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without the intervention of a virgin. They might well be begun, libare, but they could not be consummated without her, litare. Regarding virginity, they had magnificent words, sublime ideas, speculations of great beauty. But digging deeper into the secret conduct of all those celibate people and all those virtuosi of paganism, one discovers (says M. Morin) only disorders, charlatanism, and hypocrisy. To begin with their goddesses, Vesta, the earliest, was represented with a child. Where did she get it? Minerva had before her Erichthonius, an adventure with Vulcan, and temples (as a mother). Diana had her knight Virbius and her Endymion; the pleasure she got in contemplating the latter sleeping says much about her, too much for a virgin. Myrtilus accused the muses of having strong predilections for a certain Megalion and gave these predilections to all the children that he named—name by name. It is perhaps for this reason that abbé Cartaud calls them the girls of Jupiter’s opera. The virgin gods were scarcely worth more than the goddesses, witness Apollo and Mercury.
The priests, not excepting those of Cybelus, did not pass in the world for being folks of particularly regular conduct. Not all the sinful vestals would have been buried alive. For the sake of their philosophers’ honor, M. Morin is silent, and concludes the history of celibacy in this way, such as it was in the cradle, in childhood, in nature’s arms—a condition quite different from the high degree of perfection in which we see it today. This change is not surprising: the latter is the work of grace and the Holy Spirit; the former was merely the imperfect runt of a disordered, depraved, debauched nature—sad castoff of marriage and virginity. See the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions, vol. IV, page 308. Critical history of celibacy.
In absolute terms, all the preceding is merely an analysis of that memoir. We have cut some of its long passages but have scarcely allowed ourselves the liberty of changing a single expression in what we have employed. It will be likewise in what remains of this article: we take nothing upon ourselves, we are content solely to report faithfully not only the opinions but even the speech of the authors and to draw here only on sources approved by all honorable men.7 After having shown what history teaches us about
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celibacy, we are now going to think about that condition with the eyes of philosophy, and display what different writers have thought on the subject.
On celibacy considered in itself: (1) With regard to the human species: If a historian or some traveler gave us a description of a thinking being, perfectly isolated, without superior or equal or inferior, sheltered from everything that might move the passions—in a word, alone in his species—we would say without hesitating that this singular being must be plunged in melancholy; for what consolation could he find in a world that for him would be but a vast solitude? If it were added that despite appearances, he enjoys life, feels the happiness of existence, and finds some felicity within himself, we could then agree that he is not a complete monster, and that relative to himself his constitution is not entirely absurd, but we would never go so far as to say that he is good. Yet if one were insistent, and objected that he is perfect among his kind, and consequently that we are wrong to refuse him the epithet good (for what difference does it make whether he has something or nothing to sort out with others?), then we would have to call a spade a spade and acknowledge that this being is good—if, however, it is possible that he is perfect in himself, without having any relationship, any connection with the world in which he is placed.
But if some system in nature were eventually discovered to which the species of automaton in question could be thought to belong; if links were perceived in his configuration that attached him to beings similar to him; if his configuration indicated a chain of useful creatures that could grow and endure only by the use of faculties received from nature; he would immediately lose the name good with which we have dignified him. For how could this name fit an individual who, by his inaction and his solitude, would be tending so directly toward the ruin of his species? Isn’t the preservation of the species one of the essential duties of the individual? And doesn’t every well-formed, reasoning individual make himself guilty by failing in this duty, unless he is exempted from it by some authority superior to that of nature? See The Essay on merit and virtue.8
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I add, unless he is exempted from it by some authority superior to that of nature, so that it will be very clear that this in no way concerns celibacy consecrated by religion, but only that which imprudence, misanthropy, frivolity, or libertinage cause every day; that in which the two sexes, corrupting each other by means of natural sentiments themselves or needlessly smothering these sentiments within themselves, flee a union bound to make them better in order to live either in distant sterility or in unions that always make them worse. We are not unaware that the one who gave man all his members may dispense him from the use of some of them, or even prohibit this usage and attest that this sacrifice is agreeable to him. We are not denying that there is a certain corporal purity which nature, abandoned to itself, would never have thought of, but which God has judged necessary for a more dignified approach to the holy places that he inhabits and for a more spiritual manner of attending to the ministry of his altars. If we do not find within ourselves the seed of this purity, this is because it is, so to speak, a revealed virtue and one of faith.
On celibacy considered: (2) with regard to society. As we have just demonstrated, the celibacy that religion has not sanctified cannot be contrary to the propagation of the human species without being harmful to society. It harms society by impoverishing it and by corrupting it. By impoverishing it: if it is true, as can scarcely be doubted, that the lion’s share of a state’s wealth consists in the number of subjects;9 that in commerce, the multitude of hands must be counted among the objects of first necessity; and that new citizens—who can’t all be soldiers (because of Europe’s balance of peace) and who can’t wallow in idleness (because of good governance)—would work the land, populate manufactures, or become sailors. By corrupting it: Because it’s a rule drawn from nature, as the illustrious author of The Spirit of the Laws has well noted, that the more you reduce the number of possible marriages, the more you harm those marriages that have already taken place; and that the fewer married people there are, the less fidelity there is in marriage, just as when there are more robbers there are more robberies.10
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The ancients were so familiar with these advantages, and placed such a high price on the natural faculty of marrying and having children, that their laws had provided that this faculty not be taken away. They regarded that deprivation as a certain means of diminishing the resources of a people and increasing debauchery among them. Thus, when one received a bequest on condition of preserving celibacy, when a patron had his emancipated slave swear that he would not marry, the Papinian Law annulled both the condition and the oath among the Romans. They had understood that wherever celibacy had preeminence, there could scarcely be any honor for the married state. Consequently, one encounters among their laws none that contain an express abrogation of the privileges and honors they had accorded to marriage and to the number of children.
On celibacy considered: (3) with regard to Christian society. Since the worship of the gods demands constant attention and purity of body and of a singular soul, most peoples have been inclined to make of the clergy a separate corps. Thus, among the Egyptians, the Jews, and the Persians, there were families dedicated to the service of the divinity and the temples. But they thought not only of removing ecclesiastics from the business and company of the worldly; there were religions in which the decision was to spare them the trouble of a family. It is claimed that such was especially the spirit of Christianity, even at its origin. We are going to offer an abridged exposition of its regular discipline, so the reader can judge for himself.
It must be admitted that the law of celibacy for bishops, priests, and deacons is as old as the church. Nonetheless, there is no written divine law prohibiting the ordaining of married persons as priests, or priests from getting married. Jesus Christ had no precepts about it. In his epistles to Timothy and Titus, what St. Paul says on the continence of bishops and deacons aims solely to prohibit the bishop from having several wives at the same time or