LI B R.ARY 
 
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 OF ILLINOIS 
 
 194 
 
 H69sE 
 1635
 
 The person charging this material is re- 
 sponsible for its return to the library from 
 which it was withdrawn on or before the 
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 are reasons for disciplinary action and may 
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 REASON ENLIGHTENING Tlffi N ATM IN 8 
 
 1) r aw 1 1 fo r the F K. Fa m 1 1 y L i b r & r f 
 
 (r.W.JCd.J. Matsef/.
 
 THE 
 
 SYSTEM OF NATUEE; 
 
 LAWS OF THE MORAL AND PHYSICAL WORLD : 
 
 BY 
 
 BARON D'HOLBACH, 
 
 AUTHOR OF GOOD SENSE, ETC. 
 
 A NEW AND IMPROVED EDITION, 
 
 WITH NOTES BY DIDEROT, 
 
 NOW TRANSLATED FOR THE FIRST TIME 
 
 H. D. ROBINSON. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 CFREE ENQUIRERS' FAMILY LIBRARY EDITION.) 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 PUBLISHED BY G. W. & A. J. MATSELL, 
 
 94 CHATHAM STREET. 
 
 1835.
 
 
 ENTERED according to Act of Congress, in the year 1835, by H. D. ROBINSON, in 
 the ClerV i office of the District Court of the Southern District of KPW York.
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 TO THE PUBLIC. 
 
 To expose superstition, the ignorance and credulity on which it is 
 based, and to ameliorate the condition of the human race, is the ardent 
 desire of every philanthropic mind. 
 
 Mankind are unhappy, in proportion as they are deluded by imag- 
 inary systems of theology. Taught to attach much importance to 
 belief in religious doctrines, and to mere forms and ceremonies of re- 
 ligious worship, the slightest disagreement among theological dogma- 
 tists is oftentimes sufficient to inflame their minds, already excited by 
 bigotry, and to lead them to anathematize and destroy each other with- 
 out pity, mercy, or remorse. 
 
 The various theological systems in which mankind have been mis- 
 led to have faith, are but fables and falsehoods imposed by visionaries 
 and fanatics on the ignorant, the weak, and the credulous, as historical 
 truths ; and for unbelief of which, millions have perished at the stake, 
 or pined in gloomy dungeons : and such will ever be the case, until the 
 mists of superstition, and the influence of priestcraft, are exposed by 
 the light of knowledge and the power of truth. 
 
 Many honest and talented philanthropists have directed their 
 powerful intellects against the religious dogmas which have caused 
 so much misery and persecution among mankind. Owing, however, 
 to the combined power and influence of kings and priests, many of 
 those learned and liberal works have been either destroyed or buried 
 in oblivion, and the characters of the writers assailed by the unsparing 
 and relentless rancour of pious abuse. 
 
 To counteract and destroy, if possible, these sources of mischief 
 and misery, is the intention of the publishers of the FREE ENQUIRER'S 
 FAMILY LIBRARY. It is proposed to publish in a form which shall 
 unite the various advantages of neatness of typography anct cheapness 
 of price, the works of those celebrated authors whose writings, owing 
 to religious intolerance, have been kept in obscurity. 
 
 We have commenced the library with a translation of BARON 
 d'HoLBAcn's SYSTEM OF NATURE, because it is estimated as one of
 
 VI ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 panders of despotism, and the promoters of superstition. Whenever 
 he spoke of these, his naturally good temper forsook him. 
 
 " Among his friends, the Baron d'Holbach numbered the celebrated 
 Heivetius, Diderot, d'Alembert, Naigeon, Condillac, Turgot, Buffon, 
 J. J. Rousseau, Voltaire, &c. ; and in other countries, such men as 
 Hume, Garrick, the Abbate Galiani, &c. If so distinguished and 
 learned a society was calculated to give more strength and expansion 
 to his mind, it has also been justly remarked, that those illustrious 
 men could not but learn many curious and useful things from him ; 
 for he possessed an extensive library, and the tenacity of his memory 
 was such as to enable him to remember without effort every thing he 
 had once read." 
 
 However, the most praiseworthy feature in d'Holbach's character, 
 was his benevolence ; and we now conclude this sketch with the fol- 
 lowing pithy anecdote related by Mr. Naigeon, in the Journal of 
 Paris : 
 
 " Among those who frequented d'Holbach's house, was a literary 
 gentleman, who, for some time past, appeared musing and in deep 
 melancholy. Pained to see his friend in that state, d'Holbach called 
 on him. ' I do not wish,' said d'Holbach, ' to pry into a secret you 
 did not wish to confide to me, but I see you are sorrowful, and your 
 situation makes me both uneasy and unhappy. I know you are not 
 rich, and you may have wants which you have hid from me. I bring 
 you ten thousand francs which are of no use to me. You will cer- 
 tainly not refuse them if you feel any friendship for me ; and by-and- 
 by, when you find yourself in better circumstances, you will return 
 them.' This friend, moved to tears by the generosity of the action, 
 assured him that he did not want money, that his chagrin had another 
 cause, and therefore could not accept his offer ; but he never forgot 
 the kindness which prompted it, and to him I am indebted for the facts 
 I have just related." 
 
 We have no apologies to make for republishing the System of 
 Nature at this time ; the work will support itself, and needs no advo- 
 cate ; it has never been answered, because, in truth, it is, indeed, un- 
 answerable. It demonstrates the fallacy as well of the religion of 
 the Pagan as the Jew the Christian as the Mahometan. It is a 
 guide alike to the philosopher emancipated from religious thraldom, 
 and the poor votary misled by the follies of superstition. 
 
 All Christian writers on Natural Theology have studiously avoided 
 even the mention of this masterly production : knowing their utter in- 
 ability to cope with its powerful reasoning, they have wisely passed 
 it by in silence. Henry Lord Brougham, it is true, in his recent 
 Discourse of Natural Theology, has mentioned this extraordinary 
 treatise, but with what care does he evade entering the lists with this 
 distinguished writer ! He passes over the work with a haste and 
 sophistry that indicates how fully conscious he was of his own weak- 
 ness and his opponent's strength. " There is no book of an Atheistical
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. Vll 
 
 description," says his lordship, " which has ever made a greater im- 
 pression than the famous Systeme de la Nature." 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 " It is impossible to deny the merits of the Systeme de la Nature. 
 The work of a great writer it unquestionably is ; but its merit lies in 
 the extraordinary eloquence of the composition, and the skill with 
 which words are substituted for ideas ; and assumptions for proofs, are 
 made to pass current," &c. It is with a few pages of such empty de- 
 clamation that his lordship attacks and condemns this eloquent and 
 logical work.* 
 
 We do not wish to detain the reader longer from its perusal by 
 lengthening out our preface, and have only to remark, in conclusion, 
 that when Baron d'Holbach finished this work,- he might have said 
 with more truth, and far less vanity than Horace : 
 
 " Exegi monumentum sere perennius, 
 Regalique situ pyramidum altius ; 
 Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens 
 Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis 
 Annorum series, et fuga temporum." et seq. 
 
 Q, Hor. Flac. Car. Lib. III. 30, v. 1-5. 
 New York, September, 1835. 
 
 * Vide A Discourse of Natural Theology, by Henry Lord Brougham, 
 F.R.S., &c. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, and Blanchard. 1835. Pages 146 
 and 147. 
 
 Terms. The Free Enquirers' Family Library will be stereotyped, 
 and issued semi-monthly, in numbers of 32 laige octavo pages (equal to 62 
 duodecimo pages), with a handsome frontispiece, at $3 per annum, payable 
 half-yearly in advance, or 12 cents per number, by G. W. <fc A. J. MAT- 
 SELL, No. 94, Chatham street, New York, sole proprietors and publishers; 
 to whom all orders for the above work should be addressed (post paid). 
 
 Baron d'Holbach's (entire) System of Nature,* with notes by Diderot, 
 translated now for the first time by H. D. Robinson, will form 12 Numbers 
 of the Library, which we offer to the public for the very low price of 
 SI 50 per copy. (The London edition of the same work now sells for 
 10 and even $13.) 
 
 Persons forwarding $5, postage free, will be entitled to four copies 
 of the System of Nature entire. 
 
 Those persons who have heretofore complained of the high price 
 of liberal publications, will perceive, by referring to the above terms of the 
 Library, that it will be as cheap, if not cheaper, than most of the popular 
 publications of the day. 
 
 Attributed to Mirabeau.
 
 VI ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 panders of despotism, and the promoters of superstition. Whenever 
 he spoke of these, his naturally good temper forsook him. 
 
 " Among his friends, the Baron d'Holbach numbered the celebrated 
 Helve tius, Diderot, d'Alembert, Naigeon, Condillac, Turgot, Buffon, 
 J. J. Rousseau, Voltaire, &c. ; and in other countries, such men as 
 Hume, Garrick, the Abbate Galiani, &c. If so distinguished and 
 learned a society was calculated to give more strength and expansion 
 to his mind, it has also been justly remarked, that those illustrious 
 men could not but learn many curious and useful things from him ; 
 for he possessed an extensive library, and the tenacity of his memory 
 was such as to enable him to remember without effort every thing he 
 had once read." 
 
 However, the most praiseworthy feature in d'Holbach's character, 
 was his benevolence ; and we now conclude this sketch with the fol- 
 lowing pithy anecdote related by Mr. Naigeon, in the Journal of 
 Paris : 
 
 " Among those who frequented d'Holbach's house, was a literary 
 gentleman, who, for some time past, appeared musing and in deep 
 melancholy. Pained to see his friend in that siate, d'Holbach called 
 on him. ' I do not wish,' said d'Holbach, ' to pry into a secret you 
 did not wish to confide to me, but I see you are sorrowful, and your 
 situation makes me both uneasy and unhappy. I know you are not 
 rich, and you may have wants which you have hid from me. I bring 
 you ten thousand francs which are of no use to me. You will cer- 
 tainly not refuse them if you feel any friendship for me ; and by-and- 
 by, when you find yourself in better circumstances, you will return 
 them.' This friend, moved to tears by the generosity of the action, 
 assured him that he did not want money, that his chagrin had another 
 cause, and therefore could not accept his offer ; but he never forgot 
 the kindness which prompted it, and to him I am indebted for the facts 
 I have just related." 
 
 We have no apologies to make for republishing the System of 
 Nature at this time ; the work will support itself, and needs no advo- 
 cate ; it has never been answered, because, in truth, it is, indeed, un- 
 answerable. It demonstrates the fallacy as well of the religion of 
 the Pagan as the Jew the Christian as the Mahometan. It is a 
 guide alike to the philosopher emancipated from religious thraldom, 
 and the poor votary misled by the follies of superstition. 
 
 All Christian writers on Natural Theology have studiously avoided 
 even the mention of this masterly production : knowing their utter in- 
 ability to cope with its powerful reasoning, they have wisely passed 
 it by in silence. Henry Lord Brougham, it is true, in his recent 
 Discourse of Natural Theology, has mentioned this extraordinary 
 treatise, but with what care does he evade entering the lists with this 
 distinguished writer ! He passes over the work with a haste and 
 sophistry that indicates how fully conscious he was of his own weak- 
 ness and his opponent's strength. " There i? no book of an Atheistical
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. Vll 
 
 description," says his lordship, " which has ever made a greater im- 
 pression than the famous Systems de la Nature." 
 
 * * # * * 
 
 " It is impossible to deny the merits of the Systeme de la Nature. 
 The work of a great writer it unquestionably is ; but its merit lies in 
 the extraordinary eloquence of the composition, and the skill with 
 which words are substituted for ideas ; and assumptions for proofs, are 
 made to pass current," &c. It is with a few pages of such empty de- 
 clamation that his lordship attacks and condemns this eloquent and 
 logical work.* 
 
 We do not wish to detain the reader longer from its perusal by 
 lengthening out our preface, and have only to remark, in conclusion, 
 that when Baron d'Holbach finished this work,' he might have said 
 with more truth, and far less vanity than Horace : 
 
 " Exegi monumentum aere perennius, 
 Regalique situ pyramidum altius ; 
 Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens 
 Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis 
 Annorum series, et fuga temporum." et seq. 
 
 Q, Hor. Flac. Car. Lib. III. 30, v. 1-5. 
 New York, September, 1835. 
 
 * Vide A Discourse of Natural Theology, by Henry Lord Brougham, 
 F.R.S., &c. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, and Blanchard. 1835. Pages 146 
 and 147. 
 
 I 
 
 Terms. The Free Enquirers' Family Library will be stereotyped, 
 and issued semi-monthly, in numbers of 32 laige octavo pages (equal to 62 
 duodecimo pages), with a handsome frontispiece, at $3 per annum, payable 
 half-yearly in advance, or 12 cents per number, by G. W. &-. A. J. MAT- 
 SELL, No. 94, Chatham street, New York, sole proprietors and publishers; 
 to whom all orders for the above work should be addressed (post paid). 
 
 Baron d'Holbach's (entire) System of Nature,* with notes by Diderot, 
 translated now for the first time by H. D. Robinson, will form 12 Numbers 
 of the Library, which we offer to the public for the very low price of 
 SI 50 per copy. (The London edition of the same work now sells for 
 10 and even $13.) 
 
 JJj 3 Persons forwarding $5, postage free, will be entitled to four copies 
 of the System of Nature entire. 
 
 jjj 3 Those persons who have heretofore complained of the high price 
 of liberal publications, will perceive, by referring to the above terms of the 
 Library, that it will be as cheap, if not cheaper, than most of the popular 
 publications of the day. 
 
 * Attributed to Mirabeau.
 
 AUTHOR'S PREFACE 
 
 /THE source of man's unhappiness is his ignorance of Nature.- The 
 pertinacity with which he clings to blind opinions imbibed in his in- 
 Fancy, which interweave themselves with his existence, the consequent 
 prejudice that warps his mind, that prevents its expansion, that renders 
 him the slave of fiction, appears to doom him to continual errour. He 
 resembles a child destitute of experience, full of idle notions : a dan- 
 gerous leaven mixes itself with all his knowledge : it is of necessity 
 obscure, it is vacillating and false : He takes the tone of his ideas on 
 the authority of others, who are themselves in errour, or else have an 
 interest in deceiving him. To remove this Cimmerian darkness, 
 these barriers to the improvement of his condition ; to disentangle him 
 from the clouds of errour that envelop him, that obscure the path he 
 ought to tread ; to guide him out of this Cretan labyrinth, requires the 
 clue of Ariadne, with all the love she could bestow on Theseus. It 
 exacts more than common exertion ; it needs a most determined, a most 
 undaunted courage it is never effected but by a persevering resolu- 
 tion to act, to think for himself; to examine with rigour and imparti- 
 ality the opinions he has adopted. He will find that the most noxious 
 weeds have sprung up beside beautiful flowers ; entwined themselves 
 around their stems, overshadowed them with an exuberance of foliage, 
 choked the ground, enfeebled their growth, diminished their petals, 
 dimmed the brilliancy of their colours ; that deceived by the apparent 
 freshness of their verdure, by the rapidity of their exfoliation, he has 
 given them cultivation, watered them, nurtured them, when he ought 
 to have plucked out their very roots. 
 
 ^Man seeks to range out of his sphere : notwithstanding the reiterated 
 checks his ambitious folly experiences, he still attempts the impossi- 
 ble ; strives to carry his researches beyond the visible world ; and hunts 
 out misery in imaginary regions. He would be a metaphysician be- 
 fore he has become a practical philosopher. He quits the contempla- 
 tion of realities to meditate on chimeras. He neglects experience to 
 feed on conjecture, to indulge in hypothesis. He dares not cultivate 
 his reason, because from his earliest days he has been taught to con- 
 sider it criminal. ; He pretends to know his fate in the indistinct abodes 
 of another life, before he has considered of the means by which he is 
 to render himself happy in the world he inhabits : in short, man dis-
 
 AUTHORS PREFACE. IX 
 
 dains the study of Nature, except it be partially: he pursues phantoms 
 that resemble an ignis-fatuus, which at once dazzle, bewilder, and 
 affright : like the benighted traveller led astray by these deceptive ex- 
 halations of a swampy soil, he frequently quits the plain, the simple 
 road of truth, by pursuing of which, he can alone ever reasonably hope 
 to reach the goal of happiness. 
 
 The most important of our duties, then, is to seek means by which 
 we may destroy delusions that can never do more than mislead us. 
 The remedies for these evils must be sought for in Nature herself ; it 
 is only in the abundance of her resources, that we can rationally ex- 
 pect to find antidotes to the mischiefs brought upon us by an ill-di- 
 rected, by an overpowering enthusiasm. It is time these remedies 
 were sought ; it is time to look the evil boldly in the face, to examine 
 its foundations, to scrutinize its superstructure : (reason, with its faithful 
 guide experience, must attack in their entrenchments those prejudices 
 to which the human race has but too long been the victim.;] For this 
 purpose reason must be restored to its proper rank, it must be rescued 
 from the evil company with which it is associated. It has been too 
 long degraded too long neglected cowardice has rendered it subser- 
 vient to delirium, the slave to falsehood. It must no longer be held 
 down by the massive chains of ignorant prejudice. 
 
 Truth is invariable it is requisite to man it can never harm him 
 his very necessities, sooner or later, make him sensible of this ; oblige 
 him to acknowledge it. Let us then discover it to mortals let us ex- 
 hibit its charms let us shed its effulgence over the darkened road ; it 
 is the only mode by which man can become disgusted with that dis- 
 graceful superstition which leads him into errour, and which but too 
 often usurps his homage by treacherously covering itself with the mask 
 of truth its lustre can wound none but those enemies to the human 
 race whose power is bottomed solely on the ignorance, on the dark- 
 ness in which they have in almost every climate contrived to involve 
 the mind of man. 
 
 Truth speaks not to these perverse beings : her voice can only be 
 heard by generous minds accustomed to reflection, whose sensibilities 
 make them lament the numberless calamities showered on the earth 
 by political and religious tyranny whose enlightened minds contem- 
 plate with horrour the immensity, the ponderosity of that series of mis- 
 fortunes with which errour has in all ages overwhelmed mankind. 
 
 To errour must be attributed those insupportable chains which tyrants, 
 which priests have forged for all nations. To errour must be equally 
 attributed that abject slavery into which the people of almost every 
 country have fallen. [Nature designed they should pursue their hap- 
 piness by the most perfect freedom"} To errour must be attributed 
 those religious terrours which, in almost every climate, have either pe- 
 trified man with fear, or caused him to destroy himself for coarse or 
 fanciful beings. To errour must be attributed those inveterate hatreds, 
 those barbarous persecutions, those numerous massacres, those dread- 
 
 2
 
 X AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 ful tragedies, of which, under pretext of serving the interests of heaven, 
 the earth has been but too frequently made the theatre. It is errour 
 consecrated by religious enthusiasm, which produces that ignorance, 
 that uncertainty in which man ever finds himself with regard to his 
 most evident duties, his clearest rights, the most demonstrable truths. 
 In short, man is almost every where a poor degraded captive, devoid 
 either of greatness of soul, of reason, or of virtue, whom his inhuman 
 gaolers have never permitted to see the light of day. 
 
 Let us then endeavour to disperse those clouds of ignorance, those 
 mists of darkness Avhich impede man on his journey, which obscure 
 his progress, which prevent his marching through life with a firm, with 
 a steady step. Let us try to inspire him with courage with respect 
 for his reason with an inextinguishable love for truth to the 
 end that he may learn to know himself to know his legitimate 
 rights that he may learn to consult his experience, and no 
 longer be the dupe of an imagination led astray by authority 
 that he may renounce the prejudices of his childhood that he may 
 learn to found his morals on his nature, on his wants, on the real 
 advantage of society that he may dare to love himself that he may 
 learn to pursue his true happiness by promoting that of others in 
 short, that he may no longer occupy himself with reveries either use- 
 less or dangerous that he may become a virtuous, a rational being, 
 in which case he cannot fail to become happy. 
 
 If he must have his chimeras, let him at least learn to permit others 
 to form theirs after their own fashion ; since nothing can be more im- 
 material than the manner of men's thinking on subjects not accessible 
 to reason, provided those thoughts be not suffered to imbody them- 
 selves into actions injurious to others : rabove all, let him be fully per- 
 suaded that it is of the utmost importance to the inhabitants of this 
 world to be JUST, KIND, and PEACEABLEJ 
 
 Far from injuring the cause of virtue, an impartial examination of 
 the principles of this work will show that its object is to restore truth 
 to its proper temple, to build up an altar whose foundations shall be 
 consolidated by morality, reason, and justice : from this sacred fane, 
 virtue guarded by truth, clothed with experience, shall shed forth her 
 radiance on delighted mortals ; whose homage flowing consecutively 
 shall open to the world a new era, by rendering general the belief that 
 happiness, the true end of man's existence, can never be attained but 
 
 BY PROMOTING THAT OF HIS FELLOW CREATURE. 
 
 In conclusion : Warned by old age and weak limbs that death is 
 fast approaching, the author protests most solemnly that, in his labours, 
 his sole object has been to promote the happiness of his fellow crea- 
 tures ; and his only ambition, to merit the approbation of the few 
 partizans of Truth who honestly and sincerely seek her. He writes 
 not for those who are deaf to the voice of reason, who judge of things 
 only by their vile interest or fatal prejudices : his cold remains will 
 fear neither their clamours nor their resentments, so terrible to those 
 who, whilst living, dare proclaim the TRUTH.
 
 THE SYSTEM OF NATURE. 
 
 OF NATURE AND HER LAWS-OP MAN-OF THE SOUL AND ITS FACULTIES-OF THE 
 DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY ON HAPPINESS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Qf Nature. 
 
 MEN will always deceive themselves 
 by abandoning experience to follow 
 imaginary systems. Man is the work 
 of Nature : he exists in Nature : he is 
 submitted to her laws : he cannot de- 
 liver himself from them; nor can he 
 step beyond them even in thought. It 
 is in vain his mind would spring for- 
 ward beyond the visible world, an im- 
 perious necessity always compels his 
 return. ' For a being formed by Nature, 
 and circumscribed by her laws, there ex- 
 ists nothing beyond the great whole of 
 which he forms a part, of which he ex- 
 periences the influence. \ The beings 
 which he pictures to himself as above 
 nature, or distinguished from her, are 
 always chimeras formed after that 
 which he has already seen, but of which 
 it is impossible he should ever form 
 any correct idea, either as to the place 
 they occupy, or of their manner of 
 acting. There is not, there can be 
 nothing out of that Nature which in- 
 cludes all beings. 
 
 Instead, therefore, of seeking out of 
 the world he inhabits for beings Avho 
 flan procure him a happiness denied to 
 him bv Nature, let man study this Na- 
 ture, let him learn her laws, contem- 
 plate her energies, observe the immuta- 
 ble rules by which she acts : let him 
 apply these discoveries to his own feli- 
 cixy and submit in silence to her man- 
 dates, which nothing can alter: let 
 him cheerfully consent to ignore causes 
 hid from him by an impenetrable veil : 
 let him without murreuring yield to 
 the decrees of a universal necessity, 
 which can never be brought within his 
 comprehension, nor ever emancipate 
 him from those laws imposed on him 
 by his essence. 
 
 The distinction which has been so 
 often made between the physical and . 
 the moral man is evidently an abuse 
 of terms, f Man is a being purely phy- 
 sical : the moral man is nothing more 
 than this physical being considered 
 under a certain point of view, that is 
 to say, with relation to some of his 
 modes of action, arising out of his par- 
 ticular organization^ But is not this 
 organization itself the work of Nature ? 
 The motion or impulse to action of 
 which he is susceptible, is that notphy_^ 
 sical 1 His visible actions, as well as 
 the invisible motion interiorly excited 
 by his will or his thoughts, are equally 
 the natural effects, the necessary con- 
 sequences, of his peculiar mechanism, 
 and the impulse he receives from those 
 beings by whom he is surrounded. All 
 that the human mind has successively 
 invented with a view to change or 
 perfect his being, and to render him- 
 self more happy, was only a neces- 
 sary consequence of man's peculiar 
 essence, and that of the beings who act 
 upon him. The object of all his in- 
 stitutions, of all his reflections, of all 
 his knowledge, is only to procure that 
 happiness towards \vhich he is inces- 
 santly impelled by the peculiarity of his 
 nature. i All that he does, all that he 
 thinks, all that he is, all that he Avill be, 
 is nothing more than what Universal 
 Nature has made him. His ideas, his 
 will, his actions, are the necessary ef- 
 fects of those qualities infused into 
 him by Nature, and of those circum- 
 stances in which she has placed him. ( 
 In short, art is nothing but Nature act- 
 ing with the tools she has made. 
 
 Nature sends man naked and desti- 
 tute into this world which is to be his , <* 
 abode : he quickly learns to cover his 
 nakedness, to shelter himself from the 
 inclemency of the weather, first with
 
 12 
 
 OF NATURE. 
 
 rude huts and the skins of the beasts of 
 the forest ; by degrees he mends their 
 appearance, renders them more con- 
 venient : he establishes manufactories 
 of cloth, of cotton, of silk ; he digs clay, 
 gold, and other fossils from the bowels 
 of the earth, converts them into bricks 
 for his house, into vessels for his use, 
 gradually improves their shape, aug- 
 ments their beauty. To a being ele- 
 vated above our terrestrial globe, who 
 should contemplate the human species 
 through all the changes he undergoes 
 in his progress towards civilization, 
 man would not appear less subjected 
 to the laws of Nature when naked in 
 the forest painfully seeking his susten- 
 ance, than when living in civilized so- 
 ciety surrounded with comforts ; that is 
 to say, enriched with greater experi- 
 ence, plunged in luxury, where he 
 every day invents a thousand new wants 
 and discovers a thousand new modes 
 of satisfying them. All the steps taken 
 by man to regulate his existence, ought 
 only to be considered as a long succes- 
 sion of causes and effects, which are 
 nothing more than the development of 
 the first impulse given him by nature. 
 
 The same animal by virtue of his 
 organization passes successively from 
 the most simple to the most complica- 
 ted wants ; it is nevertheless the con- 
 sequence of his nature. The butterfly 
 whose beauty we admire, whose colours 
 are so rich, whose appearance is so 
 brilliant, commences as an inanimate 
 unattractive egg; from this, heat pro- 
 duces a worm, this becomes a chrysalis, 
 then changes into that winged insect 
 decorated with the most vivid tints : ar- 
 rived at this stage he reproduces, he 
 propagates : at last despoiled of his or- 
 naments he is obliged to disappear, 
 having fulfilled the task imposed on 
 him by Nature, having described the 
 circle of mutation marked out for beings 
 of his order. 
 
 The same progress, the same change 
 takes place m vegetables. It is by 
 a succession of combinations originally 
 interwoven with the energies of the 
 aloe, that this plant is insensibly regu- 
 lated, gradually expanded, and at the 
 end of a great number of years pro- 
 duces those flowers which announce 
 its dissolution. 
 
 It is equally so with man, who in all 
 his motion, all the changes he un- 
 
 dergoes, never acts but according t<? 
 laws peculiar to his organization, and 
 to the matter of which he is composed. 
 ^The physical man, is he who acts 
 by causes our senses make us under- 
 stand. 
 
 The moral man, is he who acts by 
 physical causes, with which our preju- 
 dices preclude us from becoming ac- 
 quainted. 
 
 The wild man, is a child destitute 
 of experience, who is incapable of pur- 
 suing his happiness, because he has not 
 learnt how to oppose resistance to the 
 impulses he receives from those beings 
 by whom he is surrounded. 
 
 The civilized man, is he whom ex- 
 perience and social life have enabled to 
 draw from nature the means of his own 
 happiness ; because he has learned to 
 oppose resistance to those impulses he 
 receives from exterior beings, when ex- 
 perience has taught him they would be 
 injurious to his welfare. 
 
 The enlightened man, is man in his 
 maturity, in his perfection ; who is ca- 
 pable of pursuing his own happiness j 
 because he has learned to examine, to 
 think for himself, and not to take that 
 for truth upon the authority of others, 
 which experience has taught him ex- 
 amination will frequently prove errone- 
 ous. 
 
 The happy man, is he who knows 
 how to enjoy the benefits of nature : in 
 other words, he who thinks for him- 
 self; who is thankful for the good he 
 possesses ; who does not envy the wel- 
 fare of others ; who does not sigh after 
 imaginary benefits always beyond his 
 grasp. 
 
 The unhappy man, is he who is in- 
 capacitated to enjoy the benefits of na- 
 ture ; that is, he who suffers others to 
 think for him ; who neglects the abso- 
 lute good he possesses, in a fruitless 
 search after imaginary benefits ; who 
 vainly sighs after that which ever eludes 
 his pursuit. 
 
 !.It necessarily results, that man in his 
 researches ought always to fall back 
 on experience, and natural philosophy : 
 These are what he should consult in 
 his religion in his morals in his le- 
 gislation in his political government 
 in the arts in the sciences in his 
 pleasures in his misfortunes. Ex- 
 perience teaches that Nature acts by 
 simple^ uniform, and invariable laws.
 
 OP NATURE. 
 
 13 
 
 It is by his senses man is bound to 
 this universal Nature; it is by his 
 senses he must penetrate her secrets ; 
 it is from his senses he must draw 
 experience of her laws. Whenever, 
 therefore, he either fails to acquire 
 experience or quits its path, he stum- 
 bles into an abyss, his imagination 
 leads him astray. J 
 
 All the errours of man are physical 
 errours : he never deceives himself but 
 when he neglects to return back to na- 
 ture, to consult her laws, to call experi- 
 ence to his aid. It is for want of experi- 
 ence he forms such imperfect ideas of 
 matter, of its properties, of its combina- 
 tions, of its power, of its mode of action, 
 or of the energies which spring from its 
 essence. Wanting this experience, the 
 whole universe to him is but one vast 
 scene of illusion. The most ordinary 
 results appear to him the most astonish- 
 ing phenomena ; he wonders at every 
 thing, understands nothing, and yields 
 the guidance of his actions to those in- 
 terested in betraying his interests. He 
 is ignorant of Nature, he has mistaken 
 her laws; he has not contemplated 
 the necessary routine which she has 
 marked out for every thing she con- 
 tains. Mistaken the laws of Nature, 
 did I say ? He has mistaken himself: 
 the consequence is, that all his sys- 
 tems, all his conjectures, all his rea- 
 sonings, from which he has banished 
 experience, are nothing more than a 
 tissue of errours, a long chain of ab- 
 surdities. 
 
