong if you call on me to do it.
Bayle claims that it is a law of God that we must accord the rights of truth to a proposition if and only if we believe it to be true. That this is a law he argues as follows.[29] There are an infinity of eternal truths,[30] including moral truths (ideas of duty), of which we know nothing; God has revealed only some.[31] But moral truths which God has not in some way revealed have no authority over us. [32] This shows that truth as such, and apart from its being known to us, has no rights over us. Truth has rights over mankind only when it is revealed to mankind. What does this mean? Mankind in general[33] does not exist, only individual human beings exist; and truth in general does not exist, only particular truths exist in individual minds.[34] It means, therefore, that a particular truth has rights which can be executed or exercised only over a particular person to whom that truth has been revealed.
This argument shows that to be known (or believed) is a necessary condition. But perhaps the rights of a truth depend upon two or more conditions, including (a) that it be true, and (b) that it be believed to be true. Many of his contemporaries would have regarded (a) as necessary. To prove that error in the guise of truth has the rights of truth Bayle must show that condition (b) is not only necessary but also sufficient. Consider an example.[35] A governor must obey a letter from the king, the source of its authority over him being the king's will which it expresses. But considered in itself and apart from its effect upon the governor's mind the letter has no authority. The king's will is the ultimate source, but the persuasion in the governor's mind that the letter expresses the king's will is the "proximate foundation and immediate essence" of its authority. And if a forgery produces the same persuasion it has the same authority. If we accept that the governor must obey a convincing forgery then we must concede that the governor's duty arises from his state of mind however it is produced: the "proximate foundation and immediate essence" is not only necessary but also sufficient, apart from any more remote source, to constitute the obligation. The forger has acquired the right wrongly, but the governor has a genuine duty.
Other examples support the same conclusion.[36] Suppose a man and his wife's children mistakenly believe that he is their father. While this belief lasts he cannot without injustice disinherit them, they can rightly inherit his goods, and they owe him the respect and obedience due to a father; each has all the rights and duties he or she would have if the belief were true. On the other hand, if father and child do not know their relationship and one mistreats the other, the act is no worse than the mistreatment of a stranger. Suppose a woman mistakenly thinks that a man is her husband and sleeps with him. She does not sin, indeed she would do wrong to treat him as a stranger, although the impostor has acquired a husband's rights wrongly. On the other hand, if a woman at a masked ball makes love with her husband thinking that he is a stranger she is guilty of adultery. If we accept the moral judgements suggested in these examples then we must agree that those who mistakenly believe that they are in a certain relation really have the rights and duties of that relation, and that those who do not believe they are in a relation which really they are in do not have those rights and duties: that in every case it is the belief, and not the truth or falsity of the belief, which makes the moral difference.[37] To believe that a proposition is true, whether the belief is true or false, is thus the necessary and sufficient condition for owing it whatever is due to truth. If truth were a person, truth would take love for an error mistaken for truth and loved for that reason as love of herself, whereas homage given to a true proposition not believed to be true is like adultery with one's own spouse at a masked ball.[38]
Mistaken belief gives error, metaphorically, the rights of truth over those who believe it, who therefore have a genuine duty to act on their belief, and therefore (since people have the right to do their duty) the right to act on it. Perhaps this right was wrongly acquired (for example, if the belief results from self- deception), and then they will have to answer for exercising it to God on judgement day.[39] But meanwhile, and in relation to other human beings, it is a genuine right. It makes little sense to say that the error's metaphorical rights are wrongly acquired, since error, not being a person separate from the person deceived, cannot answer for the deception as the man who impersonates a woman's husband can;[40] if we become subject to the rights of an error as a result of self-deception then it is our right - the right to act on our erroneous belief - that is wrongly acquired. Let us eliminate the personification altogether. That a proposition (true or false) has the rights of truth over those, and only those, who believe that it is true means that those who believe it (even if their belief results from self-deception or other fault for which they will in the end answer to God) have (while they believe it) certain genuine moral duties[41] which other human beings cannot rightly blame or punish them for performing, or try to induce them voluntarily not to perform - though others can rightly try to change their belief or physically prevent their action.
What these duties are has not yet been determined. If we believe a proposition then presumably we must act on it, make it known to others and so on. We have different beliefs about these duties. To be consistent Bayle must say that we must do for whatever we believe to be the truth whatever we believe we must do for the truth. But he can also say, without inconsistency, that some people are wrong in what they believe, and in what they believe they ought to do for the truth, and that in some cases they can be prevented, by means which do not involve their own consent, from acting on their beliefs.
In the Philosophical Commentary Bayle does not talk about the rights of error personified, though he does make some use of the materials of the argument just surveyed. In this book he argues that (1) an act done against conscience is a sin; (2) of two similar sinful acts one done against conscience is the worse sin; (3) of any two acts whatever, one against conscience and the other not, even if the former is an act of a kind generally good (such as giving alms) and the other of a kind generally bad (such as beating a poor man), the act against conscience is worse, even if in both cases conscience is in error;[42] (4) not only is the act against conscience the worse sin, but the other is not a sin but a good act, at least unless the error is culpable;[43] (5) indeed, even if the error is culpable the act is good, it is the error which is to blame;[44] (6) and there may be nothing blameworthy in the dogmatic errors of a heretic.[45] From this it follows that, if persecuting heretics may be a good act on the part of the orthodox, a heretic who persecutes the orthodox may do a morally good act, not blameworthy in any respect and perhaps praiseworthy.
Some of Bayle's arguments rely on a distinction and ranking of moral and natural (or "physical"[46]) goods and evils. Moral goods and evils consist only in acts of free will, choices. What makes a choice good or evil is the agent's reason for making it - more precisely, the agent's view of the goodness or badness of the reason: moral goods and evils are acts of free will in their "objective" reality.[47] That is, a choice is morally good if it is made for what the chooser believes is a morally good reason. Physical goods and evils are everything else, including external actions and their effects, acts and dispositions of will apart from their objective being, beliefs[48] and other mental episodes and dispositions.
