 Section 15 of Good Sense, by Paul-Henri Thierry, Baron Dolbach, Translator Unknown. Section 15, Parts 150 through 160. 150. Thierry finds religion a weak obstacle to the despair of the people. Priests have ever shown themselves the friends of despotism and the enemies of public liberty. Their trade requires abject and submissive slaves who have never the audacity to reason. In an absolute government, whoever gains an ascendancy over the mind of a weak and stupid prince becomes master of the state. Instead of conducting the people to salvation, priests have always conducted them to servitude. In consideration of the supernatural titles, which religion has forged for the worst of princes, the latter have commonly united with priests, who, sure of governing by opinion the sovereign himself, have undertaken to bind the hands of the people and to hold them under the yoke. But the tyrant, covered with the shield of religion, in vain flatters himself that he is secure from every stroke of fate. Opinion is a weak rampart against the despair of the people. Besides, the priest is a friend of the tyrant only while he finds his account in tyranny. He preaches sedition and demolishes the idol he has made when he finds it no longer sufficiently conformable to the interest of God, whom he makes to speak at his will, and who never speaks except according to his interests. It will no doubt be said that sovereigns, knowing all the advantages which religion procures them, are truly interested in supporting it with all their strength. If religious opinions are useful to tyrants, it is very evident that they are useful to those who govern by the laws of reason and equity. Is there, then, any advantage in exercising tyranny? Are princes truly interested in being tyrants? Does not tyranny deprive them of true power, of the love of the people, and of all safety? Ought not every reasonable prince to perceive that the despot is a madman and an enemy to himself? Should not every enlightened prince beware of flatterers, whose object is to lull him to sleep upon the brink of the precipice which they form beneath him? 151. Religion favors the wickedness of princes. If sass or dodal flatteries succeed in perverting princes and making them tyrants, tyrants on their part necessarily corrupt both the great and the humble. Under an unjust ruler, void of goodness and virtue, who knows no law but his caprice, a nation must necessarily be depraved. Will this ruler wish to have about his person honest, enlightened, and virtuous men? No. He wants none but flatterers, approvers, imitators, slaves, base and servile souls who conform themselves to his inclinations. His court will propagate the contagion of vice among the lower ranks. All will gradually become corrupted in a state whose chief is corrupt. It was long since said that princes seem to command others to do whatever they do themselves. Religion, far from being a restraint upon sovereigns, enables them to indulge without fear or remorse in acts of licentiousness as injurious to themselves as to the nations whom they govern. It is never with impunity that men are deceived. Tell a sovereign that he is a God. He will very soon believe that he owes nothing to anyone. Provided he is feared, he will care very little about being loved. He will observe neither rules nor relations with his subjects nor duties towards them. Tell this prince that he is accountable for his actions to God alone, and he will soon act as if he were accountable to no one. 152. What is an enlightened sovereign? An enlightened sovereign is he who knows his true interests, who knows that they are connected with the interests of his nation, that a prince cannot be great, powerful, beloved, or respected while he commands only unhappy slaves, that equity, beneficence, and vigilance will give him more real authority over his people than the fabulous titles said to be derived from heaven. He will see that religion is useful only to priests, that it is useless to society and often troubles it, and that it ought to be restrained in order to be prevented from doing injury. Finally he will perceive that to reign with glory he must have good laws and inculcate virtue, and not found his power upon impostors and fallacies. 153. Of the prevailing passions and crimes of the priesthood. The ministers of religion have taken great care to make of their God a formidable, capricious, and fickle tyrant. Such a God was necessary to their variable interests. A God who should be just and good without mixture of caprice or perversity, a God who had constantly the qualities of an honest man or of a kind sovereign would by no means suit his ministers. It is useful to priests that men should tremble before their God in order that they may apply to them to obtain relief from their fears. No man is a hero before his valet de chambre. It is not surprising that a God dressed up by his priests so as to be terrible to others should rarely impose upon them or should have but very little influence upon their conduct. Hence, in every country their conduct is very much the same. Under pretext of the glory of their God they everywhere pray upon ignorance, degrade the mind, discourage industry, and so discord. Ambition and avarice have at all times been the ruling passions of the priesthood. The priest everywhere rises superior to sovereigns and laws. We see him everywhere occupied with the interests of his pride, of his cupidity, and of his despotic, revengeful humor. In the room of useful and social virtues he everywhere substitutes expiations, sacrifices, ceremonies, mysterious practices, in a word, inventions lucrative to himself and ruinous to others. The mind is confounded and the reason is amazed upon viewing the ridiculous customs and pitiful means which the ministers of the gods have invented in every country to purify souls and render heaven favourable. Here they cut off part of a child's prepuse to secure for him divine benevolence. There they pour water upon his head to cleanse him of crimes which he could not as yet have committed. In one place they command him to plunge into a river whose waters have the power of washing away all stains. In another he is forbidden to eat certain food, the use of which will not fail to excite the celestial wrath. In other countries they enjoin upon sinful man to come periodically and confess his faults to a priest, who is often a greater sinner than himself, etc., etc., etc. 154. The Quackery of Priests What should we say of a set of emperors who, resorting every day to a public place, should extol the goodness of their remedies and vend them as infallible, while they themselves were full of the infirmities which they pretend to cure? Should we have much confidence in the recipes of these quacks, though they stun us with crying? Take our remedies, their effects are infallible, they cure everybody except us. What should we afterwards think? Should those quacks spend their lives in complaining that their remedies never produced the desired effect upon the sick who take them? In fine what idea should we form of the stupidity of the vulgar, who, notwithstanding these confessions, should not cease to pay dearly for remedies, the inefficacy of which everything tends to prove? Quacks resemble these alchemists, who boldly tell us they have the secret of making gold, while they have scarcely closed to cover their nakedness. The ministers of religion incessantly declaim against the corruption of the age, and loudly complain of the little effect of their lessons, while at the same time they assure us that religion is the universal remedy, the true panacea against the wickedness of mankind. These priests are very sick themselves, yet men continue to frequent their shops and to have faith in their divine antidotes, which, by their own confession, never effect a cure. Religion has corrupted morality and produced innumerable evils. Religion, especially with the moderns, has tried to identify itself with morality, the principles of which it is thereby totally obscured. It has rendered men unsociable by duty, and forced them to be inhuman to everyone who thought differently from themselves. Several disputes, equally unintelligible to each of the enraged parties, have shaken empires, caused revolutions, been fatal to sovereigns, and desolated all Europe. These contemptible quarrels have not been extinguished even in rivers of blood. Since the extinction of paganism, the people have made it a religious principle to become outrageous whenever any opinion is advanced which their priests think contrary to sound doctrine. The sectaries of a religion which preaches in appearance nothing but charity, concord, and peace, have proved themselves more ferocious than cannibals or savages whenever their divines excited them to destroy their brethren. There is no crime which men have not committed under the idea of pleasing the divinity or appeasing his wrath. The idea of a terrible God whom we paint to ourselves as a despot must necessarily render his subjects wicked. Fear makes only slaves, and slaves are cowardly, base, cruel, and think everything lawful in order to gain the favor or escape the chastisements of the master whom they fear. Liberty of thinking alone can give men humanity and greatness of soul. The notion of a tyrant God tends only to make them abject, morose, quarrelsome, intolerant slaves. Every religion which supposes a God easily provoked, jealous, revengeful, punctilious about his rights or the etiquette with which he is treated, a God little enough to be hurt by the opinions which men can form of him, a God unjust enough to require that we have uniform notions of his conduct, a religion which supposes such a God necessarily becomes restless, unsociable, and sanguinary. The worshipers of such a God would never think that they could, without offense, forbear hating and even destroying everyone who is pointed out to them as an adversary of this God. They would think that it would be to betray the cause of their celestial monarch to live in friendly intercourse with rebellious fellow-citizens. If we love what God hates, do we not expose ourselves to his implacable hatred, infamous persecutors and devout men-haters? Will you never discern the folly and injustice of your intolerant disposition? Do you not see that man is no more a master of his religious opinions, his belief or unbelief than of the language which he learns from infancy? To punish a man for his errors, is it not to punish him for having been educated differently from you? If I am an unbeliever, is it possible for me to banish from my mind the reasons that have shaken my faith? If your God gives men leave to be damned, what have you to meddle with? Are you more prudent and wise than this God whose rights you would avenge? 