 All errour is prejudicial : it is by de- 
 ceiving himself that man is plunged 
 in misery. He neglected Nature ; he 
 understood not her laws ; he formed 
 gods of the most preposterous kinds : 
 these became the sole objects of his 
 hope, the creatures of his fear, and he 
 trembled under these visionary deities ; 
 under the supposed influence of im- 
 aginary beings created by himself; 
 under the terrour inspired by blocks of 
 stone ; by logs of wood ; by flying fish ; 
 or else under the frowns of men, 
 mortal as himself, whom his distemper- 
 ed fancy had elevated above that Nature 
 of which alone he is capable of form- 
 ing any idea. His very posterity 
 laughs to scorn his folly, because ex- 
 perience has convinced them of the 
 absurdity of his groundless fears, of 
 his misplaced worship. Thus has 
 
 passed away the ancient mythology, 
 with all the trumpery attributes at- 
 tached to it by ignorance.* 
 f Man did not understand that Nature, 
 equal in her distributions, entirely 
 destitute of goodness or malice, fol- 
 lows only necessary and immutable 
 laws, when she either produces beings 
 or destroys them, when she causes 
 those to suffer, whose organization 
 creates sensibility ; when she scatters 
 among them good and evil; when 
 she subjects them to incessant change] 
 he did not perceive it was in the 
 bosom of Nature herself, that it was 
 in her abundance he ought to seek 
 to satisfy his wants ; for remedies 
 against his pains; for the means of 
 rendering himself happy : he expected 
 to derive these benefits from imaginary 
 beings, whom he erroneously imagin- 
 ed to be the authors of his pleasures, 
 the cause of his misfortunes. From 
 hence it is clear that to his ignorance 
 of Nature, man owes the creation of 
 those illusive powers . under which he 
 has so long trembled with fear ; that 
 superstitious worship, which has been 
 the source of all his misery. 
 
 For want of clearly understanding 
 his own peculiar nature, his proper ten- 
 dency, his wants, and his rights, man 
 has fallen in society, from FREEDOM 
 into SLAVERY. He had forgotten the 
 design of his existence, or else he be- 
 lieved himself obliged to smother the 
 natural desires of his heart, and to sacri- 
 fice his welfare to the caprice of chiefs, 
 either elected by himsell, or submitted 
 to without examination. He was ig- 
 norant of the true policy of association 
 of the true object of government ; hel 
 disdained to listen to the voice of Nature, 
 which loudly proclaimed that the price 
 of all submission is protection aad 
 
 * It is impossible to peruse the ancient and 
 modern theological works without feeling dis- 
 gusted at the contemptible invention of those 
 gods ichich have been made objects of terrour 
 or love to mankind. To begin with the in- 
 habitants of India and Egypt, of Greece and 
 Rome, what littleness and foolery in their 
 worship what rascality and infamy in their 
 priests! Are our own any better? No! 
 Cicero said, that two Augurs could not look 
 at each other without laughing ; but he little 
 thought that a time would come when a set 
 of mean icretches,i assuming the title of jRcr- 
 erend, would endeavour to persuade their 
 fellow men that they represented the Divinity 
 on earth ! t DCS miserable*.
 
 ;i 
 
 OF NATURE. 
 
 happiness : the end of all government 
 the benefit of the governed, not the 
 exclusive advantage of the governours^ 
 He gave himself up without reserve to 
 men like himself, whom his prejudices^ 
 induced him to contemplate as beings 
 of a superior order, as gods upon earth j 
 these profited by his ignorance, took ad- 
 vantage of his prejudices, corrupted 
 him, rendered him vicious, enslaved 
 him, made him miserable. iThusman, 
 intended by Nature for the full enjoy- 
 ment of freedom, to patiently investi- 
 gate her la\vs, to search into her secrets, 
 to always cling to his experience, has, 
 from a neglect of her salutary ad- 
 monitions, from an inexcusable ignor- 
 ance of his own peculiar essence, fallen 
 into servitude, and has been wickedly 
 governed. 
 
 Having mistaken himself, he has 
 remained ignorant of the necessary 
 affinity that subsists between him and 
 the beings of his own species : having 
 mistaken his duty to himself, it follow- 
 ed, as a consequence, he has mistaken 
 his duty to others. He made an errone- 
 ous calculation of what his felicity re- 
 quired; he did not perceive, what he 
 owed to himself, the excesses he ought 
 to avoid, the passions he ought to re- 
 sist, the impulses he ought to follow, 
 in order to consolidate his happiness, 
 to promote his comfort, to further his 
 advantage. In short, he was ignorant 
 of his true interests ; hence his irregu- 
 larities, his intemperance, his shame- 
 ful voluptuousness, with that long train 
 of vices to which he has abandoned 
 himself, at the expense of his preser- 
 vation, at the risk of his permanent 
 felicity. 
 
 It is, therefore, ignorance of himself, 
 that has prevented man from enlighten- 
 *ng his morals. The depraved govern- 
 ments to which he had submitted, felt 
 an interest in preventing the practice 
 of his duties, even when he knew 
 them. 
 
 Man's ignorance has endured so 
 long, he has taken such slow, such 
 irresolute steps to ameliorate his condi- 
 tion, only because he has neglected to 
 study Nature, to scrutinize her laws, to 
 search out her resources, to discover 
 her properties. His sluggishness finds 
 its account in permitting himself to 
 be guided by precedent, rather than 
 to follow experience which demands 
 
 activity; tp be led by routine, rather 
 than by his reason which exacts reflec- 
 tion. From hence may be traced the 
 aversion man betrays for every thing 
 that swerves from those rules to which 
 he has been accustomed: hence his 
 stupid, his scrupulous respect for anti- 
 quity, for the most silly, the most ab- 
 surd institutions of his fathers : hence 
 those fears that seize him, when the 
 most advantageous changes are propos- 
 ed to him, or the most probable attempts 
 are made to better his condition. He 
 dreads to examine, because he has been 
 taught to hold it a profanation of some- 
 thing immediately connected with his 
 welfare; he credulously believes the 
 interested advice, and spurns at those 
 who wish to show him the danger of 
 the road he is travelling. 
 
 This is the reason why nations linger 
 on in the most scandalous lethargy, 
 groaning under abuses transmitted from 
 century to century, trembling at the 
 very idea of that which alone can re- 
 medy their misfortunes. 
 
 It is for want of energy, for want of 
 consulting experience, that medicine, 
 natural philosophy, agriculture, paint- 
 ing, in short, all the useful sciences have 
 so long remained under the shackles 
 of authority, have progressed so little : 
 those who profess these sciences, for 
 the most part prefer treading the beaten 
 paths, however inadequate to their end, 
 rather than strike out new ones : they 
 prefer the ravings of their imagination, 
 their gratuitous conjectures, to that 
 laborious experience which alone can 
 extract her secrets from Nature. 
 
 In short, man, whether from sloth of! 
 from terrour, having renounced the evi- 
 dence of his senses, has been guided in 
 all his actions, in all his enterprises, by 
 imagination, by enthusiasm, by habit, 
 by prejudice, and above all, by autho- 
 rity, which knew well how to deceive j 
 him. Thus, imaginary systems have 
 supplied the place of experience of 
 reflection of reason. Man, petrified 
 with his fears, inebriated with the mar- 
 vellous, or benumbed with sloth, sur- 
 rendered his experience : guided by his 
 credulity, he was unable to fall back 
 upon it, he became consequently inex- 
 perienced: from thence he gave birth 
 to the most ridiculous opinions, or else 
 adopted without examination, all those 
 chimeras, all those idle notions offer-
 
 OF NATURE. 
 
 13 
 
 ed to him by men whose interest it 
 was to fool him to the top of his bent. 
 
 Thus, because man has forgotten Na- 
 ture, has neglected her ways because 
 he has disdained experience because 
 he has throAvn by his reason because 
 he has been enraptured with the mar- 
 vellous, with the supernatural because 
 he has unnecessarily trembled, man 
 has continued so long in a state of in- 
 fancy ; and these are the reasons there 
 is so much trouble in conducting him 
 from this state of childhood to that of 
 manhood. He has had nothing but the 
 most jejune hypotheses, of which he 
 has never dared to examine either the 
 principles or the proofs, because he has 
 been accustomed to hold them*sacred, 
 to consider them as the most perfect 
 truths, of which it is not permitted to 
 doubt, even for an instant. His ig- 
 norance rendered him credulous : his 
 curiosity made him swallow large 
 draughts of the marvellous : time con- 
 firmed him in his opinions, and he 
 passed his conjectures from race to race 
 for realities ; a tyrannical power main- 
 tained him in his notions, because by 
 those alone could society be enslaved. 
 At length the whole science of man be- 
 came a confused mass of darkness, 
 falsehood and contradictions, with 
 here and there a feeble ray of truth, 
 furnished by that Nature of which he 
 can never entirely divest himself, be- 
 cause, without his knowledge, his ne- 
 cessities are continually bringing him 
 back to her resources. 
 
 Let us then, raise ourselves above 
 these clouds of prejudice, contemplate 
 the opinions of men, and observe their 
 various systems ; let us learn to distrust 
 a disordered imagination ; let us take 
 experience, that faithful monitor, for 
 our guide ; let us consult Nature, ex- 
 plore her laws, dive into her stores ; 
 let us draw from herself our ideas of 
 the beings she contains; let us fall 
 back on our senses, which errour, in- 
 terested errour has taught us to suspect; 
 let us consult that reason, which, for the 
 vilest purposes, has been so shame- 
 fully calumniated, so cruelly disgraced ; 
 let us attentively examine the visible 
 world, and let us try if it will not en- 
 able us to form a tolerable judgment of 
 the invisible territory of the intellectual 
 world : perhaps it may be found that 
 there has been no sufficient reason for 
 
 distinguishing thorn, and that it is not 
 without motives that two empires have 
 been separated, which are equally the 
 inheritance of nature. 
 
 The universe, that vast assemblage 
 of every thing that exists, presents only 
 matter and motion : the whole offers to 
 our contemplation nothing but an im- 
 mense, an uninterrupted succession of 
 causes and effects; some of these causes 
 are known to us, because they strike 
 immediately on our senses ; others are 
 unknown to us, because they act upon 
 us by effects, frequently very remote 
 from their original cause. 
 
 An immense variety of matter, com-") 
 bined under an infinity of forms, in- 
 cessantly communicates, unceasingly 
 receives a diversity of impulses. The 
 different properties of this matter, its 
 innumerable combinations, its various 
 methods of action, which are the neces- 
 sary consequence of these combinations, 
 constitute for man, what he calls the 
 essence of beings : it is from these diver- 
 sified essences that spring the orders, 
 the classes, or the systems, which these 
 beings respectively occupy, of which 
 the sum total makes up that which is 
 called NATURE. 
 
 Nature, therefore, in its most extend- 
 ed signification, is the great whole that 
 results from the assemblage of matter 
 under its various combinations, with 
 that diversity of motions which the uni- 
 verse offers to our view. Nature, in a less 
 extended sense, or considered in each 
 individual, is the whole that results from 
 its essence ; that is to say, the properties, 
 the combination, the impulse, and the 
 peculiar modes of action, by which it is 
 discriminated from other beings. It is 
 thus_that MAN is, as a whole,, the result 
 of a certain combination of matter, en- 
 dowed with peculiar properties, compe- 
 tent to give, capable of receiving, certain 
 impulses, the arrangement of which is 
 called organization^of which the es- 
 sence is, to feel, to tlunk, to act, to 
 move, after a manner distinguished 
 from other beings with which he can 
 be compared. Man, therefore, ranks 
 in an order, in a system, in a class by 
 himself, which differs from that of other 
 animals, in whom we do not perceive 
 those properties of which he is possess- 
 ed. The different systems of beings, or 
 if they will, their particular natures, 
 depend on the general system of the
 
 16 
 
 OF MOTION. 
 
 great whole, or that universal nature, 
 of which they form a part ; to which 
 every thing that exists is necessarily 
 submitted, and attached. 
 
 Having described the proper defini- 
 tion that should be applied to the word 
 NATURE, I must advise the reader, once 
 for all, that whenever, in the course of 
 this work, the expression occurs, that 
 " Nature produces such or such an 
 effect," there is no intention of per- 
 sonifying that nature, which is purely 
 an abstract being ; it merely indicates, 
 that the effect spoken of, necessarily 
 springs from the peculiar properties of 
 those beings which compose the mighty 
 macrocosm. When, therefore, it is said, 
 Nature demands that man should pur- 
 sue his own happiness, it is to prevent 
 circumlocution, to avoid tautology ; it 
 is to be understood that it is the pro- 
 perty of a being that feels, that thinks, 
 that wills, that acts, to labour to its own 
 happiness ; in short, that is called natu- 
 ral which is conformable to the essence 
 of things, or to the laws which Nature 
 prescribes to the beings she contains, 
 in the different orders they occupy, un- 
 der the various circumstances through 
 which they are obliged to pass. Thu% 
 health is natural to man in a certain 
 state ; disease is natural to him under 
 other circumstances ; dissolution, or if 
 they will, death, is a natural state for 
 a body, deprived of some of those things, 
 necessary to maintain the existence of 
 the animal, &c. By ESSENCE is to be 
 understood, that which constitutes a 
 being such as it is ; the whole of the 
 properties, or qualities, by which it acts 
 as it does. Thus, when it is said, it is 
 the essence of a stone to fall, it is the 
 same as saying, that its descent, is the 
 necessary effect of its gravity, of its 
 density, of the cohesion of its parts, 
 of the elements of which it is composed. 
 In short, the essence of a being, is its 
 particular, its individual nature. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Of Motion, and its Origin. 
 
 MOTION is an effect by which a body 
 either changes, or has a tendency to 
 change its position : that is to say, by 
 which it successively corresponds with 
 different parts of space, or changes its 
 
 relative distance to other bodies. It is 
 motion alone that establishes the rela- 
 tion between our senses and exterior 
 or interior beings : it is only by motion, 
 that these beings are impressed upon 
 us that we know their existence 
 that we judge of their properties that 
 we distinguish the one from the other 
 that we distribute them into classes. 
 
 The beings, the substances, or the 
 various bodies, of which nature is the 
 assemblage, are themselves effects of 
 
 certain combinations effects which 
 
 become causes in their turn. A cause 
 is a being which puts another in motion, 
 or which produces some change in it. 
 The effect is the change produced in 
 one body by the motion or presence of 
 another. 
 
 Each being, by its essence, by its 
 peculiar nature, has the faculty of pro- 
 ducing, is capable of receiving, has the 
 power of communicating a variety of 
 motion. Thus some beings are proper 
 to strike our organs : these organs are 
 competent to receiving the impression, 
 are adequate to undergoing changes by 
 their presence. Those which cannot 
 act on any of our organs, either imme- 
 diately and by themselves, or mediately, 
 by the intervention of other bodies, exist 
 not for us ; since they can neither move 
 us, nor consequently furnish us with 
 ideas : they can neither be known to us, 
 nor of course be judged of by us. To 
 know an object, is to have felt it; to 
 feel it, it is requisite to have been moved 
 by it. To see, is to have been moved by 
 something acting on the visual organs ; 
 to hear, is to have been struck by some- 
 thing on our auditory nerves. In short, 
 in whatever mode a body may act upon 
 us, whatever impulse we may receive 
 from it, we can have no other knowledge 
 of it than by the change it produces in us. 
 
 Nature, as we have already said, is 
 the assemblage, of all the beings, and 
 consequently, of all the motion ofwhich 
 we have a knowledge, as well as of 
 many others of which we know nothing, 
 because they have not yet become acces- 
 sible to our senses. From the continual 
 action and re-action of these beings, 
 result a series of causes and effects ; or 
 a chain of motion guided by the con- 
 stant and invariable laws peculiar to 
 each being : which are necessary or 
 inherent to its particular nature, which 
 make it always act or move after a
 
 OP MOTION. 
 
 17 
 
 determinate manner. The different 
 principles of this motion, are unknown 
 to us, because we are in many instances, 
 if not in all, ignorant of what constitutes 
 the essence of beings. The elements 
 of bodies escape our senses ; we know 
 them only in the mass : we are neither 
 acquainted Avith their intimate combi- 
 nation, nor the proportion of these com- 
 binations ; from whence must necessa- 
 rily result their mode of action, their 
 impulse, or their different effects. 
 
 Our senses, bring us generally ac- 
 quainted with two sorts of motion in 
 the beings that surround us. The one 
 is the motion of the mass, by which an 
 entire body, is transferred from one place 
 to another. Of the motion of this genus 
 we are perfectly sensible. Thus, we 
 see a stone fall, a ball roll, an arm move 
 or change its position. The other, is 
 an internal or concealed motion, which 
 always depends on the peculiar energies 
 of a body : that is to say, on its essence, 
 or the combination, the action, and re- 
 action of the minute, of the insensible 
 particles of matter, of which that body 
 is composed. This motion we do not 
 see ; we know it only by the alteration, 
 or change, which, after some time, we 
 discover in these bodies or mixtures. 
 Of this genus is that concealed motion 
 which fermentation produces in the 
 particles that compose flour, which, 
 however scattered, however separated, 
 unite, and form that mass which w.e 
 call bread. Such, also, is the imper- 
 ceptible motion, by which we see a 
 plant or animal enlarge, strengthen, 
 undergo changes, and acquire new qua- 
 lities, without our eyes being competent 
 to follow its progression, or to perceive 
 the causes which have produced these 
 effects. Such, also, is the internal 
 motion that takes place in man, which 
 is called his intellectual faculties, his 
 thoughts, his passions, his will. Of 
 these we have no other mode of judg- 
 ing than by their action; that is, by 
 those sensible effects which eithjer ac- 
 company or follow them. Thus, when 
 we see a man run away, we judge him 
 to be interiorly actuated by the passion 
 of fear. 
 
 Motion, whether visible or concealed, 
 is styled acquired when it is impressed 
 on one body by another ; either by a 
 cause to which we are a stranger, or 
 by an exterior agent which our senses 
 
 No. L 3 
 
 enable us to discover. Thus we call 
 that acquired motion, which the wind 
 gives to the sails of a ship. That 
 motion, which is excited in a body 
 containing within itself the causes of 
 those changes we see it undergo, is 
 called spontaneous. Then it is said, 
 this body acts or moves by its own 
 peculiar energies. Of this kind is the 
 motion of the man who walks, who 
 talks, who thinks. Nevertheless, if we 
 examine the matter a little closer, we 
 shall be convinced, that, strictly speak- 
 ing, there is no such thing as spon- 
 taneous motion in any of the various 
 bodies of Nature ; seeing they are per- 
 petually acting one upon the other ; 
 that all their changes are to be attri- 
 buted to the causes, either visible or 
 concealed, by which they are moved. 
 The will of man, is secretly moved or 
 determined by some exterior cause pro- 
 ducing a change in him : we believe he 
 moves of himself, because we neither 
 see the cause that determined him, the 
 mode in which it acted, nor the organ 
 that it put in motion. 
 
 That is called simple motion, which 
 is excited in a body by a single cause. 
 Compound motion, that, which is pro- 
 duced by two or more different causes ; 
 whether these causes are equal or un- 
 equal, conspiring differently J acting to- 
 gether or in succession, known or un- 
 known. 
 
 Let the motion of beings be of what- 
 soever nature it may, it is always the 
 necessary consequence of their essence, 
 or of the properties which compose 
 them, and of those causes of which 
 they experience the action. Each being 
 can only move, and act, after a particu- 
 lar manner ; that is to say, conformably 
 to those laws which result from its 
 peculiar essence, its particular combi- 
 nation, its individual nature : in short, 
 from its specific energies, and those of 
 the bodies from which it receives an 
 impulse. It is this that constitutes the 
 invariable laws of motion : I say inva- 
 riable, because they can never change 
 without producing confusion in the 
 essence of things. It is thus that a 
 heavy body must necessarily fall, if it 
 meets with no obstacle sufficient to 
 arrest its descent ; that a sensible body 
 must naturally seek pleasure, and avoid 
 pain; that fire must necessarily burn, 
 and diffuse light.
 
 13 
 
 OF MOTION. 
 
 Each being, then, has laws of motion 
 that are adapted to itself, and constantly 
 acts, or moves according to these laws ; 
 at least when no superior cause inter- 
 rupts its action. Thus, fire ceases to 
 burn combustible matter, as soon as 
 sufficient water is thrown into it to 
 arrest its progress. Thus, a sensible 
 being ceases to seek pleasure, as soon 
 as he fears that pain will be the result. 
 
 The communication of motion, or the 
 medium of action, from one body to 
 another, also follows certain and neces- 
 sary laws : one being can only commu- 
 nicate motion to another by the affinity, 
 by the resemblance, by the conformity, 
 by the analogy, or by the point of con- 
 tact which it has with that other being. 
 Fire can only propagate when it finds 
 matter analogous to itself: it extin- 
 guishes when it encounters bodies 
 which it cannot embrace ; that is to 
 sav, that do not bear towards it a cer- 
 tain degree of relation or affinity. 
 
 Every thing in the universe is in 
 motion; the essence of matter is to act: 
 if we consider its parts attentively, we 
 shall discover that not a particle enjoys 
 absolute repose. Those which appear 
 to us to be without motion, are, in fact, 
 only in relative or apparent rest ; they 
 experience such an imperceptible mo- 
 tion, and expose it so little on their 
 surfaces, that we cannot perceive the 
 changes they undergo.* All that ap- 
 pears to us to be at rest, does not, 
 however, remain one instant in the 
 same state. All beings are continually 
 breeding, increasing, decreasing, or dis- 
 persing, with more or less tardiness or 
 rapidity. The insect called ephemeron, 
 is produced, and perishes in the same 
 day ; consequently, it experiences the 
 great changes of its being very rapidly. 
 Those combinations which form the 
 most solid bodies, and which, to our 
 eyes, appear to enjoy the most perfect 
 repose, are nevertheless decomposed 
 and dissolved in the course of time. 
 The hardest stones, by degrees, give 
 way to the contact of air. A mass of 
 
 * This truth, which is still denied by many 
 metaphysicians, has been conclusively estab- 
 lished by the celebrated Toland, in a work 
 which appeared in the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century, entitled Letters to Serena. 
 Those who can procure this scarce work will 
 do well to refer to it, and their doubts on the 
 subject, if they have any, will be removed. 
 
 iron, which time, and the action of the 
 atmosphere, has gnawed into rust, must 
 have been in motion from the moment 
 of its formation in the bowels of the 
 earth, until the instant we behold it in 
 this state of dissolution. 
 
 Natural philosophers, for the most 
 part, seem not to have sufficiently re- 
 flected on what they call the nisus ; 
 that is to say r the incessant efforts one 
 body is making on another, but which, 
 notwithstanding, appear, to our super- 
 ficial observation, to enjoy the most 
 perfect repose. A stone of five hun- 
 dred weight seems at rest on the earth, 
 nevertheless, it never ceases for an 
 instant to press with force upon the 
 earth, which resists or repulses it in its 
 turn. Will the assertion be ventured, 
 that the stone and the earth do not act? 
 Do they wish to be undeceived? They 
 have nothing to do, but interpose then- 
 hand betwixt the earth and the stone ; 
 it will then be discovered, that, not- 
 withstanding its seeming repose, the 
 stone has power adequate to brnise it. 
 Action cannot exist in bodies without 
 re-action. A body that experiences an 
 impulse, an attraction, or a pressure of 
 any kind, if it resists, clearly demon- 
 strates by such resistance, that it re- 
 acts ; from whence it follows, there is a 
 concealed force, called by philosophers 
 vis inertia, that displays itself against 
 another force ; and this clearly demon- 
 strates, that this inert force is capable 
 of both acting and re-acting. In short T 
 it will be found, on close investigation, 
 that those powers which are called 
 dead, and those which are termed live 
 or moving, are powers of the same 
 species, which only display themselves 
 after a different manner.f 
 
 f Action! sequalis et contraria est reactio. 
 
 V. BILFIJ.GEB, DE DEO, ANIMA ET MUUDO, 
 
 ccxviii. page 241. Upon which the Com- 
 mentator adds, Keactio dicitur actio patientis- 
 in agens, seu corporis in qnod agitur actio in 
 illua quod in ipsum agit. Nulla autem datur 
 in corporibus actio sine reactione, dum enim 
 corpus ad motum sollicitatur, resistit motui, 
 atque hac ipsa resistentia reagit in agens. 
 Nisus se exerens adversus nisnm agentis, seu 
 vis ilia corporis, quatenus resistit, internum 
 resistentiae principium, vocatur vis inertia?, seu 
 passiva. Ergo corpus reagit vi inertiae. Vis 
 igitur inertiae et vis motrix in corporibus una 
 eademque est vis, diverse tamen mqdo se 
 exerens. Vis autem inertias consistit in nisi 
 adversus nisum agentis se exerente, &c. 
 IBIDEM.
 
 OP MOTION. 
 
 19 
 
 May we not go farther yet, may we 
 Mot say, that in those bodies, or masses, 
 of Avhich the whole appears to us to 
 be at rest, there is, notwithstanding, a 
 continual action and reaction, constant 
 efforts, uninterrupted impulse, and con- 
 tinued resistance? In short, a nisus, 
 by which the component particles of 
 these bodies press one upon another, 
 reciprocally resisting each other, acting, 
 and reacting incessantly 1 that this 
 reciprocity of action, this simultaneous 
 reaction, keeps them united, causes 
 their particles to form a mass, a body, 
 a combination, which, viewed in its 
 whole, has the semblance of complete 
 rest, although no one of its particles 
 ever really ceases to be in motion for 
 a single iastant? These bodies appear 
 to be at rest, simply by the equality of 
 the motion of the powers acting in 
 them. 
 
 Thus bodies that have the appear- 
 ance of enjoying the most perfect re- 
 pose, really receive, whether upon their 
 surface, or in their interior, continual 
 impulsion from those bodies by which 
 they are either surrounded or pene- 
 trated, dilated or contracted, rarefied or 
 condensed ; in short, from those which 
 compose them: whereby their particles 
 are constantly acting, and reacting, or 
 in continual motion, the effects of which 
 are ulteriorly displayed by very remark- 
 able changes. Thus heat rarefies and 
 dilates metals, which clearly demon- 
 strates, that a bar of iron, from the 
 variation of the atmosphere alone, must 
 fee in unceasing motion ; and that not 
 a single particle in it can be said to 
 enjoy rest, even for a single moment. 
 Indeed, in those hard bodies, the par- 
 ticles of which are contiguous, which 
 are closely united, how is it possible to 
 conceive, that air, cold or heat, can act 
 upon one of these particles, even ex- 
 teriorly, without the motion being suc- 
 cessively communicated to those which 
 are most intimate and minute in their 
 union ? How, without motion, should 
 we be able to conceive the manner in 
 which our sense of smelling is affected 
 by emanations escaping from the most 
 compact bodies, of which all the par- 
 ticles appear to be at perfect rest? How 
 could we, even by the aid of a telescope, 
 see the most distant stars, if there was 
 not a progressive motion of light from 
 these stars to the retina of our eye ? 
 
 Observation and reflection ought to 
 convince us, that every thing in Nature 
 is in continual motion : that not one of 
 its parts enjoys true repose : that Nature 
 acts in all ; that she would cease to be 
 Nature if she did not act ; and that, 
 without unceasing motion, nothing 
 could be preserved, nothing could be 
 produced, nothing could act. Thus, 
 the idea of Nature necessarily includes 
 that of motion. But, it will be asked, 
 from whence did she receive her motion ? 
 Our reply is, from herself, since she is 
 the great whole, out of which, conse- 
 quently, nothing can exist. We say 
 this motion is a manner of existence, 
 that flows, necessarily, out of the es- 
 sence of matter ; that matter moves 
 by its own peculiar energies ; that its 
 motion is to be attributed to the force 
 which is inherent in itself; that the 
 variety of motion, and the phenomena 
 which result, proceed from the diversity 
 of the properties, of the qualities, and of 
 the combinations, which are originally 
 found in the primitive matter, of which 
 Nature is the assemblage. 
 
 Natural philosophers, for the most 
 part, have regarded as inanimate, or as 
 deprived of the faculty of motion, those 
 bodies which are only moved by the 
 interposition of some agent, or exterior 
 cause ; they have considered themselves 
 justified in concluding, that the matter 
 which constitutes these bodies, is per- 
 fectly inert in its nature. They have 
 not relinquished this errour, although 
 they must have observed, that when- 
 ever a body is left to itself, or disen- 
 gaged from those obstacles which op- 
 pose themselves to its descent, it has 
 a tendency to fall, or to approach the 
 centre of the earth, by a motion uni- 
 formly accelerated ; they have rather 
 chosen to suppose an imaginary exterior 
 cause, of which they themselves had 
 no correct idea, than admit that these 
 bodies held their motion from their own 
 peculiar nature. 
 
 In like manner, although these philo- 
 sophers saw above them an infinite 
 number of immense globes, moving 
 with great rapidity round a common 
 centre, still they clung fast to their 
 opinions ; and never ceased to suppose 
 chimerical causes for these movements, 
 until the immortal NEWTON demon- 
 strated that it was the effect of the 
 gravitation of these celestial bodies
 
 20 
 
 OF MOTION. 
 
 towards each other.* A very simple 
 observation would have sufficed to make 
 the philosophers anterior to Newton feel 
 the insufficiency of the causes they ad- 
 mitted to operate with such powerful 
 effect : they had enough to convince 
 themselves in the clashing of one body 
 against another which they could con- 
 template, and in the known laws of 
 that motion, which these always com- 
 municate by reason of their greater or 
 less density : from whence they ought 
 to have inferred, that the density of 
 subtile or ethereal matter being infi- 
 nitely less than that of the planets, it 
 could only communicate to them a very 
 feeble motion. 
 
