 Section 11 of Good Sense by Paul Henri Thierry, Baron Dolbach. Translator Unknown. Section 11, Parts 110-121 Religion, a system to reconcile contradictions by mysteries. Theology might justly be defined the science of contradictions. Every religion is only a system invented to reconcile irreconcilable notions. By the aid of habit and terror man becomes obstinate in the greatest absurdities even after they are exposed in the clearest manner. All religions are easily combated but with difficulty extirpated. Reason avails nothing against custom which becomes, says the proverb, a second nature. Many persons, in other respects sensible, even after having examined the rotten foundation of their belief, adhere to it in contempt of the most striking arguments. Whenever we complain of religion, its shocking absurdities and impossibilities we are told that we are not made to understand the truths of religion. That reason goes astray and is capable of leading us to perdition and, moreover, that what is folly in the eyes of man is wisdom in the eyes of God to whom nothing is impossible. In short, to surmount by a single word the most insurmountable difficulties presented on all sides by theology they get rid of them by saying these are mysteries. 111. Absurdity of all mysteries invented for the interests of priests. What is a mystery? By examining the thing closely I soon perceive that a mystery is nothing but a contradiction, a palpable absurdity, a manifest impossibility over which theologians would oblige men humbly to shut their eyes. In a word a mystery is whatever our spiritual guides cannot explain. It is profitable to the ministers of religion that people understand nothing of what they teach. It is impossible to examine what we do not comprehend when we do not see we must suffer ourselves to be led. If religion were clear priests would find less business. Without mysteries there can be no religion. Mystery is essential to it. A religion void of mysteries would be a contradiction in terms. The God who serves as the foundation of natural religion, or deism, is himself the greatest of mysteries. 112. Absurdity of all mysteries invented for the interests of priests. Every revealed religion is filled with mysterious dogmas, unintelligible principles, incredible wonders, astonishing recitals which appear to have been invented solely to confound reason. Every religion announces a hidden God whose essence is a mystery. Consequently the conduct ascribed to him is no less inconceivable than his essence. The deity has never spoken only in an enigmatic and mysterious manner in the various religions which have been founded in different regions of our globe. He has everywhere revealed himself only to announce mysteries, that is, to inform mortals that he intended they should believe contradictions, impossibilities, and things to which they were incapable of affixing any clear ideas. The more mysterious and incredible a religion is, the more power it has to please the imagination of men. The darker a religion is, the more it appears divine, that is, conformable to the nature of a hidden being of whom they have no ideas. Ignorance prefers the unknown, the hidden, the fabulous, the marvellous, the incredible, or even the terrible to what is clear, simple, and true. Truth does not operate upon the imagination in so lively a manner as fiction which, in other respects, everyone is able to arrange in his own way. The vulgar like to listen to fables. Priests and legislators, by inventing religions and forging mysteries, have served the vulgar people well. They have thereby been enthusiasts, women, and fools. Beings of this stamp are easily satisfied with things which they are incapable of examining. The love of simplicity and truth is to be found only among the few whose imagination is regulated by study and reflection. The inhabitants of a village are never better pleased with their parson than when he introduces Latin into his sermon. The ignorant always imagine that he who speaks to them of things they do not understand is a learned man. Such is the true principle of the credulity of the people, and of the authority of those who pretend to guide nations. 113. Absurdity of all mysteries invented for the interests of priests. To announce mysteries to men is to give and withhold. It is to talk in order not to be understood. He who speaks only obscurely either seeks to amuse himself by the embarrassment which he causes, or finds his interest in not explaining himself too clearly. All secrecy indicates distrust, impudence, and fear. Princes and their ministers make a mystery of their projects, for fear their enemies should discover and render them abortive. Can a good God amuse himself by perplexing his creatures? What interest, then, could he have in commanding its ministers to announce riddles and mysteries? It is said that man, by the weakness of his nature, is totally incapable of understanding the divine dispensations which can be to him only a series of mysteries. God cannot disclose to him secrets necessarily above his reach. If so, I answer again that man is not made to attend to the divine dispensations, that these dispensations are to him by no means interesting, that he has no need of mysteries which he cannot understand, and consequently that a mysterious religion is no more fit for him than an eloquent discourse is for a flock of sheep. 114. A universal God ought to have revealed a universal religion. The deity has revealed himself with so little uniformity in the different countries of our globe that in point of religion men regard one another with hatred and contempt. The partisans of the different sects think each other very ridiculous and foolish. Mysteries most revered in one religion are objects of derision to another. God in revealing himself to mankind ought at least to have spoken the same language to all and saved their feeble minds the perplexity of inquiring which religion really emanated from him or what form of worship is most acceptable in his sight. A universal God ought to have revealed a universal religion. By what fatality, then, are there so many different religions upon earth? Which is really right among the great number of those each of which exclusively pretends to be the true one? There is great reason to believe that no religion enjoys this advantage. Division and disputes upon opinions are indubitable signs of uncertainty and obscurity of the principles upon which they build. One fifteen. Religion is unnecessary as it is unintelligible. If religion were necessary at all, it ought to be intelligible to all. If this religion were the most important concern of men, the goodness of God would seem to demand that it should be to of all things the most clear, evident and demonstrative. Is it not, then, astonishing that this thing so essential to the happiness of mortals is precisely that which they understand least and about which, for so many ages, their teachers have most disputed? Priests have never agreed upon the manner of understanding the will of a God who has revealed himself. The world may be compared to a public fair in which are several empirics, each of whom endeavors to attract the passengers by decrying the remedies sold by his brothers. Each shop has its customers who are persuaded that their quacks possess the only true remedies, and not withstanding a continual use of them, they perceive not the inefficacy of these remedies, or that they are as infirm as those who run after the quacks of a different shop. Devotion is a disorder of the imagination contracted in infancy. The devout man is a hypochondriac who only augments his malady by the application of remedies. The wise man abstains from them entirely. He pays attention to his diet and, in other respects, leaves nature to her course. 116. All religions are rendered ridiculous by the multitude of creeds. To a man of sense nothing appears more ridiculous than the opinions which the partisans of the different religions with equal folly entertain of each other. A Christian regards the Quran, that is, the Divine Revelation announced by Muhammad, as nothing but a tissue of impertinent reveries and imposters insulting to the Divinity. The Mohammedan, on the other hand, treats the Christian as an idolator and a dog. He sees nothing but absurdities in his religion. He imagines he has a right to subdue the Christian and to force him, sword in hand, to receive the religion of his Divine Prophet. Finally he believes that nothing is more impious and unreasonable than to worship a man or to believe in the Trinity. The Protestant Christian, who without scruple worships a man and firmly believes the inconceivable mystery of the Trinity, ridicules the Catholic Christian for believing in the mystery of transubstantiation. He considers him mad, impious and idolatrous, because he kneels to worship some bread in which he thinks he sees God. Christians of every sect regard, as silly stories, the incarnations of Vishnu, the God of the Indies. They maintain that the only true incarnation is that of Jesus, son of a carpenter. Theist, who calls himself the follower of a religion which he supposes to be that of nature, content with admitting a God, of whom he has no idea, makes a jest of all the mysteries taught by the various religions in the world. 