156 Every religion is intolerant. There is no devotee who does not, according to his temperament, hate, despise or pity the adherents of a sect different from his own. The established religion, which is never any other than that of the sovereign and the armies, always makes its superiority felt in a very cruel and injurious manner by the weaker sects. As yet there is no true toleration upon earth, men everywhere adore a jealous God of whom each nation believes itself the friend to the exclusion of all others. Every sect boasts of adoring alone the true God, the universal God, the sovereign of all nature. But when we come to examine this monarch of the world, we find that every society, sect, party, or religious cabal makes of this powerful God only a pitiful sovereign whose care and goodness extend only to a small number of his subjects, who pretend that they alone have the happiness to enjoy his favors and that he is not at all concerned about the others. The founders of religions and the priests who support them evidently propose to separate the nations whom they taught from the other nations. They wish to separate their own flock by distinguishing marks. They gave their followers gods who were hostile to the other gods. They taught them modes of worship, dogmas, and ceremonies apart. And above all they persuaded them that the religion of others was impious and abominable. By this unworthy artifice the ambitious naves established their usurpation over the minds of their followers, rendered them unsociable, and made them regard with an evil eye all persons who had not the same mode of worship and the same ideas as they had. Thus it is that religion has shut up the heart and forever banished from it the affection that man ought to have for his fellow creature. Sociability, indulgence, humanity, those first virtues of all morality, are totally incompatible with religious prejudices. 157. The evils of a state religion. Every national religion is calculated to make man vain, unsociable, and wicked. The first step towards humanity is to permit everyone peaceably to embrace the mode of worship and opinions which he judges to be right. But this conduct cannot be pleasing to the ministers of religion who wish to have the right of tyrannizing over men even in their thoughts. Blind and bigoted princes, you hate and persecute heretics and order them to execution because you are told that these wretches displease God. But do you not say that your God is full of goodness? How then can you expect to please him by acts of barbarity which he must necessarily disapprove? Besides, who has informed you that their opinions displease your God? Your priests? But who assures you that your priests are not themselves deceived or wish to deceive you? The same priests? Princes, it is then upon the hazardous word of your priests that you commit the most atrocious crimes under the idea of pleasing the divinity. 158. Religion legitimates and authorizes crime. Pascal says that man never does evil so fully and cheerfully as when he acts from a false principle of conscience. Nothing is more dangerous than a religion which lets loose the ferocity of the multitude and justifies their blackest crimes. They will set no bounds to their wickedness when they think it authorized by their God whose interests, they are told, can make every action legitimate. Is religion in danger? The most civilized people immediately becomes true savages and think nothing forbidden. The more cruel they are, the more agreeable they suppose they are to their God whose cause they imagine cannot be supported with too much warmth. All religions have authorized innumerable crimes. The Jews, intoxicated with the promises of their God, arrogated the rights of exterminating whole nations. Relying on the oracles of their God, the Romans conquered and ravaged the world. The Arabians, encouraged by their divine prophet, carried fire and sword among the Christians and the idolaters. The Christians, under pretext of extending their holy religion, have often delused both hemispheres in blood. In all events favorable to their own interests, which they always call the cause of God, priests show us the finger of God. According to these principles the devout have the happiness to see the finger of God in revolts, revolutions, massacres, regicides, crimes, prostitutions, horrors, and if these things contribute ever so little to the triumph of religion we are told that God uses all sorts of means to attain his ends. Is anything more capable of effacing every idea of morality from the minds of men than to inform them that their God, so powerful and perfect, is often forced to make use of criminal actions in order to accomplish his designs? 159. The argument that evils attributed to religion are false of men. No sooner do we complain of the extravagancies and evils which religion has so often caused upon the earth than we are reminded that these excesses are not owing to religion, but that they are the sad effects of the passions of men. But I would ask, what has let loose these passions? It is evidently religion. It is zeal that renders men inhuman and serves to conceal the greatest atrocities. Do not these disorders then prove that religion, far from restraining the passions of men, only covers them with a veil which sanctifies them, and that nothing would be more useful than to tear away the sacred veil of which men often make such a terrible use? What horrors would be banished from society if the wicked were deprived of so plausible a pretext for disturbing it? Instead of being angels of peace among men, priests have been demons of discord. They have pretended to receive from heaven the right of being quarrelsome, turbulent, and rebellious. Do not the ministers of the Lord think themselves aggrieved and pretend that the Divine Majesty is offended whenever sovereigns have the temerity to prevent them from doing evil? Priests are like the spiteful woman who cried, Fire! Murder! Assassination! While her husband held her hands to prevent her from striking him. 160. Religion is incompatible with morality. Notwithstanding the bloody tragedies which religion often acts, it is insisted that without religion there can be no morality. If we judge theological opinions by their effects, we may confidently assert that all morality is perfectly incompatible with men's religious opinions. Imitate God! exclaimed the pious. But what would be our morality should we imitate this God? And what God ought we to imitate? The God of the deist? But even this God cannot serve us as a very constant model of goodness. If he is the author of all things, he is the author both of good and evil. If he is the author of order, he is also the author of disorder, which could not take place without his permission. If he produces, he destroys. If he gives life, he takes it away. If he grants abundance, riches, prosperity, and peace, he permits or sends scarcity, poverty, calamities, and wars. How then can we receive as a model of permanent beneficence the God of deism or natural religion whose favorable dispositions are every instant contradicted by all the effects we behold? Morality must have a basis less tottering than the example of a God whose conduct varies and who cannot be called good unless we obstinately shut our eyes against the evil which he causes or permits in this world. Shall we imitate the beneficent mighty Jupiter of heathen antiquity? To imitate such a God is to admit as a model a rebellious son who ravishes the throne from his father. It is to imitate a debauchee, an adulterer, one guilty of incest and of base passions, at whose conduct every reasonable mortal would blush. What would have been the condition of men under paganism had they imagined, like Plato, that virtue consisted in imitating the Gods? Must we imitate the God of the Jews? Shall we find in Jehovah a model for our conduct? This is a truly savage God made for a stupid, cruel, and immoral people. He is always furious, breathes nothing but vengeance, commands carnage, theft, and unsociability. The conduct of this God cannot serve as a model to that of an honest man and can be imitated only by a chief of robbers. Shall we then imitate the Jesus of the Christians? Was this God, who died to appease the implacable