Moral goods and evils outrank physical goods and evils;[49] at least, the evil of acting against conscience outranks any physical evil found in, or resulting from, human action. To act against conscience is to do what you believe to be wrong, which satisfies the concept of a moral evil. Although Bayle seems to hold "the autonomy of morals",[50] he assumes - for the reason, perhaps, that God is the infinite good - that those who believe in God must believe that displeasing God is wrong and that the intention to please God is the highest moral good. So to act with the intention of obeying God is morally good. But those who believe in God and regard their conscience as God's deputy, and nevertheless act against it, are guilty of an act of hatred of God.[51] To choose to displease God is an act essentially and intrinsically evil, wrong under all circumstances (no matter what the alternative), a violation of a law from which God himself cannot dispense; obedience to conscience is thus an "indispensable", exceptionless, absolute obligation.[52]
Imagine two men in similar situations who both have erroneous consciences - suppose they are successively asked for help by someone in genuine distress, whom they both mistakenly believe is a fraud whom they should drive off harshly; and suppose the first obeys his conscience (for conscience's sake) and drives him off, while the second weakly or capriciously gives the help he mistakenly believes he ought to refuse. Compare the goods and evils present in these two cases: (a) the poor man's deserts; (b) the mistaken belief held by both the men he approaches; (c) their respective decisions; (d) their actions and the effects on him. With respect to (a) and (b) there is no difference. With respect to (c) the difference is in favour of one who drives the poor man off: there is the moral good of his obeying conscience,[53] there is the moral evil of the other's deciding to act against his conscience. With respect to (d) the difference goes the other way: the man who acts against his conscience does good to the poor man, the other does evil. But goods and evils under (d) are merely "physical", whereas the evil under (c), of acting against conscience, is a great moral evil which outranks the physical evil.[54] The harsh treatment inflicted on the genuinely poor man who does not deserve it is not a moral evil, since he is not harshly treated for the reason that he is a genuinely poor man, and moral good and evil depends on intention - that is, on the reason why the act is chosen.[55] Thus the comparison of evils shows that the one who acts against his conscience, though it is mistaken and though he does good to one who deserves it, does the greater evil.[56] This is enough to prove that we are obliged to act in obedience to our consciences even when they are mistaken, because of the principle that if we cannot avoid evil altogether we must choose the evil which is less.
Bayle's contemporaries would generally have agreed that it is wrong to disobey one's conscience even if it is mistaken; but this does not mean that it is right to obey it, and still less that obedience must be a good act. It was generally held that one of the provisions of God's law requires obedience to one's conscience even when it is mistaken. But a distinction was generally drawn between an error of fact, which excuses if it is not due to sin, and an error of law (to which errors in faith were sometimes assimilated[57]), which does not excuse even when the error itself is not blameworthy; a woman who sleeps with someone she blamelessly mistakes for her husband does not sin, but it would be no excuse not to know that adultery is against God's law. It follows that error may make sin inevitable. If because of an error of law, or an error due to sin, I believe I ought to do (or omit) something which some provision of God's law actually forbids (or requires), then if I act on my belief I violate that provision without proper excuse. But if I do not act on it I violate the provision which requires obedience to conscience, also without excuse: I must sin either way.[58] The argument by comparison of evils does not challenge the claim that those whose consciences command what God actually forbids, or vice versa, must sin whatever they do; the argument is merely that the sin of acting against conscience is the worse sin, and that if we cannot avoid sin altogether we must avoid the worse.
But Bayle goes on to maintain that an act done in obedience to even erroneous conscience is not a sin at all but a morally good act.[59] Provided one errs in good faith, "an act done in consequence of a false persuasion is as good as if it had been done in consequence of a true persuasion"; "an act opposed to a false persuasion is as bad as an act opposed to a true persuasion".[60] By "good" and "bad" he does not mean simply right and wrong - that would make nonsense of the distinction between a true and a false persuasion. By "right" he means consistent with every principle of the moral law, by "wrong" he means forbidden by some principle of the moral law, by "bad" he means worthy of blame and punishment, and by "good" he means praiseworthy. His contention is that a wrong act done in the persuasion that it is right is no more blameworthy, or less praiseworthy, than it would have been if it had been right.
For the claim that an act done in accordance with conscience is a morally good act there are two arguments. The most noteworthy premiss of the first[61] is that God judges us only by the "objective" quality of our acts of free choice.[62] If Bayle holds the autonomy of morals, then God is brought in presumably because he is the infallibly just judge: what he praises or blames really is morally good or evil.[63] It might be thought that God judges everything according to its real nature: if a woman sleeps with a man who is not really her husband then surely God will judge that she has done that, and therefore that she has committed adultery, whatever she may have thought she was doing. But Bayle insists that in judging whether a person deserves blame and punishment God does not consider the outward act or its effects, but only the act of will;[64] and that he distinguishes acts of will not according to the real quality of the object chosen, but according to its "objective" quality, the quality the chooser believes it has, and on account of which he or she makes the choice;[65] the real quality of the object is accidental, and therefore morally irrelevant.[66] These are points already noticed.[67] A new point is this, that in judging moral desert God distinguishes acts of choice by the dispositions they manifest;[68] for example, God judges one who acts out of love for an error mistaken for truth as if he acts out of love of truth, because the disposition is the same.[69] It might be thought that some sort of utilitarianism lies behind this, that Bayle thinks the act should be judged by the disposition it manifests because in the long run judging by disposition will have good effects, by encouraging dispositions which generally have good effects. But although he sometimes refers to the acts the disposition would prompt if there were no error,[70] he is talking about God's judgement on the last day when the long run is over. The point of referring to the disposition and the hypothetical acts it would prompt under other circumstances is to make clear the intrinsic and actual moral value of this act.[71] Whatever the consequences of the act or of the disposition, if the act is done because it is believed to be right then it is a morally good act.
The most noteworthy premiss of the second argument is that God rules and judges us ordinarily through general laws.[72] If a ruler addresses to all his subjects a law in general terms requiring As to treat Bs in mode C, then each subject is obliged and authorised to decide whether he or she belongs to category A, and if so then who belongs to category B and which acts would fit description C.[73] A ruler ought to take account of the capacities of his subjects;[74] if he knows that they are fallible but does not provide enough specific guidance to save them from mistakes, then he must be understood to authorise them to act on the law as they fallibly interpret it.[75] To act on one's interpretation of a law which one is obliged and authorised to interpret is to obey it - even if one's interpretation is mistaken. This is the vital point. Those who are obliged and authorised to act on their own fallible interpretation, if they act on a mistaken interpretation, are not merely excused of disobedience: they actually obey.[76] We might be inclined to make a distinction, and say that they obey their superior's implied higher-order command to act on this law as they interpret it, but do not actually obey this law itself if their interpretation is wrong. But Bayle makes no such distinction: those who act on a mistaken interpretation of a law they are obliged and authorised to interpret actually obey that law. If he thinks this because they have the same disposition of choice then this argument is a variant of the argument from how God judges us.