117. Opinion of a Famous Theologian Is there anything more contradictory, impossible or mysterious than the creation of matter by an immaterial being who, though immutable, operates continual changes in the world? Is anything more incompatible with every notion of common sense than to believe that a supremely good, wise, equitable and powerful being presides over nature and by himself directs the movements of a world full of folly, misery, crimes and disorders which, by a single word, he could have prevented or removed? In fine, whenever we admit a being as contradictory as the God of theology, how can we reject the most improbable fables, astonishing miracles and profound mysteries? 118. The God of the Deists Is not less contradictory. The Deist exclaims, Abstain from worshipping the cruel and capricious God of theology. Mine is a being infinitely wise and good. He is the father of men, the mildest of sovereigns. It is he who fills the universe with his benefits. But do you not see that everything in this world contradicts the good qualities which you ascribe to your God? In the numerous family of this tender father, almost all are unhappy. Under the government of this just sovereign, vice is triumphant and virtue is distress. Among those blessings you extol, and which only enthusiasm can see, I behold a multitude of evils against which you obstinately shut your eyes. Force to acknowledge that your beneficent God, in contradiction with himself, distributes good and evil with the same hand, for his justification you must, like the priest, refer me to the regions of another life. Invent, therefore, another God, for yours is no less contradictory than that of theologians. A good God, who does evil, or consents to the commission of evil, a God full of equity, and in whose empire innocence is often oppressed, a perfect God, who produces none but imperfect and miserable works, are not such a God and his conduct as great mysteries as that of the incarnation? You blush for your fellow citizens, who allow themselves to be admitted that the God of the universe could change himself into a man and die upon a cross in a corner of Asia. The mystery of the incarnation appears to you very absurd. You think nothing more ridiculous than a God who transforms himself into bread and causes himself daily to be eaten in a thousand different places. But are all these mysteries more contradictory to reason than a God, the Avenger and Rewarder of the actions of men? Is man, according to you, free or not free? In either case, your God, if he has the shadow of equity, can neither punish nor reward him. If man is free, it is God who has made him free. Therefore God is the primitive cause of all his actions. In punishing him for his faults, he would punish him for having executed what he had given him liberty to do. If man is not free to act otherwise than he does, would not God be most unjust in punishing man for faults which he could not help committing? The minor or secondary absurdities with which all religions abound are to many people truly striking, but they have not the courage to trace the source of these absurdities. They see not that a God full of contradictions, caprices and inconsistent qualities has only served to disorder men's imaginations and to produce an endless succession of chimeras. 119. Aged belief in a deity does not prove the existence of God. The theologian would shut the mouths of those who deny the existence of God by saying that all men in all ages and countries have acknowledged some divinity or other, that every people have believed in an invisible and powerful being who has been the object of their worship and veneration, in short, that there is no nation, however savage, who are not persuaded of the existence of some intelligent superior to human nature. But can an error be changed into truth by the belief of all men? The great philosopher Bale has justly observed that general tradition, or the unanimous consent of mankind, is no criterion of truth. There was a time when all men believed that the sun moved round the earth, but this error was detected. There was a time when nobody believed the existence of the antipodes, and when everyone was persecuted, who had temerity enough to maintain it. At present every informed man firmly believes it. All nations, with the exception of a few men who are less credulous than the rest, still believe in ghosts and spirits. No sensible man now adopts such nonsense. But the most sensible people consider it their duty to believe in a universal spirit. 120. All gods are savage. All religions are monuments of ignorance. All the gods adored by men are of savage origin. They have evidently been imagined by stupid people, or presented by ambitious and crafty legislators, to ignorant and uncivilized nations who had neither capacity nor courage to examine the objects which, through terror, they were made to worship. By closely examining God we are forced to acknowledge that he evidently bears marks of a savage nature. To be savage is to acknowledge no right but force. It is to be cruel beyond measure. To follow only one's own caprice. To want foresight, prudence, and reason. Ye nations who call yourselves civilized, do you not discern, in this hideous character, the God on whom you lavish your incense? Are not the descriptions given you of the divinity visibly borrowed from the implacable, jealous, revengeful, sanguinary, capricious, inconsiderate humor of man who has not cultivated his reason? Oh, men, you adore only a great savage whom you regard, however, as a model to imitate, as an amiable master, as a sovereign full of perfection. Religious opinions are ancient monuments of ignorance, credulity, cowardice, and barbarism of their ancestors. Every savage is a child fond of the marvelous, who believes everything and examines nothing. Ignorance of nature he attributes to spirits, enchantments, and to magic whatever appears to him extraordinary. His priests appear to him sorcerers in whom he supposes a power purely divine, before whom his confounded reason humbled itself, whose oracles are to him infallible decrees which it would be dangerous to contradict. In religion men have, for the most part, remained in their primitive barbarity. Modern religions are only ancient follies revived, or presented under some new form. If the savages of antiquity adored mountains, rivers, serpents, trees, and idols of every kind, if the Egyptians paid homage to crocodiles, rats, and onions, do we not see nations who think themselves wiser than they worship bread into which they imagine that through the enchantments of their priests the divinity has descended? Is not the bread God the idol of many Christian nations who, in this respect, are as irrational as the most savage? 