 Authors' preface of Good Sense, or Free Thoughts Opposed to Supernatural Ideas, by Paul Henri Terri, Baron Daubeck. TRANSLATOR UNNOWN This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Roger Maline. Good Sense, or Free Thoughts Opposed to Supernatural Ideas, by Paul Henri Terri, Baron Daubeck. TRANSLATOR UNNOWN The Authors' Preface When we examine the opinions of men, we find that nothing is more uncommon than common sense. Or, in other words, they lack judgment to discover plain truths or to reject absurdities and palpable contradictions. We have an example of this in theology, a system revered in all countries by a great number of men, an object regarded by them as most important and indispensable to happiness. An examination of the principles upon which this pretended system is founded forces us to acknowledge that these principles are only suppositions, imagined by ignorance, propagated by enthusiasm or navery, adopted by timid credulity, preserved by custom which never reasons, and revered solely because not understood. In a word, whoever uses common sense upon religious opinions, and will bestow on this inquiry the attention that is commonly given to most subjects, will easily perceive that religion is a mere castle in the air. Theology is ignorance of natural causes, a tissue of fallacies and contradictions. In every country it presents romances void of probability, the hero of which is composed of impossible qualities. His name, exciting fear in all minds, is only a vague word to which men affix ideas or qualities, which are either contradicted by facts or inconsistent. Notions of this being, or rather the word by which he is designated, would be a matter of indifference, if it did not cause innumerable ravages in the world. But men, pre-possessed with the opinion that this phantom is a reality of the greatest interest, instead of concluding wisely from its incomprehensibility that they are not bound to regard it, infer on the contrary that they must contemplate it without ceasing and never lose sight of it. Their invincible ignorance upon this subject irritates their curiosity. Instead of putting them upon guard against their imagination, this ignorance renders them decisive, dogmatic, imperious, and even exasperates them against all who oppose doubts to the reveries which they have begotten. What perplexity arises when it is required to solve an insolvable problem, unceasing meditation upon an object impossible to understand, but in which however he thinks himself much concerned cannot but excite man and produce a fever in his brain. Let interest, vanity, and ambition co-operate ever so little with this unfortunate turn of mind, and society must necessarily be disturbed. This is the reason that so many nations have often been the scene of extravagances of senseless visionaries who, believing their empty speculations to be eternal truths and publishing them as such, have kindled zeal of princes and their subjects, and made them take up arms for opinions represented to them as essential to the glory of the deity. In all parts of our globe fanatics have cut each other's throats, publicly burnt each other, committed without a scruple and even as a duty the greatest crimes and shed torrents of blood. For what? To strengthen, support, or propagate the impertinent conjectures of some enthusiasts, or to give validity to the cheats of imposters in the name of a being who exists only in their imagination and who has made himself known only by the ravages, disputes, and follies he has caused. Savage and furious nations, perpetually at war, adore, under diverse names, some God, conformable to their ideas, that is to say cruel, carnivorous, selfish, bloodthirsty. We find in all the religions a God of armies, a jealous God, an avenging God, a destroying God, a God who is pleased with carnage and whom his worshipers consider it a duty to serve. Lambs, bull, children, men and women are sacrificed to him. Zealous servants of this barbarous God think themselves obliged even to offer up themselves as a sacrifice to him. Mad men may everywhere be seen, who, after meditating upon their terrible God, imagine that to please him they must inflict on themselves the most exquisite torments. The gloomy ideas formed of the deity, far from consoling them, have everywhere disquieted their minds and prejudiced follies destructive to happiness. How could the human mind progress while tormented with frightful phantoms and guided by men interested in perpetuating its ignorance and fears? Man has been forced to vegetate in his primitive stupidity. He has been taught stories about invisible powers upon whom his happiness was supposed to depend. Occupied solely by his fears and by unintelligible reveries, he has always been at the mercy of priests who have reserved to themselves the right of thinking for him and of directing his actions. Thus man has remained a slave without courage, fearing to reason, and unable to extricate himself from the labyrinth in which he has been wandering. He believes himself forced under the yoke of his gods, known to him only by the fabulous accounts given by his ministers, who, after binding each unhappy mortal in the chains of prejudice, remain his masters, or else abandon him defenseless in the absolute power of tyrants, no less terrible than the gods of whom they are the representatives. Oppressed by the double yoke of spiritual and temporal power, it has been impossible for the people to be happy. Religion became sacred, and men have had no other morality than what their legislators and priests brought from the unknown regions of heaven. The human mind, confused by theological opinions, ceased to know its own powers, mistrusted experience, feared truth and disdained reason in order to follow authority. Man has been a mere machine in the hands of tyrants and priests. Always treated as a slave, man has contracted the vices of slavery. Such other true causes of the corruption of morals, ignorance and servitude are calculated to make men wicked and unhappy. Knowledge, reason, and liberty can alone reform and make men happier. But everything conspires to blind them and to confirm their errors. Priests cheat them, tyrants corrupt and enslave them. Tyranny ever was and ever will be the true cause of man's depravity and also of his calamities. Almost always fascinated by religious fiction, poor mortals turn not their eyes to the natural and obvious causes of their misery, but attribute their vices to the imperfection of their natures, and their unhappiness to the anger of the gods. They offer to heaven vows, sacrifices, and presence to obtain the end of sufferings, which in reality are attributable only to the negligence, ignorance, and perversity of their guides, to the folly of their customs, and, above all, to the general want of knowledge. Let men's minds be filled with true ideas, let their reason be cultivated, and there will be no need of opposing to the passions such a feeble barrier as the fear of gods. Men will be good when they are well instructed, and when they are despised for evil or justly rewarded for good which they do to their fellow citizens. In vain should we attempt to cure men of their vices unless we begin by curing them of their prejudices. It is only by showing them the truth that they will perceive their true interests and the real motives that ought to incline them to do good. Letters have long enough fixed men's eyes upon heaven, let them now turn them upon earth. An incomprehensible theology, ridiculous fables, impenetrable mysteries, purile ceremonies are to be no longer endured. Let the human mind apply itself to what is natural, to intelligible objects, truth, and useful knowledge. Does it not suffice to annihilate religious prejudice, to show that what is inconceivable to man cannot be good for him? Does it require anything but plain common sense to perceive that a being incompatible with the most evident notions, that a cause continually opposed to the effects which we attribute to it, that a being of whom we can say nothing without falling into contradiction, that a being who, far from explaining the enigmas of the universe, only makes them more inexplicable, that a being whom for so many ages men have vainly addressed to obtain their happiness and the end of sufferings, does it require, I say, anything but plain common sense to perceive that the idea of such a being is an idea without model and that he himself is merely a phantom of the imagination? Is anything necessary but common sense to perceive, at least, that it is folly and madness for men to hate and damn one another about unintelligible opinions concerning a being of this kind? In short, does not everything prove that morality and virtue are totally incompatible with the notions of a God whom his ministers and interpreters have described in every country as the most capricious, unjust, and cruel of tyrants, whose pretended will, however, must serve as law and rule the inhabitants of the earth? To discover the true principles of morality men have no need of theology, of revelation, or of gods. They have need only of common sense. They have only to commune with themselves to reflect upon their own nature to consider the objects of society and of the individuals who compose it, and they