 If they had viewed Nature uninflu- 
 enced by prejudice, they must have 
 been long since convinced, that matter 
 acts by its own peculiar energy, and 
 needs not any exterior impulse to set 
 it in motion. They would have per- 
 ceived, that whenever mixed bodies 
 were placed in a capacity to act on 
 each other, motion was instantly en- 
 gendered, and that these mixtures acted 
 with a force capable of producing the 
 most surprising effects. If filings of 
 iron, sulphur and water be mixed to- 
 gether, these bodies thus capacitated 
 to act on each other, are heated by 
 degrees, and ultimately produce a vio- 
 lent combustion. If flour be wetted 
 with water, and the mixture closed up, 
 it will be found, after some little lapse 
 of time, by the aid of a microscope, to 
 have produced organized beings that 
 enjoy life, of which the water and the 
 
 * Natural philosophers, and Newton him- 
 self, have considered the cause of gravitation 
 to be inexplicable ; vet it appears that it may 
 be deduced from the motion of matter by 
 which bodies are diversely determined. Gravi- 
 tation is only a mode of moving a tendency 
 towards a centre. But, to speak correctly, 
 all motion is relative gravitation : that which 
 falls relatively to us, ascends with relation to 
 other bodies. Hence it follows, that every 
 motion in the universe is the effect of gravita- 
 tion ; for, in the universe, there is neither 
 up nor down, nor positive centre. It appears 
 that the weight of bodies depend on the con- 
 figuration, both exterior and interior, which 
 gives them that motion called gravitation. 
 A ball of lead being spherical, falls quickly ; 
 but this ball being reduced into very thin plates, 
 will be sustained for a longer time in the air ; 
 and the action of fire will "cause this lead to 
 rise in the atmosphere. Here the same lead, 
 variously modified, will act after modes entirely 
 different. 
 
 flour Avere believed incapable :f it 19 
 thus that inanimate matter can pass 
 into life, or animate matter, which is 
 in itself only an assemblage of motion. 
 Reasoning from analogy, the produc- 
 tion of a man, independent of the ordi- 
 nary means, would not be more mar- 
 vellous than that of an insect with flour 
 and water. Fermentation and putre- 
 faction evidently produce living ani- 
 mals. We have here the principle ; 
 and with proper materials, principles 
 can always be brought into action. 
 That generation which is styled equivo- 
 cal, is only so for those who do not 
 reflect, or who do not permit themselves 
 attentively to observe the operations of 
 Nature. 
 
 The generation of motion, and its 
 development, as well as the energy of 
 matter, may be seen more especially in 
 those combinations in which fire, air, 
 and water, find themselves in union. 
 These elements, or rather these mixed 
 bodies, are the most volatile, the most 
 fugitive of beings ; nevertheless, in the 
 hands of Nature they are the principal 
 agents employed to produce the most 
 striking phenomena. To these are to 
 be ascribed the effects of thunder, the 
 eruption of volcanoes, earthquakes. &c. 
 Art offers an agent of astonishing force 
 in gunpowder, the instant it comes in 
 contact with fire. In fact, the most 
 terrible effects result from the com- 
 bination of matter which is generally 
 believed to be dead and inert. 
 
 These facts incontestably prove, that 
 motion is produced, is augmented, is 
 accelerated in matter, without the con- 
 currence of any exterior agent: it is, 
 therefore, reasonable to conclude, that 
 motion is the necessary consequence 
 of immutable laws, resulting from the 
 essence, from the properties inherent in 
 the different elements, and the various 
 combinations of these elements. Are 
 we not justified, then, in concluding 
 from these examples, that there may 
 be an infinity of other combinations, 
 with which we are unacquainted, com- 
 petent to produce a great variety of 
 motion in matter, without being under 
 the necessity of recurring for the expla- 
 nation to agents who are more difficult 
 
 t See the Microscopical Observations of 
 Mr. Needham, which fully confirm the above 
 statement of the author.
 
 OP MOTION. 
 
 21 
 
 to comprehend than even the effects 
 which are attributed to them ? 
 
 If man had paid proper attention to 
 what passed under his view, he would 
 not have sought out of Nature a power 
 distinguished from herself, to set her in 
 action, and without which he believes 
 she cannot move. If, indeed, by Nature 
 is meant a heap of dead matter, destitute 
 of properties, purely passive, we must 
 unquestionably seek out of this Nature 
 the principle of her motion : but, if by 
 Nature, be understood what it really is, 
 a whole, of which the numerous parts 
 are endowed with diverse,' and various 
 properties ; which oblige them to act 
 according to these properties ; which 
 are in a perpetual reciprocity of action 
 and reaction ; which press, which gra- 
 vitate towards a common centre, whilst 
 others diverge and fly off towards the 
 periphery, or circumference ; which at- 
 tract, and repel, which unite, and sepa- 
 rate ; which by continual approxima- 
 tion, and constant collision, produce and 
 decompose all the bodies we behold; 
 then I say, there is no necessity to 
 have recourse to supernatural powers 
 to account for the formation of things, 
 and those phenomena which are the 
 result of motion. 
 
 Those who admit a cause exterior to 
 matter, are obliged to suppose, that this 
 cause produced all the motion by which 
 matter is agitated in giving it existence. 
 This supposition rests on another, 
 namely, that matter could begin to ex- 
 ist ; a hypothesis that, until this mo- 
 ment, has never been demonstrated by 
 any thing like solid proof. To pro- 
 duce from nothing, or the Creation, is 
 a term that cannot give us the most 
 slender idea of the formation of the 
 universe ; it presents no sense, upon 
 which the mind can fasten itself.* 
 
 * In fact, the human mind is not adequate 
 to conceive a moment when all was nothing, 
 or when all shall have passed away; even 
 admitting this to be a truth, it is no truth for 
 us, because by the very nature of our organ- 
 ization we cannot admit positions as facts, of 
 which no evidence can be adduced that has 
 relation to our senses : we may, indeed, con- 
 sent to believe it, because others say it ; but 
 will any rational being be satisfied with such 
 an admission ? Can any moral good spring 
 from such blind confidence ? Is it consistent 
 with sound doctrine, with philosophy, with 
 reason ? Do we, in fact, pay any respect to 
 the understanding of another when we say to 
 him, 1 will believe this, because in all the at- 
 
 Motion becomes still more obscure, 
 when creation, or the formation of mat- 
 ter, is attributed to a spiritual being, 
 that is to say, to a being which has no 
 analogy, no point of contact, with it ; 
 to a being which has neither extent, 
 nor parts, and cannot, therefore, be sus- 
 ceptible of motion, as we understand 
 the term ; this being only the change 
 of one body relatively to another body, 
 in which the body moved, presents suc- 
 cessively different parts to different 
 points of space. Moreover, as all the 
 world are nearly agreed that matter can 
 never be totally annihilated, or cease 
 to exist, how can we understand, that 
 that which cannot cease to be, could 
 ever have had a beginning 1 
 
 If, therefore, it be asked, whence 
 came matter 1 it is a very reasonable 
 reply to say, it has always existed. If 
 it be inquired, whence proceeds the 
 motion that agitates matter ? the same 
 reasoning furnishes the answer ; name- 
 ly, that, as motion is coeval with mat- 
 ter, it must have existed from all eter- 
 nity, seeing that motion is the ne- 
 cessary consequence of its existence, 
 of its essence, of its primitive pro- 
 perties, such as its extent, its gra- 
 vity, its impenetrability, its figure, 
 &c. By virtue of these essential, con- 
 stituent properties, inherent in all mat- 
 ter, and without which it is impossible 
 to form an idea of it, the various mat- 
 ter of which the universe is composed 
 must, from all eternity, have pressed 
 against each other ; have gravitated to- 
 wards a centre ; have clashed ; have 
 come in contact ; have been attracted ; 
 have been repelled ; have been com- 
 bined ; have been separated ; in short, 
 must have acted and moved according 
 to the essence and energy peculiar to 
 each genus, and to each of its combin- 
 
 tempts you have ventured for the purpose of 
 proving what you say, you have entirely fail- 
 ed; and have been at last obliged to ac- 
 knowledge, you know nothing about the mat- 
 ter ? What moral reliance ought we to have 
 on such people? Hypothesis may succeed 
 hypothesis ; system may destroy system ; a 
 new set of ideas may overturn the ideas of a 
 former day. Other Galileos may be con- 
 demned to death other Newtons may arise 
 we may reason; we may argue; we may 
 dispute; we may quarrel; we may punish; 
 we may destroy ; we may even exterminate 
 those who differ from us in opinion; but when 
 we have done all this, we shall be obliged to 
 fall back on our original darkness ; to confess,
 
 22 
 
 OP MOTION. 
 
 ations. Existence supposes properties 
 in the thing that exists : whenever it 
 has properties, its mode of action must 
 necessarily flow from those properties 
 which constitute its mode of being. 
 Thus, when a body is ponderous, it 
 must fall ; when it falls, it must come 
 in collision with the bodies it meets in 
 its descent ; when it is dense, when it 
 is solid, it must, by reason of this den- 
 sity, communicate motion to the bodies 
 with which it clashes ; when it has 
 analogy or affinity with these bodies, it 
 must unite with them ; when it has no 
 point of analogy with them, it must be 
 repulsed. 
 
 From which it may be fairly infer- 
 red, that, in supposing, as we are under 
 the necessity of doing, the existence 
 of matter, we must suppose it to have 
 some kind of properties, from which its 
 motion, or modes of action, must ne- 
 cessarily flow. To form the universe 
 Descartes asked but matter and mo- 
 tion: a diversity of matter sufficed for 
 him ; variety of motion was the conse- 
 quence of its existence, of its essence, 
 of its properties : its different modes of 
 action would be the necessary conse- 
 quence of its different modes of being. 
 Matter without properties, would be a 
 
 that that which has no relation with our 
 senses, which cannot manifest itself to us by 
 some of the ordinary modes by which other 
 things are manifested, has no existence for 
 us ; is not comprehensible by us ; can never 
 entirely remove our doubts; can never seize 
 on our steadfast belief; seeing it is that of 
 which we cannot form even an idea ; in short, 
 that it is that, which as long as we remain 
 what we are, must be hidden from us by a 
 veil which no power, no faculty, no energy 
 we possess, is able to remove. All who are 
 not enslaved by prejudice, agree to the truth 
 of the position : that nothing can be made of 
 nothing. 
 
 Many theologians have acknowledged na- 
 ture to be an active whole. Almost all the 
 ancient philosophers were agreed to regard the 
 world as eternal. OCELLUS LUCANUS, speak- 
 ing of the universe, says: " it has always been, 
 and it always -will beJ' VAT ABLE and GBO- 
 TIUS assure us, that, to render correctly the 
 Hebrew phrase in the first chapter of Gene- 
 sis, we must say : " When God made heaven 
 and earth, matter teas without form :" if this 
 be true, and every Hebraist can judge for him- 
 self, then the word which has been rendered 
 created, means only to fashion, form, arrange. 
 We know that the Greek words create and 
 form, have always indicated the same thing. 
 According to ST. JEHOME, creare has the same 
 meaning as conderc, to found, to build. The 
 Bible does not any where say in a clear 
 
 mere nothing: therefore, as soon as 
 matter exists, it must act ; as soon as 
 it is various, it must act variously ; if 
 it cannot commence to exist, it must 
 have existed from all eternity ; if it 
 has always existed, it can never cease 
 to be : if it can never cease to be, it can 
 never cease to act by its own energy, 
 Motion is a manner of being, which 
 matter derives from its peculiar exist- 
 ence. 
 
 The existence then of matter is a 
 fact ; the existence of motion is another 
 fact. Our visual organs point out to 
 us matter with different essences, form- 
 ing a variety of combinations, endow- 
 ed with various properties that dis- 
 criminate them. Indeed, it is an errour 
 to believe that matter is a homogene 
 ous body, of which the parts differ 
 from each other only by their various 
 modifications. Among the individuals 
 of the same species that come under 
 our notice, no two are exactly alike, 
 and it is therefore evident that the dif- 
 ference of situation alone, will neces- 
 sarily carry a diversity more or less 
 sensible, not only in the modifications, 
 but also in the essence, in the proper- 
 ties, in the entire system of beings.* 
 
 if this principle be properly weighed, 
 
 manner, that the world was made of nothing. 
 TERTULLIAN, and the father PETAU, both ad- 
 mit that, " this is a truth established more by 
 reasoning, than by authority." ST. JUSTIN 
 seems to nave contemplated matter as eternal, 
 since he commends PLATO for having said 
 that " God in the creation of the world only 
 
 Save impulse to matter, and fashioned it. 
 URNET and PYTHAGORAS were entirely of 
 this opinion, and even the church service may 
 be adduced in support ; for although it admits 
 by implication a beginning, it expressly denies 
 an end : " As it was in the beginning, is now, 
 and ever shall be, world without end." It is 
 easy to perceive, that that which cannot cease 
 to exist, must have always been. 
 
 * Those who have observed nature closely, 
 know that two grains of sand are not stricily 
 alike. As soon as the circumstances or the 
 modifications are not the same for the beings 
 of the same species, there cannot be an exact 
 resemblance between them. SEE CHAP. vi. 
 This truth was well understood by the pro- 
 found and subtle LEIBNITZ. This is the man- 
 ner in which one of his disciples explained 
 himself: Ex principio indiscernibilium patet 
 elementa rerum materialium singula singulis 
 esse dissimilia, adeo que unum ab altero dis- 
 tingui, convenienter omnia extra se invicem 
 existere, in quo differunt a punctis mathema- 
 ticis, cum ilia uti haec nunquam coincidere 
 possint. BILFINGER, Di DEO, ANIMA ET 
 MUNDO, page 276,
 
 OP MOTION. 
 
 and experience seems always to pro- 
 duce evidence of its truth, we must be 
 convinced, that the matter, or primi- 
 tive elements which enter the compo- 
 sition of bodies, are not of the same na- 
 ture, and, consequently, can neither 
 have the same properties, nor the same 
 modifications ; and if so, they cannot 
 have the same mode of moving, and 
 acting. Their activity or motion, al- 
 ready different, can be diversified to in- 
 finity, augmented or diminished, acce- 
 lerated or retarded, according to the 
 combinations, the proportions, the pres- 
 sure, the density, the volume of the 
 matter that enters their composition. 
 The element of fire, is visibly more 
 active and more inconstant than that 
 of earth. This is more solid and pon- 
 derous than fire, air, or water. Ac- 
 cording to the quality of the elements 
 which enter the composition of bodies, 
 these must act diversely, and their mo- 
 tion must in some measure partake the 
 motion peculiar to each of their constitu- 
 ent parts. Elementary fire appears to 
 be in nature the principle of activity ; 
 it may be compared to a fruitful leaven, 
 that puts the mass into fermentation 
 and gives it life. Earth appears to be 
 the principle of solidity in bodies, from 
 its impenetrability, and by the firm co- 
 herence of its parts. Water is a me- 
 dium, to facilitate the combination of 
 bodies, into which it enters itself as a 
 constituent part. Air is a fluid, whose 
 business it seems to be, to furnish the 
 other elements with the space requisite 
 to exercise their motion, and which is, 
 moreover, found proper to combine 
 with them. These elements, which 
 our senses never discover in a pure 
 state ; which are continually and reci- 
 procally set in motion by each other ; 
 which are always acting and re-acting; 
 combining and separating ; attracting 
 and repelling ; are sufficient to explain 
 to us the formation of all the beings we 
 behold. Their motion is uninterrupt- 
 edly, and reciprocally, produced from 
 each other ; they are alternately causes 
 and effects. Thus, they form a vast 
 circle of generation and destruction, of 
 combination and decomposition, which 
 could never have had a beginning, and 
 which can never have an end. In 
 short, nature is but an immense chain 
 of causes and effects, which unceasing- 
 ly flow from each other. The motion [ 
 
 of particular beings depends on the 
 general motion, which is itself main- 
 tained by individual motion. This is 
 strengthened or Aveakened accelera- 
 ted or retarded simplified or compli- 
 cated procreated or destroyed, by a 
 variety of combinations and circum- 
 stances, which every moment change 
 the directions, the tendency, the modes 
 of existing and of acting, of the differ- 
 ent beings that receive its impulse.* 
 
 If we desire to go beyond this, to 
 find the principle of action in matter 
 and to trace the origin of things, it is 
 for ever to fall back upon difficulties ; it 
 is absolutely to abridge the evidence of 
 our senses, by which alone we can 
 judge of and understand the causes 
 acting upon them, or the impulse by 
 which they are set in action. 
 
 Let us, therefore, content ourselves 
 with saying that which is supported 
 by our experience, and by all the evi- 
 dence we are capable of understanding ; 
 against the truth of which, not a shadow 
 of proof such as our reason can admit, 
 has ever been adduced ; which has been 
 maintained by philosophers in every 
 age ; which theologians themselves 
 have not denied, but which many of 
 them have upheld ; namely, that matter 
 always existed; that it moves by virtue 
 of its essence ; that all the phenomena 
 of Nature is ascribable to the diver si- 
 jied motion of the variety of matter she 
 contains ; and which, like the phenia?, 
 is continually regenerating out of her 
 own ashesj 
 
 * If it were true that every thing has a 
 tendency to form one unique or single mass, 
 and in that unique mass the instant should 
 arrive when all was in ni-sus, all would eter- 
 nally remain in this state to all eternity there 
 would be but one effort, and this would be 
 eternal and universal death. Natural philo- 
 sophers understand by nisus the effort of one 
 body against another body, without local 
 translation. This granted, there could be no 
 cause of dissolution, for, according to chy- 
 mists, bodies act only when dissolved. Cor- 
 pora non agunt nisi sint soluta. 
 
 t Omnium quae in sempiterno isto mundo 
 semper fuerunt futuraque sunt, aiunt principium 
 fuisse nullum, sed orbem esse quemdam gene- 
 rantium nascentiumque, in quo uniuscujusque 
 geniti initium simul et finis esse videtur. 
 V. CEKSORIN. De Die Natcdi. 
 
 The poet Manilius expresses himself in the 
 same manner in these beautiful lines : 
 Omnia mutantur mortali legi creata, 
 Nee se cognoscunt terrae vertentibus annis, 
 Exutas variam faciem per saecula gente*.
 
 24 
 
 OF MATTER. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Of Matter : Of its various Combinations; 
 Of its diversified Motion; or, of the Course 
 of Nature. 
 
 WE know nothing of the elements 
 of bodies, but we know some of their 
 properties or qualities ; and we distin- 
 guish their various matter by the effect 
 or change produced on our senses ; that 
 is to say, by the variety of motion their 
 presence excites in us. In consequence, 
 we discover in them extent, mobility, 
 divisibility, solidity, gravity, and inert 
 force. From these general and primi- 
 tive properties, flow a number of others, 
 such as density, figure, colour, ponder- 
 osity, &c. Thus, relatively to us, matter 
 is all that affects our senses, in any 
 manner whatever ; the various proper- 
 ties we attribute to matter, are founded 
 on the different impressions we receive, 
 on the changes they produce in us. 
 
 A satisfactory definition of matter 
 has not yet been given. Man, deceived 
 and led astray by his prejudices, formed 
 but vague, superficial, and imperfect 
 notions concerning it. He looked upon 
 it as a unique being, gross and passive, 
 incapable of either moving by itself, of 
 forming combinations, or of producing 
 any thing by its own energies ; whilst 
 he ought to have contemplated it as a 
 genus of beings, of which the indi- 
 viduals, although they might possess 
 some common properties, such as ex- 
 tent, divisibility, figure, &c., should not, 
 however, be all ranked in the same 
 class, nor comprised under the same 
 general denomination. 
 
 An example will serve more fully 
 to explain what we have just asserted, 
 throw its correctness into light, and 
 facilitate the application. The proper- 
 ties common to all matter, are, extent, 
 divisibility, impenetrability, figure, mo- 
 bility, or the property of being moved 
 in mass. Fire, beside these general 
 
 At manet incolumis mundus suaque omnia 
 
 servat, 
 
 Quae nee longadies auget, minuitque senectus, 
 Nee motus puncto currit, cursusque fatigat : 
 Idem semper erit, quoniam semper fuit idem. 
 Manilii Astronom. Lib. I. 
 
 This also was the opinion of PYTHAGORAS, 
 such as it is set forth by Ovid, in the fifteenth 
 Book of his Metamorphoses, verse 165, and 
 the following : 
 
 Omnia mutantur, nihil interit ; errat et illinc. 
 
 Hue venit, nine illuc, &c. 
 
 properties common to all matter, enjoys 
 also the peculiar property of being put 
 into activity by a motion producing on 
 our organs of feeling the sensation of 
 heat, and by another, which communi- 
 cates to our visual organs the sensation 
 of light. Iron, in common with matter 
 in general, has extent and figure; is 
 divisible, and moveable in mass : if fire 
 be combined with it in a certain propor- 
 tion, the iron acquires two new proper- 
 ties, namely, those of exciting in us 
 similar sensations of heat and light, 
 which the iron had not before its com- 
 bination with the igneous matter. These 
 distinguishing properties are insepara- 
 ble from matter, and the phenomena that 
 result, may, in the strictest sense of the 
 word, be said to result necessarily. 
 
 If we only contemplate the paths of 
 nature ; if we trace the beings in this 
 nature under the different states through 
 which, by reason of their properties, they 
 are compelled to pass, we shall discover 
 that it is to motion, and motion alone, 
 that is to be ascribed all the changes, 
 all the combinations, all the forms, in 
 short, all the various modifications of 
 matter. That it is by motion every 
 thing that exists is produced, expe- 
 riences change, expands, and is de- 
 stroyed. It is motion that alters the 
 aspect of beings, that adds to, or takes 
 away from their properties ; which 
 obliges each of them, by a consequence 
 of its nature, after having occupied a 
 certain rank or order, to quit it to occupy 
 another, and to contribute to the gene- 
 ration, maintenance, and decomposition 
 of other beings, totally different in their 
 bulk, rank, and essence. 
 
 In what experimental philosophers 
 have styled the three orders of nature, 
 that is to say, the mineral, the vegetable, 
 and the animal worlds, they have estab- 
 lished, by the aid of motion, a transmi- 
 gration, an exchange, a continual circu- 
 lation in the particles of matter. Nature 
 has occasion in one place for those par- 
 ticles which, for a time, she has placed 
 in another. These particles, after hav- 
 ing, by particular combinations, con- 
 stituted beings endued with peculiar 
 essences, with specific properties, with 
 determinate modes of action, dissolve 
 and separate with more or less facility ; 
 and combining in a new manner, they 
 form new beings. The attentive ob- 
 server sees this law execute itself in a
 
 OP MATTER. 
 
 manner more or less prominent through 
 all the beings by which he is surround- 
 ed. He sees nature full of erratic 
 germs, some of which expand them- 
 selves, whilst others wait until motion 
 has placed them in their proper situa- 
 tion, in suitable wombs or matrices, in 
 the necessary circumstances to unfold, 
 to increase, to render them more per- 
 ceptible by the addition of other sub- 
 stances of matter analogous to their 
 primitive being. In all this we see 
 nothing but the effect of motion, neces- 
 sarily guided, modified, accelerated or 
 slackened, strengthened or weakened, 
 by reason of the various properties that 
 beings successively acquire and lose ; 
 which, every moment, infallibly pro- 
 duces alterations in bodies, more or less 
 marked. Indeed these bodies cannot 
 be, strictly speaking, the same in any 
 two successive moments of their exist- 
 ence ; they must, every instant, either 
 acquire or lose : in short, they are 
 obliged to undergo continual variations 
 in their essences, in their properties, in 
 their energies, in their masses, in their 
 qualities, in their mode of existence. 
 
 Animals, after they have been ex- 
 panded in, and brought out of the 
 wombs that are suitable to the ele- 
 ments of their machine, enlarge, 
 strengthen, acquire new properties, new 
 energies, new faculties ; either by de- 
 riving nourishment from plants analo- 
 gous to their being, or by devouring 
 other animals whose substance is suit- 
 able to their preservation ; that is to 
 say, to repair the continual deperdition, 
 or loss, of some portion of their own 
 substance that is disengaging itself 
 every instant. These same animals 
 are nourished, preserved, strengthened, 
 and enlarged by the aid of air, water, 
 earth, and fire. Deprived of air, or of 
 the fluid that surrounds them, that 
 presses on them, that penetrates them, 
 that gives them their elasticity, they 
 presently cease to live. Water com- 
 bined with this air, enters into their 
 whole mechanism, of which it facili- 
 tates the motion. Earth serves them 
 for a basis, by giving solidity to their 
 texture : it is conveyed by air and 
 water, which carry it to those parts of 
 the body with which it can combine. 
 Fire itself, disguised and enveloped 
 under an infinity of forms, continually 
 received into the animal, procures him 
 
 No. I. 4 
 
 | heat, continues him in life, renders him 
 capable of exercising his functions. 
 The aliments, charged with these va- 
 rious principles, entering into the sto- 
 mach, re-establish, the nervous system, 
 and restore, by their activity, and the 
 elements which compose them, the 
 machine which begins to languish, to 
 be depressed, by the loss it has sustain- 
 ed. Forthwith the animal experiences 
 a change in his whole system ; he has 
 more energy, more activity ; he feels 
 more courage ; displays more gaiety ; 
 he acts, he moves, he thinks, after a 
 different manner ; all his faculties are 
 exercised with more ease.* From this 
 it is clear, that what are called the ele- 
 ments, or primitive parts of matter, 
 when variously combined, are, by the 
 agency of motion, continually united 
 to, and assimilated with the substance 
 of animals: that they visibly modify 
 their being, have an evident influence 
 over their actions, that is to say, upon 
 the motion they undergo, whether vi- 
 sible or concealed. 
 
 The same elements, which under 
 certain circumstances serve to nourish, 
 to strengthen, to maintain the animal, 
 become, under others, the principles of 
 his weakness, the instruments of his 
 dissolution, of his death : they work 
 his destruction, whenever they are not 
 in that just proportion, which renders 
 them proper to maintain his existence : 
 thus, when water becomes too abundant 
 in the body of the animal, it enervates 
 him, it relaxes the fibres, and impedes 
 the necessary action of the other ele- 
 ments : thu, fire admitted in excess, 
 excites in him disorderly motion, des- 
 tructive of his machine : thus, air, 
 charged with principles not analogous 
 to his mechanism, brings upon him 
 dangerous diseases and contagion. In 
 fine, the aliments modified after certain 
 
 * We may here remark, that all spirituoos 
 substances (that is to say, those containing a 
 great proportion of inflammable and igneous 
 matter, such as wine, brandy, liquors, &c.) 
 are those that accelerate most the organic 
 motion of animals, by communicating to them 
 heat. Thus, -wine generates courage, and 
 even wit. In spring and summer myriads of 
 insects are hatched, and a luxuriant vegeta- 
 tion springs into life, because the matter of 
 fire is then more abundant than in winter, 
 This igneous matter is evidently the cause of 
 fermentation, of generation, and of life th 
 Jupiter of the ancients.
 
 26 
 
 OF MATTER. 
 
 modes, instead of nourishing destroy 
 the animal, and conduce to his ruin : 
 the animal is preserved no longer than 
 these substances are analogous to his 
 system. They ruin him when they 
 want that just equilibrium that renders 
 them suitable to maintain his exist- 
 ence. 
 
 Plants, that serve to nourish and re- 
 store animals, are themselves nourish- 
 ed by earth ; they expand on its bosom, 
 enlarge and strengthen at its expense, 
 continually receiving into their texture, 
 by their roots and their pores, water, 
 air, and igneous matter : water visibly 
 reanimates them whenever their vege- 
 tation, or genus of life, languishes ; it 
 conveys to them those analogous prin- 
 ciples by which they are enabled to 
 reach perfection ; air is requisite to 
 their expansion, and furnishes them 
 with water, earth, and igneous matter 
 with which it is charged. By these 
 means they receive more or less of the 
 inflammable matter j and the different 
 proportions of these principles, their 
 numerous combinations, from whence 
 result an infinity of properties, a variety 
 of forms, constitute the various families 
 and classes into which botanists have 
 distributed plants : it is thus, we see 
 the cedar, and the hyssop, develop 
 their growth ; the one, rises to the 
 clouds ; the other, creeps humbly on 
 the earth. Thus, by degrees, from an 
 acorn springs the majestic oak, ac- 
 cumulating with time its numerous 
 branches, and overshadowing us with 
 its foliage. Thus, a grain of corn, after 
 having drawn its own nourishment 
 from the juices of the earth, serves, in 
 its turn, for the nourishment of man, 
 into whose system it conveys the ele- 
 ments or principles by which it has 
 been itself expanded combined and 
 modified in such a manner, as to render 
 this vegetable proper to assimilate and 
 unite with the human frame : that is to 
 say, with the fluids and solids of which 
 it is composed. 
 
 The same elements, the same prin- 
 ciples, are found in the formation of 
 minerals, and also in their decomposi- 
 tion, whether natural or artificial. We 
 find that earth diversely modified, 
 wrought and combined, serves to in- 
 crease their bulk, and give them more 
 or less density and gravity. Air and 
 water contribute to make their parti- 
 
 cles cohere : the igneous matter, or iir- 
 flammable principle, tinges them with 
 colour, and sometimes, plainly indi- 
 cates its presence by the brilliant scin- 
 tillation, which motion elicits from 
 them. These stones and rnetals, these 
 bodies so compact and solid, are dis- 
 united, are destroyed, by the agency 
 of air, water, and fire which the most 
 ordinary analysis is sufficient to prove, 
 as well as a multitude of experience to 
 which our eyes are the daily evidence. 
 
 Animals, plants, and minerals, aftei 
 a lapse of time, give back to nature 
 that is to say, to the general mass of 
 things, to the universal magazine 
 the elements or principles which they 
 have borrowed. The earth retakes 
 that portion of the body of which it 
 formed the basis and the solidity ; the 
 air charges itself with those parts that 
 are analogous to it, and with those par- 
 ticles which are light and subtile ; 
 water carries off that which is suitable 
 to liquescency ; fire bursting its chains, 
 disengages itself, and rushes into new 
 combinations with other bodies. 
 