121. All religious usages bear marks of stupidity and barbarism. The ferocity, stupidity, and folly of uncivilized man have never disclosed themselves in religious practices, either cruel or extravagant. A spirit of barbarity still survives and penetrates the religions even of the most polished nations. Do we not still see human victims offered to the divinity? To appease the anger of a God who is always supposed as ferocious, jealous, and vindictive as a savage? Do not those whose manner of thinking is supposed to displease him expire understudied torments by the command of sanguinary laws? Modern nations at the instigation of their priests have perhaps improved upon the atrocious folly of barbarous nations. At least we find that it has ever entered the heads of savages to torment for opinions, to search the thoughts, to molest men for the invisible movements of their brains. When we see learned nations, such as the English, French, German, etc., continue notwithstanding their knowledge to kneel before the barbarous God of the Jews, when we see these enlightened nations divide into sects, defame, hate, and despise one another for their equally ridiculous opinions concerning the conduct and intentions of this unreasonable God, when we see men of ability foolishly devote their time to meditate the will of this God, who is full of caprice and folly, we are tempted to cry out, Oh, men, you are still savage! CHAPTER XII Parts 122-132 The more a religion is ancient and general, the more suspect. Whoever has formed true ideas of the ignorance, credulity, negligence, and stupidity of the vulgar will suspect opinions the more as he finds them generally established. Men, for the most part, examine nothing. They blindly submit to custom and authority. Their religious opinions, above all others, are those which they have the least courage and capacity to examine. As they comprehend nothing about them, they are forced to be silent, or at least are soon destitute of arguments. Ask any man whether he believes in a God. He will be much surprised that you can doubt it. Ask him again what he understands by the word God. You throw him into the most embarrassment. You will perceive immediately that he is incapable of affixing any real idea to this word he incessantly repeats. He will tell you that God is God. He knows neither what he thinks of it nor his motives for believing in it. All nations speak of a God, but do they agree upon this God? By no means. But division upon an opinion proves not its evidence. It is rather a sign of uncertainty and obscurity. Does the same man always agree with himself in the notions he forms of his God? No. His idea varies with the changes which he experiences. Another sign of uncertainty. Men always agree in demonstrative truths. In any situation, except that of insanity, everyone knows that two and two make four. That the sun shines. That the hole is greater than its part. That benevolence is necessary to merit the affection of men. That injustice and cruelty are incompatible with goodness. Are they thus agreed when they speak of God? Whatever they think or say of him is immediately destroyed by the effects they attribute to him. Ask several painters to represent a chimera, and each will paint it in a different manner. You will find no resemblance between the features. Each has given it a portrait that has no original. All theologians in giving us a picture of God give us one of a great chimera in whose features they never agree, whom each arranges in his own way, and who exists only in their imaginations. There are not two individuals who have or can have the same ideas of their God. 123. Skepticism in religious matters from very superficial study. It might be said with more truth that men are either skeptics or atheists, than that they are convinced of the existence of God. How can we be assured of the existence of a being whom we could never examine, and of whom it is impossible to conceive any permanent idea? How can we convince ourselves of the existence of a being to whom we are every moment forced to attribute conduct opposed to the ideas we had endeavored to form of him? Is it then possible to believe what we cannot conceive? Is not such a belief the opinions of others without having any of our own? Priests govern by faith, but do not priests themselves acknowledge that God is to them incomprehensible? Confess, then, that a full and entire conviction of the existence of God is not so general as is imagined. Skepticism arises from a want of motives sufficient to form a judgment. Upon examining the proofs which seem to establish, and the arguments which combat, the existence of God, some persons have doubted and withheld their assent. But this uncertainty arises from not having sufficiently examined. Is it possible to doubt anything evident? Sensible people ridicule an absolute skepticism and think it even impossible. A man who doubted his own existence, or that of the Son, would appear ridiculous. Is this more extravagant than to doubt the non-existence of an evidently impossible being? Is it more absurd to doubt one's own existence than to hesitate upon the impossibility of a being whose qualities reciprocally destroy one another? Do we find greater probability for believing the existence of a spiritual being than the existence of a stick without two ends? Is the notion of an infinitely good and powerful being who causes or permits an infinity of evils less absurd or impossible than that of a square triangle? Let us conclude, then, that religious skepticism can result only from a superficial examination of theological principles which are in perpetual contradiction with the most clear and demonstrative principles. To doubt is to deliberate. Skepticism is only a state of indetermination resulting from an insufficient examination of things. Is it possible for anyone to be skeptical in matters of religion who will deign to revert to its principles and closely examine the notions of God who serves as its basis? Doubt generally arises either from indolence, weakness, indifference or incapacity. With many people, to doubt is to fear the trouble of examining things which are thought uninteresting. But religion being presented to men as their most important concern in this and the future world, skepticism and doubt on this subject must occasion perpetual anxiety and must really constitute a form of ignorance. Every man who has not courage to contemplate without prejudice, the God upon whom all religion is founded, can never know for what religion to decide. He knows not what he should believe or not believe, admit or reject, hope or fear. Indifference upon religion must not be confounded with skepticism. This indifference is founded upon the absolute or at any rate upon the probable belief that religion is not interesting. A persuasion that a thing which is pretended to be important is not so or is only indifferent supposes a sufficient examination of the thing without which it would be impossible to have this persuasion. Those who call themselves skeptics in the fundamental points of religion are commonly either indolent or incapable of examining. In every country we are assured that a God has revealed himself. What has he taught men? Has he proved evidently that he exists? Has he informed them where he resides? Has he taught them what he is or in what his essence consists? Has he clearly explained to them his intentions and plan? Does what he says of this plan correspond with the effects which we see? No. He informs them solely that he is what he is, that he is a hidden God, that his ways are unspeakable, that he is exasperated against all who have the temerity to fathom his decrees or to consult reason in judging him or his works. Does the revealed conduct of God answer the magnificent ideas which theologians would give us of his wisdom, goodness, justice, and omnipotence? By no means. In every revelation this conduct announces a partial and capricious being the protector of favorite people and the enemy of all others. If he deigns to appear to some men he takes care to keep all others in an invincible ignorance of his divine intentions. Every private revelation evidently announces in God injustice, partiality, and malignity. Do the commands revealed by any God astonish us by their sublime reason or wisdom? Do they evidently tend to promote the happiness of the people to whom the divinity discloses them? Upon examining the divine commands one sees in every country nothing but strange ordinances, ridiculous precepts, impertinent ceremonies, pure-wild customs, oblations, sacrifices, and expiations useful indeed to the ministers of God, but very burdensome to the rest of the citizens. I see likewise that these laws often tend to make men unsociable, disdainful, intolerant, quarrelsome, unjust, and inhuman to those who have not received the same revelations, the same ordinances, or the same favors from heaven. 125. Where is the proof that God ever showed himself or spoke to men? Are the precepts of morality announced by the deity really divine or superior to those which every reasonable man might imagine? They are divine solely because it is impossible for the human mind to discover their utility. They make virtue consist in a total renunciation of nature, in a voluntary forgetfulness of reason, a holy hatred of ourselves. Finally these sublime precepts often exhibit perfection in a conduct cruel to ourselves and perfectly useless to others. Has a God appeared? Has he himself promulgated his laws? Has he spoken to men with his own mouth? I am told that God has not appeared to a whole people, but that he has always manifested himself through the medium of some favorite personages who have been entrusted with the care of announcing and explaining his intentions. The people have never been permitted to enter the sanctuary. The ministers of the gods have alone had the right to relate what passes there. 