will easily perceive that virtue is advantageous and vice disadvantageous to themselves. Let us persuade men to be just, beneficent, moderate, sociable, not because such conduct is demanded by the gods, but because it is pleasant to men. Let us advise them to abstain from vice and crime, not because they will be punished in another world, but because they will suffer for it in this. These are, says Montesquieu, means to prevent crimes. These are punishments. These reform manners. These are good examples. The way of truth is straight. That of imposture is crooked and dark. Truth, ever necessary to man, must necessarily be felt by all upright minds. The lessons of reason are to be followed by all honest men. Men are unhappy only because they are ignorant. They are ignorant only because everything conspires to prevent their being enlightened. They are wicked only because their reason is not sufficiently developed. By what fatality, then, have the first founders of all sects given to their gods ferocious characters, at which nature revolts? Can we imagine a conduct more abominable than that which Moses tells us his god showed toward the Egyptians, where that assassin proceeds boldly to declare in the name and by the order of his god that Egypt shall be afflicted with the greatest calamities that can happen to man? Of all the different ideas which they give us of a supreme being, of a god, creator, and preserver of mankind, there are none more horrible than those of the imposters, who represent themselves as inspired by a divine spirit and thus saith the Lord. Why, O theologians, do you presume to inquire into the impenetrable mysteries of a being whom you consider inconceivable to the human mind? You are the blasphemers when you imagine that a being perfect, according to you, could be guilty of such cruelty towards creatures he has made out of nothing. Confess your ignorance of a creating god and cease meddling with mysteries which are repugnant to common sense. END OF PREFESS As a vast empire governed by a monarch whose strange conduct is to confound the minds of his subjects, he wishes to be known, loved, respected, obeyed, but never shows himself to his subjects and everything conspires to render uncertain the ideas formed of his character. The people subjected to his power have of the character and laws of their invisible sovereign such ideas only as his ministers give them. They however confess that they have no idea of their master, that his ways are impenetrable, his views and nature totally incomprehensible. These ministers likewise disagree upon the commands which they pretend have been issued by the sovereign, whose servants they call themselves. They defame one another and mutually treat each other as imposters and false teachers. The decrees and ordinances they take upon themselves to promulgate are obscure. They are enigmas, little calculated to be understood, or even divined by the subject, for whose instruction they were intended. The laws of the concealed monarch require interpreters, but the interpreters are always disputing upon the true manner of understanding them. Besides, they are not consistent with themselves. All they relate of their concealed prince is only a string of contradictions. They utter concerning him not a single word that does not immediately confute itself. They call him supremely good, yet many complain of his decrees. They suppose him infinitely wise, and under his administration everything appears to contradict reason. They extol his justice, and the best of his subjects are generally the least favored. They assert he sees everything, yet his presence avails nothing. He is, say they, the friend of order, yet throughout his dominions, all is in confusion and disorder. He makes all for himself, and the events seldom answer his designs. He foresees everything, but cannot prevent anything. He impatiently suffers offence, yet gives everyone the power of offending him. Men admire the wisdom and perfection of his works, yet his works, full of imperfection, are of short duration. He is continually doing and undoing, repairing what he has made, but is never pleased with his work. In all his undertakings he proposes only his own glory, yet is never glorified. His only end is the happiness of his subjects, and his subjects, for the most part, want necessaries. Those whom he seems to favor are generally least satisfied with their fate. Almost all appear in perpetual revolt against a master whose greatness they never cease to admire, whose wisdom to extol, whose goodness to adore, whose justice to fear, and whose laws to reverence, though never obeyed. The empire is the world, this monarch God. His ministers are the priests. His subjects, mankind. Two, what is theology? There is a science that has for its object only things incomprehensible. Contrary to all other sciences, it treats only of what cannot fall under our senses. Hobbes calls it the kingdom of darkness. It is a country where everything is governed by laws, contrary to those which mankind are permitted to know in the world they inhabit. In this marvelous region light is only darkness, evidence is doubtful or false, impossibilities are credible, reason is a deceitful guide, and good sense becomes madness. This science is called theology, and this theology is a continual insult to the reason of man. Three, what is theology? By the magical power of ifs, buts, perhapses, what do we know, etc., heaped together a shapeless and unconnected system is formed, perplexing mankind by obliterating from their minds the most clear ideas and rendering uncertain truths most evident. By reason of this systematic confusion nature is an enigma. The visible world has disappeared to give place to regions invisible. Reason is compelled to yield to imagination who leads to the country of her self-invented chimeras. Four, man is not born with any ideas of religion. The principles of every religion are founded upon the ideas of a God. Now it is impossible to have true ideas of a being who acts upon none of our senses. All our ideas are representations of sensible objects. What then can represent to us the idea of God which is evidently an idea without an object? Is not such an idea as impossible as an effect without a cause? Can an idea without an archetype be anything but a chimera? There are, however, divines who assure us that the idea of God is innate or that we have this idea in our mother's womb. Every principle is the result of reason. All reason is the effect of experience. Experience is acquired only by the exercise of our senses. Therefore religious principles are not founded upon reason and are not innate. Five, it is not necessary to believe in a God. Every system of religion can be founded only upon the nature of God and man and upon the relations which subsist between them. But to judge of the reality of those relations we must have some idea of the divine nature. Now the world exclaims the divine nature is incomprehensible to man, yet ceases not to assign attributes to this incomprehensible God and to assure us that it is our indispensable duty to find out that God whom it is impossible to comprehend. The most important concern of man is what he can least comprehend. If God is incomprehensible to man it would seem reasonable never to think of him. But religion maintains man cannot with impunity cease a moment to think or rather dream of his God. Six, religion is founded on credulity. We are told that divine qualities are not of a nature to be comprehended by finite minds. The natural consequence must be that divine qualities are not made to occupy finite minds. But religion tells us that the poor finite mind of man ought never to lose sight of an inconceivable being whose qualities he can never comprehend. Thus we see religion is the art of turning the attention of mankind upon subjects they can never comprehend. Seven, all religion is an absurdity. Religion unites man with God or forms a communication between them, yet do they not say God is infinite? If God be infinite no finite being can have communication or relation with him. Where there is no relation there can be no union, communication, or duties. If there be no duties between man and his God there is no religion for man. Thus in saying God is infinite you annihilate religion for man who is a finite being. The idea of infinity is to us an idea without model, without archetype, without object. Eight, the idea of God is impossible. If God be an infinite being there cannot be either in the present or future world any relative proportion between man and his God. Thus the idea of God can never enter the human mind. In supposition of a life in which man would be much more enlightened than in this the idea of the infinity of God would ever remain the same distance from his finite mind. Thus the idea of God will be no more clear in the future than in the present life. Thus intelligences superior to man can have no more complete ideas of God than man who has not the least conception of him in his present life. Nine, on the origin of superstition. How has it been possible to persuade reasonable beings that the thing most impossible to comprehend was most essential to them? It is because they have been greatly terrified, because when they fear they cease to