fury of his father, furnish us an example which men ought to follow? Alas, we shall see in him only a God, or rather a fanatic, a misanthrope, who himself, plunged in wretchedness and preaching to wretchedness, will advise them to be poor, to combat with and stifle nature, to hate pleasure, seek grief, and detest themselves. He will tell them to leave father, mother, relations, friends, etc., to follow him. Find morality, you say. It is undoubtedly admirable. It must be divine, for it is impracticable to men. But is not such sublime morality calculated to render virtue odious? According to the so much boasted morality of the man-God of the Christians, a disciple of his in this world must be like tantalus, tormented with a burning thirst, which he is not allowed to quench. Does not such morality give us a wonderful idea of the author of nature? If, as we are assured, he has created all things for his creatures, by what strange whim does he forbid them the use of the goods he has created for them? Is pleasure, then, which man continually desires, only a snare, which God has maliciously laid to surprise his weakness? CHAPTER XVI The morality of the gospel is impracticable. The followers of Christ would have us regard as a miracle, the establishment of their religion, which is totally repugnant to nature, opposite to all the propensities of the heart, and inimical to sensual pleasures. But the austerity of a doctrine renders it the more marvelous in the eyes of the vulgar. The same disposition which respects inconceivable mysteries as divine and supernatural, admires, as divine and supernatural, a morality that is impracticable and beyond the powers of man. To admire a system of morality and to put it in practice are two very different things. All Christians admire and extol the morality of the gospel which they do not practice. The whole world is more or less infected with the religious morality founded upon the opinion that to please the divinity it is absolutely necessary to render ourselves unhappy upon earth. In all parts of our globe we see penitents, fake heirs, and fanatics who seem to have profoundly studied the means of tormenting themselves in honor of a being whose goodness all agree in celebrating. Religion by its essence is an enemy to the joy and happiness of men. What are the poor? Blessed are they who weep. Blessed are they who suffer. Misery to those who are in abundance and joy. Such are the rare discoveries announced by Christianity. 162. A society of saints would be impossible. What is a saint in every religion? A man who prays and fasts, who torments himself and shuns the world, who, like an owl, delights only in solitude, abstains from all pleasure, and seems frightened of every object which may divert him from his fanatical meditations. Is this virtue? Is a being of this type kind to himself or useful to others? Would not society be dissolved and man return to a savage state if everyone were full enough to be a saint? It is evident that the literal and rigorous practice of the divine morality of the Christians would prove the infallible ruin of nations. A Christian aiming at perfection ought to free his mind from whatever can divert it from heaven, his true country. Upon earth he sees nothing but temptations, snares, and rocks of perdition. He must fear science as hurtful to faith. He must avoid industry as a means of obtaining riches too fatal to salvation. He must renounce offices and honors as capable of exciting his pride and calling off his attention from the care of his soul. In a word the sublime morality of Christ, were it practicable, would break all the bonds of society. A saint in society is as useless as a saint in the desert. His humor is morose, discontented, and often turbulent. His zeal sometimes obliges him in conscience to trouble society by opinions or dreams which his vanity makes him consider as inspirations from on high. The annals of every religion are full of restless saints, intractable saints, and seditious saints, who have become famous by the ravages with which, for the greater glory of God, they have desolated the universe. If saints who live in retirement are useless, those who live in the world are often very dangerous. The vanity of acting, the desire of appearing illustrious and peculiar in conduct, commonly constitute the distinguishing character of saints. Pride persuades them that they are extraordinary men far above human nature, beings much more perfect than others, favorites whom God regards with much more complacence than the rest of mortals. Humility in a saint is commonly only a more refined pride than that of the generality of men. Nothing but the most ridiculous vanity can induce man to wage continual war against his own nature. 163. Human nature is not depraved. A morality which contradicts the nature of man is not made for man. But, says you, the nature of man is depraved. In what consists this pretended depravity? In having passions? But are not passions essential to man? Is he not obliged to seek, desire, and love what is, or what he thinks is, conducive to his happiness? Is he not forced to fear and avoid what he judges disagreeable or fatal? Feel his passions for useful objects. Connect his welfare with those objects, divert him by sensible and known motives, from what may injure either him or others, and you will make him a reasonable and virtuous being. A man without passions would be equally indifferent to vice and to virtue. Holy doctors, you are always repeating to us that the nature of man is perverted. You exclaim that all flesh has corrupted its way, that all the propensities of nature have become inordinate. In this case you accuse your God, who is either unable or unwilling, that this nature should preserve its primitive perfection. If this nature is corrupted, why has not God repaired it? The Christian immediately assures us that human nature is repaired, but the death of his God has restored its integrity. How then, I would ask, do you pretend that human nature, not withstanding the death of a God, is still depraved? Is then the death of your God wholly fruitless? What becomes of his omnipotence and of his victory over the Devil, if it is true that the Devil still preserves the Empire, which, according to you, he has always exercised in the world? According to Christian theology, death is the wages of sin. This opinion is conformable to that of some negro and savage nations who imagine that the death of a man is always the supernatural effect of the anger of the gods. Christians firmly believe that Christ has delivered them from sin, though they see that in their religion, as in others, man is subject to death. To say that Jesus Christ has delivered us from sin, is it not to say that a judge has pardoned a criminal while we see that he leaves him for execution? 164. Concerning the effect of Jesus Christ's mission. If shedding our eyes upon whatever passes in the world we would credit the partisans of the Christian religion, we should believe that the coming of their divine Savior produced the most wonderful and complete reform in the morals of nations. If we examine the morals of Christian nations, and listen to the clamours of their priests, we shall be forced to conclude that Jesus Christ, their God, preached and died in vain. His omnipotent will still finds in men a resistance over which he cannot or will not triumph. The morality of this divine teacher, which his disciples so much admire and so little practice, is followed in a whole century only by half a dozen obscure saints, and fanatics, and unknown monks, who alone will have the glory of shining in the celestial court while all the rest of mortals, though redeemed by the blood of this God, will be the prey of eternal flames. 165. The remission of sins was invented for the interest of priests. When a man is strongly inclined to sin, he thinks very little about his God. Nay, more, whatever crimes he has committed, he always flatters himself, that this God will soften, in his favour, the rigor of his decrees. No mortal seriously believes that his conduct can damn him. Though he fears a terrible God, who often makes him tremble, yet whenever he is strongly tempted, he yields, and he afterwards sees only the God of mercies, the idea of whom calms his apprehensions. If a man commits evil, he hopes he shall have time to reform and promises to repent at a future day. In religious pharmacy there are infallible prescriptions to quiet consciences. Priests in every country possess sovereign secrets to disarm the anger of heaven. Yet if it be true that the deity is appeased by prayers, offerings, sacrifices, and penances, it can no longer be said that religion is a check to the irregularities of men. They will first sin and then seek the means to appease God. Every religion which expiates crime and promises a remission of them, if it restrains some persons, encourages the majority to commit evil. Notwithstanding his immutability, God, in every religion, is a true proteus. His priests represent him at one time armed with severity, at another full of clemency and mildness, sometimes cruel and unmerciful, and sometimes easily melted by the sorrow and tears of sinners. Consequently, men see the divinity only on the side most conformable to their present interests. A God always angry would discourage his worshippers, or throw them into despair. Men must have a God who is both irritable and placable. If his anger frightens some timorous souls, his clemency encourages the resolutely wicked, who depend upon recurring, sooner or later, to the means of accommodation. If the judgments of God terrify some faint-hearted pious persons, who by constitution and habit are not prone to evil, the treasures of divine mercy encourage the greatest criminals, who have reason to hope they participate therein equally with the others. 