Fanaticism is blind and passionate zeal born of superstitious opinions, causing people to commit ridiculous, unjust, and cruel actions, not only without any shame or remorse, but even with a kind of joy and comfort. fanaticism , therefore, is only superstition put into practice.

The particular causes of fanaticism are to be found:

(1) In the nature of dogmas. If they are contrary to reason, the overthrow sound judgment and subject everything to imagination whose abuses are the greatest of all evils. The Japanese, one of the most spiritual and enlightened people, drown themselves in honor of their favorite god Amida because the absurdities that abound in their religion have disturbed their minds. Obscure dogmas produce a multitude of interpretations thereby creating the dissension of the sects. Truth does not make any fanatics . It is so clear that it hardly allows any contradiction; it so penetrates the mind that the most demented people cannot diminish its enjoyment. As truth existed before us, it maintains itself without us and in spite of us by its evidence. It is therefore not sufficient to say that error has its martyrs, for it has made many more than truth, since each sect and each school can count is own number.

2. In atrocious morals. Some men for whom life is a state of continual danger and torment have to aspire after death either as the end of or as the recompense for their evil ways. But what havoc will not be wrought to society by the person who desires death if he is impelled to inflict as well as to accept it? We can therefore call fanatics all those excessive minds who interpret the maxims of religion to the letter and who rigorously follow the letter, those despotic doctors who choose the most revolting systems, those ruthless casuists who distress nature and who, after having torn your eye out and cut your hand off, also tell you to love completely the thing that tyrannizes you.

3. In the confusion of duties. When capricious ideas have become precepts and slight omissions are called great crimes, the mind succumbs to the multiplicity of its obligations and does not know which one to prefer. It violates the essentials out of respect for trivia. It substitutes contemplation for good works and sacrifices for social virtues. Superstition takes the place of natural law, and fear of sacrilege leads to homicide. We can observe in Japan a sect of worthy dogmatists who settle all questions and cut all Gordian knots with sweeping sabre strokes. These same men, who have no qualms about slitting their own throats, spare the lives of insects in a very pious manner. As soon as barbaric zeal has made a duty of crime, is there anything inhuman not tried by the fanatic? If you add the fears of a misguided conscience to the extreme ferocity of passions, you will soon stifle all the sentiments provided by nature. Will not the man who belittles his own value to the point of treating himself cruelly and who interprets the meaning of penitence as the deprivation and disgust of everything that has been made for man, drive his father with a stick back to the wilderness he had left? Will the man for whom murder is a stroke of eternal luck think twice about sacrificing a person whom he calls the enemy of God and his cult? An Armenian pursuing a Gomarist on the ice falls in to the water. The latter stops and holds out his hand in order to pull the other man out of danger. Right after being helped to safety, he stabs his rescuer. What do you think of this?

4. In the use of slander as a form of punishment, because the loss of one's reputation produces a considerable amount of actual harm as a consequence. The revolutions must be more frequent or the abuses frightful in the countries where this invisible lightning falls and makes a prince hateful to his entire people. But happily only those who are not struck by it live in dread of slander; for a monarch does not always have the weakness, as did Henry II, king of England, or Louis the Debonair, to put up with the punishment of slaves in order to become kings.

5. In the intolerance of one religion in regard to others, or of one sect among several of the same religion, because all hands join forces against the common enemy. Even neutrality is no longer possible when such a powerful group wants to make its authority felt; and whoever is not for it is against it. Now, must there not exist all kinds of strife as a direct result? Peace can only become general and secure by the destruction of the jealous party; for if this branch were to succeed in devastating all the others, it would soon be at war with itself: thus the state of qui vive will cease only later when the new conflicts have been resolved. Intolerance that claims to put an end to this dissension must necessarily increase it. As soon as all men are ordered to have only one correct way of thinking, they become so enthusiastic about their own particular opinions that they would even die to defend them. The consequence of intolerance is that no religion has been made for all men; for one does not permit the presence of scientists, the other kings, another of the wealthy; this one rejects children, that one women; some condemn marriage and some celibacy. the head of a sect concluded from all this that religion was an indescribable composite of the spirit of God and the opinions of men. He added that it was necessary to tolerate all religions in order to have peace in the world. He died on the gallows.

6. In persecution, which arises essentially from intolerance. If misguided zeal has sometimes made persecutors, we must admit that persecution has made even more zealots. How many excessive deeds have these people not committed now against themselves, bravely facing torture, now against their tyrants? For they always take their usual place and never fail to find a reason to run alternately into fires and blood baths.

Fanaticism has done much more harm to the world than impiety. What do impious people claim? To free themselves of a yoke, while fanatics want to extend their chains over all the earth. Infernal zealomania! Have we ever seen sects of unbelievers gather into mobs and march with weapons against the Divinity? Their souls are too weak to spill human blood. Nevertheless some strength is necessary to practice the good life without incentive, hope, or advantage. It is either jealousy or wickedness to trouble these souls in possession of themselves, because they have neither the pretentions nor the means that you have....

But if it were permitted to borrow for a minute, in the interests of humanity, the enthusiastic style, used so many times against it, here is the only prayer that we would offer against the fanatics:

"You who wish the good of all men and the death of none, since You take no pleasure in the death of the wicker, deliver us, not from the ravages of war and earthquakes, which are passing, limited, and moreover inevitable evils, but from the fury of persecutors who invoke our Holy Name Teach them that You hate blood, that the odor of sacrificial meat does not rise up to You, and that it does not have the virtue of dispersing lightning in the air or of making the dew fall form heaven. Enlighten these zealots so that they take care not to confuse holocaust with homicide. Fill them so much with love for themselves that they can forget their fellow man, since their pity is only a destructive virtue. O! where is the man whom You have chosen to be the agent of your vengeance who does not deserve it a hundred times more than the victims he has scarified for you? Make them understand that it is neither reason nor force, but your light and your goodness that lead the soul in your ways; and to bring the hands of man into such domains is to insult your power. When You wanted to form the Universe, did You call them for help? And if it pleases You to introduce me to your banquet, are You not infinite in your wonder? But You do not wish to save us in spite of ourselves. Why do they not imitate the sweetness of your grace, and why do they try to invite me through fear of loving You? Spread the spirit of humanity over the earth as well as that universal benevolence that fills us with veneration for all the beings with whom we share the precious gift of this feeling. All the gold and emerald melted together could never be equal in your eyes to the vow of a sensitive and compassionate heart, still less pay for the horror of a homicide."