reason, because they have been taught to mistrust their own understanding, because when the brain is troubled they believe everything and examine nothing. Ten, on the origin of all religion. Ignorance and fear are the two hinges of all religion. The uncertainty in which man finds himself in relation to his God is precisely the motive that attaches him to his religion. Man is fearful in the dark, in moral as well as physical darkness. His fear becomes habitual and habit makes it natural. He would think that he wanted something if he had nothing to fear. RECORDING BY RODGER MALINE He who from infancy has habituated himself to tremble when he hears pronounced certain words requires those words and needs to tremble. He is therefore more disposed to listen to one who entertains him in his fears than to one who dissuades him from them. The superstitious man wishes to fear. His imagination demands it. One might say that he fears nothing so much as to have nothing to fear. Men are imaginary invalids whose weakness empirics are interested to encourage in order to have sale for their drugs. They listen rather to the physician who prescribes a variety of remedies than to him who recommends good regimen and leaves nature to herself. RELIGION SEDUCES IGNORANCE BY THE ADE OF THE MARVELOUS If religion were more clear it would have less charms for the ignorant who are pleased only with obscurity, terrors, fables, prodigies, and things incredible. Romances, silly stories, and the tales of ghosts and wizards are more pleasing to vulgar minds than grudges. 13. RELIGION SEDUCES IGNORANCE BY THE ADE OF THE MARVELOUS In point of religion men are only great children. The more a religion is absurd and filled with wonders the greater ascendancy it acquires over them. The devout man thinks himself obliged to place no bounds to his credulity, and the greater ascendancy it acquires over them. The devout man thinks himself obliged to place no bounds to his credulity. The more things are inconceivable they appear to him divine. The more they are incredible the greater merit he imagines there is in believing them. 14. NO RELIGION IF NOT AGES OF STUPIDITY AND BARBERISM The origin of religious opinions is generally dated from the time when savage nations were yet in infancy. It was to gross, ignorant and stupid people that the founders of religion have in all ages addressed themselves when they wished to give them their gods, their motive worship, their mythology, their marvelous and frightful fables. These chimeras, adopted without exclamation by parents, are transmitted with more or less alteration to their children who seldom reason any more than their parents. 15. ALL RELIGION WAS PRODUCED BY THE DESIRE OF DOMINATION The object of the first legislators was to govern the people, and the easiest method to affect it was to terrify their minds and to prevent the exercise of reason. They led them through winding by-paths lest they might perceive the designs of their guides. They forced them to fix their eyes in the air, for fear they should look at their feet. They amused them on the way with idle stories. In a word they treated them as nurses do children who sing lullabies to put them to sleep and scold to make them quiet. 16. WHAT SERVES AS A BASIS TO RELIGION IS MOST UNCERTAIN The existence of a god is the basis of all religion. Few appear to doubt his existence, yet this fundamental article utterly embarrasses every mind that reasons. The first question of every catechism has been, and ever will be, the most difficult to resolve. In the year 1701 the holy fathers of the oratory of Vandome maintained in a thesis this proposition that, according to St. Thomas, the existence of God is not and cannot be a subject of faith. 17. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO BE CONVINCED OF THE EXISTENCE OF A GOD Can we imagine ourselves sincerely convinced of the existence of a being whose nature we know not, who is inaccessible to all our senses, whose attributes we are assured are incomprehensible to us? To persuade me that a being exists or can exist I must be first told what that being is. To induce me to believe the existence or the possibility of such a being it is necessary to tell me things concerning him that are not contradictory and do not destroy one another. In short, to fully convince me of the existence of that being it is necessary to tell me things that I can understand. 18. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO BE CONVINCED OF THE EXISTENCE OF A GOD A thing is impossible when it includes two ideas that mutually destroy one another, and which can neither be conceived nor united in thought. Conviction can be founded only upon the constant testimony of our senses which alone give birth to our ideas and enable us to judge of the agreement or disagreement. That which exists necessarily is that whose nonexistence implies a contradiction. These principles, universally acknowledged, become erroneous when applied to the existence of a God. Whatever has been hitherto set upon the subject is either unintelligible or perfect contradiction and must therefore appear absurd to every rational man. 19. THE EXISTENCE OF GOD IS NOT PROVED All human knowledge is more or less clear. By what strange fatality have we never been able to elucidate the science of God? The most civilized nations, and among them the most profound thinkers, are in this respect no more enlightened than the most savage tribes and ignorant peasants. And examining the subjects closely we shall find that by the speculations and subtle refinements of men the divine science has been only more and more obscured. Every religion has hitherto been founded only upon what is called, in logic, begging the question. It takes things for granted and then proves by suppositions instead of principles. 20. IT EXPLAINS NOTHING TO SAY THAT GOD IS A SPIRIT Metaphysics teach us that God is a pure spirit. But is modern theology superior to that of the savages? The savages acknowledge a great spirit for the master of the world. The savages, like all ignorant people, attribute to spirits all the effects of which their experience cannot discover the true causes. Ask a savage what works your watch. He will answer it is a spirit. The divine's what moves the universe. They answer it is a spirit. 21. SPIRITUALITY IS AN ABSURDITY The savage, when he speaks of a spirit, affixes at least some idea to the word. He means thereby an agent, like the air, the breeze, the breath, that invisibly produces discernible effects. By subtleizing everything, the modern theologian becomes as unintelligible to himself as to others. Ask him what he understands by a spirit. He will answer you that it is an unknown substance, perfectly simple, that has no extension, that has nothing common with matter. Indeed, is there anyone who can form the least idea of such a substance? What then is a spirit to speak in the language of modern theology but the absence of an idea? The idea of spirituality is an idea without model. 22. WHATEVER EXISTS IS DERIVED FROM MATTER Is it not more natural and intelligible to draw universal existence from the matter whose existence is demonstrated by all the senses and whose effects we experience, which we see act, move, communicate motion, and incessantly generate, then to attribute the formation of things to an unknown power, to a spiritual being who cannot derive from his nature what he is not himself, and who, by his spiritual essence, can create neither matter nor motion? Nothing is more evident than that the idea they endeavor to give us, of the action of mind upon matter, represents no object. It is an idea without model. 23. WHAT IS THE METAPHISICAL GOD OF MODERN THEOLOGY The material Jupiter of the ancients could move, compose, destroy, and create beings similar to himself. But the God of modern theology is sterile. He can neither occupy any place in space nor move matter, nor form a visible world, nor create men or gods. The metaphysical God is fit only to produce confusion, reveries, follies, and disputes. 24. LESS UNREASONABLE TO ADORE THE SUN THAN ADORE A SPIRITUAL DEITY Since a God was indispensable requisite to men, why did they not worship the sun, that visible God, adored by so many nations? What being had greater claim to the homage of men than the day-star, who enlightens, warms, and vivifies all beings, whose presence enlivens and regenerates nature, whose absence seems to cast her into gloom and languor? If any being announced to mankind power, activity, beneficence, and duration, it was certainly the sun whom they ought to have regarded as the parent of nature as the divinity. At least they could not without folly dispute his existence, or refuse to acknowledge his influence. 