Suppose, then, that God has commanded those who possess the truth to compel everyone else to accept it. He has not given enough specific guidance to prevent mistakes in carrying out the command. It is addressed to all who hear the gospel,[77] and does not specify which of the many disputed doctrines is the truth.[78] God knows that we are fallible, that what seems true to us even after thorough study is often not true, that real truths have no mark that we can perceive to distinguish them from merely apparent truths.[79] If he has given this command he has obliged and authorised us all to compel acceptance of whatever seems to each of us to be true.[80] The heretics, then, whichever they are, when they persecute the true Church because it seems to them to be in error, actually obey the alleged command and do a good act.
Bayle does not believe that such a command has been given, but still he seems to believe that those who think it has and do what they think has been commanded do a good act.[81] He seems to have in mind something like this. The moral law is a hierarchy of practical principles with just one basic commandment, "Seek the truth and act on it",[82] or even - since we are not obliged to seek unless we think it true that we ought to seek[83] - simply "Act on the truth". On this theory other, secondary, duties will be imposed by the various particular practical truths as we come to know them.[84] For example, if it is true that we ought to do no murder, then doing no murder will be required by the single basic commandment as soon as we find out that "we ought to do no murder" is a practical truth - that is, as soon as we find out that murder is wrong. The argument that a commandment addressed in general terms to fallible subjects must authorise them to act on their possibly mistaken interpretations applies to this basic commandment, interpretation in this case being deciding what is true. We obey the basic commandment, therefore, and do a morally good act, if we act on whatever seems true about what we ought to do - that is, if we do whatever seems right, even if really it is not. Therefore, although it is not true that God has commanded us to impose the truth by force, those who think it is true, and for that reason impose by force what they think is the truth, do a morally good act.
If by "conscience" we mean the self as deciding what it is right to do in a particular case,[85] and if it is enough to do what seems right, then it is enough in each case to follow conscience. "Follow conscience" is simply the basic commandment in other words. As Bayle says, the interior sentiment of conscience, its sense of conviction, the "taste" of truth which it finds in some proposition about what ought to be done, is the distinguishing character or criterion of morally good action.[86] Conscience is not a touchstone of what really is right, of the absolute truth of propositions about what we morally ought to do. Except for mathematical and metaphysical evidence there is no criterion of absolute truth,[87] in particular none of true moral judgements of particular actions.[88] If God required that we act only on absolute truth certainly known as such, we would be reduced to more-than-Pyrrhonian suspense even of practical judgement.[89] Conscience is the touchstone of "relative" truth, of truth "for me",[90] the touchstone for discerning what at the moment of decision I am obliged and authorised to do, given that the commandments are in general terms which I must interpret and apply. "God demands only that we search for truth sincerely and diligently, and that we discern it by the sentiment of conscience, in such a way that if the combination of circumstances prevents us from finding absolute truth, and makes us find the taste of truth in an object which is false, this putative and relative truth should hold for us the place of real truth."[91]
This is not relativism or subjectivism or scepticism, but merely a combination of his doctrine of the basic commandment with fallibilism.[92] The basic commandment is not "Do whatever you believe is right", as if it does not matter what you believe as long as you act on it, but "Do whatever you believe is right". Between these two formulae there can be no practical difference until we realise that our beliefs may not be correct, and even then there can be no practical difference at any given moment: the difference is in behaviour over time. If we realise that some of our beliefs may be false, and that God wants us to act on what is true, then we will try to replace beliefs which merely seem true with beliefs which are true, though we will never be sure we have succeeded. But at the moment of decision we must act on what at that moment seems true. Bayle takes a lenient view of people who refuse to inquire; if they do not believe that it is true that they have a duty to inquire, then in not inquiring they do not disobey the commandment to act on the truth.[93] We must act on what seems true after whatever inquiry (if any) it seems true that we ought to make; but in truth we ought to inquire.[94]
The thesis that a person who obeys an erroneous conscience may do a morally good act therefore does not mean that it is simply right to do whatever you think is right. You have (conditionally - given your belief) a duty to do whatever you think you have a duty to do, but this does not mean that your duties (simply) are whatever you think they are. The duty to obey conscience is really a duty, and the basic duty. If you mistakenly think you have some secondary duty which otherwise you would not have, then to do what you mistakenly think is your duty is - by virtue of the duty to obey conscience, and given your mistake, but not otherwise - really a duty, and you really have the right to do it: but the mistake is still a mistake.
Of the points listed at the beginning of section 2 we have covered 1-4. Usually Bayle says that an act done in error is morally as good as if the error had been truth "if the error is inculpable".[95] But this "if" means "at least if", since in fact he holds (5) that the act is good even if the error is culpable.