1.66 Who fear God? Most men seldom think of God, or at least bestow on him serious attention. The only ideas we can form of him are so devoid of object, and are at the same time so afflicting, that the only imaginations they can arrest are those of melancholy hypochondriacs who do not constitute the majority of the inhabitants of this world. The vulgar have no conception of God. Their weak brains are confused whenever they think of him. The man of business thinks only of his business. The courtier of his intrigues. Men of fashion, women, and young people of their pleasures. Disappation soon effaces in them all the fatiguing notions of religion. The ambitious man, the miser and the debauché, carefully avoids speculations too feeble to counterbalance their various passions. Who is odd by the idea of a God? A few enfeebled men, morose and disgusted with the world. A few in whom the passions are already deadened by age, by infirmity, or by the strokes of fortune. Religion is a check to those alone who, by their state of mind and body, or by fortuitous circumstances, have been already brought to reason. The fear of God hinders from sin only those who are not much inclined to it, or else those who are no longer able to commit it. To tell men that the deity punishes crimes in this world is to advance an assertion which experience every moment contradicts. The worst of men are commonly the arbiters of the world, and are those whom fortune loads with their favors. To refer us to another life, in order to convince us of the judgments of God, is to refer us to conjectures in order to destroy facts which cannot be doubted. 167 Hell is an absurd invention. Nobody thinks of the life to come when he is strongly smitten with the objects he finds here below. In the eyes of a passionate lover the presence of his mistress extinguishes the flames of hell, and her charms efface all the pleasures of paradise. Woman, you leave, say you, your lover for your God. This is either because your lover is no longer the same in your eyes, or because he leaves you. Nothing is more common than to see ambitious, perverse, corrupt, and immoral men who have some ideas of religion, and sometimes appear even zealous for its interest. If they do not practice it at present, they hope to in the future. They lay it up as a remedy which will be necessary to sav the conscience for the evil they intend to commit. Besides the party of devotees and priests being very numerous, active, and powerful, is it not astonishing that rogues and knaves seek its support to attain their ends? It will undoubtedly be said that many honest people are sincerely religious, and that without profit, but is a brightness of heart always accompanied with knowledge? It is urged that many learned men, many men of genius, have been strongly attached to religion. This proves that men of genius may have prejudices, be pusilanimus, and have an imagination which misleads them and prevents them from examining subjects coolly. Pascal proves nothing in favor of religion, unless that a man of genius may be foolish on some subjects, and is but a child when he is weak enough to listen to his prejudices. Pascal himself tells us that the mind may be strong and contracted and large and weak. He previously observes that a man may have a sound mind and not understand every subject equally well, for there are some who having a sound judgment in a certain order of things are bewildered in others. 168. The Bad Foundation of Religious Morals What is virtue according to theology? It is, we are told, the conformity of the actions of man to the will of God. But what is God? A being of whom nobody has the least conception and whom everyone consequently modifies in his own way. What is the will of God? It is what men who have seen God, or whom God has inspired, have declared to be the will of God. Who are those who have seen God? They are either fanatics, or rogues, or ambitious men whom we cannot believe. To found morality upon a God whom every man paints to himself differently, composes in his way, and arranges according to his own temperament and interest, is evidently to found morality upon the caprice and imagination of men. It is to found it upon the whims of a sect, a faction, a party, who believe they have the advantage to adore a true God to the exclusion of all others. To establish morality, or the duties of man upon the divine will, is to found it upon the will, the reveries, and the interests of those who make God speak without ever fearing that he will contradict them. In every religion priests alone have a right to decide what is pleasing or displeasing to their God, and we are certain they will always decide that it is what pleases or displeases themselves. The dogmas, the ceremonies, the morals, and the virtues prescribed by every religion, are visibly calculated only to extend the power or augment the emoluments of the founders and ministers of these religions. The dogmas are obscure, inconceivable, frightful, and are therefore well calculated to bewilder the imagination and to render the vulgar more obsequious to the will of those who wish to domineer over them. The ceremonies and practices procure the priests riches or respect. Religion consists in a submissive faith which prohibits the exercise of reason, in a devout humility which ensures priests the submission of their slaves, in an ardent zeal when religion, that is, when the interest of these priests, is in danger. The only object of all religions is evidently the advantage of its ministers. 169. Christian charity as preached and practiced by theologians. When we approach theologians with the barrenness of their divine virtues, they emphatically extol charity, that tender love of one's neighbor, which Christianity makes an essential duty of its disciples. But alas, what becomes of this pretendent charity when we examine the conduct of the ministers of the Lord? Ask them whether we must love or do good to our neighbor if he be an empious man, a heretic, or an infidel, that is, if he do not think like them. Ask them whether we must tolerate opinions contrary to those of the religion they profess. Ask them whether the sovereign can show indulgence to those who are in error. Their charity instantly disappears and the established clergy will tell you that the prince bears the sword only to support the cause of the most high. They will tell you that through love of our neighbor we must prosecute, imprison, exile, and burn him. You will find no toleration except among a few priests, persecuted themselves, who will lay aside Christian charity the instant they have powered a persecute in their turn. The Christian religion in its origin, preached by beggars and miserable men under the name of charity, strongly recommends alms. The religion of Muhammad also enjoins it as an indispensable duty. Nothing undoubtedly is more conformable to humanity than to sucker the unfortunate to clothe the naked, to extend the hand of beneficence to everyone in distress. But would it not be more humane and charitable to prevent the source of misery and poverty? If religion, instead of deifying princes, had taught them to respect the property of their subjects, to be just, to exercise only their lawful rights, we should not be shocked by the sight of such a multitude of beggars. A rapacious, unjust tyrannical government multiplies misery. Heavy taxes produce discouragement, sloth, and poverty, which in their turn beget robberies, assassinations, and crimes of every description. Had sovereigns more humanity, charity, and equity, their dominions would not be peopled by so many wretches whose misery it becomes impossible to alleviate. Religion and Muhammadan states are full of large hospitals, richly endowed, in which we admire the pious charity of the kings and sultans who erected them. But would it not have been more humane to govern the people justly, to render them happy, to excite and favor industry and commerce, and to let men enjoy in safety the fruit of their labors, than to crush them under a despotic yoke, to impoverish them by foolish wars, to reduce them to beggary in order that luxury may be satisfied, and then to erect splendid buildings which can contain but a very small portion of those who have been rendered miserable? Religion has only deluded men. Instead of preventing evils, it always applies ineffectual remedies. The ministers of heaven have always known how to profit by the calamities of others. Public misery is their element. They have everywhere become administrators of the property of the poor, distributors of alms, depositaries of charitable donations, and thereby they have at all times extended and supported their power over the unhappy, who generally composed the most numerous, restless, and seditious part of society. Thus the greatest evils turn to the profit of the ministers of the Lord. Christian priests tell us that the property they possess is the property of the poor, and that it is therefore sacred. Consequently they have eagerly accumulated lands, revenues, and treasures. Under color of charity spiritual guides have become extremely opulent, and in the face of impoverished nations enjoy wealth which was destined solely for the