2. PARTS 25 THROUGH 38 A SPIRITUAL DEITY The theologian exclaims to us that God wants neither hands nor arms to act, that he acts by his will. 3. PARTS 25 THROUGH 38 A SPIRITUAL DEITY is incapable of volition and action. The theologian exclaims to us that God wants neither hands nor arms to act, that he acts by his will. But pray, who or what is that God who has a will, and what can be the subject of his divine will? Are the stories of witches, ghosts, wizards, hobgoblins, etc., more absurd and difficult to believe than the magical or impossible action of mind upon matter? When we admit such a God, fables and reveries may claim belief. Theologians treat men as children, whose simplicity makes them believe all the stories they hear. 26. WHAT IS GOD? To shake the existence of God we need only to ask a theologian to speak of him. As soon as he has said a word upon the subject, the least reflection will convince us that his observations are totally incompatible with the essence he ascribes to his God. What then is God? It is an abstract word denoting the hidden power of nature. Or it is a mathematical point that has neither length, breadth, nor thickness. David Hume, speaking of theologians, has ingeniously observed that they have discovered the solution to the famous problem of Archimedes, a point in the heavens once they move the world. 27. Some remarkable contradictions in theology. Religion prostrates men before a being who, without extension, is infinite and fills all with his immensity, a being all powerful who never executes his will, a being sovereignly good who creates only disquietudes, a being the friend of order and in whose government all is in confusion and disorder. What then can we imagine can be the God of theology? 28. To adore God is to adore a fiction. To avoid all embarrassment we are told that it is not necessary to know what God is, that we must adore him, that we are not permitted to extend our views to his attributes. But before we know that we must adore a God, must we not know certainly that he exists? But how can we assure ourselves that he exists if we never examine whether the various qualities attributed to him do really exist and agree in him? Indeed, to adore God is to adore only the fictions of one's own imagination, or rather it is to adore nothing. 29. Atheism is authorized by the infinity of God. In view of confounding things the more theologians have not declared what their God is. They tell us only what he is not. By means of negations and abstractions they think they have composed a real and perfect being. Mind is that which is not body. An infinite being is a being who is not finite. A perfect being is a being who is not imperfect. Indeed, is there anyone who can form real ideas of such a massive absence of ideas? That which excludes all idea, can it be anything but nothing? To pretend that the divine attributes are beyond the reach of human conception is to grant that God is not made for man. To assure us that in God all is infinite is to own that there can be nothing common to him and his creatures. If there be nothing common to God and his creatures, God is annihilated for man, or at least rendered useless to him. God, they say, has made man intelligent, but he has not made him omniscient. Hence it is inferred that he has not been able to give him faculties sufficiently enlarged to know his divine essence. In this case it is evident that God has not been able, nor willing to be known by his creatures. By what right, then, would God be angry with beings who were naturally incapable of knowing the divine essence? God would be evidently the most unjust and capricious of tyrants. If he should punish an atheist for not having known what by his nature it was impossible he should know. To the generality of men nothing renders an argument more convincing than fear. It is therefore that theologians assure us we must take the safest part, that nothing is so criminal as incredulity, that God will punish without pity everyone who has the temerity to doubt his existence. That his severity is just, since madness or perversity can only make us deny the existence of an enraged monarch, who without mercy avenges himself on atheists. If we coolly examine these threatenings, we shall find they always suppose the thing in question. They must first prove the existence of a God, before they assure us it is safest to believe and horrible to doubt or deny his existence. They must then prove that it is possible and consistent that a just God cruelly punishes men for having been in a state of madness, that prevented their believing the existence of a being whom their perverted reason could not conceive. In a word, it is not the most inconceivable thing to conceive. In a word, they must prove that an infinitely just God can infinitely punish the invincible and natural ignorance of man with respect to the divine nature. Do not theologians reason very strangely? They invent phantoms. They compose them of contradictions. They then assure us it is safest not to doubt the existence of these phantoms they themselves have invented. According to this mode of reasoning there is no absurdity which it would not be more safe to believe than not to believe. All children are born atheists. They have no idea of God. Are they then criminal on account of their ignorance? At what age must they begin to believe in God? It is, you say, at the age of reason. But at what time should this age commence? Besides, if the profoundest theologians lose themselves in the divine nature, which they do not presume to comprehend, what ideas must man have of him? 31. Belief in God is a habit acquired in infancy. Men believe in God only upon the word of those who have no more idea of him than themselves. Our nurses are our first theologians. They talk to children of God as if he were a scarecrow. They teach them from the earliest age to join their hands mechanically. Have nurses then more true ideas of God than the children whom they used to pray? 32. Belief in God is a prejudice of successive generations. Religion, like a family estate, passes with its encumbrances from parents to children. Few men in the world would have a God had not pains been taken in infancy to give them one. Each would receive from his parents and teachers the God whom they received from theirs. But each, agreeably to his disposition, would arrange, modify, and paint him in his own manner. 33. On the origin of prejudices. The brain of man, especially in infancy, is like soft wax, fit to receive every impression that is made upon it. Education furnishes him with almost all his ideas at a time when he is incapable of judging for himself. We believe we have received from nature, or have brought with us at birth, the true or false ideas which, in a tender age, had been instilled into our minds, and this persuasion is one of the greatest sources of errors. 34. On the effects of prejudices. Prejudice contributes to cement in us the opinions of those who have been charged with our instruction. We believe them much more experienced than ourselves. We suppose they are fully convinced of the things which they teach us. We have the greatest confidence in them. By the care they have taken of us in infancy we judge them incapable of wishing to deceive us. These are the motives that make us adopt a thousand errors without other foundation than the hazardous authority of those by whom we have been brought up. The prohibition likewise of reasoning upon what they teach us by no means lessens our confidence, but often contributes to increase our respect for their opinions. 35. Theology must be instilled before the age of reason. Devines act very wisely in teaching men their religious principles before they are capable of distinguishing truth from falsehood, or their left hand from their right. It would be as difficult to instill into the mind of a man forty years old the extravagant notions that are given to us of the divinity as to eradicate them from the mind of him who had imbibed them from infancy. 36. The wonders of nature do not prove the existence of God. It is observed that the wonders of nature are sufficient to lead us to the existence of a God and fully to convince us of this important truth. But how many are there in the world who have the time, capacity, or disposition necessary to contemplate nature and meditate or progress? Men, for the most part, pay no regard to it. The peasant is not struck with the beauty of the sun which he sees every day. The sailor is not surprised at the regular motion of the ocean. He will never draw from it theological conclusions. The phenomena of nature prove the existence of a God only to some prejudiced men who have been early taught to behold the finger of God in everything whose mechanism could embarrass them. In the wonders of nature the unprejudiced philosopher sees nothing but the power of nature, the permanent and various laws, the necessary effects of different combinations of matter infinitely diversified. 37. Nature may be explained by natural causes. Is there anything more surprising than the logic of these divines who, instead of confessing their ignorance of natural causes, seek beyond nature in imaginary regions a cause much more unknown than that nature of which they can form at least some idea? To say that God is the author of the phenomena of nature is it not to attribute them to an occult cause? What is God? What is a spirit? They are causes of which we have no idea. Oh, wise divines, study nature and her laws, and since you can there discover the action of natural causes, go not to those that are supernatural, which, far from enlightening, will only darken your ideas and make it utterly impossible that you should understand yourselves. 