 The elementary particles of the ani- 
 mal being thus dissolved, disunited, 
 and dispersed, assume new activity,, 
 and form new combinations : thus, they. 
 serve to nourish, to preserve, or destroy 
 new beings among others, plants, 
 which, arrived at their maturity, nour- 
 ish and preserve new animals ; these,, 
 in their turn, yielding to the same fate 
 as the first. 
 
 Such is the invariable course of Na- 
 ture : such is the eternal circle of mu- 
 tation, which all that exists is obliged 
 to describe. It is thus that motion 
 generates, preserves for a time, and 
 successively destroys one part of the 
 universe by the other ; whilst the sum 
 of existence remains eternally the 
 same. Nature, by its combinations,, 
 produces suns, which place them- 
 selves in the centre of so many sys- 
 tems : she forms planets, which, by 
 their peculiar essence, gravitate and 
 describe their revolutions round these 
 suns : by degrees the motion is chang- 
 ed altogether, and becomes eccentric t 
 perhaps the day may arrive when these 
 wondrous masses will disperse, of 
 which man, in the short space of his- 
 existence, can only have a faint and 
 transient glimpse. 
 
 It is clear, then, that the continual
 
 OF THE LAWS OF MOTION. 
 
 27 
 
 motion inherent in matter, changes 
 and destroys all beings ; eveiy instant 
 depriving them of some of their pro- 
 perties to substitute ethers : it is mo- 
 tion which, in thus changing their 
 actual essence, changes also their order, 
 their direction, their tendency, and the 
 laws which regulate their mode of act- 
 ing and being : from the stone formed 
 in the bowels of the earth by the inti- 
 mate combination and close coherence 
 of similar and analogous particles, to 
 the sun, that vast reservoir of igneous 
 particles, which sheds torrents of light 
 over the firmament ; from the benumb- 
 ed oyster, to the thoughtful and active 
 man, we see an uninterrupted progres- 
 sion, a perpetual chain of motion and 
 combination, from which is produced 
 beings, that only differ from each other 
 by the variety of their elementary mat- 
 ter : and by the numerous combina- 
 tions of these elements spring modes 
 of action and existence, diversified to 
 infinity. In generation, in nutrition, 
 in preservation, we see nothing more 
 than matter variously combined, of 
 which each has its peculiar motion, re- 
 gulated by fixed and determinate laws, 
 which oblige them to submit to neces- 
 sary changes. We shall find in the 
 formation, in the growth, in the in- 
 stantaneous life of animals, vegetables 
 and minerals, nothing but matter, 
 which, combining, accumulating, ag- 
 gregating, and expanding by degrees, 
 forms beings, who are either feeling, 
 living, vegetating, or else destitute of 
 these faculties ; and having existed 
 some time under one particular form, 
 they are obliged to contribute by their 
 ruia to the production of other forms.* 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Of the. Laws of Motion common to all the 
 Beings of Nature Of Attraction and Re- 
 pulsion Of inert Force Of Necessity. 
 
 MAN is never surprised at those effects 
 of which he thinks he knows the cause; 
 he believes he does know the cause as 
 
 * Destructio unius, generatio alterius. Thus, 
 to speak strictly, nothing in nature is either 
 born, or dies, according to the common ac- 
 ceptation of those terms. This truth was 
 felt by many of the ancient philosophers. 
 PLATO tells us, that according to an old tra- 
 dition, " the living were born of the dead, the 
 
 soon as he sees them act in a uniform 
 and determinate manner, or when the 
 motion excited is simple : the descent 
 of a stone, that falls by its own peculiar 
 Aveight, is an object of meditation only 
 to the philosopher, to whom the mode 
 by which the most immediate causes 
 act, and the most simple motion, are 
 no less impenetrable mysteries than the 
 most complex motion, and the manner 
 by which the most complicated causes 
 give impulse. The uninformed are 
 seldom tempted either to examine the 
 effects which are familiar to them, or 
 to recur to first principles. They think 
 they see nothing in the descent of a 
 stone which ought to elicit their sur- 
 prise, or become the object of their 
 research : it requires a Newton to feel 
 that the descent of heavy bodies is a 
 phenomenon worthy his whole, his most 
 serious attention : it requires the saga- 
 city of a profound experimental philo- 
 sopher, to discover the laws by which 
 heavy bodies fall, by which they com- 
 municate to others their peculiar motion. 
 In short, the mind that is most practised 
 in philosophical observation, has fre- 
 quently the chagrin to find, that the 
 most simple and most common effects 
 escape all his researches, and remain 
 inexplicable to him. 
 
 When any extraordinary, any un- 
 usual effect 13 produced, to which our 
 eyes have not been accustomed ; or 
 when we are ignorant of the energies 
 of the cause, the action of which so 
 forcibly strikes our senses, we are 
 tempted to meditate upon it, and take 
 it into our consideration. The Euro- 
 pean, accustomed to the use of gun- 
 poudei\ passes it by, without thinking 
 much of its extraordinary energies ; the 
 workman, who labours to manufacture 
 it, finds nothing marvellous in its pro- 
 perties, because he daily handles the 
 
 same as the dead did come of the living; and 
 that this is the constant routine of nature." 
 He adds from himself, " Who knows if to live, 
 be not to die; and if to die, be not to live?" 
 This was the doctrine of PYTHAGORAS, a man 
 of great talent and no less note. EMPEDOCLES 
 says, "There is neither birth nor death for any 
 mortal, but only a combination and a separa- 
 tion of that which was combined, and this 
 is what amongst men they call birth and 
 death." Again he remarks, "Those are in- 
 fants, or short-sighted persons with very con- 
 tracted understandings, who imagine any 
 thing is born which did not exist before, or 
 that any thing can die or perish totally."
 
 28 
 
 OF THE LA\VS OF MOTION. 
 
 matter that enters its composition. 
 The American, who had never beheld 
 its operation, looked upon it as a divine 
 power, and its energies as supernatural. 
 The uninformed, who are ignorant of 
 the true cause of thunder, contemplate 
 it as the instrument of celestial ven- 
 geance. The experimental philosopher 
 considers it as the effect of the electric 
 matter, which, nevertheless, is itself a 
 cause which he is very far from per- 
 fectly understanding.* 
 
 Be this as it may, whenever we see 
 a cause act, we look upon its effect as 
 natural : when this cause becomes fa- 
 miliar to the sight, when we are accus- 
 tomed to it, we think we understand it, 
 and its effects surprise us no longer. 
 Whenever any unusual effect is per3 
 ceived without our discovering the 
 cause, the mind sets to work, becomes 
 uneasy ; this uneasiness increases in 
 proportion to its extent : as soon as it 
 is believed to threaten our preservation, 
 we become completely agitated : we 
 seek after the cause with an earnestness 
 proportioned to our alarm ; our per- 
 plexity augments in a ratio equivalent 
 to the persuasion we are under how 
 essentially requisite it is we should 
 become acquainted with the cause, that 
 has affected us -in so lively a manner. 
 As it frequently happens that our senses 
 can teach us nothing respecting this 
 cause which so deeply interests -us, 
 which we seek with so much ardour ; 
 we have recourse to our imagination ; 
 this, disturbed with alarm, enervated 
 by fear, becomes a suspicious, a falla- 
 cious guide : we create chimeras, ficti- 
 tious causes, to whom we give the 
 credit, to whom we ascribe the honour 
 of those phenomena by which we have 
 been so much alarmed. It is to this 
 disposition of the human mind that 
 must be attributed, as will be seen in 
 the sequel, the religious errours of 
 man, who, despairing of the capability 
 to trace the natural causes of those 
 
 * It required the keen, the penetrating mind 
 of a FRANKLIN, to throw light on the nature 
 of this subtile fluid ; to develop the means by 
 which ils effects might be rendered harmless ; 
 Jo turn to useful purposes a phenomenon that 
 made the ignorant tremble, that filled their 
 minds with terrour, their hearts with dismay, 
 as indicating the anger of the gods : impressed 
 with this idea, they prostrated themselves, 
 they sacrificed to Jupiter or Johovah, to depre- 
 cate their wrath. 
 
 perplexing phenomena to which he 
 was the witnesSj and sometimes The 
 victim, created m his brain, heated 
 with terrour, imaginary causes, which 
 have become to him a source of the i 
 most extravagant folly. 
 
 In nature, however, there can be 
 only natural causes and effects ; all the 
 motion excited in this nature follows 
 constant and necessary laws: the natu- 
 ral operations to the knowledge of which 
 we are competent, of which we are in 
 a capacity to judge, are of themselves 
 sufficient to enable us to discover those 
 which elude our sight ; we can at least 
 judge of them by analogy. If we study 
 nature with attention, the modes of 
 action which she displays to our senses 
 will teach us not, to be disconcerted by 
 those which she refuses to discover. 
 Those causes which are th most re- 
 mote from their effects, unquestionably 
 act by intermediate causes ; by the aid 
 of these, we can frequently trace out 
 the first. If in the chain of these causes 
 we sometimes meet with obstacles that 
 oppose themselves to our research, we 
 ought to endeavour by patience and 
 diligence to overcome them ; when it 
 so happens we cannot surmount the 
 difficulties that occur, we still are never 
 justified in concluding the chain to be 
 broken, or that the cause which acts is 
 supernatural. Let us, then, be con- r 
 tent with an honest avowal, that Nature 
 contains resources of which we are 
 ignorant ; but never let us substitute 
 phantoms, fictions, or imaginary causes, 
 senseless terms, for those causes which 
 escape our research; because, by such 
 means, we only confirm ourselves in 
 ignorance, impede our inquiries, and 
 obstinately remain in errour. ''. 
 
 In spite of our ignorance with respect 
 to the meanderings of Nature, of the 
 essence of beings, of their properties, 
 their elements, their combinations, their 
 proportions, we yet know the simple 
 and general laws according to which 
 bodies move, and we see- clearly, that 
 some of these laws, common to all 
 beings, never contradict themselves : 
 although, on some occasions, they ap- 
 pear to vary, we are frequently compe- 
 tent to discover that the cause becoming 
 complex, from combination with other 
 causes, either impedes, or prevents its 
 mode of action, being such as in its 
 primitive state we had a right to expect
 
 OP THE LAWS OF MOTION. 
 
 We know that active, igneous matter, 
 applied to gunpowder, must necessarily 
 cause it to explode : whenever this effect 
 does not follow the combination of the 
 igneods matter with the gunpowder, 
 whenever our senses do not give us 
 evidence of the fact, we are justified in 
 concluding, either that the powder is 
 damp, or that it is united with some 
 other substance that counteracts its ex- 
 plosion. We know that all the actions 
 of man have a tendency to render him 
 happy : whenever, therefore, we see him 
 labouring to injure or destroy himself, 
 it is just to infer that he is moved by 
 some cause opposed to his natural ten- 
 dency ; that he is deceived by some 
 prejudice ; that, for want of experience, 
 he is blind to consequences : that he 
 does not see whither his actions will 
 lead him. 
 
 If the motion excited in beings was 
 always simple ; if their actions did not 
 blend and combine with each other, it 
 would be easy to know the effect a 
 cause would produce. I know that a 
 stone, when descending, ought to de- 
 scribe a perpendicular : I also know, 
 that if it encounters any other body 
 which changes its course, it is obliged 
 to take an oblique direction ; but if its 
 fall be interrupted by several contrary 
 powers which act upon it alternately, 
 I am no longer competent to determine 
 what line it will describe. It may be 
 a parabola, an ellipsis, spiral, circular, 
 &c.; this will depend on the impulse it 
 receives, and the powers by which it is 
 impelled. 
 
 The most complex motion, however, 
 is never more than the result of simple 
 motion combined : therefore, as soon as 
 we know the general laws of beings, 
 and their action, we have only to de- 
 compose and to analyze them, in order 
 to discover those of which they are 
 combined: experience teaches us the 
 effects we are to expect. Thus it is 
 clear, the simplest motion causes that 
 necessary junction of different matter 
 of which all bodies are composed : that 
 matter varied in its essence, in its pro- 
 perties, in its combinations, has each 
 its several modes of action, or motion, 
 peculiar to itself: the whole motion of 
 a body is consequently the sum total of 
 each particular motion that is combined. 
 
 Amongst the matter we behold, some 
 is constantly disposed to unite, whilst 
 
 other is incapable of union ; that which 
 is suitable to unite, forms combinations 
 more or less intimate, possessing more 
 or less durability : that is to say, with 
 more or less capacity to preserve their 
 union and to resist dissolution. Those 
 bodies which are called solids, receive 
 into their composition a great number 
 of homogeneous, similar, and analogous 
 particles, disposed to unite themselves ; 
 with energies conspiring or tending to 
 the same point. The primitive beings, 
 or elements of bodies, have need of 
 support, of props, that is to say, of the 
 presence of each other, for the purpose 
 of preserving themselves ; of acquiring 
 consistence, or solidity ; a truth which 
 applies with equal uniformity to what 
 is called physical, as to what is termed 
 moral. 
 
 "It is upon this disposition in matter 
 and bodies with relation to each other, 
 that is founded those modes of action 
 which natural philosophers designate 
 by the terms attraction, repulsion, 
 sympathy, antipathy, affinities, rela- 
 tions.* Moralists describe this dispo- 
 sition under the names of love, hatred, 
 friendship, aversion. Man, like all 
 the beings in nature, experiences the 
 impulse of attraction and repulsion ; 
 the motion excited in him differing from 
 that of other beings, only because it is 
 more concealed, and frequently so hid- 
 den, that neither the causes which 
 excite it, nor their mode of action are 
 known. 
 
 Be this as it may, it is sufficient for 
 us to know, that by an invariable law 
 certain bodies are disposed to unite 
 with more or less facility, whilst others 
 
 * This system of attraction and repulsion is 
 very ancient, although it required a Newton 
 to develop it. That love, to which the ancients 
 attributed the unfolding or disentanglement of 
 chaos, appears to have Deep nothing more than 
 a personification of the principle of attraction. 
 All their allegories and fables upon chaos, evi- 
 dently indicate nothing more than the accord 
 or union that exists between analogous and 
 homogeneous substances, from whence re- 
 sulted the existence of the universe : while 
 discord or repulsion, which they called we 
 was the cause of dissolution, confusion, and 
 disorder. There can scarcely remain a doubt 
 but this was the origin of the doctrine of the 
 two principles. According to Diogenes Lseer- 
 tius, the philosopher, Empedocles asserted, 
 " that there is a kind of affection, by which the 
 elements unite themselves ; and a sort of dis- 
 cord, by which, they separate or remote them- 
 selves.
 
 30 
 
 OF THE LAWS OF MOTION. 
 
 cannot combine. Water combines itself^ 
 readily with salt, but will not blend 
 Avith oil. Some combinations are very 
 strong, cohering with great force, as , 
 metals ; others are extremely feeble, 
 their cohesion slight, and easily decom- , 
 posed, as in fugitive colours. Some 
 bodies, incapable of uniting by them- 
 selves, become susceptible of union by , 
 the agency of other bodies, which serve j 
 for common bonds or mediums'. Thus, i 
 oil and water,' naturally heterogeneous, 
 combine and make soap, by the inter- 
 vention of alkaline salt. From matter 
 diversely combined, in proportions va- i 
 ried almost to infinity, result all physi- I 
 cal and moral bodies ; the properties f 
 and qualities of which are essentially 
 different, with modes of action more or 
 less complex : which are either under- 
 stood with facility, or difficult of com- 
 prehension, according to the matter that 
 has entered into their composition, and 
 the various modifications this matter 
 has undergone. 
 
 It is thus, from the reciprocity of their 
 attraction, that the primitive, impercep- 
 tible particles of matter which consti- 
 tute bodies, become perceptible, and 
 form compound substances, aggregate 
 masses, by the union of similar and 
 analogous matter, whose essences fit 
 them to cohere. The same bodies are 
 dissolved, or their union broken, when- ; 
 ever they undergo the action of matter 
 inimical to their junction. Thus by 
 degrees are formed plants, metals, ani- 
 mals, men ; each grows, expands, and 
 increases, in its own system, or order; 
 sustaining itself in its respective ex- 
 istence by the continual attraction of ! 
 analogous matter, to which it becomes 
 united, and by which it is preserved i 
 and strengthened. Thus, certain ali- 1 
 ments become fit for the sustenance of j 
 man ; whilst others destroy his exist- : 
 ence : some are pleasant to him, i 
 strengthen his habit ; others are repug- 
 nant to him, weaken his system : in ! 
 short, never to separate physical from j 
 moral laws it is thus that men, mutu- i 
 ally attracted to each other by their 
 reciprocal wants, form those unions j 
 which we designate by the terms mar- \ 
 riage, families, societies, friendships, 
 connexions : it is thus that virtue 
 strengthens and consolidates them ; 
 that vice relaxes, or totally dissolves 
 them. 
 
 Of whatever nature may be the com- 
 bination of beings, their motion has 
 always one direction or tendency : with- 
 out direction we could not have any 
 idea of motion : this direction is regu- 
 lated by the properties of each being : 
 as soon as they have any given proper- 
 ties, they necessarily act in obedience 
 to them ; that is to say, they follow the 
 law invariably determined by these 
 same properties, which, of themselves, 
 constitute the being such as he is found, 
 and settle his mode of action, which is . 
 always the con'sequence of his manner 
 of existence. ,.' But what is the general 
 direction, or common tendency^ we see 
 in all beings ? What is the visible and 
 known end of all their motion 1 It is 
 to preserve their actual existence to 
 strengthen their several bodies to 
 attract that wmch is favourable to 
 them to repel that which is injurious 
 to them to avoid that which can harm 
 them, to resist impulsions contrary to 
 their manner of existence .and to their 
 natural tendency. 
 
 To exist, is to experience the motion 
 peculiar to a determinate essence : to 
 preserve this existence, is to give and 
 receive that motion from which results 
 the maintenance of its existence : it 
 is to attract matter suitable to corrobo- 
 rate its beingj to avoid that by which 
 it may be either endangered, or en- 
 feebled. Thus, all beings of which 
 we have any knowledge, have a ten- 
 dency to preserve themselves each after 
 its own peculiar manner : the stone, 
 by the firm adhesion of its particles, 
 opposes resistance to its destruction. 
 Organized beings preserve themselves 
 by more complicated means, but which- 
 are, nevertheless, calculated to main- 
 tain their existence against that by 
 which it may be injured. Man, both 
 in his physical and in his moral capa- 
 city, is a living, feeling, thinking, active 
 being, who every instant of his duration 
 strives equally to avoid that which may 
 be injurious, and to procure that which 
 is pleasing to him, or that which is 
 suitable to his mode of existence.* 
 
 Conservation, then, is the common 
 point to which -all the energies, all the 
 powers, all the faculties qf being, seem 
 
 * St. Augustine admits /this tendency for 
 self-preservation in all beings, whether organ- 
 ized or not. See his tractate De Civitate Dei, 
 lib. xi. cap. 28.
 
 OP THE LAWS OK MOTION. 
 
 continually directed. Natural philo- 
 sophers call this direction, or tendency, 
 self-gravitation. Newton calls it in- 
 ert force. Moralists denominate it, in 
 man, self-love ; which is nothing more 
 than the tendency he has to preserve 
 himself a desire of happiness a love 
 of his own welfare a wish for plea- 
 sure a promptitude in seizing on every 
 thing that appears favourable to his 
 conservation a marked aversion to all 
 that either disturbs his happiness, or 
 menaces his existence primitive sen- 
 timents common to all beings of the 
 human species, which all their facul- 
 ties are continually striving to satisfy ; 
 which all their passions, their wills, 
 their actions, have eternally for their 
 object and their end. This self-gravi- 
 tation, then, is clearly a necessary dis- 
 position in man and in all other beings, 
 which, by a variety of means, contri- 
 butes to the preservation of the 'exist- 
 ence they have received as Jong as 
 nothing deranges the order of their 
 machine or its primitive tendency. 
 
 Cause always produces effect ; there 
 can be no effect witho'ut cause. Im- 
 pulse is always followed by some mo- 
 tion more or less sensible, by some 
 change more or less remarkable in the 
 body which receives it. But motion, 
 and its various modes of displaying it- 
 self, is, as has been already shown, de- 
 termined by the nature, the essence, 
 the properties, the combinations of the 
 beings acting. It must then be con- 
 cluded, that motion, or the modes by 
 which beings act, arises from some 
 cause ; and as this cause is not able to 
 move or act but in conformity with the 
 manner of its being, or its essential 
 properties, it must equally be conclud- 
 ed, that all the phenomena we perceive 
 are necessary ; that every being in na- 
 ture, under the circumstances in which 
 it is placed and with the given proper- 
 ties it possesses, cannot act otherwise 
 than it does. 
 
 Necessity is the constant and infalli- 
 ble connexion of causes with their ef- 
 fects. Fire, of necessity, consumes 
 combustible matter placed within its 
 sphere of action : man, of necessity, 
 desires, either that which really is, or 
 appears to be useful to his welfare. 
 Nature, in all tne phenomena she ex- 
 hibits, necessarily acts after her own 
 peculiar essence : all the beings she 
 
 31 
 
 ' contains necessarily act each after its 
 individual essence : it is by motion 
 that the whole has relation with its 
 parts, and these with the whole : it is 
 thus that in the universe every thing 
 is connected ; it is itself but an im- 
 mense chain of causes and effects, 
 which flow without ceasing one from 
 
 I the other. If we reflect a little, we 
 
 | shall be obliged to acknowledge, that 
 every thing we see is necessary ; that 
 it cannot be otherwise than it is ; that 
 all the beings we behold, as well as 
 those which escape our sight, act by 
 certain and invariable laws. Accord- 
 ing to these laws heavy bodies fall, 
 light bodies rise ; analogous substances 
 attract each other ; beings tend to con- 
 serve themselves ; man cherishes him- 
 self; loves that which he thinks advan 
 tageous, detests that which he has an 
 idea may prove unfavourable to him. 
 In fine, we are obliged to admit that 
 there can be no independent energy 
 no isolated cause no detached action, 
 in a nature where all the beings are in 
 a reciprocity of action who without 
 interruption mutually impel and resist 
 
 | each other who is herself nothing 
 more than an eternal circle of motion 
 given and received according to ne- 
 cessary laws. 
 
 Two examples will serve to throw 
 the principle here laid down, into light 
 one shall be taken from physics, the 
 other from morals. 
 
 In a whirlwind of dust, raised by the 
 impetuous elements, confused as it ap- 
 pears to our eyes ; in the most fright- 
 ful tempest, excited by contrary winds, 
 when the waves roll high as moun- 
 tains ; there is not a single particle of 
 dust, or drop of water, that has been 
 placed by chance ; that has not a suf- 
 ficient cause for occupying the place 
 where it is found ; that does not, in 
 the most rigorous sense of the word, 
 act after the manner in which it ought 
 to act ; that is, according to its own 
 peculiar essence, and that of the beings 
 from whom it receives impulse. A 
 geometrician, who exactly knew the 
 different energies acting in each case, 
 with the properties of the particles 
 moved, could demonstrate, that, after 
 the causes given, each particle acted 
 precisely as it ought to act, and that it 
 could not have acted otherwise than it 
 did.
 
 32 
 
 OF THE LAWS OF MOTION. 
 
 In those terrible convulsions that I 
 sometimes agitate political societies, 
 shake their foundations, and frequent- 
 ly produce the overthrow of an empire 
 there is not a single action, a single 
 word, a single thought, a single will, a 
 single passion in the agents, whether 
 they act as destroyers or as victims, 
 that is not the necessary result of the 
 causes operating ; that does not act as 
 of necessity it must act from the pecu- 
 liar situation these agents occupy in 
 the moral whirlwind. This could be 
 evidently proved by an understanding 
 capacitated to seize and to rate all the 
 actions and reactions of the minds and 
 bodies of those who contributed to the 
 revolution. x 
 
 In fact, if all be connected in nature; 
 if all motion be produced the one from 
 the other, notwithstanding their secret 
 communications frequently elude our 
 sight ; we ought to feel convinced that 
 there is no cause, however minute, 
 however remote, that does not some- 
 times produce the greatest' and the 
 most immediate effects on man. It 
 may perhaps be in the arid plains of 
 Lybia, that are amassed the first ele- 
 ments of a storm or tempest, which, 
 borne by the winds, approximate our 
 climate, render our atmosphere dense, 
 which operating on the temperament, 
 may influence the passions of a man 
 whose circumstances shall have capa- 
 citated him to influence many others, 
 and who shall decide after his will the 
 fate of many nations. 
 
 Man, in fact, finds himself in nature, 
 and makes a part of it : he acts accord- 
 ing to laws which are peculiar to 
 him ; he receives, in a manner more or 
 less distinct, the action, the impulse of 
 the beings who surround him; who 
 themselves act after laws that are pe- 
 culiar to their essence. It is thus that 
 he is variously modified ; but his ac- 
 tions are always the result of his own 
 peculiar energy, and that of the beings 
 who act upon him, and by whom he is 
 modified. This is what gives such 
 variety to his determinations ; what 
 frequently produces such contradiction 
 in his thoughts, his opinions, his will, 
 his actions ; in short, that motion, 
 whether concealed or visible, by which 
 he is agitated. We shall have occa- 
 sion, in the sequel, to place this truth, 
 at present so much contested, in a 
 
 broader light : it will be sufficient for 
 our present purpose to prove, generally, 
 that every thing in nature is necessary, 
 that nothing to be found in it can act 
 otherwise than it does. 
 
 It is motion alternately communica- 
 ted and received, that establishes the 
 connexion and the relation between the 
 different orders of beings : when they 
 are in the sphere of reciprocal action, 
 attraction approximates them ; repul- 
 sion dissolves and separates them ; the 
 one conserves and strengthens them ; 
 the other enfeebles and destroys them. 
 Once combined, they have a tendency 
 to preserve themselves in that mode of 
 existence, by virtue of their inert 
 force : in this they cannot succeed, 
 because they are exposed to the con- 
 tinual influence of all other beings who 
 act upon them perpetually and in suc- 
 cession : their change of form, their 
 dissolution is requisite to the preserva- 
 tion of nature herself: this is the sole 
 end we are able to assign her ; to 
 which we see her tend incessantly ; 
 which she follows without interruption 
 by the destruction and reproduction of 
 all subordinate beings, who are obliged 
 to submit to her laws, and to concur, 
 by their mode of action, to the main- 
 tenance of her active existence, so es- 
 sentially requisite to the GREAT WHOLE. 
 
 Thus, each being is an individual, 
 who, in the great family, executes the 
 necessary task assigned to him. All 
 bodies act according to laws inherent 
 in their peculiar essence, without the 
 capability to swerve, even for a single 
 instant, from those according to which 
 Nature herself acts. This is the cen- 
 tral power, to which all other powers, 
 all other essences, all other energies, 
 are submitted ; she regulates the mo- 
 tion of beings ; by the necessity of her 
 own peculiar essence, she makes them 
 concur by various modes to the general 
 plan : this plan appears to be nothing 
 more than the life, action, and mainte- 
 nance of the whole, by the continual 
 change of its parts. This object she 
 obtains in removing them one by the 
 other : by that which establishes, and 
 by that which destroys the relation 
 subsisting between them ; by that 
 which gives them, and by that which 
 deprives them of their forms, combina- 
 tions, proportions, qualities, according 
 to which they act for a time, and after
 
 OF ORDER AND CONFUSION. 
 
 33 
 
 a given mode ; these are afterwards 
 taken from them, to make them act 
 after a different manner. It is thus 
 that nature makes them expand and 
 change, grow and decline, augment 
 and diminish, approximate and remove, 
 forms them and destroys them, accord- 
 ing as she finds it requisite to maintain 
 the .whole, towards the conservation 
 of which this nature is herself essen- 
 tially necessitated to have a tendency. 
 This irresistible power, this univer- 
 sal necessity, this general energy, is, 
 then, only a consequence of the nature 
 of things, by virtue of which every 
 thing acts without intermission, after 
 constant and immutable laws ; these 
 laws not varying more for the whole, 
 than for the beings of which it is 
 composed. Nature is an active, liv- 
 ing whole, whose parts necessarily 
 concur, and that without their own 
 knowledge, to maintain activity, life, 
 and existence. Nature acts" and ex- 
 ists necessarily: all that she contains 
 necessarily conspires to perpetuate her 
 active existence.* 
 
 * This was the decided opinion of Plato, 
 who says, " Matter and necessity are the 
 same tiling; lifts necessity is the mother of 
 the world. In point of fact we cannot go 
 beyond this aphorism, Matter acts because it 
 exists, and exists to act. If it be inquired 
 how, or why, matter exists? We answer, 
 we know not : but reasoning by analogy of 
 what we do not know by that which we do, 
 we are of opinion it exists necessarily, or be- 
 cause it contains within itself a sufficient rea- 
 son for its existence. In supposing it to be 
 created or produced by a being distinguished 
 from it, or less known than itself, we must 
 still admit that this being is necessary, and 
 includes, a sufficient reason for his own exist- 
 ence. We have not then removed any of the 
 difficulty, we have not thrown a clearer light 
 on the subject, we have not advanced a 
 single step; we have simply laid aside an 
 agent of which we know some of the proper- 
 ties, to have recourse to a power of which it 
 is utterly impossible we can form any distinct 
 idea, and whose existence cannot be demon- 
 strated. As therefore these must be at best 
 but speculative points of belief, which each in- 
 dividual, by reason of its. obscurity, may con- 
 template with different optics and under vari- 
 ous aspects ; they surely ought to be left free 
 for each to judge after his own fashion : the 
 Deist can .have no just cause 'of enmity 
 against the Atheist for his want of faith ; and 
 the numerous sects of each of the various 
 persuasions spread over the face of the earth 
 ought to make it a creed, to look with an eye 
 of complacency on the deviation of the other ; 
 and rest upon that great moral axiom, which 
 No. II. 5 
 
 We shall see in the sequel, how 
 much man's imagination has laboured 
 to form an idea of the energies of that 
 nature he has personified and distin- 
 guished from herself: in short, we shall 
 examine some of the ridiculous and 
 pernicious inventions which for want 
 of understanding nature, have been 
 imagined to impede her course, to sus- 
 pend her eternal laws, to place obsta- 
 cles to the necessity of things. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Of Order and Confusion Of Intelligence 
 Of Chance. 
 