126. There is nothing that proves miracles to have ever been performed. If in every system of divine revelation I complain of not seeing either the wisdom, goodness, or equity of God, if I suspect navery, ambition, or interest, it is replied that God has confirmed by miracles the mission of those who speak in his name. But was it not more simple for him to appear in person, to explain his nature and will? Again, if I have the curiosity to examine these miracles, I find that they are improbable tales related by suspected people who had the greatest interest in giving out that they were the messengers of the most high. What witnesses are appealed to in order to induce us to believe incredible miracles? Weak people who existed thousands of years ago, and who, even though they could attest these miracles, may be suspected of being duped by their own imagination and imposed upon by the tricks of dexterous imposters. But, you will say, these miracles are written in books which by tradition have been transmitted to us. By whom were these books written? Who are the men who have transmitted them? They are either the founders of religions themselves or their adherents and assigns. Thus in religion the evidence of interested parties becomes irrefragable and incontestable. 127. Strange that God spoke differently to different sects. God has spoken differently to every people. The Indian believes not a word of what he has revealed to the Chinese. The Mohammedan considers as fables what he has said to the Christian. The Jew regards both the Mohammedan and Christian as sacrilegious corruptors of the sacred law which his God had given to his fathers. The Christian, proud of his more modern revelation, indiscriminately damns the Indian, Chinese, Mohammedan, and even the Jew from whom he receives his sacred books. Who is wrong or right? Each exclaims, I am in the right. Each adduces the same proofs. Each mentions his miracles, diviners, prophets, and martyrs. The man of sense tells them they are all delirious, that God has not spoken, if it is true that he is a spirit, and can have neither mouth nor tongue, that without borrowing the organ of mortals God could inspire his creatures with what he would have them learn, and that as they are all equally ignorant what to think of God, it is evident that it has not been the will of God to inform them on the subject. The followers of different forms of worship which are established accuse one another of superstition and impiety. Christians look with abhorrence upon the pagan, Chinese, and Mohammedan superstition. Roman Catholics treat as impious Protestant Christians, and the latter incessantly declaim against the superstition of the Catholics. They are all right. To be impious is to have opinions offensive to the God adored. To be superstitious is to have of him false ideas. In accusing one another of superstition the different religionists resemble humpbacks who reproach one another with their deformity. 128. Obscurity and suspicious origin of oracles. Are the oracles which the divinity has revealed by his different messengers remarkable for clearness? Alas, no two men interpret them alike. Those who explain them to others are not agreed among themselves. To elucidate them they have recourse to interpretations, to commentaries, to allegories, to explanations. They discover mystical sense very different from the literal sense. Men are everywhere wanted to explain the commands of a God who could not or would not announce himself clearly to those whom he wished to enlighten. 129. Absurdity of all miracles. The founders of religion have generally proved their missions by miracles. But what is a miracle? It is an operation directly connected to the laws of nature. But who, according to you, made those laws? God. Thus your God, who, according to you, foresaw everything, counteracts the laws which his wisdom prescribed to nature. These laws were then defective, or at least in certain circumstances they did not accord with the views of the same God, since you inform us that he judged it necessary to suspend or counteract them. It is said that a few men, favored by the most high, have received power to perform miracles. But to perform a miracle it is necessary to have ability to create new causes capable of producing effects contrary to those of common causes. Is it easy to conceive that God can give men the inconceivable power of creating causes out of nothing? Is it credible that an immutable God can communicate to men power to change or rectify his plan a power which by his essence an immutable being cannot save himself? Miracles, far from doing much honor to God, far from proving the divinity of a religion, evidently annihilate the God idea. How can a theologian tell us that God, who must have embraced the whole of his plan, who could have made none but perfect laws, and who cannot alter them, is forced to employ miracles to accomplish his project, or can grant his creatures the power of working energies to execute his divine will. An omnipotent being whose will is always fulfilled, who holds in his hand his creatures, has only to will to make them believe whatever he desires. 130. Refudiation of the reasoning of Pascal on miracles. What shall we say of religions that prove their divinity by miracles? How can we credit miracles recorded in the sacred books of the Christians, where God boasts of hardening the hearts and blinding those whom he wishes to destroy, where he permits malicious spirits and magicians to work miracles as great as those of his servants, where it is predicted that Antichrist shall have power to perform prodigies capable of shaking the faith even of the elect? In this case, by what sign shall we know whether God means to instruct or ensnare us? How shall we distinguish whether the wonders we behold come from God or devil? To remove our perplexity Pascal gravely tells us that it is necessary to judge the doctrine by the miracles and the miracles by the doctrine, that the doctrine proves the miracles and the miracles the doctrine. If there exists a vicious and ridiculous circle, it is undoubtedly in this splendid reasoning of one of the greatest defenders of Christianity. Where is the religion that does not boast of the most admirable doctrine and which does not produce numerous miracles for its support? Is a miracle capable of annihilating the evidence of a demonstrated truth? Although a man should have the secret of healing all the sick, of making all the lame to walk, of raising in all the dead of a city, of ascending into the air, of stopping the course of the sun and moon, can he thereby convince me that two and two do not make four, that one makes three, and that three make only one, that a God whose immensity fills the universe could have been contained in the body of a Jew, that the eternal can die like a man, that a God who is said to be immutable, provident, and sensible could have changed his mind upon his religion and reformed his own work by a new revelation? 131 Every new revelation is necessarily false. According to the very principles either of natural or revealed theology, every new revelation should be regarded as false. Every change in a religion emanated from the deity should be reputed as impiety and blasphemy. Does not all reform suppose that, in his first effort, God could not give his religion the solidity and perfection required? To say that God, in giving a first law, conformed to the rude ideas of the people whom he wished to enlighten, is to pretend that God was neither able nor willing to render the people whom he was enlightening so reasonable as was necessary in order to please him. Christianity is an impiety. If it is true that Judaism is a religion which has really emanated from a holy, immutable, omnipotent, and foreseeing God, the religion of Christ supposes either defects in the law which God himself had given by Moses, or impotence or malice in the same God who was either unable or unwilling to render the Jews such as they ought to have been in order to please him. Every new religion or reform of ancient religions is evidently founded upon the impotence, inconstancy, imprudence, or malice of the divinity. 