 section 19 of Good Sense by Paul Henri Thierry, Baron Dolbac, Translator Unknown, section 19, parts 191 through 200, 191, if philosophy were substituted for religion. Philosophers have everywhere taken upon themselves apart which seemed destined to the ministers of religion. The hatred of the latter for philosophy was only a jealousy of trade. But instead of endeavoring to injure and decry one another, all men of good sense should unite their efforts to combat error, seek truth, and especially to put to flight the prejudices that are equally injurious to sovereigns and subjects and of which the abetters themselves sooner or later become the victims. In the hands of an enlightened government the priests would become the most useful of the citizens. Already richly paid by the state and free from the care of providing for their own subsistence, how could they be better employed than in qualifying themselves for the instruction of others? Would not their minds be better satisfied with discovering luminous truths than in wandering through the thick darkness of error? Would it be more difficult to discern the clear principles of morality than the imaginary principles of a divine and theological morality? Would men of ordinary capacities find it as difficult to fix in their heads the simple notions of their duties as to load their memories with mysteries, unintelligible words, and obscure definitions of which they can never form a clear idea? What time and pains are lost in learning and teaching things which are not of the least real utility? What resources for the encouragement of the sciences, the advancement of knowledge, and the education of youth well-disposed sovereigns might find in the many monasteries which in several countries live upon the people without in the slightest degree profiting them. But superstition, jealous of its exclusive empire, seems resolved to form only useless beings. To what advantage might we not turn a multitude of Cenobites of both sexes who, in many countries, are amply endowed for doing nothing? Instead of overwhelming them with fasting and austerities, instead of barren contemplations, mechanical prayers, and trifling ceremonies, why should we not excite in them a salutary emulation which may incline them to seek the means, not of being dead to the world, but of being useful to it? Instead of filling the youthful minds of their pupils with fables, sterile dogmas, and purilities, why are not priests obliged or invited to teach them truths and to render them useful citizens of their country? Under the present system men are only useful to the clergy who blind them and to the tyrants who fleece them. 192. Recantation of an unbeliever at the point of death proves nothing. The partisans of credulity often accuse unbelievers of insincerity because they sometimes waver in their principles, alter their minds in sickness, and retract at death. When the body is disordered the faculty of reasoning is commonly disordered with it. At the approach of death man, weak, and decayed, is sometimes himself sensible that reason abandons him and that prejudice returns. There are some diseases which tend to weaken the brain, to create despondency and pusillanimity, and there are others which destroy the body but do not disturb the reason. At any rate an unbeliever who recants in sickness is not more extraordinary than a devotee who neglects in health the duties which his religion explicitly enjoins. Ministers of religion openly contradict in their daily conduct the rigorous principles they teach to others, in consequence of which unbelievers in their turn may justly accuse them of insincerity. Is it easy to find many prelates, humble, generous, void of ambition, enemies of pomp and grandeur, and friends of poverty? In short, is the conduct of Christian ministers conformable to the austere morality of Christ, their God, and their model? 193. It is not true that atheism breaks the bonds of society. Atheism, it is said, breaks all the ties of society. Without the belief of a God, what will become of the sacredness of oaths? How shall we oblige a man to speak the truth who cannot seriously call the deity to witness what he says? But does an oath strengthen our obligation to fulfill the engagements contracted? Will he who is not fearful of lying be less fearful of perjury? He who is base enough to break his word, or unjust enough to violate his engagements, in contempt of the esteem of men, will not be more faithful therein for having called all the gods to witness his oaths? Those who disregard the judgments of men will soon disregard the judgments of God. Are not princes of all men the most ready to swear, and the most ready to violate their oaths? 194. Refudiation of the opinion that religion necessary for the vulgar. The vulgar, it has repeatedly said, must have a religion. If enlightened persons have no need of the restraint of opinion, it is at least necessary to rude men whose reason is uncultivated by education. But is it indeed a fact that religion is a restraint upon the vulgar? Do we see that this religion preserves them from intemperance, drunkenness, brutality, violence, fraud, and every kind of excess? Could a people who have no idea of the deity conduct themselves in a more detestable manner than these believing people among whom we find dissipation and vices the most unworthy of reasonable beings? Upon going out of the churches, do not the working classes and the populace plunge without fear into their ordinary irregularities under the idea that the periodical homage which they render to their God authorizes them to follow without remorse their vicious habits and pernicious propensities? Finally, if the people are so low-minded and unreasonable, is not their stupidity chargeable to the negligence of their princes, who are wholly regardless of public education, or who even oppose the instruction of their