38. Nature may be explained by natural causes. Nature, you say, is totally inexplicable without a God. That is to say to explain what you understand very little you have need of a cause which you understand not at all. You think to elucidate what is obscure by doubling the obscurity, to solve difficulties by multiplying them. Oh, enthusiastic philosophers, to prove the existence of a God, write complete treatises of botany, enter into a minute detail of the parts of the human body, launch forth into the sky to contemplate the revolution of the stars, then return to the earth to admire the course of matters. Behold with transport the butterflies, the insects, the polypie, and the organized atoms, in which you think you discern the greatness of your God. All these things will not prove the existence of God. They will prove only that you have not just ideas of the immense variety of matter, and of the effects producible by its infinitely diversified combinations that institute the universe. They will prove only your ignorance of nature, that you have no idea of her powers when you judge her incapable of producing a multitude of forms and beings of which your eyes, even with the assistance of microscopes, never discern but the smallest part. In a word they will prove that for want of knowing sensible agents, or those possible to know, you find it shorter to have recourse to a word expressing an inconceivable agent. Parts 39 to 52 39. The world has never been created. Matter moves of itself. We are gravely and repeatedly told that there is no effect without a cause. That the world did not make itself. But the universe is a cause. It is not an effect. It is not a work. It has not been made because it is impossible that it should have been made. The world has always been. Its existence is necessary. It is its own cause. Nature, whose essence is visibly to act and produce, requires not to discharge her functions an invisible mover, much more unknown than herself. Matter moves by its own energy, by a necessary consequence of its heterogeneity. The diversity of motion, or modes of mutual action, constitutes alone the diversity of matter. We distinguish beings from one another only by the different impressions or motions which they communicate to our organs. Forty. The world has never created matter moves of itself. You see that all is action in nature and yet pretend that nature, by itself, is dead and without power. You imagine that this all, essentially acting, needs a mover. What then is this mover? It is a spirit, a being absolutely incomprehensible and contradictory. Acknowledge then that matter acts of itself and cease to reason of your spiritual mover, who has nothing that is requisite to put it in action. Return from your useless excursions. Enter again into a real world. Keep two second causes and leave to divine their first cause of which nature has no need to produce all the effects you observe in the world. Forty-one. Motion is essential to matter, no spiritual mover. It can be only by the diversity of impressions and effects, which bodies make upon us, that we feel them, that we have perceptions and ideas of them, that we distinguish one from another, that we assign them properties. Now to see or feel an object, the object must act upon our organs. This object cannot act upon us without exciting some motion in us. It cannot excite motion in us if it not be in motion itself. At the instant I see an object, my eyes are struck by it. I can have no conception of light and vision without motion communicated to my eye from the luminous, extended, colored body. At the instant I smell something, my senses irritated or put in motion by the parts that exhale from the odiferous body. At the moment I hear a sound, the tympanum of my ear is struck by the air, put in motion by a sonorous body, which would not act if it were not in motion itself. Whence it evidently follows that without motion I can neither feel, see, distinguish, compare, judge, nor occupy my thoughts upon any subject whatever. We are taught that the essence of a thing is that from which all its properties flow. Now it is evident that all the properties of bodies, of which we have ideas, are owing to motion, which alone informs us of their existence and gives us the first conceptions of them. I cannot be informed of my own existence, but by the motions I experience in myself. I am therefore forced to conclude that motion is as essential to matter as extension, and that matter cannot be conceived without it. Should any person deny that motion is essential and necessary to matter, they cannot at least help acknowledge that bodies which seem dead and inert produce motion of themselves when placed in a fit situation to act upon one another. For instance, phosphorus, when exposed to the air, immediately takes fire. Meal and water, when mixed, ferment. Thus dead matter begets motion of itself. Matter has, then, the power of self-motion, and nature, to act, has no need of a mover whose pretended essence would hinder him from acting. 42. The existence of man does not prove the existence of God. 3. Whence comes man? What is his origin? Did the first man spring ready-formed from the dust of the earth? Man appears, like all other beings, a production of nature. Whence came the first stones, the first trees, the first lions, the first elephants, the first ants, the first acorns? We are incessantly told to acknowledge and revere the hand of God, of an infinitely wise, intelligent, and powerful maker, in so wonderful a work as the human machine. I readily confess that the human machine appears to me surprising. But as man exists in nature, I am not authorized to say that his formation is above the power of nature. But I can much less conceive of this formation when, to explain it, I am told, that a pure spirit, who has neither eyes, feet, hands, head, lungs, mouth, nor breath, made man by taking a little clay and breathing upon it. We laugh at the savage inhabitants of Paraguay for calling themselves the descendants of the moon. The divines of Europe call themselves the descendants or the creation of a pure spirit. Is this pretension any more rational? Man is intelligent, thence it is inferred that he can be the work only of an intelligent being, and not of a nature which is void of intelligence. Although nothing is more rare than to see man make use of this intelligence, of which he seems so proud, I will grant that he is intelligent, that his wants develop this faculty, that society especially contributes to cultivate it. But I see nothing in the human machine and in the intelligence with which it is endued that announces very precisely the infinite intelligence of the maker to whom it is ascribed. I see that this admirable machine is liable to be deranged. I see that his wonderful intelligence is then disordered, and sometimes totally disappears. I infer that human intelligence depends upon a certain disposition of the material organs of the body, and that we cannot infer the intelligence of God any more from the intelligence of man than from his materiality. All that we can infer from it is that God is material. The intelligence of man no more proves the intelligence of God than the malice of man proves the malice of that God, who is the pretended maker of man. In spite of all the arguments of divines God will always be a cause contradicted by its effects, or of which it is impossible to judge by its works. We shall always see evil, imperfection, and folly result from such a cause that is said to be full of goodness, perfection, and wisdom. 43 Neither man nor the universe are the effects of chance. What, you will say, is intelligent man, is the universe, and all it contains, the effect of chance? No, I repeat it, the universe is not an effect, it is the cause of all effects. Every being it contains is the necessary effect of this cause, which sometimes shows us its manner of acting, but generally conceals its operations. Men use the word chance to hide their ignorance of true causes, which, though not understood, act not less according to certain laws. There is no effect without a cause. Nature is a word used to denote the immense assemblage of beings, various matter, infinite combinations, and diversified motions that we behold. All bodies, organized or unorganized, are necessary effects of certain causes. Nothing in nature can happen by chance. Everything is subject to fixed laws. These laws are only the necessary connection of certain effects with their causes. One atom of matter cannot meet another by chance. This meeting is the effect of permanent laws which cause every being necessarily to act as it does and hinder it from acting otherwise in given circumstances. To talk of the fortuitous concourse of atoms or to attribute some effects to chance is merely saying that we are ignorant of the laws by which bodies act, meet, combine, or separate. Those who are unacquainted with nature, the properties of beings, and the effects which must necessarily result from the concurrence of certain causes, think that everything takes place by chance. It is not chance that has placed the sun in the center of our planetary system. It is by its own essence that the substance of which it is composed must occupy that place and thence be diffused. Forty-four. Order of the universe does not prove the existence of a God. The worshippers of a God find, in the order of