The argument for this is by analogy. If a usurper seizes power wrongly, but after that rules well in accordance with the laws God gives rulers, then on judgement day he will be blamed for the usurpation but not in addition for acts of government which would have satisfied the law of God perfectly if he had been the lawful ruler. Similarly, those who culpably fall into error (for example through negligence or self-deception) will be blamed for the error but not for acts which would have been right if the error had been the truth.[96] This seems plausible. If we reject it and say that culpable error does not excuse, and simply blame those who ought to know better as if they do know better, then blame will depend on luck. If a motorist too drunk to know what he is doing happens to kill someone he will be to blame for homicide, but if by good luck he arrives home without an accident he escapes that blame. On Bayle's theory, however, someone who drinks, knowing he may drive under the influence of alcohol and that this may lead to an accident, is very much to blame even if there is no accident, and no more to blame if there is.[97] The moral irrelevance of luck or chance follows from the conception of a moral good. Moral goods and evils are acts of free choice whereas physical goods and evils include whatever is determined by chance - that is, whatever is accidental in relation to the agent's will, whatever depends on any other cause.[98]
Bayle soon passes to point 6, that the dogmatic errors of a heretic may be inculpable: if this is true then point 5 need not be insisted on, since it is not essential to the argument for an end to the persecution of supposedly heretical Christians.[99] The thought behind 5 is also behind much of what he says about 6: someone who thinks under the influence of bad motives is to blame even if by good luck he arrives at the truth, and no more to blame if he does not - the actual truth or falsity of the resulting beliefs is morally irrelevant. The morality of thinking depends on exactly the same principles as determine the morality of acts or omissions of any sort.[100] Let us go into these principles further.[101] Like other activities, thinking is morally good or bad only in so far as it involves free choices, which get their moral value from the reason (motive, intention) for which the choice is made. The motive which should direct our thinking is the firm intention to use all our strength to know (so that we may do) God's will;[102] that is, the motive of thinking, as of all other activities, should be zeal to carry out the basic commandment. Bad motives include love of ease in preference to truth, a spirit of contradiction, jealousy of rivals, vanity attaching us to opinions we have defended publicly.[103] For an act to be blameworthy, however, it is not enough that the motives be bad; we must realise their badness at the time - or at least fail to examine their moral quality because of the influence of motives we do realise are bad. (For example, I might refuse to consider the possibility that my thinking is being influenced by jealousy of a rival, because I wish to continue to think well of myself - and I might realise that this is my motive, and that it is bad.) Morality depends on the objective quality of the motive - "objective" in Descartes's sense: that is, morality depends on the motive as the agent sees it. This is because an act is blameworthy only if it is voluntarily bad - that is, chosen in the belief that the choice is bad. It would be unjust to require repression of motives we do not know we have, or do not know are bad.[104] So we deserve blame not in so far as the motives by which our conduct is actually influenced are actually bad, but only in so far as we know (or believe) at the time that our action is influenced by motives we believe to be bad, that is, in so far as our mental activity is against conscience. Culpability in thinking, as in other activity, thus requires bad motives which cause the act with knowledge of the cause, and with knowledge of its badness - that is, so that we are at the same time conscious of the disorder of the motive.[105] This is simply an application of the principle Arnauld regarded as the basis of the doctrine of philosophic sin (see above, Essay I, sect. 2).
Ignorance or error is excused when it is due to circumstances outside the person's control, or to other inculpable ignorance or error, or to the influence of some other inculpable disposition which makes ignorance or error unavoidable by any free choice. For example, if a motive results from some habitual disposition it is not culpable unless the disposition is due to acts suspected or known when they were done to be bad.[106] Similarly, failure to find out something we could easily find out is not culpable negligence unless we know there may be something to be found out and wilfully refuse to inquire;[107] ignorance of the need to inquire excuses the error. Those who deceive themselves culpably, therefore, must have at least an inkling that the motives which influence them are bad, and fail - because of some motive they realise is not good - to examine their motives more closely.[108] Self-deception or negligence is not culpable, then, even if it results from envy or idleness or other actually wrong motive, except in so far as it results directly or indirectly from conscious choices made in the knowledge that they were bad.[109]
Natural dispositions do not merit praise or blame. For example, the love of what seems true is a disposition without moral value since it is an impulse of nature and not a matter of free choice.[110] We cannot help assenting to all propositions, and only those, which seem true, and error can gain acceptance only under the guise of truth: no one, no matter how wicked, can wilfully believe what seems false.[111] We therefore deserve no moral credit for believing what seems to us to be true, and no blame for disbelieving what seems false. Also by nature, and apart from the effects of original sin, every child is susceptible to education; a young child cannot help receiving as true what it is taught by its parents and other elders.[112] Also by nature - not by universal human nature, but by each person's particular constitution (as modified by education and acquired beliefs) - some people are more or less susceptible than others to this or that kind or item of evidence. A reason which is enough to enlighten one person may not be enough to enlighten another with an equal love of truth, and this is a difference of no moral significance.[113] Finally, it is a merely natural good or evil for the beliefs we arrive at to be actually true or false.[114] So to have been brought up in a true belief, or to have been susceptible to true teaching, or to believe what is actually true, or what seems true, are all natural, not moral perfections, and their opposites are non-moral evils.
How much scope does this leave for moral good or evil in the conduct of thought? Bayle does not ask himself this question, but I suppose he would say that there can be moral good and evil in thinking only because there are degrees of zeal in seeking truth, degrees which are subject in some way to free choice. By nature everyone desires to know the truth, but if the intensity or effectiveness of this desire depends on free choice then people can deserve praise for the degree of zeal they show for discovering the truth (or holding to it if they think they have it), or blame for neglecting it for other ends.[115]
Bayle argues at length that the opinions of the various sects of Christians of his time could result from good or at least innocent motives. A heretic may even be led further into what is actually error by zeal for truth, for example if education leads him to think that truth is to be found in some book or institution where in fact it is not; he is like a zealous messenger misdirected and riding further away from his goal, hurried away precisely by his zeal to arrive at the goal.[116] On the other hand, people may become or remain orthodox because of bad motives, and then they deserve blame just as much as they would if their beliefs were actually false, since being right is morally irrelevant. Given equal zeal for truth, there is no moral superiority in being orthodox.[117]
Many of Bayle's contemporaries would have held that the errors of heretics are culpable, or at least do not excuse resulting acts, because either (1) they are errors of law, or they are always due to sin, either (2) to original sin or (3) to the personal sins of the heretic, or for several of these reasons. To the first reason Bayle replies that it assumes that errors of law cannot be invincible, i.e. involuntary. It will not do to say that one kind of error excuses and the other does not simply because they are errors about different sorts of things. There must be some relation to the fundamental moral idea of free choice. So if an error of law can be involuntary it will be innocent and will excuse just as much as any error of fact and for the same formal reason, namely that it is not the result of free choice.[118] In any case a question of moral and religious law is reducible to a question of fact, namely whether God has revealed a certain proposition.[119] Dogmatic truths do not have the clarity and evidence of mathematical and metaphysical truths.[120] Many dogmatic propositions are related to matters which depend upon God's free choice, so they are contingent truths; there may be good arguments for the various contending dogmas, since they may all represent things God could quite reasonably have done, though as a matter of contingent fact he chose to act one way and not another; and he may not have chosen what seems more probable.[121] The questions which divide Christians are therefore difficult, just as difficult as the questions of fact decided by courts of law, in which, it is generally agreed, error may be involuntary and inculpable.[122]
