Tartuffe

I was reading the play Tartuffe and in the preface Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere writes what I think are very profound words...

"I admit there have been times when comedy became corrupt. And what do men not corrupt everyday? There is nothing so innocent that men cannot turn it to crime; nothing so beneficial that its value cannot be reversed; nothing so good in itself that it cannot be put to bad uses...Philosophy is a gift of heaven; it has been given to us to bring us to the knowledge of a God by contemplating the wonders of nature; and yet we know that often it has been turned away from its function and has been used openly in support of impiety. Even the holiest of things are not immune from human corruption, and every day we see scoundrels who use and abuse piety, and wickedly make it serve the greatest of crimes. But this does not prevent one from making the necessary distinctions. We do not confuse in the same false inference the goodness of things that are corrupted with the wickedness of the corrupt..., and I wonder if it is not better to try to correct and moderate men's passions than to try to suppress them altogether."

It amazes me that he wrote this in the 1600's and yet it is still relevant to our world today.

If you have never read Tartuffe I encourage you to do so. It is a great play and very well written. How I would summarize it is in the preface of the play...
"Eight days after Tartuffe had been banned, a play called Scaramouche the Hermit was performed before the court; and the king, on his way out, said to this great prince: 'I should really like to know why the persons who make so much noise about Moliere's comedy do not say a work about Scaramouche.' To which the prince replied, 'It is because the comedy of Scaramouche makes fun of heaven and religion, which these gentlement do not care about at all, but that of Moliere makes fun of them, and that is what they cannot bear."

Hypocrites do not like to be shown there foolishness...