subjects? Is not the want of reason and the people evidently the work of the priests who, instead of instructing men in irrational morality, entertain them with fables, reveries, ceremonies, fallacies, and false virtues which they think of the greatest importance? To the people, religion is but a vain display of ceremonies to which they are attached by habit, which entertains their eyes and produces a transient emotion in their torpid understandings without influencing their conduct or reforming their morals. Even by the confession of the ministers of the altars nothing is more rare than that internal and spiritual religion which alone is capable of regulating the life of man and of triumphing over his evil propensities. In the most numerous and devout nation are there many persons who are equally capable of understanding the principles of their religious system and who find them powerful enough to stifle their perverse inclinations? Many persons will say that any restraint whatever is better than none, they will maintain that if religion ows not the greater part, it serves at least to restrain some individuals who would otherwise without remorse abandon themselves to crime. Men ought undoubtedly to have a restraint but not an imaginary one. Religion only frightens those whose imbecility of character has already prevented them from being formidable to their fellow citizens. An equitable government, severe laws, and sound morality have an equal power over all. At least every person must believe in them and perceive the danger of not conforming to them. 195. Logical systems are not adapted to the capacity of the vulgar. Perhaps it will be asked whether atheism can be proper for the multitude. I answer that any system which requires discussion is not made for the multitude. What purpose then can it serve to preach atheism? It may at least serve to convince all those who reason that nothing is more extravagant than to fret oneself and nothing more unjust than to vex others for mere groundless conjectures. As for the vulgar who never reason, the arguments of an atheist are no more fit for them than the systems of a natural philosopher, the observations of an astronomer, the experiments of a chemist, the calculations of a geometrician, the researches of a physician, the plans of an architect, or the pleadings of a lawyer who all labor for the people without their knowledge. Are the metaphysical reasonings and religious disputes, which have so long engrossed the time and attention of so many profound thinkers, better adapted to the generality of men than the reasoning of an atheist? Nay, as the principles of atheism are founded upon plain common sense. Are they not more intelligible than those of a theology beset with difficulties, which even the persons of the greatest genius cannot explain? In every country the people have a religion, the principles of which they are totally ignorant, and which they follow from habit without any examination. Their priests alone are engaged in theology, which is too dense for vulgar heads. If the people should chance to lose this unknown theology, they might easily console themselves for the loss of a thing, not only perfectly useless, but also productive of dangerous commotions. It would be madness to write for the vulgar, or to attempt to cure their prejudices all at once. We write for those only who read and reason. The multitude read but little, and reason still less. Calm and rational persons will require new ideas, and knowledge will be gradually diffused. 196. On the Futility and Danger of Theology If theology is a branch of commerce profitable to theologians, it is evidently not only superfluous, but injurious to the rest of society, self-interest will sooner or later open the eyes of men. Sovereigns and subjects will one day adopt the profound indifference and contempt merited by a feudal system which serves only to make men miserable. All persons will be sensible of the inutility of the many expensive ceremonies which contribute nothing to public felicity. Contemptable quarrels will cease to disturb the tranquility of states when we blush at having considered them important. Instead of parliament meddling with the senseless combats of your clergy, instead of foolishly espousing their impertinent quarrels and attempting to make your subjects adopt uniform opinions, strive to make them happy in this world. Respect their liberty and property. Watch over their education. Encourage them and their labors. Reward their talents and virtues. Repress licentiousness. And do not concern yourselves with their manner of thinking. Theological fables are useful only to tyrants and the ignorant. 197. On the evils produced by implicit faith. Does it then require an extraordinary effort of genius to comprehend that what is above the capacity of man is not made for him? That things supernatural are not made for natural beings? That impenetrable mysteries are not made for limited minds? If theologians are foolish enough to dispute upon objects which they acknowledge to be unintelligible even to themselves, ought society to take any part in their silly quarrels? Must the blood of nations flow to enhance the conjectures of a few infatuated dreamers? If it is difficult to cure theologians of their madness and the people of their prejudices, it is at least easy to prevent the extravagancies of one party and the silliness of the other from producing pernicious effects. Let everyone be permitted to think as he pleases, but never let him be permitted to injure others for their manner of thinking. Were the rulers of nations more just and rational, theological opinions would not affect the public tranquility, more than the disputes of natural philosophers, physicians, grammarians, and critics. It is tyranny which causes theological quarrels to be attended with serious consequences. Those who extol the importance