the universe, an invincible proof of the existence of an intelligent and wise being who governs it. But this order is nothing but a series of movements necessarily produced by causes or circumstances which are sometimes favorable and sometimes hurtful to us. We approve of some and complain of others. Nature uniformly follows the same round, that is, the same causes produce the same effects as long as their action is not disturbed by other causes which force them to produce different effects. When the operation of causes, whose effects we experience, is interrupted by causes which, though unknown, are not the less natural and necessary, we are confounded. We cry out a miracle and attribute it to a cause much more unknown than any of those acting before our eyes. The universe is always in order. It cannot be in disorder. It is our machine that suffers when we complain of disorder. The bodies, causes and beings which this world contains necessarily act in the manner in which we see them act, whether we approve or disapprove of their effects. Earthquakes, volcanoes, inundations, pestilences and famines are effects as necessary or as much in the order of nature as the fall of heavy bodies, the courses of rivers, the periodical motions of the seas, the blowing of the winds, the fruitful rains and the favorable effects for which men praise God and thank Him for His goodness. To be astonished that a certain order rains in the world is to be surprised that the same causes constantly produce the same effects. To be shocked at disorder is to forget that when things change or are interrupted in their actions the effects can no longer be the same. To wonder at the order of nature is to wonder that anything can exist. It is to be surprised at anyone's own existence. What is order to one being is disorder to another. All wicked beings find that everything is in order when they can with impunity put everything in disorder. They find, on the contrary, that everything is in disorder when they are disturbed in the exercise of their wickedness. Forty-five. Order of the universe does not prove the existence of a God. Upon supposition that God is the author and mover of nature there could be no disorder with respect to Him. Would not all the causes that He should have made necessarily act according to the properties, essences, and impulses given them? If God should change the ordinary course of nature He would not be immutable. If the order of the universe in which man thinks he sees the most convincing proof of the existence, intelligence, power, and goodness of God should happen to contradict itself one might suspect his existence or at least accuse him of inconsistency, impudence, want of foresight, and wisdom in the arrangement of things. One would have a right to accuse him of an oversight in the choice of the agents and instruments which he makes, prepares, and puts in action. In short, if the order of nature proves the power and intelligence of the deity, disorder must prove his weakness, instability, and irrationality. You say that God is omnipresent, that He fills the universe with His immensity, that nothing is done without Him that matter could not act without His agency. But in this case you admit that your God is the author of disorder, that it is He who deranges nature, that He is the author of confusion, that He is in man and moves Him at the moment He sins. If God is everywhere He is in me, He acts with me, He is deceived with me, He offends God with me, and combats with me the existence of God. Oh, theologians, you never understand yourselves when you speak of God? Forty-six. Absurd to adore a divine intelligence. In order to have what we call intelligence it is necessary to have ideas, thoughts, and wishes. To have ideas, thoughts, and wishes it is necessary to have organs. To have organs it is necessary to have a body. To act upon bodies it is necessary to have a body. To experience disorder it is necessary to be capable of suffering. Once it evidently follows that a pure spirit can neither be intelligent nor affected by what passes in the universe. Divine intelligence, ideas, and views have, you say, nothing common with those of men. Very well. How then can men judge right or wrong of these views, reason upon these ideas, or admire this intelligence? This would be to judge, admire, and adore that of which we can have no ideas. To adore the profound views of divine wisdom is it not to adore that of which we cannot possibly judge? To admire these views is it not to admire without knowing why? Admiration is always the daughter of ignorance. Men admire and adore only what they do not comprehend. Forty-seven. Qualities given God contrary to the essence attributed to him. All those qualities ascribed to God are totally incompatible with the being who, by his very essence, is void of all analogy with human beings. It is true that divines imagine they extricate themselves from this difficulty by exaggerating the human qualities attributed to the divinity. They enlarge them to infinity, where they cease to understand themselves. What results from this combination of man with God? A mere chimera of which, if anything be affirmed, the phantom, combined with so much pains, instantly vanishes. Dante, in his poem upon Paradise, relates that the deity appeared to him under the figure of three circles, forming an iris, whose lively colors generated each other, but that looking steadily upon the dazzling light he saw only his own figure. While adoring God it is himself that man adores. Forty-eight. Quality is given God contrary to the essence attributed to him. Ought not the least reflection suffice to prove that God can have none of the human qualities, all ties, virtues, or perfections? Our virtues and perfections are consequences of the modifications of our passions. But has God passions as we have? Again, our good qualities consist in our dispositions toward the beings with whom we live in society. God, according to you, is an insulated being. God has no equals, no fellow beings. God does not live in society. He wants the assistance of no one. He enjoys an unchangeable felicity. Admit then, according to your own principles, that God cannot have what we call virtues, and that man cannot be virtuous with respect to him. Forty-nine. Absurd to say that the human race is the object of the universe. Man, wrapped up in his own merit, imagines the human race to be the sole object of God in creating the universe. Upon what does he found this flattering opinion? We are told that man is the only being endued with intelligence, which enables him to know the deity and to render him homage. We are assured that God made the world only for his own glory, and that it was necessary that the human species should come into this plan, that there might be someone to admire his works and glorify him for them. But according to these suppositions, has not God evidently missed his object? First, man, according to yourselves, will always labor under the completest impossibility of knowing his God, and the most invincible ignorance of his divine essence. Secondly, a being who has no equal cannot be susceptible of glory, for glory can result only from the comparison of one's own excellence with that of others. Thirdly, if God be infinitely happy, if he be self-sufficient, what need has he of the homage of his feeble creatures? Fourthly, God, notwithstanding all his endeavors, is not glorified, but, on the contrary, all the religions in the world represent him as perpetually offended. Their sole object is to reconcile sinful, ungrateful, rebellious man with his angry God. Fifty. God is not made for man, nor man for God. If God be infinite, he has much less relation with man than man with ants. Would the ants reason pertinently concerning the intentions, desires, and projects of the gardener? Could they justly imagine that a park was planted for them alone by an ostentatious monarch, and that the sole object of his goodness was to furnish them with a superb residence? But, according to theology, man is, with respect to God, far below what the vilest insect is to man. Thus, by theology itself, which is wholly devoted to the attributes and views of the divinity, theology appears a complete folly. Fifty-one. Untrue that the object of the universe was to render man happy? We are told that, in the formation of the universe, God's only object was the happiness of man. But, in a world made purposely for him, and governed by an omnipotent God, is man in reality very happy? Are his enjoyments durable? Are not his pleasures mixed with pains? Are many persons satisfied with their fate? Is not man continually the victim of physical and moral evils? Is not the human machine, which is represented as a masterpiece of the creator's skill, liable to derangement in a thousand ways? Should we be surprised at the workmanship of a mechanic who should show us a complex machine ready to stop every moment and which, in a short time, would break in pieces of itself? Fifty-two. What is called providence is a word without meaning. The generous care displayed by the deity in providing for the wants and watching over the happiness of his beloved creatures is called providence. But when we open our eyes we find that God provides nothing. Providence sleeps over