The second reason given why a heretic's error cannot excuse was that it is always due to sin,[123] to original sin at least. The followers of St Augustine held that error or ignorance may be a penalty justly inflicted on the human race for original sin; that although such error is not itself a sin deserving punishment it does not excuse sins which result from it, since Adam's sin does not reduce God's rights; and that God is therefore entitled to treat us as if we knew what we would have known but for original sin.[124] Bayle answers that it would be unreasonable on God's part not to take account of the effects of original sin since they take place because of laws which he freely chose.[125] And dogmatic errors are not all due to original sin; mostly they are due to human nature as it was originally created, before Adam sinned. Although our souls are infected by original sin it is not true that in everything they act as infected by sin; some of our original nature remains, and is the source of some of what we do and of some of our errors.[126] The union of soul and body, and the consequent confusion and weakness of our reasoning power, especially in childhood, are part of our nature as originally created.[127] Receptivity to what our parents teach is natural, and not due to original sin or to any other sin - or if it is, then the true belief of the orthodox (whichever they are) is also due to sin, since the beliefs of most members of all sects are probably due to education.[128]
The third reason was that a heretic must in every case be led into or kept in error by some personal vice or sin - negligence, pride, temerity or the like. In reply Bayle observes that the Christian sects all agree on the doctrines which come most into conflict with vice - doctrines forbidding revenge, commanding us to love our enemies, live soberly, chastely, humbly and so on. The disagreements are on matters which do not make the yoke of morality heavier or lighter. In fact people seem to be attracted to a religion if it is demanding.[129] Some doctrinal disputes arise because of the difficulty of reconciling certain of God's attributes with one another (for example, his lordship with his equity); different solutions may all be proposed with good motives.[130] As for pride, no one says "God says so, but I know better than God". It cannot be fairly said that members of any sect have too much pride to submit their lights to God; the dispute is not whether what God has revealed is true, but only whether he has revealed this or that.[131] As for self-interest, it is not always the reason why people adopt religious opinions. The French Protestants, Polish Socinians and Jews in every Christian land have persisted in beliefs it would have been in their interest to abandon.[132]
As for prepossession or prejudice, it is true that many people look most favourably on their own side's arguments and think about them most and know them best, and do not give enough consideration to the other side. But this is true of all sects, not only of those who are in fact in the wrong. And it is not true that error is always due to such prejudiced behaviour. Even impartial judges, such as Chinese philosophers might be, would find it difficult to decide the points which divide Christian sects.[133] It is said that no one can remain in error who makes unprejudiced use of the means of information which are at hand. But there is a complicated dispute about what the proper means of information are.[134] In any case it is absurd to suggest that all who have remained in error have (for example) read the bible without prayer and docility, not desiring to find out the truth but seeking confirmation of their prejudices, carefully repressing all truer thoughts which the book suggests.[135]
As for opinionatedness, to refuse to change one's religion even though one has been silenced in argument need not be due to that fault. Someone who is quick-witted, articulate and well prepared may silence someone who is really right but lacks self-confidence or presence of mind.[136] Those who realise this are entitled to hold to their position even though they can give no reasons. Repressing doubts that arise in the mind, or refusing to listen or to investigate, may not show lack of love for truth; it may be due to a conviction that one already has the truth, together with fear of deception by crafty antagonists. This fear is often the result of education, and susceptibility to education is a physical (not moral) defect at most, while the desire to hold fast to what seems to be the truth (which is often what makes the mis-educated refuse to examine) is a "physical" perfection at least, and perhaps a moral perfection.[137]
It may be said that those who fall into error are guilty of temerity, in imprudently affirming what (since it is false) cannot be evident.[138] Descartes's notion of temerity is very exacting; he says that since assent is an act of will error is always voluntary and avoidable. But then, since some errors of fact must surely still excuse, there must be some errors which are voluntary but not culpable, and religious error may be in this category.[139] Descartes's maxim of assenting only to what is clear and distinct does not apply to religious questions; we must affirm and live by whatever religion conscience finds has the "taste" of truth.[140] In deciding religious questions we cannot wait for conclusive evidence.[141] In the questions debated among the Christian sects none of the arguments goes beyond probability and the probabilities are not overwhelmingly in favour of any sect.[142] The fact that assent is voluntary is not enough to show that error in such questions is culpable. Some say that those who are given God's grace will be guided to the right decision, and that only those who follow such guidance escape the guilt of temerity. But we cannot know when grace is leading us, since it is imperceptible, and truths to which it leads us have no mark to distinguish them from beliefs which we wrongly think are due to grace; the influence of grace therefore provides no criterion of non-temerarious decision. We cannot be rationally assured of having the truth except by argument, and grace does not provide arguments - it does not teach Greek or Hebrew, logic or historical fact.[143]
Thus Bayle replies in detail to the objections which might stand in the way of his thesis that there is no correlation between orthodoxy and moral merit, or between heresy and demerit. He does not try to prove that no one's errors are ever blameworthy, merely that there can be no presumption that those who belong to one or other of the Christian sects of his time are to blame for their errors. Some controversies may be simpler, and there may be some opinions which no one can hold without wickedness. Whether the beliefs of one side are more likely to result from some moral fault is a question that needs to be decided (if it needs to be decided) separately for every conflict.
Originally, in the General Critique, Bayle argued that if the true Church has the right or duty to persecute then heretics have it too. The argument of the Philosophical Commentary, as we have seen, moves toward the conclusion that - whether or not the true Church has or claims the right to persecute - those who believe they have it do have it,[144] and have it even if their belief that they do is a culpable error. But he also gives several arguments to show that indeed it is an error, that in truth no one has it.
The first of these I call the reciprocity argument.[145] Suppose that the saying, "Compel them to come in",[146] or some other of Jesus's sayings, was meant as a command to persecute. Then the various Christian sects will feel obliged to persecute non-Christians and one another reciprocally, which will lead to civil wars, rebellions,[147] the exclusion or even extermination of Christians by conscientious infidel rulers,[148] and other evils. Persecution essentially[149] requires acts which would be wrong except that they are supposed to have been commanded to be done in the cause of truth,[150] and Bayle argues that once any exception is made to the ordinary laws of morality the moral boundaries are obliterated altogether.[151] The evils of reciprocal persecution are thus very great. Jesus (if he is God) must have foreseen all these evils and would (if he had given such a command) be chiefly responsible for them.[152] Since God's responsibility for such evils is unthinkable, the supposition that Jesus commanded persecution must be false.