and utility of religion ought to show us its happy effects, the advantages, for instance, which the disputes and abstract speculations of theology can be to porters, artisans, and laborers, and to the multitude of unfortunate women and corrupt servants with which great cities abound. All these beings are religious, they have what is called an implicit faith. Their Parsons believe for them, and they stupidly adhere to the unknown belief of their guides. They go to hear sermons, and would think at a great crime to transgress any of the ordinances to which, in childhood, they are taught to conform. But of what service to morals is all this? None at all. They have not the least idea of morality, and are even guilty of all the roguery, fraud, rapine, and excess that is out of the reach of law. The populace have no idea of their religion. What they call religion is nothing but a blind attachment to unknown opinions and mysterious practices. In fact, to deprive people of religion is to deprive them of nothing. By overthrowing their prejudices, we should only lessen or annihilate the dangerous confidence they put in interested guides, and should teach them to mistrust those who, under the pretext of religion, often lead them into fatal excesses. 198. On the evils produced by implicit faith. While pretending to instruct and enlighten men, religion in reality keeps them in ignorance, and stifles the desire of knowing the most interesting objects. The people have no other rule of conduct than what their priests are pleased to prescribe. Religion supplies the place of everything else. But being in itself essentially obscure, it is more proper to lead mortals astray than to guide them in the path of science and happiness. Religion renders enigmatic all natural philosophy, morality, legislation, and politics. A man blinded by religious prejudices fears truth whenever it clashes with his opinions. He cannot know his own nature. He cannot cultivate his reason. He cannot perform experiments. Everything concurs to render the people devout. But everything tends to prevent them from being humane, reasonable, and virtuous. Religion seems to have no other object than to stupefy the mind. Objects have been ever at war with genius and talent, because well-informed men perceive that superstition shackles the human mind and would keep it in eternal infancy, occupied solely by fables and frightened by phantoms. Incapable of improvement itself, theology opposed insurmountable barriers to the progress of true knowledge, its sole object is to keep nations and their rulers in the most profound ignorance of their duties, and of the real motives that should incline them to do good. It obscures morality, renders its principles arbitrary, and subjects it to the caprice of the gods or of their ministers. It converts the art of governing men into a mysterious tyranny, which is the scourge of nations. It changes princes into unjust, licentious despots, and the people into ignorant slaves who become corrupt in order to merit the favour of their masters. One ninety-nine. All religions were established by impostors in days of ignorance. By tracing the history of the human mind, we shall be easily convinced that theology has cautiously guarded against its progress. It began by giving out fables as sacred truth. It produced poetry, which filled the imagination of men with its purile fictions. It entertained them with its gods and their incredible deeds. In a word, religion has always treated men like children whom it lulled to sleep with tales, which its ministers would have a still regard as incontestable truths. If the ministers of the gods have sometimes made useful discoveries, they have always been careful to give them a dogmatical tone and envelop them in the shades of mystery. Pythagoras and Plato, in order to acquire some trifling knowledge, were obliged to court the favour of priests to be initiated in their mysteries and to undergo whatever trials they were pleased to impose. At this price they were permitted to imbibe those exalted notions, still so bewitching to all those who admire only what is perfectly unintelligible. It was from Egyptian, Indian, and Shaldean priests from the schools of these visionaries, professionally interested in bewildering human reason that philosophy was obliged to borrow its first rudiments. Obscure and faults in its principles, mixed with fictions and fables, and made only to dazzle the imagination, the progress of this philosophy was precarious and its theories unintelligible. Instead of enlightening, it blighted the mind and diverted it from objects truly useful. The theological speculations and mystical reveries of the ancients are still law in a great part of the philosophic world, and being adopted by modern theology it is heresy to abandon them. They tell us of aerial beings of spirits, angels, demons, genii, and other phantoms which are the object of their meditations, and serve as the basis of metaphysics, an abstract and futile science which, for thousands of years, the greatest geniuses have vainly studied. Hypothesis imagined by a few visionaries of Memphis and Babylon, constitute even now the foundations of a science whose obscurity makes it revered as marvelous and divine. The first legislators were priests. The first mythologists, poets, learned men, and physicians were priests. In their hands science became sacred and was withheld from the profane. They spoke only in allegories, emblems, enigmas, and ambiguous oracles. Means well calculated to excite curiosity, and above all to inspire the astonished vulgar with the holy respect for men, who when they were thought to be instructed by the gods and capable of reading in the heavens the fate of the earth, boldly proclaimed themselves the oracles of the deity. 