unfortunate. While the latter, far from murmuring, applaud a pious generosity which enriches the church, but rarely contributes to the relief of the poor, according to the principles of Christianity poverty itself is a virtue. Indeed it is the virtue which sovereigns and priests oblige their slaves to observe most rigorously. With this idea many pious Christians have of their own accord renounced riches, distributed their patrimony among the poor, and retired into deserts, there to live in voluntary indigence. But this enthusiasm, this supernatural taste for misery, has been soon forced to yield to nature. The successors of these volunteers in poverty sold to the devout people their prayers and their intercessions with the deity. They became rich and powerful. Thus monks and hermits lived in indolence and under color of charity impudently devoured the substance of the poor. The species of poverty most esteemed by religion is poverty of mind. The fundamental virtue of every religion most useful to its ministers is faith. It consists an unbounded credulity which admits without inquiry whatever the interpreters of the deity are interested in making men believe. By the aid of this wonderful virtue priests became the arbiters of right and wrong, of good and evil. They could easily cause the commission of crimes to advance their interest. But faith has been the source of the greatest outrages that have been committed. One Seventy Confession Priestcraft's Gold Mine He who first taught nations that when we wrong man we must ask pardon of God, appease him by presence and offer him sacrifices evidently destroyed the true principles of morality. According to such ideas many persons imagine that they may obtain of the king of heaven, as of kings of the earth, permission to be unjust and wicked, or may at least obtain pardon for the evil they may commit. Morality is founded upon the relations, wants, and constant interests of mankind. The relations which subsist between God and men are either perfectly unknown or imaginary. Imagine by associating God with man has wisely weakened or destroyed the bonds which unite them. Morals imagine they may injure one another with impunity by making suitable satisfaction to the Almighty Being who is supposed to have the right of remitting all offenses committed against his creatures. Is anything better calculated to encourage the wicked or harden them in crimes than to persuade them that there exists an invisible being who has a right to forgive acts of injustice, rapine, and outrage committed against society? By these destructive ideas perverse men perpetrate the most horrid crimes and believe they make reparation by imploring divine mercy. Their conscience is at rest when a priest assures them that heaven is disarmed by a repentance, which, though sincere, is very useless to the world. In the mind of a devout man God must be regarded more than his creatures. It is better to obey him than men. The interests of the celestial monarch must prevail over those of weak mortals. But the interests of heaven are obviously those of its ministers, whence it evidently follows that in every religion priests, under pretext of the interests of heaven or the glory of God, can dispense with the duties of human morality when they clash with the duties which God has a right to impose. Besides, must not he who has power to pardon crimes have a right to encourage the commission of crimes? End of Section 16, Recording by Roger Millean. Section 17 of Good Sense, by Paul Henri Thierry Baron Dolbach. Section 17, Parts 171 through 181, 171, supposition of the existence of a God unnecessary to morality. We are perpetually told that without a God there would be no moral obligation, that the people and even the sovereigns require a legislator powerful enough to constrain them. All constraint supposes a law, but this law arises from the eternal and necessary relations of things with one another, relations which have nothing common with the existence of a God. The rules of man's conduct are derived from his own nature which he is capable of knowing and not from the divine nature of which he has no idea. These rules constrain or oblige us, that is, we render ourselves estimable or contemptible, amiable or detestable, worthy of reward or of punishment, happy or unhappy, accordingly as we conform to or deviate from these rules. The law which obliges man not to hurt himself is founded upon the nature of a sensible being who, in whatever way he came into this world, is forced by his actual essence to seek good and shun evil, to love pleasure and fear pain. The law which obliges man not to injure and even to do good to others is founded upon the nature of sensible beings living in society whose essence compels them to despise those who are useless and to detest those who oppose their felicity. Whether there exists a God or not, whether this God has spoken or not, the moral duties of men will always be the same so long as they are sensible beings. Have men, then, need of a God whom they know not, of an invisible legislator, of a mysterious religion and of chimerical fears in order to learn that every excess evidently tends to destroy them, that to preserve health they must be temperate, that to gain the love of others it is necessary to do them good, that to do them evil is a sure means to incur their vengeance and hatred? Before the law there was no sin. Nothing is more false than this maxim. It suffices that man is what he is or that he is a sensible being in order to distinguish what gives him pleasure or displeasure. It suffices that one man knows that another man is a sensible being like himself to perceive what is useful or hurtful to him. It suffices that man needs his fellow creature in order to know that he must fear to excite sentiments unfavorable to himself. Thus the feeling and thinking being has only to feel and think in order to discover what he must do for himself and others. I feel and another feels like me. This is the foundation of all morals. Supernatural morality are fatal to the public welfare. We can judge of the goodness of a system of morals only by its conformity to the nature of man. By this comparison we have a right to reject it, if contrary to the welfare of our species. Whoever has seriously meditated religion, whoever has carefully weighed its advantages and disadvantages will be fully convinced that both are injurious to the interests of man or directly opposite to his nature. To arms the cause of your God is at stake, heaven is outraged, the faith is in danger, impiety, blasphemy, heresy. The magical power of these formidable words, the real value of which the people never understand, have at all times enabled priests to excite revolts, to dethrone kings, to kindle civil wars and to lay waste. If we examine the important objects which have produced so many ravages upon earth it appears that either the foolish reveries and whimsical conjectures of some theologian who did not understand himself or else the pretensions of the clergy have broken every social bond and deluged mankind with blood and tears. 173 The Union of Church and State is a Calamity. The sovereigns of this world, by associating the divinity in the government of their dominions, by proclaiming themselves his vice-gerents and representatives upon earth, and by acknowledging they hold their power from him, have necessarily constituted his ministers their own rivals or masters. Is it then astonishing that priests have often made kings feel the superiority of the celestial monarch? Have they not more than once convinced temporal princes that even the greatest power is compelled to yield to the spiritual power of opinion? Nothing is more difficult than to serve two masters, especially when they are not agreed upon what they require. The association of religion with politics necessarily introduced double legislation. The law of God, interpreted by his priests, was often repugnant to the law of the sovereign or the interest of the state. When princes have firmness and are confident of the love of their subjects, the law of God is sometimes forced to yield to the wise intentions of the temporal sovereign. But generally the sovereign authority is obliged to give way to the divine authority, that is, to the interests of the clergy. Nothing is more dangerous to a prince than to encroach upon the authority of the church, that is, to attempt to reform abuses consecrated by religion. God is never more angry than when we touch the divine rights, privileges, possessions, or immunities of his priests. The metaphysical speculations of religious opinions of men influence their conduct only when they judge them conformable to their interest. Nothing proves this truth more clearly than the conduct of many princes with respect to the spiritual power which they often resist. But not a sovereign persuaded of the importance and rights of religion to believe himself in conscience bound to receive respectfully the orders of its priests and to regard them as the orders of the divinity? There was a time when kings and people, more consistent in their conduct, were convinced of the rights of spiritual power and becoming its slaves yielded to it upon every occasion and were but docile instruments in its hands. That happy time has passed. By a strange inconsistency the most devout monarchs are sometimes seen to oppose the enterprise of those whom they yet regard as the ministers of God. A sovereign, deeply religious, ought to remain prostrate at the feet of his ministers and regard them as true sovereigns. Is there upon earth a power which has a right to put itself in competition with that of the most high? 174. National religions are ruinous. Have princes then who imagine themselves interested in cherishing the prejudices of their subjects seriously reflected upon the effects which have been and may be again produced by certain privileged demagogues who have a right to speak at pleasure and in the name of heaven to inflame the passions of millions of subjects? What ravages would not these sacred harangers cause if they should conspire, as they have so often done, to disturb the tranquility of a state? To most nations nothing is more burdensome and ruinous than the worship of their gods. Not only do the ministers of these gods everywhere constitute the first order in the state, but they also enjoy the largest portion of the goods of society, and have a right to levy permanent taxes upon their fellow citizens. What real advantages, then, do these organs of the most high procure the people for the immense profits extorted from their industry? In exchange for their riches and benefits, what do they give them but mysteries, hypotheses, ceremonies, subtle questions, and endless quarrels, which states are again compelled to pay with blood? 