 THE observation of the necessary, 
 regular, and periodical motion in the 
 universe, generated in the mind of man 
 the idea of order. This term, in its 
 primitive signification, represents to 
 him nothing more than a mode of con- 
 sidering, a facility of perceiving, to- 
 gether and separately, the different re- 
 lations of a whole, in which is dis- 
 covered by its manner of existing and 
 acting, a certain affinity or conformity 
 with his own. Man, in extending this 
 idea to the universe, carried with him 
 those methods of considering things 
 Avhich are peculiar to himself: he has 
 consequently supposed there really ex- 
 isted m nature affinities and relations, 
 which he classed under the name of 
 order; and others, which appeared to 
 him not to conform to those Avhich he 
 has ranked under the term confusion. 
 
 It is easy to comprehend that this 
 idea of order and confusion can have 
 no absolute existence in nature, where 
 every thing is necessary ; Avhere the 
 whole follows constant and invariable 
 laws ; and which oblige each being, in 
 every moment of its duration, to sub- 
 mit to other laws which themselves 
 flow from its own peculiar mode of ex- 
 istence. It is, therefore, in his imag- 
 ination alone man finds the model of 
 that Avhich he terms order, or confu- 
 sion, which, like all his abstract, meta- 
 physical ideas, supposes nothing be- 
 
 is strictly conformable to nature, which con- 
 tains the nucleus of man's happiness " Do 
 not unto another, that -which you do not wish 
 another should do unto you ;" for it is evident, 
 according to their own doctrines, that out of 
 all their multifarious systems, one only can 
 be right.
 
 34 
 
 OF ORDER AND CONFUSION. 
 
 yond his reach. Order, however, is 
 never more than the faculty of conform- 
 ing himself with the beings by whom 
 he is environed, or with the whole of 
 which he forms a part. 
 
 Nevertheless, if the idea of order be 
 applied to nature, it will be found to be 
 nothing but a series of action, or mo- 
 tion, which man judges to conspire to 
 one common end. Thus, in a body 
 that moves, order is the chain of action, 
 the series of motion proper to Consti- 
 tute it what it is, and to maintain it in 
 its actual state. Order, relatively to 
 the whole of nature, is the concate- 
 nation of causes and effects necessary 
 to her active existence, and to the 
 maintaining her eternally together; 
 but, as it has been proved in the pre- 
 ceding chapter, every individual being 
 is obliged to concur to this end in the 
 different ranks they occupy ; from 
 whence it is a necessary deduction, 
 that what is called the order of nature, 
 can never be more than a certain man- 
 ner of considering the necessity of 
 things, to which all, of which man has 
 any knowledge, is submitted. That 
 which is styled confusion, is only a re- 
 lative term used to designate that series 
 of necessary action, that chain of re- 
 quisite motion, by which an individual 
 being is necessarily changed or dis- 
 turbed in its mode of existence, and 
 by which it is instantaneously obliged 
 to alter its manner of action : but no 
 one of these actions, no part of this 
 motion, is capable, even for a single 
 instant, of contradicting or deranging 
 the general order of nature, from which 
 all beings derive their existence, their 
 properties, the motion peculiar to each. 
 
 What is termed confusion in a being, 
 is nothing more than its passage into a 
 new class, a new mode of existence, 
 which necessarily carries with it a new 
 series of action, a new chain of motion, 
 different from that of which this being 
 found itself susceptible in the preceding 
 rank it occupied. That which is called 
 order in nature, is a mode of existence, 
 or a disposition of its particles strictly 
 necessary. In every other assemblage 
 of causes and effects, or of worlds, as 
 well as in that which we inhabit, some 
 sort of arrangement, some kind of 
 order, would necessarily be establish- 
 ed. Suppose the most discordant and 
 the most heterogeneous substances 
 
 were put into activity ; by a concatena- 
 tion of necessary phenomena they 
 would form amongst themselves a com- 
 plete order, a perfect arrangement of 
 some sort. This is the true notion of 
 a property which may be denned an 
 aptitude to constitute a being such as 
 it is actually found, such as it is, with 
 respect to the whole of which it makes 
 a part. 
 
 Thus, I repeat, order is nothing but 
 necessity, considered relatively to the 
 series of actions, or the connected chain 
 of causes and effects that it produces 
 in the universe. What is, in fact, the 
 motion in our planetary system, the 
 only one of which man has any distinct 
 idea, but order ; but a series of phe- 
 nomena, operated according to neces- 
 sary laws, regulating the bodies of 
 which it is composed 1 In conformity 
 to these laws, ,the sun occupies the 
 centre; the planets gravitate towards 
 it, and describe round it, in regulated 
 periods, continual revolutions : the sa- 
 tellites of these planets gravitate to- 
 wards those which are in the centre 
 of their sphere of action, and describe 
 round them their periodical route. One 
 of these planets, the earth, which man 
 inhabits, turns on its own axis, and by 
 the various aspects which its annual 
 revolution obliges it to present to the 
 sun, experiences those regular varia- 
 tions which are called seasons. By a 
 necessary series of the sun's action 
 upon different parts of this globe, all 
 its productions undergo vicissitudes : 
 plants, animals, men, are in a sort of 
 lethargy during Winter : in Spring, 
 these beings appear to reanimate, to 
 come, as it were, out of a long drowsi- 
 ness. In short, the mode in Avhich the 
 earth receives the sun's beams, has an 
 influence on all its productions ; these 
 rays, when darted obliquely, do not act 
 in the same manner as when they fall 
 perpendicularly ; their periodical ab- 
 sence, caused by the revolution of this 
 sphere on itself, produces night and 
 day. In all this, however, man never 
 witnesses more than necessary effects, 
 flowing from the essence of things, 
 which, whilst that shall remain the 
 same, can never be contradicted. These 
 effects are owing to gravitation, attrac- * 
 tion, centrifugal power, &c.* 
 
 * Centrifugal force is a philosophical term, 
 used to describe that force by which all bodies
 
 OF ORDER AND CONFUSION. 
 
 35 
 
 On the other hand, this order, which 
 man admires as a supernatural effect, 
 is sometimes disturbed or changed into 
 what he calls confusion: this confusion 
 itself is, however, always a necessary 
 consequence of the laws of nature, in 
 which it is requisite for the maintenance 
 of the whole that some of her parts 
 should be deranged, and thrown out of 
 the ordinary course. It is thus comets 
 present themselves so unexpectedly to 
 man's wondering eyes ; their eccentric 
 motion disturbs the tranq'uillity of his 
 planetary system ; they excite the ter- 
 rour of the uninformed, to whom every 
 thing unusual is marvellous. The natu- 
 ral philosopher himself conjectures that, 
 in former ages, these comets have over- 
 thrown the surface of this mundane 
 ball, and caused great revolutions on 
 the earth. Independent of this extra- 
 ordinary confusion, he is exposed to 
 others more familiar to him : sometimes 
 the seasons appear to have usurped 
 each other's place to have quitted their 
 regular order; sometimes the discordant 
 elements seem to dispute among them- 
 selves the dominion of the world ; the 
 sea bursts its limits ; the solid earth is 
 shaken, is rent asunder ; mountains are 
 in a state of conflagration ; pestilential 
 diseases destroy men, sweep off ani- 
 mals ; sterility desolates a country ; 
 then affrighted man utters piercing 
 cries, offers up his prayers to recall 
 order, and tremblingly raises his hands 
 towards the Being he supposes to be 
 the author of all these calamities : and 
 yet, the whole of this afflicting confu- 
 sion are necessary effects, produced by 
 natural causes, which act according to 
 fixed, to permanent laws, determined 
 by their own peculiar essence, and the 
 universal essence of nature, in which 
 every thing must necessarily be changed' 
 be moved, be dissolved; where that 
 which is called order must sometimes 
 be disturbed, and be altered into a new 
 mode of existence, which, to his mind, 
 appears confusion. 
 
 What is called the confusion of 
 nature, has no existence : man finds 
 order in every thing that is conformable 
 to his own mode of being; confusion 
 in every thing by which it is opposed : 
 
 which move round any other body in a circle 
 or an ellipsis, do endeavour to fly off from the 
 axis of their motion in a tangent to the pe- 
 riphery or circumference of iu 
 
 nevertheless, in nature all is in order, 
 because none of her parts are ever able 
 to emancipate themselves from those 
 invariable and necessary rules, which 
 flow from their respective essences : 
 there is not, there cannot be, oonfusion 
 in a whole, to the maintenance of which 
 what is called confusion is absolutely 
 requisite ; of which the general course 
 can never be deranged where all the 
 effects produced are the consequence of 
 natural causes, that, under the circum- 
 stances in which they are placed, act 
 only as they infallibly are obliged to act. 
 
 It thus follows that there can be nei- 
 ther monsters nor prodigies, wonders 
 nor miracles in nature : those which 
 are designated as monsters, are certain 
 combinations with which the eyes of 
 man are not familiarized, but which 
 are not less the necessary effects of 
 natural causes.. Those which he terms 
 prodigies, wonders, or supernatural 
 effects, are phenomena of nature with 
 whose mode of action he is unac- 
 quainted of which his ignorance does 
 not permit him to ascertain the princi- 
 ples whose causes he cannot trace, but 
 which his heated imagination makes him 
 foolishly attribute to fictitious causes, 
 which, like the idea of order, have no 
 existence but in himself; for, out of 
 nature, none of these things can have 
 existence. 
 
 As for those effects, which are called 
 miracles, that is to say, contrary to the 
 immutable laws of nature, such things 
 are impossible ; because nothing can 
 for an instant suspend the necessary 
 course of beings, without arresting the 
 entire of nature, and disturbing her in 
 her tendency. There have neither been 
 wonders nor miracles in nature, except 
 for those who have not sufficiently 
 studied this nature, and who conse- 
 quently do not feel that her laws can 
 never be contradicted, even in the 
 minutest of her parts, without the 
 whole being annihilated, or at least, 
 without changing her essence, or her 
 mode of action.* 
 
 * A miracle, according to some metaphysi- 
 cians, is an effect produced by a power not to 
 be found in nature. Miraculum yocainus 
 effcctum qui nullas sui vires sufficientes in 
 natura agnoscit. See Bilftnger, De Deo, 
 Animo et Mundo. From this it has been 
 concluded that the cause must be looked for 
 beyond or out of nature ; but reason bids us 
 not to recur to supernatural causes, to explain
 
 36 
 
 OF ORDER AND CONFUSION. 
 
 Order and confusion, then, are only 
 relative terms, by which man designates 
 the state in which particular beings find 
 themselves: He says, a being is in 
 order when all the motion it undergoes 
 conspires to favour its tendency to self- 
 preservation, and is conducive to the 
 maintenance of its actual existence; 
 that it is in confusion, when the causes 
 which move it disturb the harmony of 
 its existence, or have a tendency to 
 destroy the equilibrium necessary to 
 the conservation of its actual state. 
 Nevertheless, confusion, as we have 
 shown, is nothing but the passage of a 
 being into a new order; the more rapid 
 the progress, the greater the confusion 
 for the being that is submitted to it : 
 that which conducts man to what is 
 called death, is, for him, the greatest 
 of all possible confusion. Yet this 
 death is nothing more than a passage 
 into a new mode of existence : it is in 
 the order of nature. 
 
 The human body is said to be in 
 order, when its various component parts 
 act in that mode from which results the 
 conservation of the whole, which is the 
 end of his actual existence.* He is said 
 to be in health, when the fluids and 
 solids of his body concur towards this 
 end. He is said to be in confusion, or 
 in ill health, whenever this tendency 
 is disturbed ; when any of the con- 
 stituent parts of his body cease to con- 
 cur to his preservation, or to fulfil his 
 peculiar functions. This it is that hap- 
 pens in a state of sickness, in which, 
 however, the motion excited in the 
 human machine is as necessary, is 
 regulated by laws as certain, as natu- 
 ral, as invariable, as that which concurs 
 to produce health. Sickness merely 
 produces in him a new order of motion, 
 a new series of action, a new chain of 
 things. Man dies : to us this appears the 
 greatest confusion he can experience ; 
 his body is no longer what it was its 
 parts cease to concur to the same end 
 his blood has lost its circulation he is 
 deprived of feeling his ideas have 
 
 the phenomena we behold, before we have 
 become fully acquainted with natural causes 
 in other words, with the powers and capabili- 
 ties which nature herself contains. 
 
 * In other words, when all the impulse he 
 receives, all the motion he communicates, tends 
 to preserve his health and to render him happy, 
 by promoting the happiness of his fellow men. 
 
 vanished he thinks no more his de- 
 sires have fled -death is the epoch, is 
 the cessation of his human existence. 
 His frame becomes an inanimate mass 
 by the substraction of those principles 
 by which it was anhriated; its tendency 
 has received a new direction, and the 
 motion excited in its ruins conspires to 
 a new end. To that motion, the har- 
 mony of which produced life, sentiment, 
 thought, passions, and health, succeeds 
 a series of motion of another species, 
 which, nevertheless^ follows laws as 
 necessary as the first : all the part* of 
 the dead man conspire to produce what 
 is called dissolution, fermentation, pu- 
 trefaction ; and these new modes of 
 being, of acting, are just as natural to 
 man, reduced to this state, as sensibility, 
 thought, the periodical motion of the 
 blood, &c. were to the living man : his 
 essence having changed, his mode of 
 action can no longed be the same. To 
 that regulated motion, to that necessary 
 action, which conspired to the produc- 
 tion of life, succeeds that determinate 
 motion, that series of action, which 
 concur to produce the dissolution of 
 the dead carcass, the dispersion of its 
 parts, and the formation of new combi- 
 nations, from which result new beings : 
 and this, as we have before seen, is the 
 immutable order of ever-active nature.! 
 It cannot, then, be too often repeated, 
 that, relatively to the great whole, all 
 the motion of beings, all their modes of 
 action, can never be but in order, that 
 is to say, are always conformable to 
 nature : that in all the stages through 
 which beings are obliged to pass, they 
 invariably act after a mode necessarily 
 subordinate to the universal whole. 
 Nay, each individual being always 
 acts in order ; all its actions, the whole 
 system of its motion, are the necessary 
 consequence of its peculiar mode of 
 existence, whether that be momentary 
 
 t " We have accustomed ourselves to think," 
 says an anonymous author, " that life is the 
 contrary of death ; and this appearing to us 
 under the idea of absolute destruction, we have 
 been eager at least to exempt the soul from it, 
 as if the soul, or mind, was essentially any 
 thing else but the result of life, whose opposites 
 are animate and inanimate. Death is so little 
 opposed to life, that it is the principle of it. 
 From the body of a single animal that ceases 
 to live, a thousand other living beings are 
 formed." See Miscellaneous Dissertations -. 
 Amsterdam. 1740 pp. 252, 253.
 
 OP ORDER_AND CONFUSION. 
 
 or durable. Order, in political society, 
 is the effect of a necessary series of 
 ideas, of wills, of actions, in those who 
 compose it, whose movements are regu- 
 lated in a manner either calculated to 
 maintain its indivisibility, or to hasten 
 its dissolution. Man constituted or 
 modified in the manner we term vir- 
 , tuous, acts necessarily in that mode 
 from whence results the welfare of his 
 associates : the man we style wicked, 
 acts necessarily in that mode from 
 whence springs the misery of- his fel- 
 lows: his nature and his modification 
 being essentially different, he must 
 necessarily act after a different mode : 
 his individual order is at variance, but 
 his relative order is complete : it is 
 equally the essence of the one to pro- 
 mote happiness, as it is of the other to 
 induce misery. 
 
 Thus order and confusion in indi- 
 vidual beings, are nothing more than 
 the manner of man's considering the 
 natural and necessary effects Avhich 
 they produce relatively to himself. He 
 fears the wicked man ; he says that he 
 will carry confusion into society, be- 
 cause he disturbs its tendency ; because 
 he places obstacles to its happiness. 
 He avoids a falling stone, because it 
 will derange in him the order necessary 
 to his conservation. Nevertheless, order 
 and confusion are always, as we have 
 shown, consequences equally necessary 
 to either the transient or durable state 
 of beings. It is in order that fire burns, 
 because it is of its essence to burn ; 
 for the wicked to do mischief, because 
 it is of his essence to do mischief: on 
 the other hand, it is in order that an 
 intelligent being should remove himself 
 from whatever can disturb his mode of 
 existence. A being, whose organization 
 renders him sensible, must, in virtue of 
 his essence, fly from every thing that 
 can injure his organs, that can place 
 his existence in danger. 
 
 Man calls those beings intelligent 
 who are organized after his own man- 
 ner, in whom he sees .faculties proper 
 for their preservation, suitable to main- 
 tain their existence in the order that is 
 convenient to them, enabling them to 
 take the necessary measures towards 
 this end with a consciousness of the 
 motion they undergo. From hence it 
 will be perceived, that the faculty called 
 intelligence, consists in a capability toj 
 
 act conformably to a known end in the 
 being to which it is attributed. He 
 looks upon those beings as deprived of 
 intelligence in whom he finds no con- 
 formity with himself ; in whom he dis- 
 covers neither the same organization, 
 nor the same faculties : of which he 
 knows neither the essence, the end to 
 which they tend, the energies by which 
 they act, nor the order that is convenient 
 to them. The whole cannot have a dis- 
 tinct end, because there is nothing out 
 of itself to which it can have a tendency. 
 If it be in himself that he arranges the 
 idea of order, it is also in himself that 
 he -draws up that of intelligence. He 
 refuses to ascribe it to those beings who 
 d6 not act after his own manner : he 
 accords it to all those whom he supposes 
 to act like himself: the latter he calls 
 intelligent agents ; the former blind 
 causes ; that is to say, intelligent agents 
 who act by CHANCE a word void of 
 sense, but which is always opposed to 
 that of intelligence, without attaching 
 to it any determinate or certain idea.* 
 
 In fact, he attributes to chance all 
 those effects of which the connexion 
 they have with their causes is not seen. 
 Thus man uses the word chance to 
 cover his ignorance of those natural 
 causes which produce visible effects, 
 by means of which he cannot form an 
 idea ; or that act by a mode of which he 
 does not perceive the order ; or whose 
 system is not followed by actions con- 
 formable to his own. As soon as he 
 sees, or believes he sees the order of 
 action, he attributes this order to an 
 intelligence ; which is nothing more 
 than a quality borrowed from himself, 
 
 * We always compare the intelligence of 
 other beings with our own, and if it be not the 
 same, we deny its existence, which is a very 
 gross errour ; forj although a being may appear 
 deprived of our own intelligence, ne neverthe- 
 less has one peculiar to his organization, which 
 leads him, with the greatest impulse possible, 
 towards an end we do not see; and all beings, 
 with regard to the end Nature proposes to 
 herself, are provided with that degree of mtelli 
 gence necessary to obtain it. To assume that 
 a being is deprived of intelligence, is merely to 
 say that his intelligence is not like ours, and 
 that we do not understand it: to say that a 
 being acts by chance, is merely to confess that 
 we do not see its end, and the place it occupies 
 in the universal chain of existences. It is quite 
 certain that all beings are possessed of intelli- 
 gence, albeit we may not understand it ; and 
 it is no less certain that all beings tend to ar 
 end, albeit we may not perceive it.
 
 38 
 
 OF ORDER AND CONFUSION. 
 
 from his own peculiar mode of action, 
 and from the manner in which he is 
 himself affected. 
 
 Thus an intelligent being is one 
 who thinks, who wills, who acts, to 
 compass an end. If so, he must have 
 organs and an aim conformable to those 
 of man : therefore, to say that nature is 
 governed by an intelligence, is to affirm 
 that she is governed by a being fur- 
 nished with organs ; seeing that with- 
 out this organic construction he can 
 neither have sensations, perceptions, 
 ideas, thoughts, will, plan, nor self- 
 understood action. 
 
 Man always makes himself the cen- 
 tre of the universe : it is to himself that 
 he relates all he beholds. As soon as 
 he believes he discovers a mode of ac- 
 tion that has a conformity with his 
 own, or some phenomenon that in- 
 terests his feelings, he attributes it to a 
 cause that resembles himself, that acts 
 after his manner, that has similar fa- 
 culties with those he himself possesses, 
 whose interests are like his own, whose 
 projects are in unison with, and have 
 the same tendency as those he him- 
 self indulges : in short, it is from him- 
 self, from the properties which actuate 
 him, that he forms the model of this 
 cause. It is thus that man beholds out 
 of his own species nothing but beings 
 who act differently from himself; yet, 
 believes that he remarks in nature an 
 order analogous to his own peculiar 
 ideas: views, conformable to those ; 
 which he himself has. He imagines 
 that nature is governed by a cause, 
 whose intelligence is conformable to 
 his own ; to whom he ascribes the 
 honour of the orjier which he believes 
 he witnesses : of those views that fall 
 in with those that are peculiar to him- 
 self; of an aim which quadrates with 
 that which is the great end of all his 
 own actions. It is true that man, feel- 
 ing his incapability to produce the vast, 
 the multiplied effects, of which he wit- 
 nesses the operation when contempla- 
 ting the universe, was under the ne- 
 cessity of making a distinction between 
 himself and the cause which he sup- 
 posed to be the author of such stupen- 
 dous effects ; he believed he removed 
 every difficulty by exaggerating in this 
 cause all those faculties of which he 
 was himself in possession. It was 
 thus, and by degrees, he arrived at 
 
 forming an idea of that intelligent cause 
 which he has placed above nature to 
 preside over her action, and to give her 
 that motion of which he has chosen to 
 believe she was in herself incapable. 
 He obstinately persists in always re- 
 garding this nature as a heap of dead, 
 inert, formless matter, which has not 
 within itself the poAver of producing 
 any of those great effects, of those re- 
 gular phenomena, from which eman- 
 ates what he styles the order of the 
 universe.* From whence it may be 
 deduced, that it is for want of being 
 acquainted with the powers of nature, 
 with the properties of matter, that man 
 has multiplied beings without necessi- 
 ty : that he has supposed the universe, 
 under the empire of an intelligent 
 cause, of which he is, and perhaps al- 
 ways will be, himself the model : and 
 he only rendered this cause more in- 
 conceivable, when he extended in it 
 his own faculties too much. He either 
 annihilates, or renders it altogether im- 
 possible, when he would attach to it 
 incompatible qualities, which he is 
 obliged to do to enable him to account 
 for the contradictory and disorderly 
 effects he beholds in the world. In 
 fact, he sees confusion in the world ; 
 yet, notwithstanding this confusion 
 contradicts the plan, the power, the 
 wisdom, the bounty of this intelligence, 
 and the miraculous order which he as- 
 cribes to it, he says the extreme beau- 
 tiful arrangement of the whole obliges 
 him to suppose it to be the work of a 
 sovereign intelligence.! 
 
 It will, no doubt, be argued, that as 
 nature contains and produces intelli- 
 gent beings, either she must be herself 
 
 * Anaxagoras is said to have been the first 
 who supposed the universe created and gov- 
 erned by an intelligence . Aristotle reproaches 
 him with having made an automaton of this 
 intelligence ; that is, with ascnbing to it the 
 production of things only when he was at a 
 loss, for good reasons, to account for their 
 appearance. See Bayle's Dictionary, Art. 
 Anaxagoras, Note E. 
 
 t Unable to reconcile this seeming confu- 
 sion with the benevolence he attaches to this 
 cause, he had recourse to another effort of his 
 imagination ; he made a new cause, to whom 
 he ascribed all the evil, all the misery, result- 
 ing from this confusion : still, his own person 
 served for the model, to which he added thosr 
 deformities which he had learned to hold in 
 disesteem : in multiplying these counter 01 
 destroying causes, he peopled Pandemonium
 
 OF MAX. 
 
 intelligent, or else she must be govern- 
 ed by an intelligent cause. We reply, 
 intelligence is a faculty peculiar to or- 
 ganized beings, that is to say, to beings 
 constituted and combined after a de- 
 terminate manner, from whence results 
 certain modes of action, which are de- 
 signated under various names, accord- 
 ing to the different effects which these 
 beings produce : wine has not the pro- 
 perties called wit and courage ; never- 
 theless, it is sometimes seen that 'it 
 communicates those qualities to men 
 who are supposed to be in themselves 
 entirely devoid of them. It cannot be 
 said that nature is intelligent after the 
 manner of any one of the beings she 
 contains ; but she can produce intelli- 
 gent beings, by assembling matter 
 suitable to form the particular organ- 
 ization, from whose peculiar modes of 
 action will result the faculty called in- 
 telligence, who shall be capable of pro- 
 ducing those effects which are the ne- 
 cessary consequence of this property. 
 I therefore repeat, that to have intelli- 
 gence," designs, and views, it is requi- 
 site to have ideas : to the production 
 of ideas, organs or senses are neces- 
 sary: this is what is neither said of 
 nature, nor of the causes he has sup- 
 posed to preside over her actions. In 
 short, experience proves beyond a 
 doubt that matter, which is regarded as 
 inert and dead, assumes sensible action, 
 intelligence, and life, when it is com- 
 bined after particular modes. 
 
 From what has been said, it must 
 be concluded, that order is never more 
 than the necessary, the uniform con- 
 nexion of causes with their effects ; or 
 that series of action which flows from 
 Hie peculiar properties of beings so 
 long as they remain in a given state 
 that confusion is nothing more than 
 the change of this state that, in the 
 universe, all is necessarily in order; 
 because every thing acts and moves 
 according to the properties of the beings 
 it contains that, in nature, there can- 
 not be either confusion, or real evil, 
 since every thing follows the laws of 
 its natural existence that there is 
 neither chance, nor any thing fortui- 
 tous in this nature, where no effect is 
 produced without a sufficient cause ; 
 where all causes act necessarily ac- 
 cording to fixed, to certain laws, which 
 are themselves dependant on the esse - 
 
 tial properties of these causes, as well 
 as on the combination or modification 
 which constitutes either their transi- 
 tdry or permanent state that intelli- 
 gence is a mode of acting, a method 
 of existence, natural to some particular 
 beings that, if this intelligence should 
 be attributed to nature, it would then 
 be nothing more than the faculty of 
 conserving herself in active existence 
 by necessary means. In refusing to 
 nature the intelligence he himself en- 
 joys in rejecting the intelligent cause 
 which is supposed to be the contriver 
 of this nature, or the principle of that 
 order he discovers in her course, noth- 
 ing is given to chance, nothing to a 
 blind cause ; but every thing he be- 
 holds is attributed to real, to known 
 causes, or to such as are easy of com- 
 prehension. All that exists is ac- 
 knowledged to be a consequence of the 
 inherent properties of eternal matter, 
 which, by contact, by blending, by 
 combination, by change of form, pro- 
 duces order and confusion, and all those 
 varieties which assail his sight it is 
 himself who is blind, when he imagines 
 blind causes man only manifested his 
 ignorance of the powers and laws of 
 nature, when he attributed any of its 
 effects to chance. He did not show a 
 more enlightened mind when he as- 
 cribed them to an intelligence, the idea 
 of which is always borrowed from him- 
 self, but which is never in conformity 
 with the effects which he attributes to 
 its intervention he only imagined 
 words to supply the place of things, 
 and believed he understood them by 
 thus obscuring ideas which he never 
 dared either define or analyze. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Of Man Of his Distinction into Moral and 
 Physical Of his Origin. 
 
 LET us now apply the general laws 
 we have scrutinized, to those beings of 
 nature who interest us the most. Let 
 us see in what man differs from the 
 other beings by which he is surround- 
 ed. Let us examine if he has not cer- 
 tain points in conformity with thfem 
 that oblige him, notwithstanding the 
 different properties they respectively 
 possess, to act in certain respects ac- 
 cording to the universal laws to which
 
 40 
 
 OF MAN. 
 
 every thing is submitted. Finally, let 
 us inquire if the ideas he has formed of 
 himself in meditating on his own pe- 
 culiar mode of existence, be chimeri- 
 cal, or founded in reason. 
 
 Man occupies a place amidst that 
 crowd, that multitude of beings, o. 
 which nature is the assemblage. His 
 essence, that is to say, the peculiar 
 manner of existence by which he is 
 distinguished from other beings, ren- 
 ders him susceptible of various modes 
 of action, of a variety of motion, some 
 of which are simple and visible, others 
 concealed and complicated. His life" 
 itself is nothing more than a long series, 
 a succession of necessary and con- 
 nected motion, which operates perpet- 
 ual and continual changes in his ma- 
 chine ; which has for its principle either 
 causes contained within himself, such 
 as blood, nerves, fibres, flesh, bones, in 
 short, the matter, as well solid as fluid, 
 of which his body is composed or 
 those exterior causes, which, by acting 
 upon him, modify him diversely; such 
 as the air with which he is encompass- 
 ed, the aliments by which he is nourish- 
 ed, and all those objects fromAvhich he 
 receives any impulse whatever by the 
 impression they make on his senses. 
 
 Man, like all other beings in nature, 
 tends to his own preservation he ex- 
 periences inert force he gravitates 
 upon himself he is attracted by ob- 
 jects that are analogous, and repelled 
 by those that are contrary to him he 
 seeks after some he flies or endeavours 
 to remove himself from others. It is 
 this variety of action, this diversity of 
 modification of which the human being 
 is susceptible, that has been designated 
 under such different names, by such 
 varied nomenclature. It will be ne- 
 cessary, presently, to examine these 
 closely and in detail. 
 
 However marvellous, however hid- 
 den, however complicated, may be the 
 modes of action which the human 
 frame undergoes, whether interiorly or 
 exteriorly ; whatever may be, or ap- 
 pear to be the impulse he either re- 
 ceives or ' communicates, examined 
 closely, it will be found that all his 
 motion, all his operations, all his 
 changes, all his various states, all his 
 revolutions, are constantly regulated by 
 the same laws, which nature has pre- 
 scribed to all the beings she brings 
 
 forth which she develops Avhich she 
 enriches with faculties of which she 
 increases the bulk which she con- 
 serves for a season which she ends 
 by decomposing or destroying thus 
 obliging them to change their' form. 
 
