peace, and
making agapae.

All of which shows that there is no singularity, no extravagance, no
superstition which has not passed through the heads of mankind. Happy
the day when these superstitions do not trouble society and make of it a
scene of disorder, hatred and fury! It is better without doubt to pray
God stark naked, than to stain His altars and the public places with
human blood.

_NATURAL LAW_

B: What is natural law?

A: The instinct which makes us feel justice.

B: What do you call just and unjust?

A: What appears such to the entire universe.

B: The universe is composed of many heads. It is said that in Lacedaemon
were applauded thefts for which people in Athens were condemned to the
mines.

A: Abuse of words, logomachy, equivocation; theft could not be committed
at Sparta, when everything was common property. What you call "theft"
was the punishment for avarice.

B: It was forbidden to marry one's sister in Rome. It was allowed among
the Egyptians, the Athenians and even among the Jews, to marry one's
sister on the father's side. It is but with regret that I cite that
wretched little Jewish people, who should assuredly not serve as a rule
for anyone, and who (putting religion aside) was never anything but a
race of ignorant and fanatic brigands. But still, according to their
books, the young Thamar, before being ravished by her brother Amnon,
says to him:--"Nay, my brother, do not thou this folly, but speak unto
the king; for he will not withhold me from thee." (2 Samuel xiii. 12,
13.)

A: Conventional law all that, arbitrary customs, fashions that pass: the
essential remains always. Show me a country where it was honourable to
rob me of the fruit of my toil, to break one's promise, to lie in order
to hurt, to calumniate, to assassinate, to poison, to be ungrateful
towards a benefactor, to beat one's father and one's mother when they
offer you food.

B: Have you forgotten that Jean-Jacques, one of the fathers of the
modern Church, has said that "the first man who dared enclose and
cultivate a piece of land" was the enemy "of the human race," that he
should have been exterminated, and that "the fruits of the earth are for
all, and that the land belongs to none"? Have we not already examined
together this lovely proposition which is so useful to society
(Discourse on Inequality, second part)?

A: Who is this Jean-Jacques? he is certainly not either John the
Baptist, nor John the Ev