175. Religion paralyzes morality. Religion, though said to be the firmest prop of morality, evidently destroys its true springs in order to substitute imaginary ones, inconceivable chimeras, which, being obviously contrary to reason, nobody firmly believes. All nations declare that they firmly believe in a god who rewards and punishes. All say they are persuaded of the existence of hell and paradise. Yet do these ideas render men better or counteract the most trifling interests? Everyone assures us that he trembles at the judgments of God. Yet everyone follows his passions when he thinks himself sure of escaping the judgments of man. The fear of invisible powers is seldom so strong as the fear of visible ones. Unknown or remote punishments strike the multitude far less forcibly than the sight of the gallows. Few courtiers fear the anger of their gods so much as the displeasure of their master. A pension, a title, or a ribbon, suffices to efface the remembrance both of the torments of hell and of the pleasures of the celestial court. The caresses of a woman repeatedly prevail over the menaces of the most high. A jest, a stroke of ridicule, a witticism make more impression upon the man of the world than all the grave notions of his religion. Are we not assured that a true repentance is enough to appease the deity? Yet we do not see this true repentance is very sincere. At least it is rare to see noted thieves, even at the point of death, restore goods which they have unjustly acquired. Men are undoubtedly persuaded that they shall fit themselves for eternal fire if they cannot insure themselves against it. But some useful compacts may be made with heaven. By giving the church a part of his fortune almost every devout rogue may die in peace without concerning himself in what he gained his riches. One Seventy-Six, Fatal Consequences of Devotion By the confession of the warmest defenders of religion and of its utility nothing is more rare than sincere conversions, and we might add nothing more unprofitable to society. Men are not disgusted with the world until the world is disgusted with them. If the devout have the talent of pleasing God and his priests, they have seldom that of being agreeable or useful to society. To a devotee religion is a veil which covers all passions, pride, ill-humor, anger, revenge, impatience, and ranker. Devotion arrogates a tyrannical superiority which banishes gentleness, indulgence, and gaiety. It authorizes people to censure their neighbors, to reprove and revile the profane for the greater glory of God. It is very common to be devout, and at the same time destitute of every virtue and quality necessary to social life. One Seventy-Seven, The Idea of a Future Life is not consoling to man. It is asserted that the dogma of another life is of the utmost importance to peace and happiness, that without it men would be destitute of motives to do good. What need is there of terrors and fables to make man sensible, how he ought to conduct himself? Does not everyone see that he has the greatest interest in meriting the approbation, esteem, and benevolence of the beings who surround him, and in abstaining from everything by which he may incur the censure, contempt, and resentment of society? However short an entertainment, a conversation, or visit, does not each desire to act his part decently and agreeably to himself and others? If life is but a passage, let us strive to make it easy, which we cannot defect if we fail in regard to those who travel with us. Religion occupied with its gloomy reveries considers man merely as a pilgrim upon earth, and therefore supposes that in order to travel the more securely he must forsake company and deprive himself of pleasure and amusements, which might console him for the tediousness and fatigue of the journey. A stoical and morose philosopher sometimes gives us advice as irrational as that of religion. But a more rational philosophy invites us to spread flowers upon the way of life, to dispel melancholy and banished terrors, to connect our interest with that of our fellow travelers, and by gaiety and lawful pleasures, to divert our attention from difficulties and accidents to which we are often exposed. It teaches us that to travel agreeably we should abstain from what might be injurious to ourselves, and carefully shun what might render us odious to our associates. 178. An atheist is fully as conscientious as a religious man. It is asked what motives an atheist can have to do good. The motive to please himself and his fellow creatures, to live happily and peaceably, to gain the affection and esteem of men. Can he, who fears not the gods, fear anything? He can fear men. He can fear contempt, dishonor, the punishment of the laws. In short, he can fear himself, and the remorse felt by all those who are conscious of having incurred or merited the hatred of their fellow creatures. Conscience is the internal testimony, which we bear to ourselves, of having acted so as to merit the esteem or blame of the beings with whom we live. And it is founded upon the clear knowledge we have of men and of the sentiments which our actions must produce in them. The conscience of the religious man consists in imagining that he has pleased or displead his God, of whom he has no idea, and whose obscure and doubtful intentions are explained to him only by men of doubtful veracity, who, like him, are utterly unacquainted with the essence of the deity, and are little agreed upon what can please or displease him. In a word, the conscience of the credulous is directed by men who have themselves an erroneous conscience, or whose interest stifles knowledge. Can an atheist have a conscience? What are his motives to abstain from hidden vices and secret crimes of which other men are ignorant and which are beyond the reach of laws? He may be assured by constant experience that there is no vice which, by the nature of things, does not punish itself. Would he preserve this life? He will avoid every excess that may impair his health. He will not wish to lead a languishing life which would render him a burden to himself and others. As for secret crimes, he will abstain from them, for fear he shall be forced to blush at himself, from whom he cannot flee. If he has any reason, he will know the value of the esteem which an honest man ought to have for himself. He will see that unforeseen circumstances may unveil the conduct which he feels interested in concealing from others. The other world furnishes no motives for doing good to him who finds none on earth. 179. An atheistical king, far preferable to a religious king. The speculative atheist, says the theist, may be an honest man, but his writings will make political atheists. Princes and ministers no longer restrained by the fear of God will abandon themselves without scruple to the most horrid excesses. But however great the depravity of an atheist upon the throne, can it be stronger and more destructive than that of the many conquerors, tyrants, persecutors, ambitious men, and perverse courtiers who, though not atheists, but often very religious and devout, have not withstanding made humanity groan under the weight of their crimes? Can an atheistical prince do more harm to the world than a Louis XI, a Philip II, a Richelieu, who all united religion with crime? Nothing is more rare than atheistical princes, nothing more common than tyrants and ministers who are very wicked and very religious. 