Society for the Mutual Education of Women.
RESPONSE TO SATAN
ON THE SUBJECT OF
MR. PROUDHON
BY
THE ARCHANGEL SAINT-MICHEL
How long, O Satan, do you hope to persecute with impunity the
children of the true God? You have assumed every form in order to establish
your empire on the earth; now you believe your power so solidly based that you
dare to reveal yourself by your true name; for it is you who suggested, to a pamphleteer misled by your perfidious inspirations,
the strange thought of signing your work, which he believed his own, with your
accursed name.
It is in
the name of morals that you accuse and slander one of the most generous
defenders of the rights of the people; it is in the name of justice that you uphold
privilege; it is in the name of truth that you propagate error!
It is
because Proudhon comes, like the exterminating angel, to undermine your altars and
cast the anathema on your impious doctrines, it is because he wants to demolish
the temple of iniquity that your adherents have raised to the golden calf, that
you accuse him of insulting and denying God.
But it
is time for the light to comes and dispel the shadows you pour out by design
over the earth to make humanity go astray from the providential way. I come to
unveil your life and your works, and to announce to all that the end of your
reign is near.
Hardly a
few thousand revolutions of the sun of your terrestrial system separate us, O
Satan, from these happy times when you lived among us, angel of light, as
indicated by your original name; (Lucibel), you freely roamed the myriad shining
spheres subject to your direction, where countless phalanges of God’s children
lived happily.
All
children of God, we are all brothers, all equal though different, all free
because we accept providential direction freely and with love;
But you wanted to demonstrate the power of your free will by following an opposite
course; angel of light, you became the spirit of darkness, and
when, after a solemn combat, where you were struck down by me, according to the
will of the Most High, and banished from the heavens where you wanted to reign,
you came to the earth to found your empire, and still struggling against the
law of God, opposed yourself constantly to the regeneration of those that you
have led in revolt and in your fall.
It is by
interpreting in a false and impious manner the holy traditions and the
teachings of Christ, that you have led the human race down the subversive paths
of error and suffering.
It is by
interpreting falsely and in an impious manner the dogmas of the fall, the expiation
and the redemption that you have misled men, fallen and transformed angel, about the path that
they must follow in order to recapture their glorious privileges and arrive at
the happiness for which they have been created.
The fall
is the deviation from the law of love, fraternity and solidarity, from the law
of labor by which every intelligent being must develop and enrich the faculties
with which it is endowed; and you know well that God has put within the human domain
the tree of the science of good and evil, the knowledge of truth and free will,
in order to inspire in them the desire to acquire science and liberty; but he
has warned at the same time that they will die the death if they eat the fruit
of that tree that they have not planted and cultivated, in order to teach them
that no one should possess that which they have not acquired by labor.
But you,
who are the tempter, you still come to lead man astray by persuading him that God
has forbidden him from acquiring science and enjoying his liberty. It is by
inciting him to oppress the holiest half of himself that you giver rise in his
heart to selfishness and the spirit of domination, in order to stifle in him
the seed of divine love and the sentiment of fraternity.
God, in
his infinite foresight, had prepared the way of regeneration. He gave the earth
to man as an instrument of labor, and did not permit it to produce by itself,
without culture, what is necessary to the satisfaction of his needs, in order
to make him understand that he must exercise and develop all the faculties with
which he is endowed in order to acquire knowledge of nature and of the
properties of all beings and all things, and to transform them according to his
needs and desires. By giving man the mission of subjecting all the powers of
nature, of conquering the sovereignty of the terrestrial globe and of
appropriating it by labor, God united all the members of the great human family
by a powerful link of solidarity, for that immense work can only be
accomplished but the entire human race marching in harmony towards a single
goal. It is only when all men will have acquired in their successive transformations
the most complete development of all of their physical, intellectual and moral
faculties, that they will be perfect, that they will be happy. But the work of regeneration
will be incomplete and no one will be happy as long as there is a single
incomplete and suffering being on the globe.