the greater part of the inhabitants of this world. For a very small number of men who are supposed to be happy, what an immense multitude grown under oppression and languish in misery. Are not nations forced to deprive themselves of bread to administer to the extravagances of a few gloomy tyrants who are no happier than their oppressed slaves? At the same time that our divines emphatically expatiate upon the goodness of providence, while they exhort us to repose our confidence in her, do we not hear them at the sight of unforeseen catastrophes exclaim that providence sports with the vain projects of man, that she frustrates their designs, that she laughs at their efforts, that profound wisdom delights to bewilder the minds of mortals? But shall we put confidence in a malignant providence who laughs at and sports with mankind? How will one admire the unknown ways of a hidden wisdom whose manner of acting is inexplicable? Judge of it by effects, you will say. We do, and find that these effects are sometimes useful and sometimes hurtful. Men think they justify providence by saying that in this world there is much more good than evil to every individual of mankind. Supposing the good we enjoy from providence is to the evil as a hundred to ten. Will it not still follow that for a hundred degrees of goodness providence possesses ten of malignity which is incompatible with the supposed perfection of the divine nature? Almost all books are filled with the most flattering praises of providence whose attentive care is highly extolled. It would seem as if man, to live happily here below, needed not his own exertions. Yet without his own labor man could subsist hardly a day. To live he is obliged to sweat, toil, hunt, fish, and labor without intermission. Without these second causes the first cause, at least in most countries, would provide for none of our wants. In all parts of the globe we see savage and civilized man in a perpetual struggle with providence. He is necessitated to ward off the strokes directed against him by providence in hurricanes, tempests, frosts, hailstorms, inundations, droughts, and the various accidents which so often render useless all his labors. In a word we see man continually occupied in guarding against the ill offices of that providence which is supposed to be attentive to his happiness. A bigot admired divine providence for wisely ordering rivers to pass through those places where men built large cities. Is not this man's reasoning as rational as that of many learned men who incessantly talk of final causes or who pretend that they clearly perceive the beneficent views of God in the formation of all things? Good Sense Do we see then that providence so very sensibly manifests herself in the preservation of those admirable works which we attribute to her? If it is she who governs the world we find her as active in destroying as in forming, in exterminating as in producing. Does she not every moment destroy by thousands the very men to whose preservation and welfare we suppose are continually attentive? Every moment she loses sight of her beloved creature? Sometimes she shakes his dwelling, sometimes she annihilates his harvests, sometimes she inundates his fields, sometimes she desolates them by a burning drought. She arms all nature against man, she arms man himself against his own species, and commonly terminates his existence in anguish. Is this then what is preserving the universe? If we could view without prejudice the equivocal conduct of providence towards the human race and all sensible beings we should find that far from resembling a tender and careful mother she resembles rather those unnatural mothers who instantly forgetting the unfortunates of their licentious love abandon their infants as soon as they are born and who, content and born them, expose them helpless to the caprice of fortune. The Hottentots in this respect are much wiser than other nations who treat them as barbarians and refuse to worship God because they say, if he often does good he often does evil. Is not this manner of reasoning more just and conformable to experience than that of many men who are determined to see in their God nothing but goodness, wisdom and foresight and who refuse to see that the innumerable evils of which this world is the theatre must come from the same hand which they kiss with delight? 54. The world is not governed by an intelligent being. Common sense teaches that we cannot and ought not to judge of a cause but by its effects. A cause can be reputed constantly good only when it constantly produces good. A cause which produces both good and evil is sometimes good and sometimes evil. But the logic of theology destroys all this. According to that the phenomena of nature or the effects we behold in this world prove to us the existence of a cause infinitely good and this cause is God. Although this world is full of evils, although disorder often rains in it, although men incessantly repine at their hard fate, we must be convinced that these effects are owing to a beneficent and immutable cause and many people believe it or fain believe. Everything that passes in the world proves to us in the clearest manner that it is not governed by an intelligent being. We can judge of the intelligence of a being only by the conformity of the means which he employs to attain his proposed object. The object of God is the happiness of man. Yet a like necessity governs the fate of all sensible beings who are born only to suffer much and enjoy little and die. The cup of man is filled with joy and bitterness. Good is everywhere attended with evil. Order gives place to disorder. Generation is followed by destruction. If you say that the designs of God are mysterious and that his ways are impenetrable, I answer that in this case it is impossible to judge whether God be intelligent. 55. God cannot be considered immutable. You pretend that God is immutable. What then produces a continual instability in this world which you make his empire? Is there a state subject to more frequent and cruel revolutions than that of this unknown monarch? How can we attribute to an immutable God sufficiently powerful to give solidity to his works, a government in which everything is in continual vicissitude? If I imagine I see a God of uniform character in all the effects favorable to my species, what kind of a God can I see in their continual misfortunes? You tell me it is our sins which compel him to punish. I answer that God, according to yourselves, is then not immutable, since the sins of men force him to change his conduct towards them. Can a being who is sometimes provoked and sometimes appeased be constantly the same? 56. Good and evil are the necessary effects of natural causes. The universe can be only what it is. All sensible beings in it enjoy and suffer. That is, are moved sometimes in an agreeable and sometimes in a disagreeable manner. These effects are necessary. They result necessarily from causes which act only according to their properties. These effects necessarily please or displease by the consequence of nature. This same nature compels me to avoid, avert, and resist some things, and to seek, desire, and procure others. In a world where everything is necessary, a God who remedies nothing, who leaves things to run in their necessary course, is he anything but destiny or necessity personified? It is a deaf and useless God who can affect no change in general laws to which he is himself subject. Of what importance is the infinite power of a being who will do but very little in my favor? Where is the infinite goodness of a being indifferent to happiness? Of what service is the favor of a being who is able to do an infinite good does not do even a finite one? Fifty-seven. The consolations of theology and paradise are imaginary. When we ask why so many miserable objects appear under the government of a good God, we are told, by way of consolation, that the present world is only a passage designed to conduct man to be a happier one. The divines assure us that the earth we inhabit is a state of trial. In short, they shut our mouths by saying that God could communicate to His creatures neither impossibility nor infinite happiness which are reserved for Himself alone. Can such answers be satisfactory? First, the existence of another life is guaranteed to us only by the imagination of man who, by supposing it, have only realized the desire they have of surviving themselves in order to enjoy here after a purer and more durable happiness. Secondly, how can we conceive that a God who knows everything and must be fully acquainted with the dispositions of His creatures should want so many experiments in order to be sure of their dispositions? Thirdly, according to the calculations of their chronologists, our earth has existed six or seven thousand years. During that time nations have experienced calamities. History exhibits the human species at all times tormented and ravaged by tyrants, conquerors and heroes, by wars, inundations, famines, plagues, etc. Are such long trials then likely to inspire us with very great confidence in the secret views of the deity? Do such numerous and constant evils give a very exalted idea of the future state His goodness is preparing for us? Fourthly, if God is so