 Man, in his origin, is an impercepti- | 
 ble point, a speck, of which the parts 
 are without form ; of which the mobili- 
 ty, the life, escapes his senses ; in 
 short, in which he does not perceive 
 any sign of those qualities called sen- 
 timent, feeling, thought, intelligence, 
 force, reason, &c. Placed in the 
 womb suitable to his expansion, this 
 point unfolds, extends, increases by 
 the continual addition of matter he at- 
 tracts that is analogous to his being, 
 which consequently assimilates itself 
 with him. Having quitted this womb, 
 so appropriate to conserve his exist- 
 ence, to unfold his qualities, to strength- 
 en his habii ; so competent to give, for 
 a season, consistence to the weak rudi 
 ments of his frame ; he becomes adult : 
 his body has then acquired a consider- 
 able extension of bulk, his motion is 
 marked, his action is visible, he is sen- 
 sible in all his parts ; he is a living, an 
 active mass ; that is to say, he feels, 
 thinks, and fulfils the functions pecu- 
 liar to beings of his species. But how" 
 has he become sensible? Because he 
 has been by degrees nourished, enlarg- 
 ed, repaired by the continual attraction 
 that takes place within himself of that 
 kind of matter which is pronounced 
 inert, insensible, inanimate; although 
 continually combining itself with his 
 machine, of which it forms an active 
 whole, that is living, that feels, judges, 
 reasons, wills, deliberates, chooses, 
 elects ; with a capability of labouring, 
 more or less efficaciously, to his own 
 individual preservation ; that is to say, 
 to the maintenance of the harmony of 
 his natural existence. _J 
 
 All the motion and changes that man 
 experiences in the course of his life, 
 whether it be from exterior objects, or 
 from those substances contained with- 
 in himself, are either favourable or 
 prejudicial to his existence ; either 
 maintain its order, or throw it into con- 
 fusion ; are either in conformity with, 
 or repugnant to the essential tendency 
 of his peculiar mode of being. He is 
 compelled by nature to approve of some, 
 to disapprove of others ; some of neces-
 
 OF MAN. 
 
 sity render him happy, others contri- 
 bute to his misery ; some become the 
 objects of his most ardent desire, others 
 of his determined aversion : some elicit 
 his confidence, others make him trem- 
 ble with fear. 
 
 In all the phenomena man presents, 
 from the moment he quits the womb 
 of his mother, to that wherein he be- 
 comes the inhabitant of the silent tomb, 
 he perceives nothing but a succession 
 of necessary causes and effects, which 
 are strictly conformable to those laws 
 common to all the beings in nature. 
 All his modes of action all his sensa- 
 tions all his ideas all his passions 
 every act of his will every impulse he 
 either gives or receives, are the neces- 
 sary consequences of his own peculiar 
 properties, and those which he finds in 
 the various beings by whom he is 
 moved. Every thing he does every 
 thing that passes within himself, are 
 the effects of inert force of self-gravi- 
 tation of the attractive or repulsive 
 powers contained in his machine of 
 the tendency he has, in common with 
 other beings, to his own individual 
 preservation ; in short', of that energy 
 Avhich is the common property of everv 
 being he beholds. Nature, in man^ 
 does nothing more than show, in a de- 
 cided manner, what belongs to the pe- 
 culiar nature by which he is distin- 
 guished from the beings of a different 
 system or order. 
 
 The source of those errours into 
 which man has fallen when he has 
 contemplated himself, has its rise, as 
 will presently be shown, in the opinion 
 he has entertained, that he moved by 
 himself that he always acts by his 
 own natural energy that in his actions, 
 in the will that gave him impulse, he 
 was independent of the general laws 
 of nature, and of those objects which, 
 frequently without his knowledge, and 
 always in spite of him, are, in obedience 
 to these laws, continually acting upon 
 him. If he had examined himself at- 
 tentively, he must have acknowledged, 
 that none of the motion he underwent 
 was spontaneous he must have dis- 
 covered, that even his birth depended 
 on causes wholly out of the reach of 
 his own powers that it was without 
 his own consent he entered into the 
 system in which he occupies a place 
 that, from the moment in which he is 
 
 No. II. 6 
 
 born, until that in which he dies, he is 
 continually impelled by causes which, 
 in spite of himself, influence his frame, 
 modify his existence, dispose of his 
 conduct. Would not the slightest re- 
 flection have sufficed to prove to him, 
 that the fluids and the solids of which 
 his body is composed, as well as that 
 concealed mechanism, which he be- 
 lieves to be independent of exterior 
 causes, are, in fact, perpetually under 
 the influence of these causes; that 
 without them he would find himself in 
 a total incapacity to act? Would he 
 not have seen, that his temperament, 
 his constitution, did in nowise depend 
 on himself that his passions are the 
 necessary consequence of this tempera- 
 ment that his will is influenced his 
 actions determined by these passions ; 
 and consequently by opinions which he 
 has not given to himself? His blood 
 more or less heated or abundant, his 
 nerves more or less braced, his fibres 
 more or less relaxed, give him disposi- 
 tions either transitory or durable, which 
 are at every moment decisive of his 
 ideas, of his desires, of his fears, of his 
 motion, whether visible or concealed. 
 And the state in which he finds him- 
 self, does it not necessarily depend on 
 the air which surrounds him diversely 
 modified ; on the various properties of 
 the aliments which nourish him ; on 
 the secret combinations that form them- 
 selves in his machine, which either pre- 
 serve its order, or throw it into confu- 
 sion ? In short, had man fairly studied 
 himself, every thing must have con- 
 vinced him, that in every moment of 
 his duration, he was nothing more than 
 a passive instrument in the hands of 
 necessity. 
 
 Thus it must appear, that where all 
 the causes are linked one to the other, 
 where the whole forms but one im- 
 mense chain, there cannot be any inde- 
 pendent, any isolated energy ; any de- 
 tached power. It follows, then, that 
 nature, always in action, marks out to 
 man each point of the line he is bound 
 to describe. It is nature that elaborates, 
 that combines the elements of which 
 he must be composed. It is nature 
 that gives him his being, his tendency, 
 his peculiar mode of action. It is 
 nature that develops him, expands him, 
 strengthens him. and preserves him for 
 a season, during which he is obliged to
 
 OP MAN 
 
 fulfil the task imposed on him. It is 
 nature, that in his journey through life, 
 strews on the road those objects, those 
 events, those adventures, that modify 
 him in a variety of ways, and give him 
 impulses which are sometimes agree- 
 able and beneficial, at others prejudicial 
 and disagreeable. It is nature, that in 
 giving him feeling, has endowed him 
 with capacity to choose the means, and 
 to take those methods that are most 
 conducive to his conservation. It is 
 nature, who, when he has finished bis 
 career, conducts him to his destruction, 
 and thus obliges him to undergo the 
 constant, the universal law, from the 
 operation of which nothing is exempted. 
 It is thus, also, motion brings man forth 
 out of the womb, sustains him for a 
 season, and at length destroys him, or 
 obliges him to return into the bosom of 
 nature, who speedily reproduces him, 
 scattered under an infinity of forms, in 
 which each of his particles will, in the 
 same manner, run over again the differ- 
 ent stages, as necessarily as the whole 
 had before run over those of his pre- 
 ceding existence. 
 
 The beings of the human species, as 
 well as all other beings, are susceptible 
 of two sorts of motion : the one, that of 
 the mass, by which an entire body, or 
 some of its parts, are visibly transferred 
 from one place to another; the other, 
 internal and concealed, of some of 
 which man is sensible, while some 
 takes place without his knowledge, and 
 is not even to be guessed at but by 
 the effect it outwardly produces. In a 
 machine so extremely complex as man, 
 formed by the combination of such a 
 multiplicity of matter, so diversified in 
 its properties, so different in its propor- 
 tions, so varied in its modes of action, 
 the motion necessarily becomes of the 
 most complicated kind ; its dullness, as 
 well as its rapidity, frequently escapes 
 the observation of those themselves in 
 whom it takes place. 
 
 Let us not, then, be surprised, if when 
 man would account to himself for his 
 existence, for his manner of acting, 
 finding so many obstacles to encounter, 
 he invented such strange hypotheses 
 to explain the concealed spring of his 
 machine if when this motion appeared 
 to him to be different from that of other 
 bodies, he conceived an idea that he 
 moved and acted in a manner altogether 
 
 distinct from the other beings in nature. 
 He clearly perceived that his body, as 
 well as different parts of it, did act; 
 but, frequently, he was unable to dis- 
 cover what brought them into action : 
 he then conjectured he contained within 
 himself a moving principle distinguish- 
 ed from his machine, which secretly 
 gave an impulse to the springs which 
 set this machine in motion ; that moved 
 him by its own natural energy ; and 
 that consequently he acted according to 
 laws totally distinct from those which 
 regulated the motion of other beings. 
 He was conscious of certain internal 
 motion which he could not help feeling ; 
 but how could he conceive that this 
 invisible motion was so frequently com- 
 petent to produce such striking effects ? 
 How could he comprehend that a 
 fugitive idea, an imperceptible act of 
 thought, could frequently bring his 
 whole being into trouble and confu- 
 sion? He fell into the belief, that he 
 perceived within himself a substance 
 distinguished from that self, endowed 
 with a secret force, in which he sup- 
 posed existed qualities distinctly differ- 
 ing from those of either the risible 
 causes that acted on his organs, or 
 those organs themselves. He did not 
 sufficiently understand, that the primi- 
 tive cause which makes a stone fall, or 
 his arm move, are perhaps as difficult 
 of comprehension, as arduous to be 
 explained, as those internal impulses 
 of which his thought or his will are 
 the effects. Thus, for want of medi- 
 tating nature of considering her under 
 her true point of view of remarking 
 the conformity and noticing the simul- 
 taneity of the motion of this fancied 
 motive-power with that of his body 
 and of his material organs he con- 
 jectured he was not only a distinct 
 being, but that he was set apart, with 
 different energies, from all the other 
 beings in nature ; that he was of a more 
 simple essence, having nothing in com- 
 mon with any thing that he beheld.* 
 
 * " We must," says an anonymous writer, 
 "define life, before we can reason upon the 
 soul : but this is what 1 esteem impossible, 
 because there are things in nature so simple 
 that imagination cannot divide them, nor re- 
 duce them to any thing more simple than 
 themselves : such is life, whiteness, and light, 
 which we have not been able to define but by 
 their effects." See Miscellaneous Disserta- 
 tions, -printed at Amsterdam, 1740, page 232.
 
 OP MAN. 
 
 It is from thence his notions of spi- 
 rituality, immateriality, immortality, 
 have successively sprung ; in short, all 
 those vague unmeaning words he has 
 invented by degrees, in order to subtilize 
 and designate the attributes of the un- 
 known . power which he believes he 
 contains within himself, and which he 
 conjectures to be the concealed prin- 
 ciple of all his visible actions.* To 
 crown the bold conjectures he ventured 
 to make on this internal motive-power, 
 he supposed that different from all other 
 beings, even from the body that served 
 to envelop it, it was not bound to un- 
 dergo dissolution ; that such was its 
 perfect simplicity, that it could not be 
 decomposed, nor even change its form ; 
 in short, that it was by its essence 
 exempted from those revolutions to 
 which he saw the bocfy subjected, as 
 well as all the compound beings with 
 which nature is filled. 
 
 Thus man became double ; he looked 
 upon himself as a whole, composed by 
 the inconceivable assemblage of two 
 distinct natures, which had no point of 
 analogy between themselves : ^Tie dis- 
 tinguished two substances in tiimself ; 
 one evidently submitted to the influence 
 of gross beings, composed of coarse 
 inert matter: this he called body: 
 the other, which he supposed to be 
 simple, and of a purer essence, was 
 contemplated as acting from itself, and 
 giving motion to the body with which 
 it found itself so miraculously united : 
 this he called soul or spirit : the func- 
 tions of the one he denominated physi- 
 cal, corporeal, material; the functions 
 of the other he styled spiritual, intel- 
 lectual. Man, considered relatively to 
 the first, was termed the physical man; 
 viewed with relation to the last, he was 
 designated the -moral man. 
 
 These distinctions, although adopted 
 by the greater number of the philoso- 
 Life is the assemblage of motion natural to an 
 organized being, and motion can only be a 
 property of matter. 
 
 * When man once imbibes. an idea he can- 
 not comprehend, he meditates upon it until he 
 has given it a complete personification. Thus 
 he saw, or fancied he saw, the igneous matter 
 pervade every thing; he conjectured that it 
 was the only principle of life and activity; and 
 proceeding to imbody it, he gave it his own 
 form, called it JUPITER, and ended by worship- 
 ping this image of his own creation as the 
 power from whom he derived every good he 
 experienced, every evil he sustained. 
 
 phers of the present day, arc only 
 founded on gratuitous suppositions. 
 Man has always believed he remedied 
 his ignorance of things by inventing 
 words to which he could never attach 
 any true sense or meaning. He ima- 
 gined he understood matter, its proper- 
 ties, its faculties, its resources, its dif- 
 ferent combinations, because he had 
 a superficial glimpse of some of its 
 qualities : he has, however, in reality 
 done nothing more than obscure the 
 faint ideas he has been capacitated to 
 form of this matter, by associating it 
 with a substance much less intelligible 
 than itself. It is thus speculative man, 
 in forming words, in multiplying beings, 
 has only plunged himself into greater 
 difficulties than those he endeavoured 
 to avoid, and thereby placed obstacles 
 to the progress of his knowledge : when- 
 ever he has been deficient of facts, he 
 has had recourse to conjecture, which 
 he quickly changed into fancied reali- 
 ties. Thus, his imagination no longer 
 guided by experience, was lost, without 
 hope of return, in the labyrinth of an* 
 ideal and intellectual world, to which 
 he had himself given birth ; it was next 
 to impossible to withdraw him from this 
 delusion, to place him in the right road, 
 of which nothing but experience can 
 furnish him the clue. Nature points 
 out, that in man himself, as well as in 
 all those objects which act upon him, 
 there is nothing more than matter en- 
 dowed with various properties, diversely 
 modified, and acting by reason of these 
 properties : that man is an organized 
 whole, composed of a variety of matter; 
 thatj like all the other productions of 
 nature, he follows general and known 
 laws, as well as those laws or modes 
 of action which are peculiar to himself, 
 Jand unknown. 
 
 Thus, when it shall be inquired, 
 what is man ? 
 
 We say, he is a material being, 
 organized after a peculiar manner ; 
 conformed to a certain mode of think- 
 ing, of feeling, capable of modification 
 in certain modes peculiar to himself, 
 to his organization, to that particular 
 combination of matter which is found 
 assembled in him. 
 
 If, again, it be asked, what origin we 
 give to beings of the human species ? 
 
 We reply, that, like all other beings, 
 man is a production of nature, who
 
 44 
 
 OF MAN. 
 
 resembles them in some respects, and 
 finds himself submitted to the same 
 laws ; who differs from them in other 
 respects, and follows particular laws 
 determined by the diversity of his con- 
 formation. 
 
 If. then, it be demanded, whence came 
 man?* 
 
 We answer, our experience on this 
 head does not capacitate us to resolve 
 the question ; but that it cannot interest 
 us, as it suffices for us to know that man 
 exists, and that he is so constituted as 
 to be competent to the effects we wit- 
 ness. 
 
 But it will be urged, has man always 
 existed? Has the human species ex- 
 isted from all eternity, or is it only an 
 instantaneous production of nature ? 
 Have there been always men like our- 
 selves? Will there always be such? 
 Have there been, in all times, males 
 and females ? Was there a first man, 
 from whom all others are descended ? 
 Was the animal anterior to the egg, or 
 did the egg precede the animal? Is 
 this species without beginning? Will 
 it also be without end ? The species 
 itself, is it indestructible, or does it pass 
 away like its individuals? Has man 
 always been what he now is, or has he, 
 before he arrived at the state in which 
 we see him, been obliged to pass under 
 an infinity of successive developments ? 
 Can man at last flatter himself with 
 having arrived at a fixed being, or must 
 the human species again change ? If 
 man is the production of nature, it will 
 perhaps be asked, Is this nature com- 
 petent to the production of new beings, 
 and to make the old species disappear? 
 Adopting this supposition, it may be 
 inquired, why nature does not pro- 
 duce under our eyes new beings, new 
 species ? 
 
 It would appear on reviewing these 
 questions, to be perfectly indifferent, as 
 to the stability of the argument we have 
 used, which side was taken : for want 
 of experience, hypothesis must settle 
 a curiosity that always endeavours to 
 
 * Theologians will, without hesitation, an- 
 swer this question in the most dogmatic and 
 positive manner. Not only they will tell you 
 -whence man came, but also how and -who 
 brought him into existence; and what he said 
 and whit he did when he first walked the 
 earth. However, true philosophy says " Ida 
 not know." 
 
 spring forward beyond the boundaries 
 prescribed to our mind. This granted, 
 the contemplator of nature will say, 
 that he sees no contradiction in sup- 
 posing the human species, such as it is 
 at the present day, was either produced 
 in the course of time, or from all eter- 
 nity: he will not perceive any advan- 
 tage that can arise from supposing that 
 it has arrived by different stages, or 
 successive developments, to that state 
 in which it is actually found. Matter 
 is eternal, and necessary, but its forms 
 are evanescent and contingent. It may 
 be asked of man, is he any thing more 
 than matter combined, of which the 
 form varies every instant ? 
 
 Notwithstanding, some reflections 
 seem to favour the supposition, and to 
 render more probable the hypothesis that 
 man is a production formed in the course 
 of time ; who is peculiar to the globe 
 he inhabits, and the result of the pecu- 
 liar laws by which it is directed ; who, 
 consequently, can only date his forma- 
 tion as coeval with that of his planet. 
 Existence is essential to the universe, 
 or to the total assemblage of matter 
 essentially varied that presents itself 
 to our contemplation ; but the combina- 
 tions, the forms, are not essential. This 
 granted, although the matter of which 
 the earth is composed has always ex- 
 isted, this earth may not always have 
 had its present form and its actual 
 properties perhaps, it may be a mass 
 detached in the course of time from 
 some other celestial body ; perhaps, 
 it is the result of the spots or encrusta- 
 tions which astronomers discover in the 
 sun's disk, which have had the faculty 
 to diffuse themselves over our planetary 
 system perhaps, the sphere we inhabit 
 may be an extinguished or a displaced 
 comet, which heretofore occupied some 
 other place in the regions of space, and 
 which, consequently, was then compe- 
 tent to produce beings very different 
 from those Ave now behold spread over 
 its surface, seeing that its then position, 
 its nature, must have rendered its pro- 
 ductions different from those which, at 
 this day, it offers to our vieAv. 
 
 Whatever may be the supposition 
 adopted, plants, animals, men, can only 
 be regarded as productions inherent in 
 and natural to our globe, in the position 
 or in the circumstances in which it is 
 actually found : these productions would
 
 OF MAN. 
 
 43 
 
 ne changed, if this globe, by any revo- 
 lution, should happen to shift its situa- 
 tion. What appears to strengthen this 
 hypothesis, is, that on our ball itself, 
 all the productions vary by reason of its 
 different climates: men, animals, vege- 
 tables, minerals, are not the same on 
 every part of it: they vary sometimes 
 in a very sensible manner,' at very 
 inconsiderable distances. The elephant 
 is indigenous to, or a native of the 
 torrid zone : the reindeer is peculiar to 
 the frozen climates of the north : Indos- 
 tan is the womb that matures the dia- 
 mond ; we do not find it produced in 
 our own country : the pineapple grows 
 in the common atmosphere of America ; 
 in our climate it is never produced until 
 art has furnished a sun analogous to 
 that which it requires. Lastly, man, 
 in d ifferent climates, varies in his colour, 
 in his size, in his conformation, in his 
 powers, in his industry, in his courage, 
 in the faculties of his mind. But, what 
 is it that constitutes climate 1 It is the 
 different position of parts of the same 
 globe relatively to the sun ; positions 
 that suffice to make a sensible variety 
 in its productions. 
 
 There is, then, sufficient foundation 
 to conjecture, that, if by any accident 
 our globe should become displaced, all 
 its productions would of necessity be 
 changed ; for, causes being no longer 
 the same, or no longer acting after the 
 same manner, the effects would neces- 
 sarily no longer be what they now are : 
 all productions, that they may be able 
 to conserve themselves, or maintain 
 their actual existence, have occasion 
 to co-order themselves with the whole 
 from which they have emanated : with- 
 out this, they would no longer be in a 
 capacity to subsist. It is this faculty 
 of co-ordering themselves, this rela- 
 tive adaptation, Avhich is called the 
 order of the universe, the want of it 
 is called confusion. Those productions 
 which are treated as monstrous, are 
 such as are unable to co-order them- 
 selves with the general or particular 
 laws of the beings who surround them, 
 or with the whole in which they find 
 themselves placed : they have had the 
 faculty in their formation to accommo- 
 date themselves to these laws ; but these 
 very laws are opposed to their perfec- 
 tion : for this reason, they are unable to 
 subsist. It is thus, that, by a certain 
 
 analogy of conformation which exists 
 between animals of different species, 
 mules are easily produced ; but these 
 mules cannot propagate their species. 
 Man can live only in air, fish only in 
 water. Put the man into the water, 
 the fish into the air, not being able to 
 co-order themselves with the fluids 
 which surround them, these animals 
 will quickly be destroyed. Transport, 
 by imagination, a man from our planet 
 into Saturn, his lungs will presently 
 be rent by an atmosphere too rarefied 
 for his mode of being, his members will 
 be frozen with the intensity of the cold; 
 he will perish for want of finding ele- 
 ments analogous to his actual existence : 
 transport another into Mercury, the ex- 
 cess of heat Avill quickly destroy him. 
 
 Thus, everything seems to authorize 
 the conjecture that the human species 
 is a production peculiar to our sphere, 
 in the position in which it is found : 
 that, when this position may happen to 
 change, the human species will, of 
 consequence, either be changed, or will 
 be obliged to disappear ; for then, there 
 would not be that with which man could 
 co-order himself with the whole, or con- 
 nect himself with that which can enable 
 him to subsist. It is this aptitude in 
 man to co-order hirnielTwith the whole, 
 that not only furnishes him with the 
 idea of order, but also makes him ex- 
 claim, Whatever is, is right, whilst 
 every thing is only that which it can 
 be, and the whole is necessarily what 
 it is, and whilst it is positively neither 
 good nor bad. It is only requisite to 
 displace a man to make him accuse the , 
 universe of confusion. 
 
 These reflections would appear to 
 contradict the ideas of those who are 
 willing to conjecture that the other 
 planets, like our own, are inhabited by 
 beings resembling ourselves. But if 
 the Laplander differs in so marked a 
 manner from the Hottentot, what differ- 
 ence ought we not rationally to suppose 
 between an inhabitant of our planet and 
 one of Saturn or of Venus ? 
 
 However, if AVC are obliged to recur, 
 by imagination, to the origin of things, 
 to the infancy of the human species, 
 we may say, that it is probable man 
 was a necessary consequence of the 
 disentangling of our globe, or one of 
 the results of the qualities, of the pro- 
 perties, of the energies of which it is
 
 OF MAN. 
 
 susceptible in its present position ; 
 that he was born male and female ; 
 that his existence is co-ordinate with 
 that of the globe, under its present 
 position ; that as long as this co-ordi- 
 nation shall subsist, the human species 
 will conserve himself, will propagate 
 himself, according to the impulse and 
 the primitive laws which he has origi- 
 nally received that, if this co-ordina- 
 tion should happen to cease ; if the 
 earth, displaced, should cease to receive 
 the same impulse, the same influence, 
 on the part of those causes which actu- 
 ally act upon it and give it energy ; 
 that then, the . human species would 
 change to make place for new beings 
 suitable to co-order themselves with 
 the state that should succeed to that 
 which we now see subsist. 
 
 In thus supposing changes in the 
 position of our globe, the primitive man 
 did, perhaps, differ more from the actual 
 man than the quadruped differs from 
 the insect. Thus, man, the same as 
 every thing else that exists on our 
 planet, as well as in all the others, 
 may be regarded as in a state of con- 
 tinual vicissitude : thus, the last term 
 of the existence of man, is, to us, as 
 unknown, as indistinct, as the first : 
 there is, therefore, no contradiction in 
 the belief, that the species vary inces- 
 santly ; and it is as impossible to know 
 what he will become, as to know what 
 he has been. 
 
 With respect to those who may ask, 
 why nature does not produce new 
 beings ? we inquire of them in turn, 
 upon what foundation they suppose 
 this fact ? What is it that authorizes 
 them to believe this sterility in nature 1 
 Know they, if, in the various combina- 
 tions which she is every instant form- 
 ing, nature be not occupied in producing 
 new beings without the cognizance of 
 these observers? Who has informed 
 them that this nature is not actually 
 assembling in her immense elaboratory 
 the elements suitable to bring to light 
 generations entirely new, that will have 
 nothing in common with those of the 
 species at present existing 1* What 
 
 * How do we know that the various beings 
 and productions said to have been created at 
 the same time with man, are not the posterior 
 and spontaneous production of Nature 1 Four 
 thousand years ago man became acquainted 
 with the lion : well ! what are four thousand 
 yean 1 Who can prove that the lion, seen for 
 
 absurdity, then, or what want of just 
 inference would there be to imagine, 
 that man, the horse, the fish, the bird, 
 will be no more ! Are these animals 
 so indispensably requisite to nature, 
 that without them she cannot continue 
 her eternal course ? Does not all change 
 around us? Do we not change our- 
 selves ? Is it not evident that the whole 
 universe has not been, in its anterior 
 eternal duration, rigorously the same 
 that it now is ; that it is impossible, in 
 its posterior eternal duration, it can be 
 rigidly in the same state that it now is 
 for a single instant ? How, then, pre- 
 tend to divine the infinite succession of 
 destruction, of reproduction, of combi- 
 nation, of dissolution, of metamorphosis, 
 of change, of transposition, which may 
 eventually take place? Suns encrust 
 themselves, and are extinguished ; pla- 
 nets perish and disperse themselves in 
 the vast plains of air ; other suns are 
 kindled ; new planets form themselves, 
 either to make revolutions round these 
 suns, or to describe new routes ; and 
 man, an infinitely small portion of the 
 globe, which is itself but an impercep- 
 tible point in the immensity of space, 
 vainly believes it is for himself this 
 universe is made ; foolishly imagines 
 ought to be the confidant of nature ; 
 confidently flatters himself he is eternal, 
 and calls himself KING OP THE UNIVERSE ! ! 
 O man ! wilt thou never conceive that 
 :hou art but an ephemeron ? All changes 
 n the universe : nature contains no one 
 constant form, yet thou pretendest that 
 thy species can never disappear; that 
 thou shalt be exempted from the uni- 
 versal law, that wills all shall expe- 
 rience change ! Alas ! in thy actual 
 >eing, art thou not submitted to con- 
 inual alterations ? Thou, who in thy 
 oily arrogantly assumest to thyself the 
 itle of KING OF NATDRE ! Thou, who 
 measures! the earth and the heavens ! 
 Thou, who in thy vanity imagines! that 
 he whole was made because thou art 
 ntelligent'. there requires but a very 
 slight accident, a single atom to be dis- 
 )laced, to make thee perish ; to degrade 
 hee ; to ravish from thee this intelli- 
 gence of which thou appearest so proud. 
 
 .he first time by man four thousand years ago, 
 lad not then been in existence thousands of 
 years! or again, that this lion was not pro- 
 duced thousands of years after the proud biped 
 who arrogantly calls himself king of the uni- 
 crte 1
 
 OF THE SOUL. 
 
 47 
 
 If all the preceding conjectures be 
 refused ; if it be pretended that nature 
 acts by a certain quantum of immuta- 
 ble and general laws ; if it be believed 
 that men, quadrupeds, fish, insects, 
 plants, are from all eternity, and will 
 remain eternally what they now are : 
 if it be contended, that from all eterni- 
 ty the stars have shone in the immense 
 regions of space ; if it be insisted that 
 we must no more demand why man is 
 such as he appears than ask why na- 
 ture is such as we behold her, or why 
 the world exists ; we shall no longer 
 oppose such arguments. Whatever may 
 be the system adopted, it will perhaps 
 reply equally well to the difficulties 
 with which our opponents endeavour 
 to embarrass the way : examined close- 
 ly, it Avill be perceived they make 
 nothing against those truths which we 
 have gathered from experience. It li 
 not given to man to know every thing : 
 it is not given him to know his origin : 
 it is not given him to penetrate into the 
 essence of things, nor to recur to first 
 principles ; but it is given him to have 
 reason, to have honesty, to ingenuous- 
 ly allow he is ignorant of that which 
 he cannot know, and not to substitute 
 unintelligible words and absurd sugj 
 positions for his uncertainty. Thus 
 we say to those who, to solve difficul- 
 ties, pretend that the human species 
 descended from a first man and a first 
 woman, created by a God, that we have 
 some ideas of nature, but that we have 
 none of the Divinity nor of creation, and 
 that to use these words, is only mother 
 terms to acknowledge our ignorance of 
 the powers of nature, and our inability 
 to fathom the means by which she has 
 been capacitated to produce the phe- 
 nomena we behold.* 
 
 Let us then conclude, that man has 
 no reason to believe himself a privi- 
 leged being in nature, for he is subject 
 to the same vicissitudes as all her other 
 productions. His pretended preroga- 
 tives have their foundation in errour. 
 Let him but elevate himself, by his 
 thoughts, above the globe he inhabits, 
 and he will look upon his own species 
 
 * Ut Tragici poetae confugiunt ad Deum 
 aliquem, cum ahter explicare argument! exi- 
 tum non possunt. Cicero, de Divinatione 
 Lib. 2. He again says, magna stulititia est 
 earum rerum Deos facers effectores, causas 
 icrum non qusrere. Jb. 
 
 with the same eyes he does all the 
 other beings in nature. He will then 
 clearly perceive that in the same man- 
 ner each tree produces its fruit in con- 
 sequence of its species, so each man 
 acts by reason of his particular energy, 
 and produces fruit, actions, works, 
 equally necessary : he will feel, that 
 the illusion which gives him such an 
 exalted opinion of himself, arises from 
 his being, at one and the same time a 
 spectator and a part of the universe. 
 He will acknowledge, that the idea of 
 excellence which he attaches to his 
 being, has no other foundation than his 
 own peculiar interest, and the predilec- 
 tion he has in favour of himself, t 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Of the Soul, and of the Spiritual System. 
 