132. Blood of martyrs testifies against the truth of miracles. If history informs me that the first apostles, the founders or reformers of religions, wrought great miracles, history also informs me that these reformers and their adherents were commonly buffeted, persecuted, and put to death as disturbers of the peace of nations. I am therefore tempted to believe that they did not perform the miracles ascribed to them. Indeed, such miracles must have gained them numerous partisans among the eyewitnesses who ought to have protected the operators from abuse. My incredulity redoubles when I am told that the workers of miracles were cruelly tormented or ignominiously executed. How is it possible to believe that missionaries, protected by God, invested with his divine power and enjoying the gift of miracles, could not have wrought such a simple miracle as to escape the cruelty of their persecutors? Priests have the art of drawing from the persecutions themselves a convincing proof in favor of the religion of the persecuted. But a religion which boasts of having cost the lives of many martyrs, and informs us that its founders, in order to defend it, have suffered punishments, cannot be the religion of a beneficent, equitable, and omnipotent God. A good God would not permit men entrusted with announcing his command to be ill-treated. An all-powerful God, wishing to found a religion, would proceed in a manner more simple and less fatal to the most faithful of his servants. To say that God would have his religion sealed with blood is to say that he is weak, unjust, ungrateful, and sanguinary, and that he is cruel enough to sacrifice his messengers to the views of his ambition. CHAPTER XIII Parts 133 through 140 133 Fanaticism of martyrs and the interested zeal of missionaries To die for religion proves not that the religion is true or divine, it proves at most that it is supposed to be such. An enthusiast proves nothing by his death unless that religious fanaticism is often stronger than the love of life. An imposter may sometimes die with courage, he then makes in the language of the proverb a virtue of necessity. People are often surprised and affected at sight of their generous courage and disinterested zeal which has prompted missionaries to preach their doctrine even at the risk of suffering the most rigorous treatment. From this ardor for the salvation of men are drawn inferences favorable to the religion they have announced. But in reality this disinterestedness is only apparent. He who ventures nothing should gain nothing. A missionary seeks to make his fortune by his doctrine. He knows that if he is fortunate enough to sell his commodity he will become absolute master of those who receive him for their guide. He is sure of becoming the object of their attention, respect, and veneration. Such are the true motives which kindle the zeal and charity of so many preachers and missionaries. To die for an opinion proves the truth or goodness of that opinion no more than to die in battle proves the justice of a cause in which thousands have the folly to devote their lives. The courage of a martyr elated with the idea of paradise is not more supernatural than the courage of a soldier intoxicated with the idea of glory or impelled by the fear of disgrace. What is the difference between an Iroquois who sings while he is burning by inches and the martyr St. Lawrence who upon the gridiron insults his tyrant. The preachers of a new doctrine fail because they are the weakest. Apostles generally practice a perilous trade. Their courageous death proves neither the truth of their principles nor their own sincerity any more than the violent death of the ambitious man or of the robber proves that they were right in disturbing society or that they thought themselves authorized in so doing. The trade of a missionary was always flattering to understand the notion and formed a convenient method of living at the expense of the vulgar. These advantages have often been enough to efface every idea of danger. 134. Theology makes its God an enemy to reason and common sense. You tell us theologians that what is folly in the eyes of men is the wisdom before God who delights to the wisdom of the wise. But do you not say that human wisdom is a gift of heaven? In saying this wisdom displeases God is but folly in his sight and that he is pleased to confound it, you declare that your God is the friend only of ignorant people and that he makes sensible people a fatal present for which this perfidious tyrant promises to punish them cruelly at some future day. Is it not strange that one can be the friend of your God only by declaring oneself the enemy of reason and good sense? 135. Faith irreconcilable with reason and reason preferable to faith. According to the Divine's, faith is innocent without evidence. Whence it follows that religion requires us firmly to believe in evident things and propositions often improbable or contrary to reason? But when we reject reason as a judge of faith, do we not confess that reason is incompatible with faith? As the ministers of religion have resolved to banish reason, they must have felt the impossibility of reconciling it with faith, which is visibly only a blind submission to priests whose authority seems to many persons more weighty than evidence itself and preferable to the testimony of the senses. Sacrifice your reason, renounce experience, mistrust the testimony of your senses, submit without inquiry to what we announce to you in the name of heaven, such as the uniform language of priests throughout the world. They agree upon no point except upon the necessity of never reasoning upon the principles which they present to us as most important to our felicity. I will not sacrifice my reason, because this reason alone enables me to distinguish good from evil, truth from falsehood. If, as you say, my reason comes from God, I shall never believe that a God whom you call good has given me reason as a snare to lead me to perdition. Priests, do you not see that by decrying reason you columniate your God from whom you declare it to be a gift? I will not renounce experience, because it is a guide much more sure than the imagination or authority of spiritual guides. Experience teaches me that enthusiasm and interest may blind and lead them astray themselves, and that the authority of experience ought to have much more influence upon my mind than the suspicious testimony of many men who I know are either very liable to be deceived themselves or otherwise are very much interested in deceiving others. I will mistrust my senses, because I am sensible they sometimes mislead me. But, on the other hand, I know that they will always deceive me. I well know that the eye shows me the sun much smaller than it really is, but experience, which is only the repeated application of the senses, informs me that objects always appear to diminish as their distance increases. Thus I attain to a certainty that the sun is much larger than the earth. Thus my senses suffice to rectify the hasty judgments which they themselves had caused. In warning us to mistrust the testimony of our senses, the priests annihilate the proofs of all religion. If men may be dupes of their imagination, if their senses are deceitful, how shall we believe the miracles which struck the treacherous senses of our ancestors? If my senses are unfaithful guides, I ought not to credit even the miracles wrought before my eyes. 136. To what absurd and ridiculous sophisms the religious are reduced? You incessantly repeat that the truths of religion are above reason. If so, do you not perceive that these truths are not adapted to reasonable beings? To pretend that reason can deceive us is to say that truth can be false, that the useful can be hurtful. Is reason anything but a knowledge of the useful and true? Besides, as our reason and senses are our only guides in this life, to say they are unfaithful is to say that our errors are necessary, our ignorance invincible, and that without the extreme of injustice God cannot punish us for following the only guides it was his supreme will to give. To say we are obliged to believe things above our reason is ridiculous. To assure us that upon some objects we are not allowed to consult reason is to say that in the most interesting matter we must consult only imagination or act only at random. Our divines say we must sacrifice our reason to God. But what motives can we have to sacrifice our reason to a being who makes us only useless presence which he does not intend us to use? What confidence can we put in a God who according to our divines themselves is malicious enough to harden the heart, to strike with blindness, to lay snares for us, to lead us into temptation? In fine what confidence can we put in the ministers of this God who, to guide us more conveniently, commands us to shut our eyes? 1.37 ought a man to believe on the assurance of another man? Men are persuaded that religion is to them of all things the most serious while it is precisely what they least examine for themselves. In pursuit of an office, a piece of land, a house, a place of profit, in any transaction or contract, whatever, everyone carefully examines all, takes the greatest precaution, weighs every word of a writing, is guarded against every surprise. Not so in religion. Everyone receives it at a venture and believes it upon the word of others without ever taking the trouble to examine. Two causes concur to foster the negligence and carelessness of men with regard to their religious opinions. The first is the despair of overcoming the obscurity in which all religion is necessarily enveloped. Their first principles are only adapted to disguise lazy minds who regard them as a chaos impossible to be understood. The second cause is that everyone is averse to being too much bound by severe precepts, which all admire in theory, but very few care to practice with rigor. The religion of many people is like old family ties, which they have never taken pains to examine, but which they deposit in their archives to have recourse to them occasionally. 