200. All religions borrow from one another ridiculous ceremonies. The religions of ancient priests have only changed form. Although our modern theologians regard their predecessors as imposters, yet they have collected many scattered fragments of their religious systems. In modern religions we find not only their metaphysical dogmas, which theology has merely clothed in a new dress, but also some remarkable remains of their superstitious practices, their magic, and their enchantments. Christians are still commanded to respect the remaining monuments of the legislators, priests, and prophets of the Hebrew religion, which had borrowed its strange practices from Egypt. Thus extravagancies, imagined by knaves or idolatrous visionaries, are still sacred among Christians. If we examine history we shall find a striking resemblance among all religions. In all parts of the earth we see that religious notions periodically depress and elevate the people. The attention of man is everywhere engrossed by rights often abominable, and by mysteries always formidable, which become the sole objects of meditation. The different superstitions borrow from one another their abstract reveries and ceremonies. Religions are in general mere unintelligible rhapsodies, combined by new teachers who use the materials of their predecessors, reserving the right of adding or retrenching whatever is not conformable to the present age. The religion of Egypt was evidently the basis of the religion of Moses, who banished the worship of idols. Moses was merely a schismatic Egyptian. Christianism is only reformed Judaism. Muhammadism is composed of Judaism, Christianity, and the ancient religion of Arabia, etc. End of Section 19, Recording by Roger Maline Section 20 of Good Sense This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline Good Sense by Paul Henri Thierry Baron Dobach Translator Unknown Section 20, Parts 201 through 206 201 Theology has always diverted philosophy from its right path. Theology, from the remotest antiquity to the present time, has had the exclusive privilege of directing philosophy. What assistance has been derived from its labors? It changed philosophy into an unintelligible jargon, calculated to render uncertain the clearest truths. It has converted the art of reasoning into a jargon of words. It has carried the human mind into the airy regions of metaphysics, and there employed it in vainly fathoming and obscure abyss. Instead of physical and simple causes, this transformed philosophy has substituted supernatural, or rather occult, causes. It has explained phenomena difficult to be conceived by agents still more inconceivable. It has filled language with words, void of sense, incapable of accounting for things, better calculated to obscure than enlighten, and which seems invented expressly to discourage man, to guard him against the powers of his mind, to make him mistrust the principles of reason and evidence, and to raise an insurmountable barrier between him and truth. 202 Theology Explains Nothing Were we to believe the partisans of religion, nothing could be explained without it. Nature would be a perpetual enigma, and man would be incapable of understanding himself. But what does this religion in reality explain? The more we examine it, the more we are convinced that its theological notions are fit only to confuse our ideas. They change everything into mystery. They explain difficult things by things that are impossible. Is it a satisfactory explanation of phenomena to attribute them to unknown agents, to invisible powers, to immaterial causes? Does the human mind receive much light by referring to the depths of the treasures of divine wisdom, to which we are repeatedly told it is vain to extend our rash inquiries? Can the divine nature of which we have no conception enable us to conceive the nature of man? Ask a Christian what is the origin of the world? He will answer that God created it. What is God? He cannot tell. What is it to create? He knows not. What is the cause of pestilence, famine, wars, droughts, inundations, and earthquakes? The anger of God. What remedies can be applied to these calamities? Prayers, sacrifices, processions, offerings, and ceremonies are, it is said, the true means of disarming celestial fury, but why is heaven enraged? Because men are wicked. Why are men wicked? Because their nature is corrupt. What is the cause of this corruption? It is, says the theologian, because the first man, beguiled by the first woman, ate an apple which God had forbidden him to touch. Who beguiled this woman into such folly? The devil. Who made the devil? God. But why did God make this devil destined to pervert mankind? This is unknown. It is a mystery which the deity alone is acquainted with. It is now universally acknowledged that the earth turns around the sun. Centuries ago this opinion was blasphemy, as being irreconcilable with the sacred books which every Christian reveres as inspired by the deity himself. Notwithstanding divine revelation, astronomers now depend rather upon evidence than upon the testimony of their inspired books. What is the hidden principle of the motions of the human body? The soul. What is a soul? A spirit. What is a spirit? A substance which has neither form nor color nor extension nor parts. How can we form any idea of such a substance? How can it move a body? That is not known. It is a mystery. Have beasts souls? But do they not act, feel, and think in a manner very similar to man? Mere illusion. By what right do you deprive beasts of a soul which you attribute to man, though you know nothing at all about it? Because the souls of beasts would embarrass our theologians, who are satisfied with the power of terrifying and damning the immaterial souls of men, and are not so much interested in damning those of beasts. Such are the pure solutions which philosophy, always in the leading strings of theology, was obliged to invent in order to explain the problems of the physical and moral world. 