Thus the
law of expiation is the law of solidarity and association, it is the law of
progress. From the childhood of humanity, God has sent, according to the needs
of times and places, prophets and legislators to direct humanity and lead it
towards the providential way.
But you,
Satan, you wanted to reign on earth, as you had wanted to reign in heaven, you
have used every means that you infernal genius suggests in order to substitute your
worship for the worship of the true God; you have inspired false prophets and
tyrants who come to extend the veil of ignorance and superstition over the
eternal truths, and to persuade the people that God has condemned them to live
in suffering; fraternity and holy equality were excluded from the earth by oppressive
and unjust laws, the natural order was overturned, oppressors, false doctors and
idlers were placed in the first ranks, and the laborers, successively slaves,
serfs and proletarians, were relegated to the lowest ranks of society, deprived
of the means to develop all their faculties and reduced to constant struggling against
all the miseries born from a subversive social organization.
But your
greatest crime, O Satan! It is to have accomplished your impious work in the
name of God and to have thus caused his children to doubt his love, his justice,
and his power.
God, the
true God, wants all men to be brothers, equal and free; he created them to be
happy. He dedicated the earth to all the generations, present and future, as a
common good, whose products must nourish all those who inhabit it. And you have
brought forth discord and hatred, inequality and slavery, by establishing property
on the right of the strongest, the chance of birth, and the exploitation of man
by man.
You
accuse Proudhon, that courageous defender of fraternity, because he dared to
say that property is theft.
Isn’t
property, which must be based on an equitable division of the products of labor,
indeed, as you have constituted it, a spoliation of the common good for the
profit of a privileged few? And it is with
gold, torn from the bowels of the
earth by hard-working miners, who only collect,
as the price of their labors, some suffering and misery; it is with gold transformed
into a conventional value that the elect of privilege, led astray themselves by
infernal ruses, think they have a right to acquire what belongs to all.
With
that gold, often acquired by fateful speculations, sources of ruin and misery
for the people, that they, not only that which is necessary for the
satisfaction for the needs of life, but, the pleasures and feasts, which should
be the price of labor, the recompense and the relaxation of the worker, and the
communion of the people with their brothers and with God, by growth and
happiness.
You have
thus reduced humanity to vegetate under the yoke of poverty and ignorance which
produces the corruption; you have put all interests in battle, based all
institutions on war, on privilege, on the exploitation of man by man, and
organized society in a sense opposite to fraternity, equality, liberty and
justice, and, through some false doctors, you name this awful chaos a society
constituted by God!
But it
is you who is the creator-God of that subversive organization; thus, it is of
you that Proudhon has spoken, when he said: God (the God of evil) is
essentially hostile to our nature. That divinity hostile to our nature, it is
you, Satan! You, the prince of darkness, who wants to extinguish the natural
light that the true God makes shine in all souls, and stop the development of
the most noble faculties of man! It is you who forbids science, progress, well-being,
by taking from the most numerous party of humanity the means of exercising and developing
the gifts that God has made to all intelligent beings, by creating them in his
image. God, the true God, wants all to be happy, since he has put in all souls
an ardent aspiration towards happiness and liberty.
But the
moment approaches, Satan! When the mystery of the redemption will be unveiled! When
you will be struck down anew and vanquished by the power of infinite love, when
men will understand that you have falsely interpreted the teachings of Christ.
He has
come to deliver humanity from your yoke and has taught all the renunciation of
all the goods of the earth and the joys of life, as the means of reconciling
all men and making them understand the holy law of solidarity which must
reconnect all the members of humanity in harmony, but which strikes them with
years of disorder; because humanity is like a body which suffers, when a single
one of its members is suffering. Now, it reveals thus, to the elect of fortune and
the powerful of the earth, that all the joys and vanities with which they are
intoxicated, while so great a number of their brothers groan in slavery and affliction,
are false joys and fatal illusions; that all the treasures that they possess are
treasures of iniquity, because no one should appropriate the goods of the earth,
as long as there is a single one of their brothers deprived of necessities.