138. Faith can take root only in feeble, ignorant, or slothful minds. The disciples of Pythagoras paid implicit faith to the doctrine of their master. He has said it was to them the solution of every problem. The generality of men are not more rational. In matters of religion a curate, a priest, an ignorant monk becomes master of the thoughts. Faith relieves the weakness of the human mind to which application is commonly painful. It is much more convenient to depend upon others than to examine for oneself. Inquiry, being slow and difficult, equally displeases the stupidity of the ignorant and the ardor of the enlightened. Such is undoubtedly the reason why faith has so many partisans. The more men are deficient in knowledge and reason, the more zealous they are in religion. In theological quarrels the populace, like ferocious beasts, fall upon all those against whom their priest is desirous of exciting them. A profound ignorance, boundless credulity, weak intellect, and warm imagination are the materials of which are made bigots, zealots, fanatics, and saints. How can the voice of reason be heard by them who make it a principle never to examine for themselves, but to submit blindly to the guidance of others? The saints and the populace are, in the hands of their directors, automatons, moved at pleasure. 139. That one religion has greater pretensions to truth and absurdity. Religion is an affair of custom and fashion. We must do as others do, but, among the numerous religions in the world, which should men choose? This inquiry would be too painful and long. They must therefore adhere to the religion of their fathers, to that of their country which, having force on its side, must be the best. If we judge of the intentions of providence by the events and revolutions of this world, we are compelled to believe that he is very indifferent about the various religions upon earth. For thousands of years, paganism, polytheism, idolatry were the prevailing religions, we are now assured that the most flourishing nations had not the least idea of God, an idea regarded as so essential to the happiness of man. Christians say all mankind lived in the grossest ignorance of their duties toward God and had no notions of him, but what were insulting to his Divine Majesty. Christianity, growing out of Judaism, very humble in its obscure origin, became powerful and cruel under the Christian emperors who, prompted by Holy Zeal, rapidly spread it in their empire by means of fire and sword and established it upon the ruins of paganism. Muhammad and his successors, seconded by providence, or their victorious arms, in a short time banished the Christian religion from a part of Asia, Africa, and even Europe, and the Gospel was then forced to the Koran. In all the factions or sects, which for many ages have distracted Christianity, the best argument has been always that of the strongest party. Arms have decided which doctrine is most conducive to the happiness of nations. May we not hence infer either that the deity feels little interested in the religion of men, or that he always declares in favor of the opinions which best suit the interest of earthly powers, and find that he changes his plan to accommodate their fancy. Rulers infallibly decide the religion of the people. The true religion is always the religion of the prince. The true God is the God whom the prince desires his people to adore. The will of the priests who govern the prince always becomes the will of God. A wit justly observed that the true religion is always that on whose side are the prince and the hangman. Emperors and hangman long supported the gods of Rome against the god of Christians. The latter, having gained to his interest the emperors, their soldiers, and their hangman succeeded in destroying the worship of the Roman gods. The god of Mohammed has dispossessed the god of Christians of a great part of the dominions which he formerly occupied. In the eastern part of Asia is a vast, flourishing, fertile, populous country governed by such wise laws that the fiercest conquerors have adopted them with respect. I mean China. Accepting Christianity which was banished as dangerous, the people there follow such superstitions as they please, while the mandarins or magistrates, having long known the errors of the popular religion, are vigilant to prevent the bonzes or priests from using it as an instrument of discord. Yet we see not that Providence refuses his blessing to a nation whose chiefs are so indifferent about the worship that is rendered to him. On the contrary, the Chinese enjoy a happiness and repose worthy to be envied by the many nations whom religion divides and often devastates. We cannot reasonably propose to divest the people of their follies, but we may perhaps cure the follies of those who govern the people and who will then prevent the follies of the people from becoming dangerous. We fear only when princes and soldiers rally round her standard, then she becomes cruel and sanguinary. Every sovereign who is the protector of one sect or religious faction is commonly the tyrant of others and becomes himself the most cruel disturber of the peace of his dominions. 140. Religion is unnecessary to morality. It is incessantly repeated and many sensible persons are induced to believe that religion is a restraint necessary to men, that without it there would no longer exist the least check for the vulgar, and that morality and religion are intimately connected with it. The fear of the Lord, cries the priest, is the beginning of wisdom. The terrors of another life are salutary and are proper to curb the passions of men. To perceive the in-utility of religious notions we have only to open our eyes and contemplate the morals of those nations who are the most under the dominion of religion. We there find proud tyrants, oppressive ministers, perfidious courtiers, shameless extortioners, adulterers, debauchees, prostitutes, thieves, and rogues of every kind who have never doubted either the existence of an avenging and rewarding God, the torments of hell, or the joys of paradise. Without the least utility to the greater part of mankind, the ministers of religion have studied to render death terrible to the eyes of their followers. If devout Christians could but be consistent, they would pass their whole life in tears and die under the most dreadful apprehensions. What can be more terrible than death to the unfortunate who are told that it is horrible to fall into the hands of the living God, that we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling? Yet we are assured that the death of the Christian is attended with infinite consolations of which the unbeliever is deprived. The good Christian, it is said, dies in the firm hope of an eternal happiness which he has strived to merit. But is not this firm assurance itself a presumption punishable in the eyes of a severe God? Ought not the greatest saints to be ignorant whether they are worthy of love or hatred? Ye priests, while consoling us with the hope of the joys of paradise, have you then had the advantage to see your names and ours inscribed in the Book of Life? End of Section 13 Recording by Roger Maline. Section 14 of Good Sense This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline. Good Sense Paul Ritiri Baron Dobach Translator Unknown Section 14 Parts 141-149 141 Religion, the weakest barrier that can be opposed to the passions. To oppose the passions and present interests of men the obscure notions of a metaphysical, inconceivable God, the incredible punishments of another life, or the pleasures of the heaven of which nobody has the least idea is not this combating realities with fictions? Men have never any but confused ideas of their God. They see Him only in clouds. They never think of Him when they are desirous to do evil. Whenever ambition, fortune, or pleasure allures them, God's threatenings and promises them. In the things of this life there is a degree of certainty which the most lively faith cannot give to the things of another life. Every religion was originally a curb invented by legislators who wished to establish their authority over the minds of rude nations. Like nurses who frighten children to oblige them to be quiet the ambitious used the name and had recourse to terror in order to make them support quietly the yoke they wish to impose. Are then the bug-bearers of infancy made for ripe age? At the age of maturity no man longer believes them. Or, if he does, they excite little emotion in him and never alter his conduct. 