It may be said that only the true Church has been commanded to persecute, and that therefore it alone has the right to do so.[153] But being alone entitled to persecute will not do the true Church any good. Since every sect regards itself as a true Church they will all take the command as addressed to themselves[154] and will in fact persecute, whether they have a right to or not,[155] and the true Church (and everyone else) will be deprived of the protection against persecution which the laws of morality might otherwise have given. Its only defence will be to claim that it is the true Church and call on its persecutors to look into its claim, postponing what they regard as their duty until they have examined all the controversies - which they will reasonably refuse to do. That the true Church (whichever that is) is left with such a weak defence is one of the evils resulting from the alleged command to persecute.[156] Not only will all sects persecute, but (according to the reasoning presented in the earlier sections of this essay) persecution will be their duty and therefore their right, both in the sense that no human being can rightly blame or punish them for it or try to induce them voluntarily not to do it,[157] and in the sense that even in God's sight they do nothing blameworthy or punishable - they will not be condemned for it even on judgement day.[158]
Since persecution may happen even without a command a prohibition is needed. Persecution should be outlawed by treaty between sects,[159] or it should be regarded as contrary to the law of nations.[160] Since persecution always violates some ordinary rule of morality, it is in fact prohibited by the law of nature - God's law, which the Gospel law confirms.[161] Since God must have foreseen and provided against the evils of reciprocal persecution[162] he must have intended the rules of morality as "common principles", binding on all sects alike,[163] including the true Church, and never to be suspended without an explicit command.[164]
With this reciprocity argument there are some difficulties. First, it is meant to show that there is no moral right to persecute, yet Bayle must admit that those who believe they have the duty to persecute have a genuine moral right to do so. This is implied by the arguments presented in the earlier parts of this essay, and Bayle acknowledges the implication in the course of developing the reciprocity argument.[165] In answer to this difficulty he says that the reciprocity argument is a reductio ad absurdum,[166] showing that if (P) God had commanded persecution it would follow (Q) that in persecuting the true Church heretics do a morally good act. But this is not the structure of the reciprocity argument, the premisses used in the derivation of Q do not include P, and Q is not, in Bayle's opinion, absurd but true. The absurdity is that God would be responsible for certain evils, and that would follow whether or not the acts of heretic persecutors are sins. That heretics would do a good act in persecuting the truth follows not from the hypothesis that God has commanded persecution, but from the fact that they believe he has, together with the principles of Bayle's own ethical theory. The true answer to the difficulty is that in Bayle's ethics an act may be morally good, and a person may have a genuine moral right to do it, and yet it may be in truth a wrong act: and a morally virtuous person will want to do, and will want to lead others to do, what is actually right. So, as Bayle says, even if those who persecute do so sincerely and err involuntarily we ought to correct their error, which is the purpose of the reciprocity argument and of his book.[167] The argument is meant to lead persecutors who may not have been to blame for persecuting to see that persecution is wrong, and they will then deserve blame if they persecute knowing that it is wrong. (The point of course is not to make them blameworthy, but to make them stop: if they are sincere they will stop when they realize that persecution is wrong.) While they think that persecution is right no one can rightly try to persuade them not to persecute[168] except by entering into the ocean of theological controversy to show them that their Church is not the true Church. The reciprocity argument avoids those controversies and instead corrects the error about persecution.
A second difficulty is with the "common principles" which the argument is supposed to confirm. In arguing that any exception to ordinary moral rules obliterates moral boundaries altogether, Bayle commits a fallacy. He accepts the rightness of capital punishment and of other acts done by the ruler and his authorised agents for the purpose of repressing crime, acts that would be wrong if done by others or for other purposes; in that sense they are exceptions to the ordinary rules of morality. But to repress crime the ruler may not do just anything: his action is still subject to some moral restrictions. The fallacy is to take the proposition, "That certain things which might be unjust if not done in favour of the true religion (or for some other legitimate purpose) become just if done in its favour", as equivalent to the proposition, "That whatever is done for a legitimate purpose is just".[169] This leads to an exaggeration of the evils following from the supposed command to persecute. It also forces an "all or nothing" choice: either the moral boundaries are obliterated altogether, or nothing is to be done by rulers which would not be just if done by anyone for any purpose. As far as the reciprocity argument goes various intermediate positions are possible. Consider, for example, the rule cuius regio eius religio: this rule would not lead to reciprocal persecution, since it forbids rulers to attempt to impose a religion in another ruler's territory, and authorises none but rulers to enforce any religion. It might be objected that it is pointless to impose different religions in different places, but there may be some secular or even religious point in religious uniformity even if the favoured religion is not enforced as the only one that is true. The cuius regio rule leaves open the question what means may be used, but this is true also of the principle that the ruler may repress crime by means not available to everyone for every purpose.[170] The moral code may forbid some actions as wrong intrinsically and never to be done by anyone for any purpose, and these will of course not be available to rulers for repressing crime, or for imposing religion.
Bayle has another argument which might be used to reinforce the reciprocity argument by forbidding coercion in religious matters by rulers. The argument runs as follows. Anyone not an atheist must regard conscience as the voice of God; to act against one's conscience, therefore, implies hatred of or contempt for God, and to act thus is evil intrinsically, not justifiable under any circumstances. Neither of the two possible sources of the ruler's authority, God and the people, can be supposed to have authorised the ruler to try to make people do an intrinsically evil act: not God, because that would mean that God might confer a power of trying to make someone act in contempt of himself; not the people, because the parties to the social contract cannot be supposed to have given anyone power to make them do anything that implies contempt of God. The ruler therefore can have no right to try to force anyone to act against conscience.[171]
The difficulty with this argument is that conscience cannot literally be forced, it can only be tempted. The body can be forced; but without consent, which on Bayle's account is an interior act of will, there is no action attributable to the person forced; and the will cannot be forced to consent.[172] Force or threat of force to the body may constitute temptation, but it might be argued that those who consent are themselves responsible for what they consent to against conscience. Bayle denounces the tempter as a sharer in the guilt of the hypocrisy and acts against conscience which temptations cause.[173] But some distinctions need to be drawn. Temptation may be directly intended or incidental; it may be strong, or so weak that a reasonably conscientious person would successfully resist it; it may be temptation to do what both parties regard as wrong, or temptation (if that is the right word) to do what the tempter regards as right. A person who directly intends to subject another to strong temptation to do what both regard as wrong clearly does something wrong. But it is impossible to make laws, or even simply to live, without incidentally exposing others to at least weak temptation to do what they may regard as wrong.[174] I believe there is a duty not to tempt people even incidentally, even to actions which they are mistaken in regarding as wrong; but this is merely a prima facie duty.[175] Bayle ought to agree, since he holds (as we will see) that the ruler may enforce certain kinds of laws even against those who believe they have a duty to violate them. So it would seem that, in at least some cases, if the ruler regards the commanded act as right he may rightly exact it even from those who regard it as wrong, if he has a weighty enough reason. What Bayle needs to show is that the reasons in favour of religious uniformity can never be weighty enough.