203. Theology has always fettered morality and retarded progress. How many evasions have been used, both in ancient and modern times, in order to avoid an engagement with the ministers of the gods, who have never been the tyrants of thought? How many hypotheses and shifts were such men as Descartes, Malabrange, and Leibniz forced to invent, in order to reconcile their discoveries with the fables and mistakes which religion had consecrated? In what guarded phrases have the greatest philosophers expressed themselves, even at the risk of being absurd, inconsistent, or unintelligible, whenever their ideas did not accord with the principles of theology? Priests have been always attentive to extinguished systems which opposed their interest. Theology was ever the bed of procrustes to be adapted to which the limbs of travelers, if too long were cut off and if too short were lengthened. Can any sensible man, delighted with the sciences and attached to the welfare of his fellow creatures, reflect, without vexation and anguish, how many profound, laborious, and subtle brains have been for ages, foolishly occupied in the study of absurdities? What a treasure of knowledge might have been diffused by many celebrated thinkers, if, instead of engaging in the impertinent disputes of vain theology, they had devoted their attention to intelligible objects really important to mankind? Half the efforts which religious opinions have cost genius and half the wealth which frivolous forms of worship have cost nations would have sufficed to instruct them perfectly in morality, politics, natural philosophy, medicine, agriculture, etc. Superstition generally absorbs the attention, admiration, and treasures of the people. Their religion costs them very dear, but they have neither knowledge, virtue, nor happiness for their money. 204. Theology has always fettered morality and retarded progress. Some ancient and modern philosophers have been bold enough to assume experience and reason for their guides and to shake off the chains of superstition. Democrates, Epicurus, and other Greeks presume to tear away the veil of prejudice and to deliver philosophy from theological shackles, but their systems, too simple, too sensible, and too free from the marvelous for imaginations enamored with chimeras, were obliged to yield to the fabulous conjectures of such men as Plato and Socrates. Among the moderns, Hobbes, Spinoza, Bale, etc., have followed the steps of Epicurus, but their doctrine has found very few followers in a world still intoxicated with fables to listen to reason. In every age it has been dangerous to depart from prejudices. Discoveries of every kind have been prohibited. All that enlightened men could do was to speak ambiguously, hence they often confounded falsehood with truth. Several had a double doctrine, one public and the other secret. The key of the latter being lost, their true sentiments, have often become unintelligible and consequently useless. How could modern philosophers, who under pain of cruel persecution, were commanded to renounce reason and to subject it to faith, that is, to the authority of priests? How, I say, could men thus bound give free scope to their genius, improve reason, and accelerate the progress of the human mind? It was with fear and trembling that even the greatest men obtained a glimpse of truth, rarely had they the courage to announce it, and those who did were terribly punished. With religion it has ever been unlawful to think, or to combat the prejudices of which man is everywhere the victim and the dupe. 205. Religion is an extravagance and a calamity. Every man sufficiently intrepid to announce truths to the world is sure of incurring the hatred of the ministers of religion who loudly call to their aid secular powers and want the assistance of laws to support both their arguments and their gods. Their clamors expose too evidently the weakness of their cause. None call for aid but those who feel distressed. In religion man is not permitted to err. In general those who err are pitied, and some kindness is shown to persons who discover new truths. But when religion is thought to be interested either in the errors or the discoveries, a holy zeal is kindled, the populace become frantic, and nations are in an uproar. Can anything be more afflicting than to see public and private felicity, depending upon a feudal system which is destitute if principles, founded only on a distempered imagination, and incapable of presenting anything but words void of sense? In what consists the so much boasted utility of a religion which nobody can comprehend, which continually torments those who are weak enough to meddle with it, which is incapable of rendering men better, and which often makes them consider it meritorious to be unjust and wicked? Is there a folly more deplorable and more justly to be combated than that which far from doing any service to the human race only makes them blind, delirious, and miserable by depriving them of truth, the sole cure for their wretchedness? 206 Religion prevents us from seeing the true causes of misfortunes. Religion has ever filled the mind of man with darkness and kept him in ignorance of his real duties and true interests. It is only by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of religion that we shall discover truth, reason, and morality. Religion diverts us from the causes of evils, and from the remedies which nature prescribes. Far from curing it only aggravates, multiplies, and perpetuates them. Let us observe with the celebrated Lord Bolingbroke that theology is the box of Pandora, and if it is impossible to shut it, it is at least useful to inform men that this fatal box is open. The End End of Section 20, Recording by Roger Moline End of Good Sense Without God or Free Thoughts Opposed to Supernatural Ideas by Paul Henri Thierry Baron Dobach Translator Unknown