142. Honor is more salutary than a powerful bond than religion. Almost every man fears what he sees much more than what he does not see. He fears the judgments of men of which he feels the effect more than the judgments of God of whom he has only fluctuating ideas. The desire of pleasing the world the force of custom the fear of ridicule and of censure have more force than the judgments. Does not the soldier through fear of disgrace daily expose his life in battle even at the risk of incurring eternal damnation? The most religious persons have often more respect for a varlet than for God. A man who firmly believes that God sees everything and that he is omniscient and omnipresent will be guilty when alone which he would never do in presence of the meanest of mortals. Those who pretend to be the most fully convinced of the existence of God every moment act as if they believe the contrary. 143. Religion does not restrain the passions of kings. Let us at least it will be said cherish the idea of a God which alone may serve as a barrier to the passions of kings. But can we sincerely admire the wonderful effects which the fear of this God generally produces upon the minds of princes who are called his images? What idea shall we form of the original if we judge of it by the copies? Sovereign it is true call themselves the representatives of God, his vice-gerence upon earth. But does the fear of a master more powerful than they are incline them seriously to study the welfare of the nations whom Providence has entrusted to their care? Does the pretended terror which ought to be inspired into them by the idea of an invisible judge to whom alone they acknowledge themselves accountable for their actions render them more equitable, more compassionate, more sparing of blood and treasure of their subjects, more temperate in their pleasures, more attentive to their duties? In fine does this God, by whose authority kings reign, deter them from inflicting a thousand evils upon the people to whom they ought to act as guides, protectors and fathers? Alas, if we survey the whole earth we shall see men almost everywhere governed by tyrants who use religion merely as an instrument to render more stupid the slaves whom they overwhelm under the weight of their vices or whom they sacrifice without mercy to their extravagancies. Far from being a check upon the passions of kings religion, by its very principles, frees them from all restrained. It transforms them into divinities whose caprice the people are never permitted to resist. While it gives up the reigns to princes on their part breaks the bonds of the social compact, it endeavors to chain the minds and hands of their oppressed subjects. Is it then surprising that the gods of the earth imagine everything lawful for them and regard their subjects only as instruments of their caprice or ambition? In every country religion has represented the monarch of nature as a cruel, fantastical, partial tyrant whose caprice is law. The monarch god is but too faithfully imitated by his representatives upon earth. Religion seems everywhere invented solely to lull the people in the lap of slavery in order that their masters may easily oppress them or render them wretched with impunity. 144. Origin of the divine right of kings To guard against the enterprises of a haughty pontiff who wished to reign over kings to shelter their persons from the attempts of credulous nations excited by the priests, several European princes have pretended to hold their crowns and rights from God alone and to be accountable only to him for their actions. After a long contest between the civil and spiritual power the former at length triumphed and the priests forced to yield acknowledged the divine right of kings and preached them to the people reserving the liberty of changing their minds and of preaching revolt whenever the divine rights of kings clashed with the divine rights of the clergy. It was always at the expense of nations that peace was concluded between kings and priests but the latter in spite of treaties that always preserved the pretensions. Tyrants and wicked princes whose consciences continually reproached them with negligence or perversity far from fearing their God had rather deal with this invisible judge who never opposes anything or with his priests who are always condescending to the rulers of the earth than with their own subjects. Do they probably appeal from the divine right of their chiefs? Men, when oppressed to the last degree, sometimes become turbulent and the divine rights of the tyrant are then forced to yield to the natural rights of the subjects. It is cheaper dealing with gods than men. Kings are accountable for their actions to God alone. Priests are accountable only to themselves. There is much reason to believe that both are more confident of the indulgence of heaven than of that of earth. It is much easier to escape the vengeance of gods who may be cheaply appeased than the vengeance of men whose patience is exhausted. If you remove the fear of an invisible power what restraint will you impose upon the passions of sovereigns? Let them learn to reign. Let them learn to be just to respect the rights of the people and to acknowledge the kindness of the nations from whom they hold their greatness and power. Let them learn to fear men and to submit to the laws of equity. Let nobody transgress these laws with impunity and let them be equally binding upon the powerful and the weak, the great and the small, the sovereign and the subjects. The fear of God's religion and the terrors of another life are the metaphysical and supernatural bulwarks opposed to the impetuous passions of princes. Are these bulwarks effectual? Let experience resolve the question. To oppose religion to the wickedness of tyrants is to wish that vague, uncertain, unintelligible relations may be stronger than propensities which everything conspires daily to strengthen. 145 Religion is fatal to political ameliorations. The immense service of religion to politics is incessantly boasted. But a little reflection will convince us that religious opinions equally blind both sovereigns and people and never enlighten them upon their true duties or interests. Religion but too often forms licentious, immoral despots, obeyed by slaves whom everything obliges to conform to their views. For want of having studied or known the true principles of administration, the objects and rights of social life, the real interests of men and their reciprocal duties, princes in almost every country have become licentious, absolute and perverse and their subjects' object wicked and unhappy. It was to avoid the trouble of studying these important objects that recourse was had to chimeras which, far from remedying anything, have hitherto only multiplied the evils of mankind and diverted them from whatever is most essential to their happiness. Not the unjust and cruel manner in which so many nations are governed manifestly furnish one of the strongest proofs, not only of the small effect produced by the fear of another life, but also of the non-existence of a providence busied with the fate of the human race. If there existed a good god should we not be forced to admit that in this life he strangely neglects the greater part of mankind? It would seem that this god has created nations only to be the sport of the passions and follies of his representatives upon earth. 