 MAN, after having gratuitously sup- 
 posed himself composed of two distinct 
 independent substances, having no 
 common properties relatively with each 
 other,\has pretended, as we have seen, 
 that that which actuated him interiorly, 
 that motion which is invisible, that im- 
 pulse which is placed within himself, 
 is essentially different from those which 
 act exteriorly. The first he designa- 
 ted, as we have already said, by the 
 name of a spirit, or a soul J If, how- 
 ever, it be asked, what is a spirit ? the 
 moderns will reply, that the whole fruit 
 of their metaphysical researches is li- 
 mited to learning that this motive- 
 power, which they state to be the 
 spring of man's action, is a substance 
 of an unknown nature, so simple, so 
 indivisible, so deprived of extent, so 
 invisible, so impossible to be discover- 
 ed by the senses, that its parts cannot 
 be separated, even by abstraction or 
 thought. But how can we conceive 
 such a substance, which is only the 
 negation of every thing of which we 
 have a knowledge 1 How form to our- 
 selves an idea of a substance void of 
 extent, yet acting on our senses ; that 
 is to say, on material organs which 
 
 . t In Nature nothing is mean or contempti- 
 ble, and it is only pride, originating in a false 
 idea of our superiority, which causes our con- 
 tempt for some of her productions. In the 
 eyes of Nature, however, the oyster that vege- 
 tates at the bottom of the sea is as dear and 
 perfect as the proud biped who devour* it.
 
 48 
 
 OF THE SOUL. 
 
 nave extent ? How can a being with- 
 out extent be moveable and put matter 
 in action ? How can a substance, de- 
 void of parts, correspond successively 
 with different parts of space ? 
 
 At any rate all men are agreed in 
 this position, that motion is the suc- 
 cessive change of the relations of one 
 body with other bodies, or with- the dif- 
 ferent parts of space. If that, which is 
 called spirit, be susceptible of com- 
 municating or receiving motion; if it 
 acts if it gives play to the organs or 
 body to produce these effects it neces- 
 sarily follows, that this being changes 
 successively its relation, its tendency, 
 its correspondence, the position of its 
 parts, either relatively to the different 
 points of space, or to the different 
 organs of the body which it puts in ac- 
 tion; but to change its relation with 
 space and Avith the organs to which it 
 gives impulse, this spirit must have 
 extent, solidity, consequently distinct 
 parts : whenever a substance possesses 
 these qualities, it is what we call mat- 
 ter, and can no longer be regarded as 
 a simple pure being in the sense at- 
 tached to it by the moderns.* 
 
 * A very cogent question presents itself on 
 this occasion : if this distinct substance, said 
 to form one of the component parts of man, 
 be really what it is reported, and if it be not, 
 it is not what it is described; if it be unknown, 
 if it be not pervious to the senses ; if it be in- 
 visible, by what means did the metaphysi- 
 cians themselves become acquainted with it? 
 How did they form ideas of a substance, that, 
 taking their own account of it, is not, under 
 any of its circumstances, either directly or by 
 analogy cognizable to the mind of man ? If 
 they could positively achieve this, there would 
 no longer be any mystery in nature : it would 
 be as easy to conceive the time when all was 
 nothing, when all shall have passed away, to 
 account for the production of every thing we 
 behold, as to dig in a garden, or read a lecture. 
 Doubt would vanish from the human species ; 
 there could no longer be any difference of 
 opinion, since -all must necessarily be of one 
 mind on a subject so accessible to every in- 
 quirer. 
 
 But it will be replied, the materialist him- 
 self admits, the natural philosophers of all 
 ages have admitted, elements, atoms, beings 
 simple and indivisible, of which bodies are 
 composed : granted ; they have no more : 
 they have also admitted that many of these 
 atoms, many of these elements, if not all, are 
 unknown to them : nevertheless, these simple 
 beings, these atoms of the materialist, are not 
 the same thing with the spirit, or the soul of 
 ihe metaphysician. When the natural philo- 
 sopher talks of atoms; when he describes 
 
 Thus it will be seen that those who 
 have supposed in man an immaterial 
 substance, distinguished from his body, 
 have not thoroughly understood them- 
 selves ; indeed they have done nothing 
 more than imagined a negative quality 
 of which they cannot have any correct 
 idea : matter alone is capable of acting 
 on our senses, and without this action 
 nothing Avould be capable of making it- 
 self known to us. They have not seen 
 that a being without extent, is neither 
 in a capacity to more itself, nor has 
 the capability of communicating motion 
 to the body, since such a being, having 
 no parts, has not the faculty of chang- 
 ing its relation, or its distance, relative- 
 ly to- other bodies, nor of exciting mo- 
 tion in the human body, which is it- 
 self material. That which is called 
 our soul, moves itself with us ; now 
 motion is a property of matter this 
 soul gives impulse to the arm ; the arm, 
 moved by it, makes an impression, a 
 blow, that folloAvs the general law of 
 motion : in this case, the force remainr- 
 ing the same, if the mass was twofold, 
 the blow would be double. This soul 
 again evinces its materiality in the in- 
 vincible obstacles it encounters on the 
 
 them as simple beings, he indicates nothing 
 more than that they are homogeneous, pure, 
 without mixture : but then he allows that they 
 have extent consequently parts are separable 
 by thought, although no other natural agent 
 with which he is acquainted is capable of di- 
 viding them- -that the simple beings of this 
 genus are susceptible of motion, can impart 
 action, receive impulse, are material, are 
 placed in nature, are indestructible; that con- 
 sequently, if he cannot know them from them- 
 selves, he can form some idea of them by 
 analogy ; thus he has done that intelligibly 
 which the metaphysician would do unintelligi- 
 bly : the latter, with a view to render man im- 
 mortal, finding difficulties to his wish, from 
 seeing that the body decayed that it sub- 
 mitted to the great, the universal law has, 
 to solve the difficulty, to remove the impedi- 
 ment, given him a soul, distinct from the body, 
 which rre says is exempted from the action of 
 the general law : to account for this, lie has 
 called it a spiritual being, whose properties 
 are the negation of all known properties, con- 
 sequently inconceivable: had he, however, 
 had recourse to the atoms of the former ; had 
 he made this substance the last possible term 
 of the division of matter, it would at least have 
 been intelligible," it would also have been im- 
 mortal, since, according to the reasonings of 
 all men, whether metaphysicians, theologians, 
 or natural philosophers, an atom is an inde- 
 structible element, that must exist to all eter- 
 nity.
 
 OF THE SOUL. 
 
 49 
 
 part of the body. If the arm be moved 
 by its impulse when nothing opposes 
 it, yet this arm can no longer move 
 when it is charged with a weight be- 
 yond its strength. Here then is a 
 mass of matter that annihilates the im- 
 pulse given by a spiritual cause, which 
 spiritual cause having no analogy with 
 matter, ought not to find more difficulty 
 in moving the whole world than* in 
 moving a single atom, nor an atom 
 than the universe. From this it is fair 
 to conclude that such a substance is a 
 chimera ; a being of the imagination : 
 nevertheless such is the being the me- 
 taphysicians have made the contriver 
 and the author of nature ! !* 
 
 As soon as I feel an impulse or ex- 
 perience motion, I am under the ne- 
 cessity to acknowledge extent, solidity, 
 density, impenetrability in the sub- 
 stance I see move, or from which I re- 
 ceive impulse : thus, when action is 
 attributed to any cause whatever, I am 
 obliged to consider it material. I may 
 be ignorant of its individual nature, of 
 its mode of action, of its generic pro- 
 perties ; but I cannot deceive myself 
 in general properties which are com- 
 mon to all matter : besides this ignor- 
 ance will only be increased, when I 
 shall take that for granted of a being 
 of which I am precluded from forming 
 
 * As man, in all his speculations, takes 
 himself for the model, he no sooner imagined 
 a spirit within himself than giving it extent, 
 he made it universal, then ascribed to it all 
 those causes with which his ignorance pre- 
 vents him from becoming acquainted : thus 
 he identified himself with the supposed author 
 of nature ; then availed himself of the suppo- 
 sition to explain the connexion of the soul 
 with the body. His self-complacency pre- 
 vented his perceiving that he was only en- 
 larging; the circle of his errpurs, by pretending 
 to understand that which it is more than pro- 
 bable he will never know : his self-love pre- 
 vented him from feeling, that, whenever he 
 punished another for not thinking as he did, 
 he committed the greatest injustice, unless he 
 was satisfactorily able to prove that other 
 wrong himself right : that if he himself was 
 obliged to have recourse to hypothesis, to gra- 
 tuitous suppositions, whereon to found his 
 doctrine, that from the very fallibility of his 
 nature these might be erroneous : thus GALI- 
 LEO was persecuted, because the metaphysi- 
 cians and the theologians of his day chose to 
 make others believe what it was evident they 
 did not themselves understand. As to our 
 modern metaphysicians, they may dream of 
 a universal spirit after the manner of the hu- 
 man soul of an infinite intelligence after the 
 No. II. 7 
 
 any idea, which moreover deprives it 
 completely of the faculty of moving 
 and acting. Thus ? a spiritual sub- 
 stance, that moves itself, that gives an 
 impulse to matter, that acts, implies a 
 contradiction, which necessarily infers 
 a total impossibility. 
 
 The partizans of spirituality believe 
 they answer the difficulties they have 
 themselves accumulated, by saying, 
 " The soul is entire, is whole under 
 each point of its extent." If an ab- 
 surd answer will solve difficulties, they 
 have done it ; for after all it will be 
 found, that this point, which is called 
 soul, however insensible, however min- 
 ute, must yet remain something.! But 
 if as much solidity had appeared in the 
 answer as there is a want of it, it must 
 be acknowledged, that in whatever 
 manner the spirit or the soul finds it- 
 self in its extent, when the body moves 
 forward, the soul does not remain be- 
 hind ; if so, it has a quality in common 
 with the body peculiar to matter, since 
 it is transferred from place to place 
 jointly with the body. Thus, if even 
 the soul should be immaterial, what 
 conclusion must be drawn ? Entirely 
 submitted to the motion of the body, 
 without this body it would remain dead 
 and inert. This soul would only be 
 part of a twofold machine, necessarily 
 
 manner of a finite intelligence ; but in so do- 
 ing they do not perceive that this spirit or in- 
 telligence, whether they suppose it finite or in- 
 finite, will not be more convenient or fit to 
 move matter. 
 
 t According to this answer an infinity of 
 unextended substance, or the same unextend- 
 ed substance repeated an infinity of times, 
 would constitute a substance that has extent, 
 which is absurd ; for, according to this prin- 
 ciple, the human soul would then be as in- 
 finite as God, since it is assumed that God is 
 a being without extent, who is an infinity of 
 times whole in each part of the universe 
 and the same is stated of the human soul ; 
 from whence we must necessarily conclude 
 that God and the soul of man are equally in- 
 finite, unless we suppose unextended sub- 
 stances of different extents, or a God without 
 extent more extended than the human soul. 
 Such are, however, the rhapsodies which some 
 of our theological metaphysicians would have 
 thinking beings believe!" \Vith a view of 
 making the numan soul immortal, these 
 theologians have spiritualized it, and thus 
 rendered it an unintelligible being ; had they 
 said that the soul was the minutest division 
 of matter, it would then have been intelligi- 
 ble and immortal too, since it would have 
 been an atom, an indissoluble element.
 
 60 
 
 OP THE SOUL. 
 
 impelled forward by a concatenation or 
 connexion with the whole. It would 
 resemble a bird, which a child con- 
 ducts at its pleasure by the string with 
 which it is bound. 
 
 Thus, it is for want of consulting 
 experience, and by not attending to 
 reason, that man has obscured his ideas 
 upon the concealed principle of his 
 motion. If, disentangled from preju- 
 dice, he would contemplate his soul, or 
 the moving principle that acts within 
 him, he would be convinced that it 
 forms part of his body ; that it cannot 
 be distinguished from it but by abstrac- 
 tion ; and that it is only the body itself 
 considered relatively with some of its 
 functions, or with those faculties of 
 which its nature and its peculiar or- 
 ganization renders it susceptible. He 
 will also perceive tharMhis soul is obli- 
 ged to undergo the same changes as the 
 body ; that it is born and expands itself 
 with it ; that, like the body, it passes 
 through a state of infancy, a period of 
 weakness, a season of inexperience ; 
 that it enlarges and strengthens itself 
 in the same progression ; that, like the 
 body, it arrives at an adult age, reaches 
 maturity ; that it is then it obtains the 
 faculty of fulfilling certain functions, 
 enjoys reason, and displays more or 
 less wit, judgment, and manly activity ; 
 that like the body, it is subject to those 
 vicissitudes which exterior causes 
 oblige it to undergo by their influence ; 
 that, conjointly with the body, it suffers, 
 enjoys, partakes of its pleasures, shares 
 its pains, is sound when the body is 
 healthy, diseased when the body is op- 
 pressed with sickness ; that, like the 
 body, it is continually modified by the 
 different degrees of density in the at- 
 mosphere ; by the variety of the sea- 
 sons ; by the various properties of the 
 aliments received into the stomach : in 
 short, he would be obliged to acknowl- 
 edge that at some periods, it manifests 
 visible signs of torpor, decrepitude, and 
 death. 
 
 In despite of this analogy, or rather 
 this continual identity of the soul with 
 the body, man has been desirous of 
 distinguishing their essence : he has 
 therefore made the soul an inconceiva- 
 ble being; but in order that he might 
 form to himself some idea of it, he 
 was after all obliged to have re- 
 course to material beings and to their 
 
 manner of acting. In fact, the word 
 spirit presents to the mind no other 
 ideas than those of breathing, of respi- 
 ration, of wind. Thus, when it is said, 
 the soul is a spirit, it really means 
 nothing more than that its mode of ac- 
 tion is like that of breathing, which, 
 though invisible in itself, or acting 
 without being seen, produces, never- 
 theless, very risible effects. But 
 breath is a material cause it is air 
 modified ; it is not therefore a simple, 
 a pure substance, such as the moderns 
 designate under the name of spirit* 
 
 Although the word spirit is so very 
 ancient among men, the sense attach- 
 ed to it by the moderns is quite new ; 
 and the idea of spirituality, as admitted 
 at this day, is a recent production of 
 the imagination. Neither Pythagoras 
 nor Plato, however heated their brain, 
 and however decided their taste for the 
 marvellous, appear to have understood 
 by spirit an immaterial substance, or 
 one without extent, such as that of 
 which the moderns have formed the 
 human soul, and the concealed author 
 of motion. The ancients, by the word 
 spirit, were desirous to define matter 
 of an extreme subtilty, and of a purer 
 quality than that which acted grossly 
 on our senses. In consequence, some 
 have regarded the soul as an ethereal 
 substance ; others as igneous matter : 
 others again have compared it to light. 
 Democritus made it consist in motion, 
 consequently gave it a mode of exist- 
 ence. Aristoxenesj who was himself 
 a musician, made it harmony. Aris-* 
 totle regarded the soul as the moving 1 
 faculty upon which depended the mo-' 
 tion of living bodies. 
 
 The earliest doctors of Christianity 
 had no other idea of the soul than that 
 it was materiaLf Tertullian, Arnobius, 
 
 * The Hebrew word Ruach, signifies breath, 
 respiration. The Greek word TlvKi/ux, means 
 the same thing, and is derived from mtua, 
 spiro. Lactantius states that the Latin word 
 anima comes from the Greek word Sveftos 
 which signifies wind. Some metaphysicians 
 fearful of seeing too far into human nature, 
 have compounded man of three substances, 
 body, soul, and intellect Za^e*, 4 I/ ''> N*t. 
 See Marc. Antonin., Lib. iii. 16. 
 
 t According to Origen, atro-.u^TOf, incor- 
 poreus, an epithet given to God, signifies a 
 substance more subtile than that of gross 
 bodies. Tertullian says, Q,uis autem negabit 
 deum esse corpus, etsi deus spiritus? The 
 same Tertulhan says, Nos autem animam
 
 OP THE SOUL. 
 
 51 
 
 Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Saint 
 Justin, Irenaeus, have never spoken of 
 it other than as a corporeal substance. 
 It was reserved for their successors, at 
 a great distance of time, to make the 
 human soul, and the soul of the world, 
 pure spirits ; that is to say, immaterial 
 substances, of which it is impossible 
 to form any accurate idea : by degrees 
 this incomprehensible doctrine of spi- 
 rituality, conformable without doubt to 
 the views of theologians who make it 
 a principle to annihilate reason, pre- 
 vailed over the others:* this doctrine 
 was believed divine and supernatural, 
 because it was inconceivable to man. 
 Those who dared believe that the soul 
 was material, were held as rash, in- 
 considerate madmen, or else treated as 
 enemies to the welfare and happiness 
 of the human race. When man had 
 once renounced experience and abjured 
 his reason, he did nothing more, day 
 after day, than subtilize the ravings of 
 his imagination : he pleased himself by 
 continually sinking deeper into the most 
 unfathomable depths of errour ; and he 
 felicitated himself on his discoveries, on 
 his pretended knowledge, in an exact 
 ratio as his understanding became en- 
 veloped with the clouds of ignorance. 
 Thus, in consequence of man's reason- 
 ing upon false principles, the soul, or 
 moving principle within him, as well 
 as the concealed moving principle of 
 Nature, have been made mere chime- 
 ras, mere beings of the imagination.! 
 
 corporalem et hie profitemur, et in suo volu- 
 inirie probamus, habentem proprium genus 
 substantiae, soliditatis, per quam quid et sentire 
 <>t pati possit. V. De Resurrectione Carnis. 
 
 * The system of spirituality, such as it is 
 admitted at this day, owes all its pretended 
 proofs to Descartes. Although before him 
 the soul had been considered spiritual, he was 
 the first who established that " that which 
 tkinks ought tobedistinguishedfrom matter;" 
 from whence he concludes that the soul, or 
 that which thinks in man, is a spirit that is 
 to say, a simple and indivisible substance. 
 Would it not have been more consistent with 
 logic and reason to have said that, since man, 
 who is matter and who has no idea but of 
 matter, enjoys the faculty of thought, matter 
 can think that is, it is susceptible of that 
 particular modification called thought. See 
 Sayle's Dictionary, Art. Pomponatius and 
 Simonides. 
 
 t Although there is so little reason and 
 philosophy in the system of spirituality, yet 
 we must confess that it required deep cunning 
 on the part of the selfish theologians who 
 invented it. To render man susceptible of 
 
 Therefore the doctrine of spirituality 
 offers nothing but vague ideas or ra- 
 ther is the absence of all ideas. What 
 does it present to the mind, but a sub- 
 stance which possesses nothing of 
 which our senses enable us to have a 
 knowledge ? Can it be truth, that man 
 is able to figure to himself a being not 
 material, having neither extent nor 
 parts, which, nevertheless, acts upon 
 matter without having any point of 
 contact, any kind of analogy with it, 
 and which itself receives the impulse 
 of matter by means of material organs, 
 which announce to it the presence 01 
 other beings? Is it possible to con- 
 ceive the union of the soul with the 
 body, and to comprehend how this 
 material body can bind, enclose, con- 
 strain, determine a fugitive being which 
 escapes all our senses? Is it honest 
 to solve these difficulties by saying 
 there is a mystery in them ; that they 
 are the effects of an omnipotent power 
 more inconceivable than the human 
 soul and its mode of acting? When, to 
 resolve these problems, man is obliged 
 to have recourse to miracles, and to 
 make the Divinity interfere, does he 
 not avow his own ignorance 1 
 
 Let us not, then, be surprised at those 
 subtle hypotheses, as ingenious as they 
 are unsatisfactory, to which theological 
 prejudice has obliged the most profound 
 modern speculators to recur, when they 
 have undertaken to reconcile the spi- 
 rituality of the soul with the physical 
 action of material beings on this incor- 
 poreal substance, its reaction upon these 
 beings, and its union with the body. 
 When the human mind permits itself 
 to be guided by authority without proof- 
 to be led forward by enthusiasm when 
 it renounces the evidence of its senses ; 
 what can it do more than sink into 
 errour ?{ 
 
 rewards and punishments after death, it was 
 necessary to exempt some portion of him from 
 corruption and dissolution a doctrine ex- 
 tremely useful to priests, whose great aim is 
 to intimidate, govern, and plunder the igno- 
 rant a doctrine which enables them even to 
 perplex many enlightened persons, who are 
 equally incapable of comprehending the " sub- 
 lime truths" about the soul and the Divinity ! 
 These honest priests tell us, that this imma- 
 terial soul shall be burnt, or, in other words, 
 shall experience in hell the action of the 
 material element of fire, and we believe them 
 upon their word ! ! ! 
 
 t Those who wish to form an idea of the 
 shackles imposed by theology on the genius 
 
 0, OF ILL LIB.
 
 OP THE SOUL. 
 
 If man wishes to form to himself 
 clear ideas of his soul, let him throAv 
 himself back on his experience ; let him 
 renounce his prejudices ; let him avoid 
 theological conjecture ; let him tear the 
 sacred bandage with which he has been 
 blindfolded only to confound his reason. 
 Let the natural philosopher, let the 
 anatomist, let the physician, unite their 
 experience and compare their observa- 
 tions, in order to show what ought to 
 be thought of a substance so disguised 
 under a heap of absurdities : let their 
 discoveries teach moralists the true 
 motive-power that ought to influence 
 the actions of man legislators, the true 
 motives that should excite him to labour 
 to the welfare of society sovereigns, 
 the means of rendering truly happy 
 the subjects committed to their charge. 
 Physical souls have physical wants, 
 and demand physical and real happi- 
 ness, far preferable to that variety of 
 fanciful chimeras with which the mind 
 of man has been fed during so many 
 ages. Let us labour to perfect the 
 morality of man ; let us make it agree- 
 able to him; and we shall presently 
 see his morals become better, himself 
 become happier ; his mind become calm 
 and serene ; his will determined to vir- 
 tue by the natural and palpable motives 
 held out to him. By the diligence and 
 care which legislators shall bestow on 
 natural philosophy, they Avill form citi- 
 zens of sound understanding, robust 
 and well constituted, who, finding them- 
 selves happy, will be themselves acces- 
 sary to that useful impulse so necessary 
 to general happiness. When the body 
 is suffering, when nations are unhappy, 
 the mind cannot be in a proper state. 
 Mens sana in corpore sano, a sound 
 mind in a sound body, this always 
 makes a good citizen. 
 
 The more man reflects, the more he 
 will be convinced that the soul, very 
 far from being distinguished from the 
 body, is only the body itself considered 
 relatively to some of its functions, or to 
 some of the modes of existing or acting 
 of which it is susceptible whilst it en- 
 
 of philosophers born under the " Christian 
 dispensation," let them read the metaphysical 
 romances of Leibnitz, Descartes, Malebranche, 
 Cudworth, etc. and coolly examine the inge- 
 nious but rhapsodical systems entitled the 
 Pre-established harmony of occasional causes ; 
 Physical pre-motion, etc. 
 
 joys life. Thus, the soul is man con- 
 sidered relatively to the faculty he has 
 of feeling, of thinking, and of acting in 
 a mode resulting from his peculiar 
 nature; that is to say, from his pro- 
 perties, from his particular organiza- 
 tion ; from the modifications, whether 
 durable or transitory, which the beings 
 who act upon him cause his machine 
 to undergo.* 
 
 Those who have distinguished the 
 soul from the body, appear only to have 
 distinguished their brain from them- 
 selves. Indeed, the brain is the com- 
 mon centre where all the nerves, dis- 
 tributed through every part of the body, 
 meet and blend themselves : it is by 
 the aid of this interior organ that all 
 those operations are performed which 
 are attributed to the soul : it is the im- 
 pulse, the motion, communicated to the 
 nerve, which modifies the brain : in 
 consequence, it reacts, and gives play 
 to the bodily organs, or rather it acts 
 upon itself, and becomes capable of 
 producing within itself a great variety 
 of motion, which has been designated 
 intellectual faculties. 
 
 From this it may be seen, that some 
 philosophers have been desirous to 
 make a spiritual substance of the brain ; 
 but it is evidently ignorance that has 
 both given birth to, and accredited this 
 system, which embraces so little of the 
 natural. It is from not having studied 
 bimself that man has supposed he was 
 compounded with an agent essentially 
 different from his body : in examining 
 this body he will find that it is quite 
 useless to recur to hypothesis to explain 
 the various phenomena it presents ; for 
 
 * When a theologian, obstinately bent on 
 admitting into man two sftbstances essentially 
 different, is asked why he multiplies beings 
 without necessity ? he will reply, " Because 
 'nought cannot be a property of matter." 
 [f, then, it be inquired of him, '.' Cannot God 
 give to matter the faculty of thought?" he will 
 answer, "No! seeing that God cannot do im- 
 possible things .'" But this is atheism, for, 
 according to his principles, it is as impossible 
 :hat spirit or thought can produce matter, as 
 it is impossible that matter can produce spirit 
 or thought : it must, therefore, be concluded 
 against him, that the world was not made by 
 a spirit, any more than a spirit was made by 
 the world ; that the world is eternal, and if an 
 eternal spirit exists, then we have two eternal 
 beings, which is absurd. If, therefore, there 
 is only one eternal substance, it is the world, 
 whose existence cannot be doubted or de- 
 nied.
 
 OP THE INTELLECT. 
 
 hypothesis can do nothing more than 
 lead him out of the right road. What 
 obscures this question, arises from this, 
 that man cannot see himself: indeed, 
 for this purpose it would be requisite 
 that he could be at one and the same 
 moment both within and without him- 
 self. Man may be compared to an 
 Eolian harp, tliat issues sounds of it- 
 self, and should demand what it is that 
 causes it to give them forth ? it does not 
 perceive that the" sensitive quality of 
 its chords causes the air to brace them ; 
 that being so braced, it is rendered 
 sonorous by every gust of wind with 
 which it comes in contact. 
 
 The more experience we collect, the 
 more we shall be convinced that the 
 word spirit conveys no one sense even 
 to those that invented it ; consequently, 
 cannot be of the least use either in phy- 
 sics or morals. What modern metaphy- 
 sicians believe and understand by the 
 word, is in truth nothing more than an 
 occult power, imagined to explain oc- 
 cult qualities and actions, but which, 
 in fact, explains nothing. Savage na- 
 tions admit of spirits to account to 
 themselves for those effects which to 
 them appear marvellous, and the cause 
 of which they ignore. In attributing 
 to spirits the phenomena of nature, as 
 well as those of the human body, do 
 we, in fact, do any thing more than 
 reason like savages ? Man has filled 
 nature with spirits, because he has 
 almost always been ignorant of the 
 true causes of those effects by which 
 he was astonished. Not being ac- 
 quainted with the powers of nature, he 
 has supposed her to be animated by a 
 great spirit: not understanding the 
 energy of the human frame, he has, in 
 like manner, conjectured it to be ani- 
 mated by a spirit : from this it Avould 
 appear, that whenever he wished to in- 
 dicate the unknown cause of the phe- 
 nomena he knew not how to explain 
 m a natural manner, he had recourse 
 to the word spirit. It was according 
 to these principles, that when the 
 Americans first beheld the terrible ef- 
 fects of gunpowder, they ascribed the 
 cause to their Spirits or Divinities : it 
 is by adopting these principles that we 
 now believe in Angels and Demons, 
 and that our ancestors believed in a 
 plurality of Gods, in ghosts, in genii, 
 &c., and pursuing the same track, we 
 
 ought to attribute to spirits gravitation, 
 electricity, magnetism, &c., &c.* 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Qf the Intellectual Faculties ; they are all de~ 
 rived from, the Faculty of Feeling. 
 
 To convince ourselves that the facul- 
 ties called intellectual, are only cer- 
 tain modes of existence, or determinate 
 manners of acting which result from 
 the peculiar organization of the body, 
 we have only to analyze them: we 
 shall then see, that all the operations 
 which are attributed to the soul, are 
 nothing more than certain modifications 
 of the body, of which a substance that is 
 without extent^ that has no parts, that 
 [is immaterial, is not susceptible. 
 
 The first faculty we behold in the 
 living man, that from which all his 
 others flow, is feeling: kowever inex- 
 plicable this faculty may appear on a 
 first view, if it be examined closely, it 
 ;wjll be found to be a consequence of 
 the essence, a result of the properties 
 of organized beings ; the same as 
 gravity, magnetism, elasticity, elec- 
 tricity, &c. result from the essence or 
 nature of some others ; and we shall 
 also find that these last phenomena are 
 not less inexplicable than that of feel- 
 ing. Nevertheless, if we wish to de- 
 fine to ourselves a precise idea of it, 
 we shall find that feeling is a particuA 
 lar manner of being moved peculiar to 
 certain organs of animated bodies, oc- 
 casioned by the presence of a material 
 object that acts upon these organs, 
 and which transmits the impulse or 
 [shock to the brain. 
 
 * It is evident that the notion of spirits, 
 imagined by savages and adopted by me ig- 
 norant, is calculated to retard the progress of 
 knowledge, since it precludes our researches 
 into the true cause of the effects which we 
 see, by keeping the human mind in apathy 
 and sloth. This state of ignorance may be 
 very useful to crafty theologians, but very in- 
 jurious to society. This is the reason, how- 
 ever, why in all ages priests have persecuted 
 those who have been the first to give natural 
 explanations of the phenomena of nature a s 
 witness Anaxagoras, Aristotle, Galileo, Des- 
 cartes and, more recently, Richard Carlile, 
 William Lawrence, Robert Taylor, and Abner 
 Kneeland; to which we may add the name 
 of the learned and venerable Thomas Cooper, 
 M. D., lately president of Columbia College, 
 South Carolina. -
 
 OF THE INTELLECT. 
 