180. Philosophy Produces Morality A man of reflection cannot be incapable of his duties, of discovering the relations subsisting between men, of meditating his own nature, of discerning his own wants, propensities, and desires, and of perceiving what he owes to beings who are necessary to his happiness. These reflections naturally lead him to a knowledge of the morality most essential to social beings. Dangerous passions seldom fall to the lot of a man who loves to commune with himself, to study and to investigate the principles of things. The strongest passion of such a man will be to know truth and his ambition to teach it to others. He cultivates the mind. On the score of morals and honesty has not he who reflects and reasons evidently an advantage over him who makes it a principle never to reason? If ignorance is useful to priests and to the oppressors of mankind, it is fatal to society. Man, void of knowledge, does not enjoy reason. Without reason and knowledge he is a savage liable to commit crimes. Morality, or the science of duties, is acquired only by the study of man and of what is relative to man. He who does not reflect is unacquainted with true morality and walks with precarious steps in the path of virtue. The less men reason the more wicked they are. Savages, princes, nobles and the dregs of the people are commonly the worst of men because they reason the least. The devout man seldom reflects and rarely reasons. He fears all inquiry scrupulously follows authority and often, through an error of conscience, makes it a sacred duty to commit evil. The atheist reasons. He consults experience which he prefers to prejudice. If he reasons justly, his conscience is enlightened. He finds more real motives to do good than the bigot whose only motives are his fallacies and who never listens to reason. Are not the motives of the atheist sufficiently powerful to counteract his passions? Is he blind enough to be unmindful of his true interest which ought to restrain him? But he will be neither worse nor better than the numerous believers who, notwithstanding religion and its sublime precepts, follow a conduct which religion condemns. Is a credulous assassin less to be feared than an assassin who believes nothing? Is a very devout tyrant less tyrannical than an undevout tyrant? 181. Religious opinions have little influence upon conduct. Nothing is more uncommon than to see men consistent. Their opinions never influence their conduct except when conformable to their temperaments, passions, and interests. Daily experience shows that religious opinions produce much evil and little good. They are hurtful because they often favor the passions of tyrants, of ambitious men, of fanatics, and of priests. They are of no effect because incapable of counterbalancing the present interests of the greater part of mankind. Religious principles are of no avail when they act in opposition to ardent desires, though not unbelievers men then conduct themselves as if they believed nothing. We shall always be liable to err when we judge of the opinions of men by their conduct or of their conduct by their opinions. A religious man, notwithstanding the unsociable principles of a sanguinary religion, will sometimes, by a happy inconsistency, be humane, tolerant, and moderate. The principles of his religion do not then agree with the gentleness of his character. Libertines, debauchies, hypocrites, adulterers, and rogues often appear to have the best ideas upon morals. Why do they not reduce them to practice? Because their temperament, their interest, and their habits do not accord with their sublime theories. The rigid principles of Christian morality, which many people regard as divine, have but little influence upon the conduct of those who preach them to others. Do they not daily tell us to do what they preach and not what they practice? The partisans of religion often denote an infidel by the word libertine. It is possible that many unbelievers may have loose morals, which is owing to their temperament and not to their opinions. But how does their conduct affect their opinions? Cannot then an immoral man be a good physician, architect, geometrician, logician, or metaphysician? A man of irreproachable conduct may be extremely deficient in knowledge and reason. In quest of truth it little concerns us from whom it comes. Let us not judge men by their opinions, nor opinions by men. Let us judge men by their conduct and their opinions by their conformity with experience and reason, and by their utility to mankind. 182. Reason leads man to atheism. Every man who reasons soon becomes an unbeliever, for reason shows that theology is nothing but a tissue of chimeras. That religion is contrary to every principle of good sense, that it tinctures all human knowledge with falsity. The sensible man is an unbeliever, because he sees that far from making men happier, religion is the chief source of the greatest disorders and the permanent calamities with which man is afflicted. The man who seeks his own welfare and tranquility examines and throws aside religion, because he thinks it no less troublesome than useless to spend his life in trembling before phantoms fit to impose only upon silly women or children. If licentiousness, which reasons but little, sometimes leads to irreligion, the man of pure morals may have very good motives for examining his religion and banishing it from his mind, religious terrors, too weak to impose upon the wicked in whom vice is deeply rooted, afflict, torment, and overwhelm restless imaginations. Courageous and vigorous minds soon shake off the unsupportable yoke. But those who are weak and timorous languish under it during life, and as they grow old their fears increase. Priests have represented God as so malicious, austere, and terrible a being that most men would cordially wish that there was no God. It is impossible to be happy while always trembling. Ye devout, you adore a terrible God. But you hate him. You would be glad if he did not exist. Can we refrain from desiring the absence or destruction of a master, the idea of whom destroys our happiness? The black colors in which priests paint the divinity are truly shocking, and force us to hate and reject him. 83. Fear alone makes theists. If fear created the gods, fear supports their empire over the minds of mortals. So earlier men accustomed to shudder at the mere name of the deity that they regard him as a specter, a hobgoblin, a bugbear, which torments and deprives them of courage even to wish relief from their fears. They apprehend that the invisible specter will strike them the moment they cease to be afraid. Bigots are too much in fear of their God to love him sincerely. They serve him like slaves, who, unable to escape his power, resolve to flatter their master, and who, by dint of lying, at length persuade themselves that they in some measure love him. They make a virtue of necessity. The love of devotees for their God, and of slaves for their despots, is only a feigned homage. 84. Can we and ought we to love God? Christian divines have represented their gods so terrible and so little worthy of love that several of them have thought they must dispense with loving him. A blasphemy, shocking to other divines who were less ingenious. St. Thomas, having maintained that we are obliged to love God as soon as we attain the use of reason, the Jesuit Sermond answered him, that is very soon. The Jesuit Vasquez assures us that it is enough to love God at the point of death. Hurtado, more rigid, says, we must love God every year. Enriquez is contented that we love him every five years. Sotus, every Sunday. Upon what are these opinions grounded, asks Father Sermon, who adds that Suarez requires us to love God sometimes. But when? He leaves that to us. He knows nothing about it himself. Now, says he, who will be able to know that of which such a learned divine is ignorant. The same Jesuit Sermond further observes that God does not command us to love him with an affectionate love, nor does he promise us salvation upon condition that we give him our hearts. It is enough to obey and love him with an effective love by executing his orders. This is the only love we owe him, and he has not so much commanded us to love him as not to hate him. This doctrine appears heretical, impious, and abominable to the Janzinists, who, by the revolting severity they attribute to their God, make him far less amiable than the Jesuits their adversaries. The latter, to gain adherence, paint God in colors capable of encouraging the most perverse of mortals. Thus nothing is more undecided with the Christians than the important question whether they can, ought, or ought not to love God. Some of their spiritual guides maintain that it is necessary to love him with all one's heart, notwithstanding all his severity. Others, like Father Daniel, think that an act of pure love to God is the most heroic act of Christian virtue, and almost beyond the reach of human weakness. The Jesuit pinterot goes farther. He says, a deliverance from the grievous yoke of loving God is a privilege of the new covenant. One eighty-five. God and religion are proved to be absurdities. The character of the man always decides that of his God everybody makes one for himself and like himself. The man of gaiety, involved in dissipation and pleasure, does not imagine that God can be stern and cross. He wants a good-natured God with whom he can find reconciliation. The man of a rigid, morose, bilious, sour disposition must have a God like himself, a God of terror, and he regards as perverse those who admit a placable indulgent God. As men are constituted, organized, and modified in a manner which cannot be precisely the same, how can they agree about a chimera which exists only in their brains? The cruel and endless disputes between the ministers of the Lord are not such as to attract the confidence of those who impartially consider them. How can we avoid complete infidelity upon viewing principles about which those who teach them to others are never agreed? How can we help doubting the existence of a God of whom it is evident that even his ministers can only form very fluctuating ideas? How can we, in short, avoid totally rejecting a God who is nothing but a shapeless heap of contradictions? How can we refer the matter to the decision of priests who are perpetually at war, treating each other as impious and heretical, defaming and persecuting each other without mercy, for differing in the matter of understanding what they announce to the world? 