He exhorted the weak, poor and suffering
not to envy the
deceptive joys and iniquitous treasures of their oppressors, not
to teach them to despise the gifts of God, but finally that they do not become
like those prevaricators of the divine law, by taking by violence what they
possess.
The
privileged and powerful of the earth, inspired and directed by law, want to
persuade the people that the treasure of heaven is promised to those who
suffer, in compensation for the joys of life; but they testify, by their
ambition and their cupidity, by their immoderate thirst for the pleasures and enjoyments
of luxury, that they do not believe in that promise and that they use it as a
lure, to subjugate the people under the yoke of poverty; but the regenerative
torch of social science has
projected its light on your impostures, and the people know now that, to deserve
that heavenly treasure promised to all, they must work constantly to escape
slavery, poverty, ignorance and corruption.
This
treasure from heaven which is the reign of God on earth, the reign of
fraternity and universal harmony, can only be acquired by the most complete
development of all the faculties with which the heavenly father has endowed all
his children, it is promised to all, and all will obtain it, when they
understand that no one can be perfect, which is to say happy, as long as
suffering beings exist.
And the
work of redemption will only be accomplished by reparation and reconciliation.
You have
convinced the elect of fortune that they owe to those disinherited of the goods
of the earth only charity which degrades and withers, but Christ said: If you
want to be perfect, sell your goods and distribute them to the poor. He did not
demand of the rich a small part of their excess, but all that they possessed, to
make them understand that it is not a gift that they make to their brothers,
but a restitution.
And it
is a restitution, because the one who possesses must not forget that his fortune,
however he has acquired it, does not belong to him completely, because he has
not created its source. God alone creates the raw materials and gives man the intelligence
and the faculties necessary to employ them according to his needs; and his will
is that each and all of his children participate in the gifts that he has made
to each and all. In the end man can only acquire and possess with the aid of
the progress that has been accomplished, the education he has received, and the
advantages procured for him by the social organization.
Thus
society should be organized so that all its members can profit from the progress
accomplished, develop all their faculties, and acquire, by labor the right to
possess.
But, in
a society based on privilege where the smallest number possess the earth, the
houses, and all the large industrial exploitations, and refuse the right to
labor to their brothers of the most numerous class, property is a spoliation.
Thus,
Satan!. Proudhon was right to say that property is theft, that charity is a
mystification: charity means love and devotion, and you want to substitute the
alms which humiliate, the hand-outs that the people reject; for it is written
on their flag: Live working or die fighting. He was right to say that the
justice that you have instituted is infamous; it is blind; it is impious, since
it punishes those who take bread to save their children from the horrors of
hunger, and it protects the shameful speculations of those who work the people like
dogs and reduce them to poverty; since it protects the tyrants who oppress those
who only ask to live by laboring. Proudhon, the generous citizen who has had
the courage to protester against the impious doctrine of Malthus and Thiers,
your faith adherents, Proudhon has broken
your throne and overturned your altars. He has shown himself a servant of
the true God by unveiling your iniquities. The time has come, Satan, when your
reign will end. Humanity, tired of suffering, seeks the light, and wants
happiness.
The
privileged themselves begin to understand that you have fooled them, and that
there are no real joys, of certain possession or of security, possible in injustice.
And that
dreadful struggle of hate and envy, of selfishness and fear, will cease when
the sun of truth will rise over all, and as brothers who, encountering each
other in the shadows, battle each other, they will be filled with confusion and
will understand that the temple of Fraternity cannot be founded on bloody bases;
they will enter in the path of reparation.
All the
privileges of sex, race, birth, of caste and fortune will be abolished. They
will recognize that all have the same right to education, to labor, to the joys
of life, to rest and happiness. And knowing that in their successive
transformations, since the origin of the world, they have been by turns
oppressors and oppressed, they will pardon one another. That reconciliation will
be the token of salvation for humanity, and the aurora of the reign of God, of
fraternity and universal harmony.
THE ARCHANGEL SAINT MICHAEL.
[Working translation by Shawn. P. Wilbur]
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