In Bayle's time there were various theories about the functions of the secular ruler. Some held simply that the ruler should do as much good, of whatever sort, as he can by any available morally permissible means.[176] Others imposed restrictions on ends or means or both. According to some the ruler's proper means is force: only the ruler (or his agents) may use force, and whatever he does (at least as ruler) is done by that means.[177] According to some the only legitimate end of the ruler's acts as ruler is to enforce God's law; or (since only God can "search hearts" and judge inner acts) to enforce outward conformity with it;[178] or to enforce the "second table" of the ten commandments, that is, those provisions of God's law which regulate human intercourse in this world. Others held that the ruler's function is to enforce "political laws" designed to secure peace (and perhaps prosperity) in this world, laws which by coincidence may overlap with God's law, but not to enforce them as being divinely ordained.[179] Some of these options may be combined; thus Locke and others held that the magistrate is restricted to the use of coercive means for "political" ends.
Mostly, Bayle's theory is like Locke’s: the ruler has no concern with conscience or religion or morality as such, but is to use coercive means to enforce "political laws" designed to protect the this-worldly peace and security of society and its members, without concern for conscience.[180] Thus he says that in punishing the murderer whose conscience tells him to kill, the ruler is not obliged to have any regard to conscience; if someone believes he ought to commit murder then morally he is obliged to do so, but the ruler can punish him without taking any account of his moral obligation.[181] Similarly the ruler can coerce without hesitation any religious innovator whose doctrines are destructive of human society.[182] On this theory the argument to show that the ruler must repress persecution is simple: persecution is destructive of peace and security, a violation of the laws which the ruler must enforce without regard to what people believe in conscience they ought to do.[183] Political laws thus include the moral rules which the reciprocity argument reaffirms and shows to be "common" principles ruling out persecution even by the true Church. In enforcing political laws the ruler therefore represses persecution. That the true Church has no special right to persecute, and in general no rights that error does not have, means that the magistrate must prevent persecution even by the Church he regards as true.
However Bayle says various things that are inconsistent with this simple theory. For example, he says that the ruler can act as "nursing father" to what he regards as the true religion - sponsor reformation, act against scandals in clerical life, endow orthodox colleges, supply money and prestige[184] - as long as he does not impose religious unity by force. In justifying the enforcement of political but not religious laws Bayle argues that people's consciences generally support the former but not necessarily the latter,[185] a consideration that would have been irrelevant if conscience were for the ruler simply of no account. He says also that the ruler may punish people for acting against their consciences, even if their conscience is in error, and even if they act in religious matters and without violation of political law, provided he can be sure they do act against conscience.[186]
His various remarks could mostly be harmonised if we attribute to him (as something he held in the back of his mind, not clearly) a more complex theory along the following lines: (1) The ruler is to do as much good of whatever sort as he can by any morally legitimate means. (2) The ruler cannot generally judge people's motives with much assurance.[187] (3) People's consciences generally sanction the rules needed to secure this worldly peace, but (4) otherwise disagree, especially about religion. (5) Moral goods and evils greatly exceed other goods and evils, but (6) not so as to rule out sometimes doing or risking some moral evil for the probability of avoiding much non-moral evil.[188] (7) The greatest (or only) moral evil is to decide to act against one's conscience. From these premisses follow: (8) the ruler should do what can be done without tempting consciences to foster what he regards as the true religion; and (9) he should punish acts of impiety done against conscience, in the few cases (if there are any) in which he can be sure they are such, but (10) otherwise he should inflict punishment only to enforce political laws. Since (10) rests on (2) and (3), which are propositions of contingent fact, it is merely a rule of thumb; the "simple theory" is (10) treated as an independent principle. Notice that on this more complex theory the overlap of political laws with part of God's law need not be mere coincidence, and there is no reason why the ruler should not be said to be enforcing God's law as such in so far as it secures peace in this world (the "second table" of the decalogue). Serving God is one of the sorts of good things the ruler may rightly do.
On this more elaborate theory the argument that the ruler must prevent persecution cannot be simple, since there are people who believe they are obliged to persecute, and on this theory their consciences cannot be simply disregarded. If they could be physically restrained there would be no violation of their consciences, but in practice they must often be restrained by threat. In repressing persecution the ruler may therefore be tempting the consciences of many who believe they have a religious duty to persecute.[189] Bayle does not seem to see any problem. He does not give any argument from the premisses of the more elaborate theory to the conclusion that the ruler must prevent persecution - in arguing that point he writes as if he held simply that the ruler must preserve peace without concern for conscience. If he had taken account of effects on conscience he might have argued that persecution tempts more consciences than the repression of persecution does (which will not always be true). Or he might have argued that incidental temptation is not as bad as direct and intentional temptation, and that tempting persecutors is only a side-effect of the ruler's attempt to preserve peace and protect conscience from direct violation, whereas the persecutor's intention is precisely to induce people to change religion against their consciences. It would follow that the ruler ought to take precautions - even if that may, as a side-effect, tempt some persecutors voluntarily not to do what they think they ought to do - so that no one can subject others to direct temptation to act against their consciences. But this is an argument Bayle does not use.
He does say, however, that the ruler should control persecution as far as possible by means which do not tempt the consciences of those who think they ought to persecute.[190] This is in effect his reply to the common question whether we must tolerate the intolerant: we cannot persecute them, but we must prevent them from persecuting others, and we can take precautions against them.[191] He agreed with many of his Protestant contemporaries that toleration should not extend to atheists or Catholics, as sects dangerous to society.[192] The argument against forcing consciences does not apply to atheists because they do not regard conscience as the voice of God,[193] and they are believed[194] to attack the foundations of peace in this world, which the ruler must defend. As for Catholics, since they do regard conscience as the voice of God their consciences are not to be forced or tempted. But they will persecute others if they can,[195] so precautions must be taken against them.[196] The ruler must repress persecution and need not wait until acts of persecution are actually taking place. He must make sure that Catholics will never get the power to persecute, acting against them not as holding a false religion but as endangering public security.[197] He may prevent seditious preaching, exclude Catholics from public office, and even - if milder measures are not enough - send them into exile (allowing them to take their possessions).[198] But this non- toleration must not become persecution: there must be no attacks on their persons or properties, they must be allowed to practise their religion at least in private and to bring up their children as Catholics, and they must not be forced to attend religious exercises against their consciences.[199] Precautions must as far as possible be managed so as not to tempt their consciences; for example, disqualification from office must apply for life even to those who convert, and to their older children.[200] If we do not take incidental temptation so seriously this may sound like disguised persecution, but Bayle's intention is to protect integrity of conscience.