186 The existence of God has not yet been demonstrated. The existence of a God is the basis of all religion. Nevertheless, this important truth has not as yet been demonstrated. I do not say so to convince unbelievers, but in a manner satisfactory to theologians themselves. Profound thinkers have at all times been occupied in inventing new proofs. What are the fruits of their meditations and arguments? They have left the subject in a worse condition. They have demonstrated nothing. They have almost always excited the clamors of their brethren who have accused them of having poorly defended the best of causes. 187 Priests are more actuated by self-interest than unbelievers. The apologists of religion daily repeat that the passions alone make unbelievers. Pride, they say, and the desire of signalizing themselves make men atheists. They endeavor to efface from their minds the idea of God only because they have reason to fear his terrible judgments. Whatever may be the motives which incline men to atheism, it is our business to examine whether their sentiments are founded in truth. No man acts without motives. Let us first examine the arguments and afterwards the motives. We shall see whether these motives are not legitimate and more rational than those of many credulous bigots who suffer themselves to be guided by masters little worthy of the confidence of men. You say, then, priests of the Lord, that the passions make unbelievers, that they renounce religion only through interest or because it contradicts their inordinate propensities. You assert that they attack your gods only because they fear their severity. But are you yourselves, in defending religion and its chimeras, truly exempt from passions and interests? Who reap advantages from this religion for which priests display so much zeal? Priests! To whom does religion procure power, influence, riches, and honors? To priests! Who wage war in every country against reason, science, truth, and philosophy, and render them odious to sovereigns and people? Priests! Who profit by the ignorance and vain prejudices of men? Priests! Priests, you are rewarded, honored, and paid for deceiving mortals, and you cause those to be punished who undeceive them. The follies of men procure you benefices, offerings, and expiations, while those who announce the most useful truths are rewarded only with chains, gibbets, and funeral piles. Let the world judge between us! 188. Presumption and Badness. More in priests than in atheists. Pride and vanity have been, and ever will be, inherent in the priesthood. Is anything more capable of rendering men haughty and vain than the pretense of exercising a power derived from heaven, of bearing a sacred character, of being the messengers and ministers of the most high? Are not these dispositions perpetually nourished by the credulity of the people, the deference and respect of sovereigns, the immunities, privileges, and distinctions enjoyed by the clergy? In every country the vulgar are much more devoted to their spiritual guides, whom they regard as divine, than to their temporal superiors, whom they consider as no more than ordinary men. The parson of a village acts a much more conspicuous part than the lord of the manor or the justice of the peace. Among the Christians a priest thinks himself far above a king or an emperor. A Spanish grandee having spoken rather haughtily to a monk, the latter arrogantly said, Learn to respect a man who daily has your god in his hands and your queen at his feet. Have priests, then, a right to accuse unbelievers of pride? Are they themselves remarkable for uncommon modesty or profound humility? Is it not evident that the desire of domineering over men is essential to their trade? If the ministers of the lord were truly modest, should we see them so greedy of respect, so impatient of contradiction, so positive in their decisions, and so unmercifully revengeful to those whose opinions offend them? Has not science the modesty to acknowledge how difficult it is to discover truth? What other passion but ungovernable pride can make men so savage, revengeful, and void of indulgence and gentleness? What can be more presumptuous than to arm nations and deluge the world and blood in order to establish or defend futile conjectures? You say that presumption alone makes atheists? Inform them, then, what your god is. Teach them his essence. Speak of him intelligibly. Say something about him which is reasonable and not contradictory or impossible. If you are unable to satisfy them, if hitherto none of you have been able to demonstrate the existence of a god in a clear and convincing manner, if by your own confession his essence is completely veiled from you, as from the rest of mortals, forgive those who cannot admit what they can neither understand nor make consistent with itself, do not tax with presumption and vanity those who are sincere enough to confess their ignorance, do not accuse of folly those who find themselves incapable of believing contradictions, and for once blush at exciting the hatred and fury of sovereigns and people against men who think not like you concerning a being of whom you have no idea? Is anything more rash and extravagant than to reason concerning an object known to be inconceivable? You say that the corruption of the heart produces atheism, that men shake off the yoke of the deity only because they fear his formidable judgments. But why do you paint your god in colors so shocking that he becomes insupportable? Why does so powerful a god permit men to be so corrupt? How can we help endeavoring to shake off the yoke of a tyrant who, able to do as he pleases with men, consents to their perversion, who hardens and blinds them, and refuses them his grace, that he may have the satisfaction to punish them eternally for having been hardened and blinded, and for not having the grace which he refused? Theologians and priests must be very confident of the grace of heaven and a happy futurity to refrain from detesting a master so capricious as the god they announce. A god who damns eternally is the most odious of beings that a human mind can invent. No man upon earth is truly interested in the support of error which is forced sooner or later to yield to truth. The general good must at length open the eyes of mortals. The passions themselves sometimes contribute to break the chains of prejudices. Did not the passions of sovereigns centuries ago annihilate in some countries of Europe the tyrannical power which a too haughty pontiff once exercised over all princes of his sect? In consequence of the progress of political science, the clergy were then stripped of immense riches which credulity had accumulated upon them. Ought not this memorable example to convince priests that prejudices triumph but for a time, and that truth alone can ensure solid happiness? By caressing sovereigns, by fabricating divine rights for them, by deifying them, and by abandoning the people, bound hand and foot to their will, the ministers of the most high must see that they are laboring to make them tyrants. Have they not reason to apprehend that the gigantic idols which they raise to the clouds will one day crush them by their enormous weight? Do not a thousand examples remind them that these tyrants, after preying upon the people, may prey upon them in their turn? We will respect priests when they become sensible men. Let them, if they please, use the authority of heaven to frighten those princes who are continually desolating the earth, but let them no more adjudge to them the horrid right of being unjust with impunity. Let them acknowledge that no man is interested in living under tyranny, and let them teach sovereigns that they themselves are not interested in exercising a despotism which, by rendering them odious, exposes them to danger and detracts from their power and greatness. Finally, let priests and kings become so far enlightened as to acknowledge that no power is secure which is not founded upon truth, reason, and equity. 190. What if priests the apostles of reason? By waging war against reason which they ought to have protected and developed, the ministers of the gods evidently act against their own interest. What power, influence, and respect might they not have gained among the wisest of men? What gratitude would they not have excited in the people if, instead of wasting their time about their vain disputes, they had applied themselves to really useful science, and investigated the true principles of philosophy, government, and morals? Who would dare to reproach a body with its opulence or influence if the members dedicating themselves to the public good employed their leisure and study and exercised their authority in enlightening the minds both of sovereigns and subjects? Priests, forsake your chimeras, your unintelligible dogmas, your contemptible quarrels? Banish those phantoms which could be useful only in the infancy of nations? Assume at length the language of reason. Instead of exciting persecution, instead of entertaining the people with silly disputes, instead of preaching useless and fanatical dogmas, preach human and social morality. Preach virtues really useful to the world? Become the apostles of reason, the defenders of liberty, and the reformers of abuses. End of section 18, recording by Roger Maline.