kindly disposed, as He is asserted to be, without giving men infinite happiness, could He not at least have communicated the degree of happiness of which finite beings are susceptible here below? To be happy must we have an infinite or divine happiness? Fifthly, if God could not make men happier than they are here below, what will become of the hope of a paradise where it is pretended that the elect will forever enjoy ineffable bliss? If God neither could nor would avert evil from the earth, the only residents we can know, what reason have we to presume that He can or will avert evil from another world of which we have no idea? Epicurus observed, either God would remove evil out of this world and cannot, or He can and will not, or He has neither the power nor will, or, lastly, He has both the power and will. If He has the will and not the power, this shows weakness, which is contrary to the nature of God. If He has the power and not the will, it is malignity, and this is no less contrary to His nature. If He is neither able nor willing, He is both impotent and malignant and consequently cannot be God. If He be both willing and able, which alone is consonant to the nature of God, whence comes evil or why does He not prevent it? Reflecting minds are still waiting for a reasonable solution of these difficulties, and our divines tell us that they will be removed only in a future life. Fifty-eight. Another romantic reverie. We are told of a pretended scale of beings. It is supposed that God has divided His creatures into different classes in which each enjoys the degree of happiness of which it is susceptible. According to this romantic arrangement, from the oyster to the celestial angels, all beings enjoy a happiness which is suitable to their nature. Experience explicitly contradicts this sublime reverie. In this world all sensible beings suffer and live in the midst of dangers. Man cannot walk without hurting, tormenting, or killing a multitude of sensible beings which are in his way, while he himself is exposed at every step to a multitude of evils, foreseen or unforeseen, which may lead him to destruction. During the whole course of his life he is exposed to pains. He is not sure a moment of his existence to which he is so strongly attached and which he regards as the greatest gift of the divinity. Fifty-nine. Vain that theology attempts to clear its God from defects. The world, it will be said, has all the perfection of which it is susceptible. Since it is not God who made it, it must have great qualities and great defects. But we answer that as the world must necessarily have great defects, it would have been more comfortable to the nature of a good God not to have created a world which he could not make completely happy. If God was supremely happy before the creation of the world, and could have continued to be supremely happy without creating the world, why did he not remain at rest? Why must man suffer? Why must man exist? Of what importance is his existence to God? Nothing or something. If man's existence is not useful or necessary to God, why did God make man? If man's existence is necessary to God's glory, he had need of man. He was deficient in something before man existed. We can pardon an unskillful workman for making an imperfect work, because he must work well or ill upon penalty of starving. This workman is excusable, but God is not. According to you he is self-sufficient. If so, why does he make men? He has, you say, everything requisite to make man happy. Why then does he not do it? Confess that your God has more malice than goodness unless you admit that God was necessitated to do what he has done without being able to do it otherwise. Yet you assure us that God is free. You say also that he is immutable, although it was in time that he began and ceased to exercise his power, like the inconstant beings of this world. Oh, theologians, vain are your efforts to free your God from defects. This perfect God has always some human imperfections. Sixty. Impossible to believe God is of infinite goodness and power. Is not God master of his favors? Can he not give them? Can he not take them away? It does not belong to his creatures to require reasons for his conduct. He can dispose of the works of his own hands as he pleases. Absolute sovereign of mortals he distributes happiness or misery according to his good pleasure. Such are the solutions given by theologians to console us for the evils which God inflicts upon us. We reply that a God who is infinitely good cannot be master of his favors but would, by his nature, be obliged to bestow them upon his creatures, that a being truly beneficent cannot refrain from doing good, that a being truly generous does not take back what he is given, and that every man who does so dispenses with gratitude and has no right to complain of finding ungrateful men. How can the odd and capricious conduct which theologians ascribe to God be reconciled with religion which supposes a covenant or mutual engagements between God and men? If God owes nothing to his creatures, they, on their part, can owe nothing to their God. All religion is founded upon the happiness that men think they have a right to expect from the deity, who is supposed to say to them, Love me, adore me, obey me, and I will make you happy. Men, on their part, say to him, Make us happy, be faithful to your promises, and we will love you, we will adore you, and obey your laws. By neglecting the happiness of his creatures, distributing his favors according to his caprice, and retracting his gifts, does not God break the covenant which serves as the basis of all religion? Cicero has justly observed that, if God is not agreeable to man, he cannot be his God. Goodness constitutes deity. This goodness can be manifested to man only by the blessings he enjoys. As soon as he is unhappy this goodness disappears, and with it the divinity. An infinite goodness can be neither limited, partial, nor exclusive. If God be infinitely good he owes happiness to all his creatures. The unhappiness of a single being would suffice to annihilate unbounded goodness. Under an infinitely good and powerful God is it possible to conceive that a single man should suffer? One animal, or might, that suffers furnishes invincible arguments against divine providence and its infinite goodness. Sixty-one. Impossible to believe God is of infinite goodness and power. According to theology the afflictions and evils of this life are chastisements which guilty men incur from the hand of God. But why are men guilty? If God is omnipotent, does it cost him more to say, Let everything in the world be in order, let all my subjects be good, innocent, and fortunate than to say, Let everything exist? Was it more difficult for this God to do his work well than badly? Religion tells us of a hell, that is, a frightful abode where not withstanding his goodness God reserves infinite torments for the glory of men. Thus after having rendered mortals very unhappy in this world, religion tells them that God can render them still more unhappy in another. The theologian gets over this by saying that the goodness of God will then give place to his justice. But a goodness which gives place to the most terrible cruelty is not an infinite goodness. Besides, can a God who after having been infinitely good becomes infinitely bad be regarded as an immutable being? Can we discern the shadow of clemency or goodness in a God filled with implacable fury? 62. Theology's God a monster of absurdity and injustice. Divine justice, as stated by our divines, is undoubtedly a quality very proper to cherish in us the love of the divinity. According to the ideas of modern theology, it is evident that God has created the majority of men with the sole view of putting them in a fair way to incur eternal punishment. Would it not have been more conformable to goodness, reason, and equity to have created only stones or plants and not to have created sensible beings than to have formed men whose conduct in this world might subject them to endless punishment in the other? A God perfidious and malicious enough to create a single man and then to abandon him to the danger of being damned cannot be regarded as a perfect being, but as an unreasonable, unjust, and ill-natured. Very far from composing a perfect God, theologians have formed the most imperfect of beings. According to theological notions God would resemble a tyrant who, after having put out the eyes of the greater part of his slaves, should shut them up in a dungeon where, for his amusement, he would incognito observe their conduct through a trapped door in order to punish with rigor all those who, while walking about, should hit against each other, but who would magnificently reward the few whom he had not deprived of sight in avoiding to run against their comrades. Such are the ideas which the dogma of gratuitous predestination gives us of the divinity. Although men are continually repeating that their God is infinitely good, yet it is evident that in reality they can believe nothing of the kind. How can we love what we do not know? How can we love a being whose character is only fit to throw us into inquietude trouble? How can we love a being of whom all that is said tends to render him an object of utter detestation?