In his excellent book on Bayle, Walter Rex suggests that in the end Bayle's scepticism destroys his case for toleration. He says that to oppose acts of persecution Bayle at first appealed to the "natural light" as showing with "absolute certainty that such acts were contrary to God's moral law". But in the end "the criterium of natural light has virtually disappeared and the fallible but absolute judgment of conscience has been put in its place". Against the persecutor's claim that his conscience obliges him to persecute, "Bayle is reduced to the mere assertion that persecution is a crime, with very little logic to substantiate it". Although he keeps saying that we must examine our beliefs, "Bayle's statement that there is no way to be certain of having found the truth would appear. . . to undermine completely the doctrine of the necessity of examination"; "There seems to be nothing left but ruins. One wonders if even the idea of tolerance remains".[201]
I do not share this unfavourable assessment. To begin with the last point: the impossibility of being certain does not mean that examination is unnecessary. We may be wrong about some things, and examination may reveal some of our mistakes (though possibly we sometimes change our minds when we should not).[202] And the impossibility of arriving at certainty does not make examination futile. It is reasonable to examine as long as it seems possible that examination may significantly improve our chances of believing what is actually true, even if we will never be sure it is true. Perhaps the natural light is dim but still a light. Bayle's fallibilism therefore does not imply the rejection of examination.
And fallibilism is not scepticism.[203] The ancient sceptics practised suspense of judgement, affirming nothing, since nothing is certain (or even, as it seemed to the Pyrrhonists, more probable than its contrary).[204] Bayle always rejected scepticism, not only in religion but generally, and I think we should take him at his word.[205] In religion it seemed to him essential to reject scepticism because a Christian must not only act on but also affirm the truths of faith, including speculative dogmas, and affirm them as being certain[206] even in the face of insoluble objections from reason.[207] In other practical matters and in speculative philosophy[208] he rejects scepticism also, though outside religion he seems to regard it as a rather harmless error.[209] Having accepted that in religion the truths of faith must be affirmed without conclusive evidence, perhaps he saw no reason to withhold affirmation from probabilities in other matters. The distinction between certainty and probability is no longer important; certainty and "evidence" can be treated as the higher degrees of probability.[210] At all events, while agreeing with the sceptics that all our judgements are fallible, he does not agree with them that wisdom requires that we affirm nothing that may turn out to be false. In all fields we should not only act on but also affirm (though perhaps not as certain, except for the articles of faith) whatever, after due inquiry, seems true.[211]
Since in his later writings he still calls the maxims of reason "evident" even while emphasising that they conflict with one another[212] and with truths of faith, what Bayle says in the first chapter of the Philosophical Commentary perhaps should not be taken to mean that the natural light shows anything with "absolute certainty". In his later writings he says that if scripture clearly teaches something contrary to some apparently evident maxim of reason, then we must believe scripture and reject the maxim as false, at least in that application.[213] This position would allow a possible interpretation of scripture to be rejected because it is not a clear scripture teaching and conflicts with one of the maxims of reason, especially one of the more evident ones; it would not allow the simple argument that scripture cannot mean what it seems to mean (perhaps clearly) because that would contradict some (perhaps less evident) maxim of reason.[214] The argument of the early sections of the Philosophical Commentary is not really inconsistent with this later position. Perhaps he had already worked it out[215] but did not think it necessary to explain more of it than the argument required, or perhaps he worked out the rest later in thinking about the problem of the origin of evil. At any rate, persecution is not a clear teaching of scripture[216] and the moral principles it violates are among the most evident of the maxims of reason. In the earlier sections of the book he does seem to say that there are infallible maxims of morality, mathematics and metaphysics.[217] Perhaps he says this concessively, since his readers probably believed it and their belief did not have to be challenged to argue the points he wanted to make; or perhaps at that time he believed it himself.[218] In any case it is not an essential premiss of his argument. He could have argued that the natural light, though fallible, is still a light, and the only light we have when scripture is unclear; and that therefore the interpretation of an unclear scripture text must not conflict with the more evident maxims of morality even if some of them may actually be false. It seems to me, then, that the development of Bayle's thought did not lead, or need not have led, to a repudiation of the argument of the early sections of the book.
"The fallible but absolute judgment of conscience" does not really take the place of the natural light; the two are complementary. The natural light reveals general principles, conscience judges particular cases.[219] Even if the natural light were infallible we would still have to make judgements of conscience applying the general maxims of natural law to particular cases, and such judgements have always been regarded as fallible.[220] According to Bayle conscience is the touchstone of "truth for me" in practical matters, but this does not mean that I cannot be mistaken about my duties. He says in doing what I mistakenly think is right I may do a good act, but this does not mean that evil may be good or that wrong may be right: it means that in some cases (for example when I do something because I think it is my duty, and in the face of difficulties) the act may deserve praise even though it is in fact contrary to some secondary principle of the moral law.[221] So whether the natural light is infallible or not, the judgement of conscience may be mistaken, and yet "absolute" in the sense that one must act on it; and the act may be good though wrong.
As for the suggestion that his growing scepticism reduces him in the end to the bare assertion that persecution is a crime, it must be said that he has an argument, in fact a number of arguments, to which the truth or falsity of fallibilism can make no difference. Unless people's consciences are often mistaken there will of course be no serious religious conflict, and there would be no practical point to arguments for toleration. But how fallible we are is not a question that affects the validity of any of Bayle's arguments. In my estimation Bayle comes reasonably close to proving his main thesis, that persecution is morally wrong. And he recognizes that this thesis and the propositions that those who mistakenly think they ought to persecute have a moral right to try to do so and that they should nevertheless be forcibly stopped are, all three of them, consistent with one another. His position on the rights of conscience is this: those who do what is actually wrong in obedience to conscience do not deserve blame or punishment and should not be tempted voluntarily not to do what they mistakenly think they ought to do, but their mistake should be combated by argument, and the act should be forcibly prevented if it threatens the rights of others. They have a moral right to try to do the wrong act, their effort to do it against opposition is praiseworthy, but others may have a moral duty to prevent it even while respecting their conscientiousness.
See also Sincerity and Being Right
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