Note 45 — Chapter XII · IF NON-TOL­ERA­TION WAS PART OF THE DI­VINE LAW A­MONG THE JEWS, AND WHETH­ER IT WAS AL­WAYS PUT IN PRAC­TICE.

The death of Agag, king of the Amalekites, may be looked upon as a real sacrifice. Saul had made this prince a prisoner of war, and had admitted him to a capitulation notwithstanding that the priest and the prophet Samuel had charged him to spare no one; saying to him expressly: “Go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”—“And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord at Gilgal.” “The zeal with which this prophet was animated,” says Calmet, “put a sword into his hand on this occasion, to revenge the honor of God, and to confound Saul.” In this melancholy adventure, we have a vow, a priest, and a victim; consequently, it is a real sacrifice. We find from history that most nations, the Chinese excepted, were wont to sacrifice human victims to the Deity; Plutarch says, that this custom prevailed even among the Romans at some certain times. Cæsar in his “Commentaries” tells us that the Germans were going to sacrifice two of his officers, whom he had sent to confer with their king, Ariovistus, had not Cæsar delivered them by beating the German army. I have in another place observed,* that this violation of the laws of nations, and the offering of human victims, which was rendered more horrible by its being done by the hands of their women, seems a little to contradict Tacitus’s panegyric on them in his treatise “De Moribus Germanorum,” which seems rather to have been designed as a satire upon the Roman people, than to praise the Germans, to whom he was an utter stranger. And here we may observe by the way, that Tacitus was fonder of satire than of truth; he labors to throw everything, even the most indifferent actions, into an odious point of light; and his malice pleases us as much as his style, because we are naturally fond of wit and slander. But to return to the subject of human sacrifices. This custom prevailed as much among our forefathers as with * Additions to Gen­e­ral His­tory, part i., of Vol­taire. the Germans; it is the lowest degree of debasement to which human nature can fall when left to herself, and is one of the effects of the weakness of mortal understanding, which reasons thus: We ought to offer to God whatever we have of most pleasing or valuable; there is nothing more valuable than our children; therefore we ought to select the youngest and most beautiful to sacrifice them to the Deity. Philo says that the Canaanites used to offer their children in sacrifice, before God had commanded Abraham, as a trial of his faith, to offer up his only son, Isaac. Sanchoniathon, as quoted by Eusebius, says that the Phœnicians, when threatened with any great danger or distress, offered up the most favorite of their children, and that Ilus sacrificed his son, Jehud, much about the same time that God made the trial of Abraham’s faith. It is very difficult to penetrate into the dark recesses of early antiquity; but it is too melancholy a truth that these horrible sacrifices were almost everywhere in use; and men have laid them aside, only in proportion as they have become civilized. So true is it that civilization is the nurse of humanity.