Aldous Huxley - The Devils of Loudun

I have distinguished between demagogues and religionists, on the ground that the latter may sometimes do some good, whereas the former can scarcely, in the very nature of things, do anything but harm. But it must not be imagined that the religious exploiters of herd-intoxication are wholly guiltless. On the contrary, they have been responsible in the past for mischiefs almost as enormous as those brought upon their victims (along with the victims of those victims) by the revolutionary demagogues of our own time. In the course of the last six or seven generations, the power of religious organizations to do evil has, throughout the Western world, considerably declined. Primarily this is due to the astounding progress of applied science and the consequent demand by the masses for compensatory illusions that have an air of being positivistic rather than metaphysical. The demagogues offer such pseudo-positivistic illusions and the churches do not. As the attractiveness of the churches declines, so also does their influence, so do their wealth, their political power and, along with these, their capacity for doing evil on a large scale. Circumstances have now delivered the churchmen from certain of the temptations to which, in earlier centuries, their predecessors almost invariably succumbed. They would be well advised voluntarily to deliver themselves from such temptations as still remain. Conspicuous among these is the temptation to acquire power by pandering to men’s insatiable craving for downward self-transcendence. Deliberately to induce herd-intoxication—even if it is done in the name of religion, even if it is all supposedly “for the good” of the intoxicated—cannot be morally justified.

On the subject of horizontal self-transcendence very little need be said—not because the phenomenon is unimportant (far from it), but because it is too obvious to require analysis and of occurrence too frequent to be readily classifiable.

In order to escape from the horrors of insulated selfhood most men and women choose, most of the time, to go neither up nor down, but sideways. They identify themselves with some cause wider than their own immediate interests, but not degradingly lower and, if higher, higher only within the range of current social values. This horizontal, or nearly horizontal, self-transcendence may be into something as trivial as a hobby, or as precious as married love. It can be brought about through self-identification with any human activity, from running a business to research in nuclear physics, from composing music to collecting stamps, from campaigning for political office to educating children or studying the mating habits of birds. Horizontal self-transcendence is of the utmost importance. Without it, there would be no art, no science, no law, no philosophy, indeed no civilization. And there would also be no war, no odium theologicum or ideologicum , no systematic intolerance, no persecution. These great goods and these enormous evils are the fruits of man’s capacity for total and continuous self-identification with an idea, a feeling, a cause. How can we have the good without the evil, a high civilization without saturation bombing or the extermination of religious and political heretics? The answer is that we cannot have it so long as our self-transcendence remains merely horizontal. When we identify ourselves with an idea or a cause we are in fact worshipping something homemade, something partial and parochial, something that, however noble, is yet all too human. “Patriotism,” as a great patriot concluded on the eve of her execution by her country’s enemies, “is not enough.” Neither is socialism, nor communism, nor capitalism; neither is art, nor science, nor public order, nor any given religion or church. All these are indispensable, but none of them is enough. Civilization demands from the individual devoted self-identification with the highest of human causes. But if this self-identification with what is human is not accompanied by a conscious and consistent effort to achieve upward self-transcendence into the universal life of the Spirit, the goods achieved will always be mingled with counterbalancing evils. “We make,” wrote Pascal, “an idol of truth itself; for truth without charity is not God, but His image and idol, which we must neither love nor worship.” And it is not merely wrong to worship an idol; it is also exceedingly inexpedient. The worship of truth apart from charity—self-identification with science unaccompanied by self-identification with the Ground of all being—results in the kind of situation which now confronts us. Every idol, however exalted, turns out, in the long run, to be a Moloch, hungry for human sacrifice.

In writing this history of Grandier, Surin, Sœur Jeanne and the devils I have made use of the following sources:

Histoire des Diables le Loudun (Amsterdam, 1693). This work, by the Protestant Pastor Aubin, is a very well-documented account of Grandier’s trial and the subsequent possession. The author was an inhabitant of Loudun and acquainted with many of the actors in the diabolic drama.

Urbain Grandier in La Sorcière . By Jules Michelet. The great historian’s essay is brief and inaccurate, but extremely lively.

Urbain Grandier et les Possédées de Loudun . By Dr. Gabriel Legué (Paris, 1880). A very thorough book. The same author’s earlier work, Documents pour servir à l’histoire médicale des possédées de Loudun (Paris, 1876) is also valuable.

Relation . By Fr. Tranquille. First published in 1634. Reprinted in Vol. II of Archives Curieuses de l’ Histoire de France (1838).

The History of the Devils of Loudun . By de Nion. Published at Poitiers in 1634, and printed in translation at Edinburgh, 1887–88. Lauderdale’s account of his visit to Loudun appears as a supplement to this narrative.

Letter . By Thomas Killigrew. Published in the European Magazine (February, 1803).

Bayle’s Historical Dictionary (English edition, 1736). Article on Urbain Grandier.

Sœur Jeanne des Anges, Autobiographie d’une hystérique possédée . Edited, with introduction and notes, by Drs. Gabriel Legué and Gilles de la Tourette (Paris, 1886). This is the only edition of the narrative composed by the Prioress in 1644. The autobiography is followed by numerous letters addressed by Sœur Jeanne to Fr. Saint-Jure, S.J.

Science Expérimentale . By Jean-Joseph Surin (1828). This is a somewhat garbled edition of Surin’s account of his stay at Loudun.

Lettres Spirituelles du P. Jean-Joseph Surin . Edited by L. Michel and F. Cavalléra (Toulouse, 1926). Vol. II contains a reliable text of what the editors call the Autobiography of Surin.

Dialogues Spirituels . By Jean-Joseph Surin (Lyon, 1831).

Le Catéchisme Spirituel . By Jean-Joseph Surin (Lyon, 1856).

Fondements de la Vie Spirituelle . By Jean-Joseph Surin (Paris, 1879).

Questions sur l’Amour de Dieu . By Jean-Joseph Surin. Edited, with valuable introduction, notes and appendices, by A. Pottier and L. Maries (Paris, 1930).

Le Père Louis Lallemant et les grands spirituels de son temps . By Aloys Pottier, S.J. (Paris, 1930. 2 vols.)

La Doctrine Spirituelle du P. Louis Lallemant . By Pierre Champion. First published in 1694. The best modern edition is that of 1924.

Histoire Littéraire du Sentiment Religieux en France . By Henri Brémond (Paris, 1916 and subsequent years). Contains excellent chapters on Lallemant and Surin.

Aldous Huxley was born on 26 July 1894 near Godalming, Surrey. He began writing poetry and short stories in his early twenties, but it was his first novel Crome Yellow (1921), which established his literary reputation. This was swiftly followed by Antic Hay (1923), Those Barren Leaves (1925) and Point Counter Point (1928) – bright, brilliant satires of contemporary society. For most of the 1920s Huxley lived in Italy but in the 1930s he moved to Sanary, near Toulon.