146 Christianity preaching implicit obedience to despotism. By reading history with attention we shall perceive that Christianity at first, weak and servile, established itself among the savages and free nations of Europe, only intimating to their chiefs that its religious principles favor despotism and rendered them absolute. Consequently we see barbarous princes suddenly converted, that is we see them adopt without examination a system so favorable to their ambition and use every art to induce their subjects to embrace it. If the ministers of this religion have since often derogated from their favorite principles it is because the theory influences the conduct of the ministers of the Lord only when it suits their temporal interests. Christianity boasts of procuring men a happiness unknown to preceding ages. It is true the Greeks knew not the divine rights of tyrants or of the usurpers of the rights of their country. Under paganism it never entered the head of any man to suppose that it was against the will of heaven for a nation to defend themselves against a ferocious beast who had the audacity to lay waste their possessions. The religion of the Christians was the first that screened tyrants from danger by laying down as a principle that the people must renounce the legitimate defense of themselves. Thus Christian nations are deprived of the first law of nature which orders man to resist evil and to disarm whoever is preparing to destroy him. If the ministers of the church have often permitted the people to revolt for the interest of heaven they have never permitted them to revolt for their own deliverance from real evils or known violences. From heaven came the chains that were used to feathering the minds of mortals. Why is the Mohammedan everywhere a slave? Because his prophet enslaved him in the name of the deity as Moses had before subdued the Jews. In all parts of the earth we see that the first legislators were the first sovereigns and the first priests of the savages to whom they gave laws. Religion seems invented solely to exalt princes above their nations and rivet the fetters of slavery. As soon as the people are too unhappy here below priests are ready to silence them by threatening them with the anger of God. They are made to fix their eyes upon heaven lest they should perceive the true causes of their misfortunes and apply the remedies which nature presents. 147 One object of religious principles eternized the tyranny of kings. By dint of repeating to men that the earth is not their true country, that the present life is only a passage that they are not made to be happy in this world, that their sovereigns hold their authority from God alone and are accountable only to him for the abuse of it that is not lawful to resist them, etc. The interests have eternized the misgovernment of kings and the misery of the people. The interests of nations have been basely sacrificed to their chiefs. The more we consider the dogmas and principles of religion the more we shall be convinced that their sole object is the advantage of tyrants and priests without regard to that of societies. To mask the impotence of religion has persuaded mortals that iniquities always kindle the wrath of heaven. People impute to themselves alone the disasters that daily befall them. If nations sometimes feel the strokes of convulsed nature their bad governments are but too often the immediate and permanent causes from whence proceed the continual calamities which they are forced to endure. The ambition, negligence, vices and oppressions of kings and nobles generally the causes of scarcity, beggary, wars, pestilences, corrupt morals and all the multiplied scourges which desolate the earth in fixing men's eyes continually upon heaven in persuading them that all their misfortunes are effects of divine anger in providing none but spiritual and futile means to put an end to their sufferings we might justly conclude that the only object of priests was to divert nations from thinking about the true sources of their misery and thus to render it eternal. The ministers of religion conduct themselves almost like those indigent mothers who for want of bread sing their starved children to sleep or give them playthings conflicting hunger. Blinded by error from their very infancy restrained by the invisible bonds of opinion, overcome by panic terrors their faculties blunted by ignorance how should the people know the true causes of their wretchedness? They imagine that they can avert it by invoking the gods. Alas, do they not see that it is in the name of these gods that they are ordered to present their throats to the sword of their merciless tyrants in whom they might find the obvious cause of the evils under which they grown and for whom they seize not to implore in vain the assistance of heaven? Ye credulous people in your misfortunes redouble your prayers offerings and sacrifices throng to your temples fast in sackcloth lashes bathe yourselves in your own tears and above all completely ruin yourselves to enrich your gods you will only enrich their priests the gods of heaven will be propitious only when the gods of the earth shall acknowledge themselves men like you and shall devote to your welfare the attention you deserve 148 fatal it is to persuade kings they are responsible to god alone negligent, ambitious and perverse princes are the real causes of public misfortunes useless unjust wars depopulate the earth encroaching and despotic governments absorb the benefits of nature the rapacity of courts discourages agriculture extinguishes industry produces want pestilence and misery heaven is neither cruel nor propitious to the prayers of the people it is their proud chiefs who have almost always hearts of stone it is destructive to the morals of princes to persuade them that they have god alone to fear when they injure their subjects or neglect their happiness sovereigns not the gods but your people that you offend when you do evil it is your people and yourselves that you injure when you govern unjustly in history nothing is more common than to see religious tyrants nothing more rare than to find equitable, vigilant enlightened princes a monarch may be pious punctual in a servile discharge of the duties of his religion very submissive and liberal to his priests and yet at the same time be destitute of every virtue and talent necessary for governing to princes religion is only an instrument destined to keep the people more completely under the yoke by the excellent principles of religious morality a tyrant who during a long reign has done nothing but oppress his subjects resting from them the fruits of their labor sacrificing them without mercy to his insatiable ambition a conqueror who has usurped the provinces of others slaughtered whole nations and who during his whole life has been a scourge to mankind imagines his conscience may rest when to expiate so many crimes he has wept at the feet of a priest who generally has the base complacence to console and encourage a robber whom the most hideous despair would too lightly punish for the misery he has caused upon earth 149 a devout king is the scourge of his kingdom a sovereign sincerely devout is commonly dangerous to the state credulity always supposes a contracted mind devotion generally absorbs the attention which a prince should pay to the government of his people obsequious to the suggestions of his priests he becomes the sport of their caprices the favor of their quarrels and the instrument and accomplice of their follies which he imagines to be of the greatest importance among the most fatal presence which religion has made the world ought to be reckoned devout and zealous monarchs who under an idea of working for the welfare of their subjects have made it a sacred duty to torment, persecute and destroy those who thought differently from themselves a bigot at the head of an empire is one of the greatest scourges a single fanatical or navish priest listened to by a credulous and powerful prince suffices to put a state disorder in almost all countries priests and pious persons are entrusted with forming the minds and hearts of young princes destined to govern nations what qualifications have instructors of this stamp by what interests can they be animated full of prejudices themselves they will teach their pupil to regard superstition as almost important and sacred it's chimerical duties as most indispensable intolerance and persecution as the true foundation of his future authority they will endeavour to make him a party leader a turbulent fanatic a tyrant they will early stifle his reason and forewarn him against the use of it they will prevent truth from reaching his ears they will exasperate him against true talents and prejudice him in favour of contemptible ones in short they will make him a weak devotee who will have no idea either of justice or injustice nor of true glory nor of true greatness and who will be destitute of the knowledge and virtues necessary to the government of a great nation such is the plan of the nation of a child destined one day to create the happiness or misery of millions of men end of section 14 recording by Roger Maline