 Man only feels by the aid of nerves 
 dispersed through his body, which is 
 itself, to speak correctly, nothing more 
 than a great nerve ; or may be said to 
 resemble a large tree, of which the 
 branches experience the action of the 
 root communicated through the trunk. 
 In man the nerves unite and loose 
 themselves in the brain ; that intestine 
 is the true seat of feeling: like the 
 spider suspended in the centre of his 
 web, it is quickly warned of all the 
 changes that happen to the body, even 
 at the extremities to which it sends its 
 filaments and branches. Experience 
 enables us to ascertain that man ceases 
 to feel in those parts of his body of 
 which the communication with the 
 brain is intercepted ; he feels very little, 
 or not at all, whenever this organ is 
 itself deranged or affected in too lively 
 a manner.* 
 
 However this may be, the sensibility 
 of the brain, and of all its parts, is a 
 fact. If it be asked, whence comes this 
 property? We shall reply, it is the 
 result of an arrangement, of a combina- 
 tion, peculiar to the animal ; insomuch, 
 that coarse and insensible matter ceases 
 to be so by animalizing itself, that is to 
 say, by combining and identifying itself 
 with the animal. It is thus that milk, 
 bread, wine, change themselves in the 
 substance of man, who is a sensible 
 being : this insensible matter becomes 
 sensible in combining itself with a 
 sensible whole. Some philosophers 
 
 * A proof of this is afforded in the Trans- 
 actions of the Royal Academy of Sciences at 
 Paris : they inform us of a man, who had his 
 scull taken off, in the room of which his brain 
 was re-covered with skin ; and in proportion as 
 a pressure was made by the hand on his brain, 
 the man fell into a kind of insensibility which 
 deprived him of all feeling. Bartolin says, 
 the brain of a man is twice as big as that of 
 an ox. This observation had been already 
 made by Aristotle. In the dead body of an 
 idiot dissected by Willis, the brain was found 
 smaller than ordinary : he says, the greatest 
 difference he found between the parts of the 
 body of this idiot, and those of wiser men, 
 was, that the plexus of the intercostal nerves, 
 which is the mediator between the brain and 
 the heart, was extremely small, accompanied 
 by a less number of nerves than usual. Ac- 
 cording to Willis, the ape is of all animals 
 that which has the largest brain, relatively to 
 his size: he is also, after man, that which lias 
 the most intelligence ; and this is further con- 
 firmed by the name he bears in the soil to 
 which he is indigenous, which is orang out- 
 ang } or the man beast. There is, therefore, 
 
 think that sensibility is a universal 
 quality of matter : in this case it would 
 be useless to seek from whence this 
 property is derived, as we know it by 
 its effects. If this hypothesis be ad- 
 mitted, in like manner as two kinds of 
 motion are distinguished in nature, the 
 one called live force, the other dead, or 
 inert force, two sorts of sensibility will 
 be distinguished the one active or live, 
 the other inert or dead. Then to ani- 
 malize a substance, is only to destroy 
 the obstacles that prevent its being 
 active or sensible. In fact, sensibility 
 is either a quality which communicates 
 itself like motion, and which is acquired 
 by combination ; or this sensibility is a 
 property inherent in all matter : in both, 
 or either case, an unextended being, 
 without parts, such as the human soul 
 is said to be, canr neither be the cause 
 of it, nor submitted to its operation.f 
 
 The conformation, the arrangement, 
 the texture, the delicacy of the organs, 
 as well exterior as interior, which com- 
 pose men and animals, render their 
 parts extremely mobile, and make their 
 machine susceptible of being moved 
 with great facility. In a body, which 
 is only a heap of fibres, a mass of nerves, 
 contiguous one to the other, and united 
 in a common centre, always ready to 
 act ; in a whole, composed of fluids and 
 of solids, of which the parts are in equi- 
 librium ; of which the smallest touch 
 each other, are active, rapid in their 
 motion, communicating reciprocally, 
 
 every reason to believe that it is entirely in 
 the brain that consists the difference that is 
 found not only between man and beasts, but 
 also between the man of wit and the fool ; 
 between the thinking man and he who is ig- 
 norant; between the man of sound under- 
 standing and the madman. And again, a 
 multitude of experience proves that those per- 
 sons who are most accustomed to use tneir 
 intellectual faculties, have their brain more 
 extended than others : the same has been re- 
 marked of watermen or rowers, that they 
 have arms much larger than other men. 
 
 t All the parts of nature enjoy the capa- 
 bility to arrive at animation; the obstacle is 
 only in the state not in the quality. Life is 
 the perfection of nature: she has no parts 
 which do not tend to it, and which dp not 
 attain it by the same means. Life, in an 
 insect, a dog, a man, has no other difference 
 than that this act is more perfect, relatively to 
 ourselves, in proportion to the structure of the 
 organs : if, therefore, it be asked, what is requi- 
 site to animate a body? we reply, it needs no 
 foreign aid, it is sufficient that the power of 
 nature be joined to its organization.
 
 OF THE INTELLECT. 
 
 alternately and in succession, the im- 
 pression*, the oscillations, the shocks 
 they receive ; in such a composition, 
 I say, it is not at all surprising that the 
 slightest impulse propagates itself with 
 celerity ; that the shocks excited in its 
 remotest parts make themselves quickly 
 felt in the brain, whose delicate texture 
 renders it susceptible of being itself very 
 easily modified. Air, fire, water, agents 
 the most inconstant, possessing the most 
 rapid motion, circulate continually in the 
 fibres, incessantly penetrate the nerves, 
 and without doubt contribute to that 
 incredible celerity with which the brain 
 is acquainted with what passes at the 
 extremities of the body. 
 
 Notwithstanding the great mobility 
 of which man's organization renders 
 him susceptible ; although exterior as 
 well as interior causes are continually 
 acting upon him, he does not always 
 feel in a distinct, in a decided manner, 
 the impulse given to his senses : indeed, 
 he does not feel it until it has produced 
 some change, or given some shock to 
 his brain. Thus, although completely 
 environed by air, he does not feel its 
 action until it is so modified as to strike 
 with a sufficient degree of force on his 
 organs and his skin, through which his 
 brain is warned of its presence. Thus, 
 during a profound and tranquil sleep, 
 undisturbed by any dream, man ceases 
 to feel. In short, notwithstanding the 
 continued motion that agitates his frame, 
 man does not appear to feel when this 
 motion acts in a convenient order; he 
 does not perceive a state of health, but 
 he discovers a state of grief or sickness; 
 because, in the first, his brain does not 
 receive too lively an impulse, whilst in 
 the others his nerves are contracted, 
 shocked, agitated, with violent and dis- 
 orderly motion, thus giving notice t&at 
 some cause acts strongly upon them, 
 and impels them in a manner that bears 
 no analogy with their natural habit : 
 this constitutes in him that peculiar 
 mode of existing which he calls grief. 
 
 On the other hand, it sometimes hap- 
 pens that exterior objects produce very 
 considerable changes on his body, with- 
 out his perceiving them at the moment. 
 Often, in the heat of battle, the soldier 
 perceives not that he is dangerously 
 wounded ; because at the time the 
 rapidity, the multiplicity of impetuous 
 motions that assail his brain, do not 
 
 permit him to distinguish the particular 
 change a part of his body has undergone 
 by the wound. In short, Avhen a great 
 number of causes are simultaneously 
 acting on him wijh too much vivacity, 
 he sinks under their accumulated pres- 
 sure, he swoons he loses his senses 
 he is deprived of feeling. 
 
 In general, feeling only obtains when 
 the brain can distinguish distinctly the 
 impressions made on the organs with 
 which it has communication ; it is the 
 distinct shock, the decided modification, 
 man undergoes, that constitutes con- 
 science.* From whence it will appetfr, 
 that feeling is a mode of being, or a 
 marked change, produced on our brain 
 by the impulse communicated to our 
 organs, whether by interior or exterior 
 agents, and by which it is modified, 
 either in a durable or transient manner. 
 In fact, it is not always requisite that 
 man's organs should be moved by an 
 exterior object to enable him to be con- 
 scious of the changes effected in him : 
 he can feel them within himself by 
 means of an interior impulse ; his brain 
 is then modified, or rather, he renews 
 within himself the anterior modifica- 
 tions. We should not be astonished 
 that the brain should be necessarily 
 warned of the shocks, of the impedi- 
 ments, of the changes that may happen 
 to so complicated a machine as the 
 human body, in which all the parts are 
 contiguous to the brain to a whole, in 
 which all the sensible parts concentrate 
 themselves in this brain, and are by 
 their essence in a continual state of 
 action and reaction. 
 
 When a man experiences the pains 
 of the gout, he is conscious of them; 
 in other words, he feels interiorly that 
 it has produced very distinct changes 
 in him, without his perceiving that he 
 has received an impulse from any ex- 
 terior cause ; nevertheless, if he will 
 recur to the true source of these changes, 
 he will find that they have been wholly 
 produced by exterior agents ; they have 
 been the consequence either of his tem- 
 perament, of the organization received 
 from his parents, or of the aliments with 
 which his frame has been nourished, 
 
 * Doctor Clarke says, Conscience is the act 
 of reflecting, by means of which I know that I 
 think ; and that my tlioughts, or my actions, 
 belong to me, and not to another. See his tetter 
 against Dodwell.
 
 56 
 
 OP THE INTELLECT. 
 
 besides a thousand trivial, inappreciable 
 causes, which, congregating themselves 
 by degrees, produce in him the gouty 
 humour, the effect of which is to make 
 him feel in a very acute manner. The 
 pain of the gout engenders in his brain 
 an idea or modification which it ac- 
 quires the faculty of representing or 
 reiterating to itself, even when he shall 
 be no longer tormented with the gout : 
 his brain, by a series of motion inte- 
 riorly excited, is again placed in a state 
 analogous to that in which it was when 
 he really experienced this pain : but if 
 he had never felt it, he would have had 
 no idea of this excruciating disease. 
 
 The visible organs of man's body, 
 by the intervention of which his brain 
 is modified, take the name of senses. 
 The various modifications which his 
 brain receives by the aid of these senses, 
 assume a variety of names. Sensation, 
 perception, idea, are terms that desig- 
 nate nothing more than the changes 
 produced in this interior organ, in con- 
 sequence of impressions made on the 
 exterior organs by bodies acting on 
 them : these changes, considered by 
 themselves, are called sensations; they 
 adopt the term perception, when the 
 brain is warned of their presence; ideas, 
 is that state of them in which the brain 
 is able to ascribe them to the objects 
 by which they have been produced. . j 
 
 Every sensation, then, is nothing 
 more than the shock given to the or- 
 gans ; every perception, is this shock 
 propagated to the brain: every idf-a. 
 is the image of the object to which 
 the sensation and the perception is to 
 be ascribed. From whence it will be 
 seen, that if the senses be not moved, 
 there can neither be sensations, per- 
 ceptions, nor ideas : and this will be 
 proved to those who yet doubt so de- 
 monstrable and striking a truth. 
 
 It is the extreme mobility of which 
 man is capable, owing to his peculiar 
 organization, which distinguishes him 
 from other beings that are called insen- 
 sible or inanimate: and the different 
 degrees of mobility of which the indi- 
 viduals of his species are susceptible, 
 discriminate them from each other, 
 making that incredible variety and that 
 infinity of difference which is to be 
 found, as well in their corporeal facul- 
 ties as in those which are mental or 
 intellectual. From this mobility, more 
 
 or less remarkable in each human being, 
 results wit, sensibility, imagination, 
 taste, &c. For the present, however, 
 let us follow the operation of the senses : 
 let us examine in what manner they 
 are acted upon and are modified by 
 exterior objects : we will afterwards 
 scrutinize the reaction of the interior 
 organ or brain. 
 
 The eyes are very delicate, very 
 moveable organs, by means of which 
 the sensation of light, or colour, is 
 experienced : these give to the brain 
 a distinct perception, in consequeuce 
 of which man forms an idea generated 
 by the action of luminous or coloured 
 bodies : as soon ' as the eyelids are 
 opened, the retina is affected in a pe- 
 culiar manner ; the fluid, the fibres, the 
 nerves, of which they are composed, 
 are excited by shocks which they com- 
 municate to the brain, and to which 
 they delineate the images of the bodies 
 from which they have received the 
 impulse ; by this means an idea is 
 acquired of the colour, the size, the 
 form, the distance of these bodies: it 
 is thus that may be explained the 
 mechanism of sight. 
 
 The mobility and the elasticity of 
 which the skin is rendered susceptible 
 by the fibres and nerves which form its 
 texture, account for the rapidity with 
 which this envelope to the human body 
 is affected when applied to any other 
 body : by their agency the brain has 
 notice of its presence, of its extent, 
 of its roughness, of its smoothness, of 
 its surface, of its pressure, of its pon- 
 derosity, &c. qualities from which 
 the brain derives distinct perceptions, 
 which breed in it a diversity of ideas ; 
 it is this that constitutes the touch. 
 
 The delicacy of the membrane by 
 which the interior of the nostrils is 
 covered, renders them easily suscepti- 
 ble of irritation, even by the invisible 
 and impalpable corpuscles that emanate 
 from odorous bodies: by this means 
 sensations are excited, the brain has 
 perceptions, and generates ideas : it is 
 this that forms the sense of smelling. 
 
 The mouth, filled with nervous, sen- 
 sible, moveable, and irritable glands, 
 saturated with juices suitable to the 
 dissolution of saline substances, is af- 
 fected in a very lively manner by the 
 aliments which pass through it; these 
 glands transmit to the brain the impres-
 
 OP THE INTELLECT. 
 
 57 
 
 sions received : it is from this mecha- 
 nism that results taste. 
 
 The ear, whose conformation fits it 
 to receive the various impulses of air 
 diversely modified, communicates to 
 the brain the shocks or sensations; 
 these breed the perception of sound, 
 and generate the idea of sonorous 
 bodies : it is this that constitutes hear- 
 ing. 
 
 Such are the only means by which 
 man receives sensations, perceptions, 
 ideas. These successive modifications 
 of his brain are effects produced by ob- 
 jects that give impulse to his senses ; 
 they become themselves causes pro- 
 ducing in his mind new modifications, 
 which are denominated thought, re- 
 flection, memory, imagination, judg- 
 ment, will, action ; the basis, however, 
 of all these is sensation. 
 
 To form a precise notion of thought, 
 it will be requisite to examine step by 
 step what passes in man during the 
 presence of any object whatever. Sup- 
 pose, for a moment, this object to be a 
 peach : this fruit makes, at the first 
 view, two different impressions on his 
 eyes ; that is to say, it produces two 
 modifications, which are transmitted 
 to the brain, which on this occasion ex- 
 periences two new perceptions, has two 
 new ideas or modes of existence, de-* 
 signaled by the terms colour and ro- 
 tundity; in consequence, he has an 
 idea of a body possessing roundness 
 and colour : if he places his hand on 
 this fruit, the organ of feeling having 
 been set in action, his hand experiences 
 three new impressions, which are call- 
 ed softness, coolness, weight, from 
 whence result three new perceptions 
 in the brain, and consequently three 
 new ideas : if he approximates this 
 peach to his nose, the organ of smell- 
 ing receives an impulse, which, com- 
 municated to the brain, a new percep- 
 tion arises, by which he acquires a new 
 idea called odour: if he carries this 
 fruit to his mouth, the. organ of taste 
 becomes affected in a very lively man- 
 ner; this impulse communicated to 
 the brain, is followed by a perception 
 that generates in him the idea of fla- 
 vour. In reuniting all these impres- 
 sions, or these various modifications 
 of his organs, which haA'e been conse- 
 quently transmitted to his brain, that 
 is to say, in combining the different 
 
 NO. II. 8 
 
 sensations, perceptions, and ideas, that 
 result from the impulse he has receiv- 
 ed, he has the idea of a whole, which 
 he designates by the name of a peach, 
 with which he can then occupy his 
 thoughts.* 
 
 What has been said is sufficient to 
 show the generation of sensations, of 
 perceptions, of ideas, with their asso- 
 ciations, or connexion in the brain : it 
 will be seen that these various modifi- 
 cations are nothing more than the con- 
 sequence of successive impulsions, 
 which the exterior organs transmit to 
 the interior organ, which enjoys the 
 faculty of thought, that is to say, to 
 feel in itself the different modifica- 
 tions it has received, or to perceive 
 the various ideas which it has genera- 
 ted to combine them to separate 
 them to- extend them to abridge 
 them to compare them to renew 
 them, &c. From whence it will be 
 seen, that thought is nothing more than 
 the perception of certain modifications 
 which the brain either gives to itself, 
 or has received from exterior objects. 
 
 Indeed, not only the interior organ 
 perceives the modifications it receives 
 from without, but again it has the fa- 
 culty of modifying itself of consider- 
 ing the changes which take place in it, 
 the motion by which it is agitated in 
 its peculiar operations, from which it 
 imbibes new perceptions, new ideas. 
 It is the exercise of this power to fall 
 back upon itself, that is called reflec- 
 tion. 
 
 From this it will appear, that for 
 man to think and to reflect, is to feel, 
 or perceive within himself the impres- 
 
 * From this it is sufficiently proved that 
 thought has a commencement, a duration, an 
 end, or rather, a generation, a succession, a 
 dissolution, like all the other modifications 
 of matter; like them, thought is excited, is 
 determined, is increased, is- divided, is com- 
 pounded, is simplified, &c. If, therefore, the 
 soul, or the principle that thinks, be indivisi- 
 ble, how does it happen that the soul has the 
 faculty of memory and of forgetfulness ; is 
 capacitated to think successively, to divide, to 
 abstract, to combine, to extend its ideas, to 
 retain them, to lose them? How can it 
 cease to think 1 If forms appear divisible in 
 matter, it is only in considering them by ab- 
 straction, after the method of geometricians ; 
 but this divisibility of form exists not in nature, 
 in which there is neither a point, an atom, 
 nor form perfectly regular ; it must therefore 
 be concluded, that the forms of matter are not 
 less indivisible than thought.
 
 58 
 
 OF THE INTELLECT. 
 
 sions, the sensations, the ideas, which 
 have been furnished to his brain by 
 those objects which give impulse to his 
 senses in consequence of the various 
 changes which his brain produced on 
 jlself. 
 
 I Memory is the faculty which the 
 brain has of renewing in itself the mo- 
 difications it has received, or rather, to 
 restore itself to a state similar to that 
 in which it has been placed by the 
 sensations, the perceptions, the ideas, 
 produced by exterior objects, in the 
 exact order it received them, without 
 any new action on the part of these 
 objects, or even when these objects 
 are absent $ the brain perceives that 
 these modifications assimilate with 
 those it formerly experienced in the 
 presence of the objects to which it re- 
 lates, or attributes them. Memory is 
 faithful when these modifications are 
 precisely the same ; it is treacherous 
 when they differ from those which the 
 organs have exteriorly experienced. 
 
 Imagination in man is only the fa- 
 culty which the brain has of modifying 
 itself, or of forming to itself new per- 
 ceptions upon the model of those which 
 it has anteriorly received through the 
 action of exterior objects on the senses. 
 The brain, then, does nothing more 
 than combine ideas which it has al- 
 ready formed, and which it recalls to 
 itself to form a whole, or a collection 
 of modifications, which it has not re- 
 ceived, although the individual ideas, 
 or the parts of which this ideal whole 
 is composed, have been previously 
 communicated to it./ It is thus, man 
 forms to himself the idea of Centaurs* 
 of HyppogriffsJ of Gods,J and De- 
 mons. T| By memory, the brain renews 
 in itself the sensations, the perceptions, 
 the ideas, which it has received, and 
 represents to itself the objects which 
 have actually .moved its organs. By 
 imagination it combines them various- 
 ly; forms objects or wholes in their 
 place, which have not moved its organs, 
 although it is perfectly acquainted with 
 the elements or ideas of which it com- 
 poses them. It is thus that man, by 
 combining a great number of ideas bor- 
 
 * A being composed of a man and a horse, 
 t A being composed of a horse with wings. 
 
 * A nondescript! 
 
 T A gentleman with two horns, a tail, and 
 a cloven foot. 
 
 rowed from himself, such as justice, 
 wisdom, goodness, intelligence, &c., 
 has, by the aid of imagination, formed 
 an imaginary whole, which he has call- 
 ed God. 
 
 Judgment, is the faculty which the 
 brain possesses of comparing with each 
 other the modifications it receives, the 
 ideas it engenders, or which it has the 
 power of awakening within itself, to 
 the end that it may discover their rela- 
 tions or their effects. 
 rtyill, is a modification of the brain, 
 by which it is disposed to action, that is 
 to say, to give such an impulse to the 
 organs of the body as can induce it to 
 act in a manner that will procure for 
 itself what is requisite to modify it in a 
 mode analogous to its own existence, 
 or to enable it to avoid that by which 
 it can be injured. To will is to be dis- 
 posed to action. The exterior objects, 
 or the interior ideas, which give birth 
 to this disposition, are called motives, 
 because they are the springs or move- 
 ments which determine it to act, that 
 is to say, which give play to the organs 
 of the body. Thus voluntary actions 
 are the motion of the body, determined 
 by the modification of the brain. Fruit 
 hanging on a tree, through the agency 
 of the visual organs modifies the brain 
 in such a manner as to dispose the arm 
 to stretch itself forth to cull it ; again 
 it modifies it in another manner, by 
 which it excites the hand to carry it to 
 the mouth. 
 
 All the modifications which the in- 
 terior organ or the brain receives ; all 
 the sensations all the perceptions 
 all the ideas that are generated by the 
 objects which give impulse to the 
 senses, or which it renews within it- 
 self by its own peculiar faculties, are 
 either favourable or prejudicial to man's 
 mode of existence, whether that be 
 transitory or habitual : they dispose the 
 interior organ to action, which it ex- 
 ercises by reason of its own peculiar 
 energy : this action is not, however, 
 the same in all the individuals of the 
 human species, depending much on 
 their respective temperaments. From 
 hence the passions have their birth: 
 these are more or less violent : they are, 
 however, nothing more than the mo- 
 tion of the will, determined by the ob- 
 jects which give it activity conse- 
 quently, composed of the analogy or
 
 OP THE INTELLECT. 
 
 of the discordance which is found 
 between these objects and man's pecu- 
 liar mode of existence, or the force of 
 his temperament. From this it results, 
 that the passions are modes of exist- 
 ence or modifications of the brain, 
 which either attract or repel those ob- 
 jects by which man is surrounded ; 
 that consequently they are submitted 
 in their action to the physical laws of 
 [attraction and repulsion. 
 
 The faculty of perceiving, or of being 
 modified, as well by itself as by ex- 
 terior objects, which the brain enjoys, 
 is sometimes designated by the term 
 understanding. To the assemblage 
 of the various faculties of which this 
 interior organ is susceptible, is applied 
 the name of intelligence. To a de- 
 termined mode, in which the brain ex- 
 ercises the faculties peculiar to itself, 
 is given the appellation of reason. 
 The dispositions, or the modifications 
 of the brain, some of them constant, 
 others transitory, which give impulse 
 to the beings of the human species, 
 causing them to act, are styled wit, 
 wisdom, goodness, prudence, virtue, 
 $c. 
 
 In short, as there will be an oppof^ 
 tunity presently to prove, all the intel- 
 lectual faculties, that is to say, all the 
 modes of action attributed to the soul, 
 may he reduced to the modifications, 
 to the qualities, to the modes of exist- 
 ence, to the changes produced by the 
 motion of the brain, which is visibly 
 in man the seat of feeling the princi-l 
 pie of all his actions. .These modif> 
 cations are to be attributed to the ob- 
 jects that strike on his senses ; of 
 which the impression is transmitted to 
 the brain, or rather to the ideas which 
 the perceptions caused by the action 
 of these objects on his senses have 
 there generated, and which it has the 
 faculty to reproduce. This brain 
 jioves itself in its turn, reacts upon 
 .tself, gives play to the organs, which 
 concentrate themselves in it, or which 
 rather are nothing more than an exten- 
 sion of its own peculiar substance. It 
 is thus the concealed motion of the in- 
 tenor organ renders itself sensible by 
 outward and visible signs. The brain, 
 affected by a modification which is 
 called fear, diffuses a paleness over 
 the countenance, excites a tremulous 
 motion in the limbs, called trembling. 
 
 The brain, affected by a sensation of 
 griff, causes tears to flow from the 
 eyes, even without being moved by any 
 exterior object; an idea which it re- 
 traces with great strength, suffices to 
 give it very lively modifications, which 
 visibly have an influence on the whole 
 frame. 
 
 In all this nothing rriore is to be per- 
 ceived than the same substance which 
 acts diversely on the various parts of 
 the body. If it be objected, that this 
 mechanism does not sufficiently ex- 
 plain the principles of the motion, or 
 the faculties of the soul ; we reply, 
 that it is in the same situation as all 
 the other bodies of nature, in which 
 the most simpje motion, the most ordi- 
 nary phenomena, the most common 
 modes of action, are inexplicable mys- 
 teries, of which we shall never be able 
 to fathom the first principles. Indeed, 
 how can we flatter ourselves we shall 
 ever be enabled to compass the true 
 principle of that gravity by which a 
 stone falls ? Are we acquainted with 
 the mechanism which produces attrac- 
 tion in some substances, repulsion in 
 others ? Are we in a condition to 
 :xplain the communication of motion 
 from one body to another 1 But it may 
 be fairly asked ; are the difficulties that 
 occur, when attempting to explain the 
 :nanner in which the soul acts, removed, 
 by making it a spiritual being, a sub- 
 stance of which we have not, nor can- 
 not form one idea, which consequently 
 must bewilder all the notions we are 
 capable of forming to ourselves of this 
 jeing? Let us then be contented to^i 
 mow that the soul moves itself, modi- 
 fies itself, in consequence of material 
 causes, which act upon it, which give 
 it activity ; from whence the conclusion 
 may be said to flow consecutively, that 
 all its operations, all its faculties, prove 
 ':hat it is itself material. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Of the Diversity of the Intellectual Faculties; 
 they depend on Physical Causes, as do tkeir 
 Moral Qualities. The Natural Principles 
 of Society. Of Morals. Of Politics. 
 
 NATURE is under the necessity to 
 diversify all her works. Elementary 
 natter, different in its essence, must 
 necessarily form different beings, va-
 
 GO 
 
 OP THE INTELLECT. 
 
 rious in their combinations, in their 
 properties, in their modes of action, in 
 their manner of existence. There is 
 not, neither can there be, two beings, 
 two combinations, which are mathe- 
 matically and rigorously the same ; 
 because the place, the circumstances, 
 the relations, the proportions, the modi- 
 fications, never being exactly alike, the 
 beings that result can never bear a 
 perfect resemblance to each other : and 
 their modes of action must of necessity 
 vary in something, even when we be- 
 lieve we find between them the greatest 
 conformity. 
 
 In consequence of this principle, 
 which every thing we see conspires 
 to prove to be a truth, there are not 
 two individuals of the human species, 
 who have precisely the same traits ; 
 who think exactly in the same manner; 
 who view things under the same iden- 
 tical point of sight ; who have decidedly 
 the same ideas ; consequently no two 
 of them have uniformly the same sys- 
 tem of conduct. The visible organs of 
 man, as well as his concealed organs, 
 have indeed some analogy, some com- 
 mon points of resemblance, some gene- 
 ral conformity, which makes them 
 appear, when viewed in the gross, to 
 be affected in the same manner by 
 certain causes ; but the difference is 
 infinite in the detail. The human soul 
 may be compared to those instruments 
 of which the chords, already diversified 
 in themselves by the manner in which 
 they have been spun, are also strung 
 upon different notes : struck by the 
 same impulse, each chord gives forth 
 the sound that is peculiar to itself, that 
 is to say, that which depends on its 
 texture, its tension, its volume, on the 
 momentary state in which it is placed 
 by the circumambient air. It is this 
 that produces the diversified spectacle, 
 the varied scene, which the moral world 
 offers to our view : it is from this that 
 results the striking contrariety that is 
 to be found in the minds, in the facul- 
 ties, in the passions, in the energies, in 
 the taste, in the imagination, in the 
 ideas, in the opinions of man : this 
 diversity is as great as that of his 
 physical powers : like them it depends 
 on his temperament, which is as much 
 varied as his physiognomy. This va- 
 riety gives birth to that continual series 
 of action and reaction which constitutes 
 
 the life of the moral world : from this 
 discordance results the harmony which 
 at once maintains and preserves the 
 human race. 
 
 The diversity found among the indi- 
 viduals of the human species, causes 
 inequalities between man and man : 
 this inequality constitutes the support 
 of society. If all men were equal in 
 their bodily powers, in their mental 
 talents, they would not have any occa- 
 sion for each other : it is the variation 
 of his faculties, the inequality which 
 this places him in with regard to his 
 fellows, that renders man necessary to 
 man : without these he would live by 
 himself, he would remain an isolated 
 being. From whence it may be per- 
 ceived that this inequality, of which 
 man so often complains without cause ; 
 this impossibility each man finds when 
 in an isolated state, when left to him- 
 self, when unassociated with his fellow 
 men, to labour efficaciously to his own 
 welfare, to make his own security, to 
 ensure his own conservation, places him 
 in the happy situation of associating 
 with his like, of depending on his fellow 
 associates, of meriting their succour, 
 of propitiating them to his views, of 
 attracting their regard, of calling in 
 their aid to chase away, by common 
 and united efforts, that which would 
 have the power to trouble or derange 
 the order of his existence. In conse- 
 quence of man's diversity and of the 
 inequality that results, the weaker is 
 obliged to seek the protection of the 
 stronger : this, in his turn, recurs to the 
 understanding, to the talents, to the 
 industry of the weaker, whenever his 
 judgment points out he can be useful 
 to him : this natural inequality furnishes 
 the reason why nations distinguish 
 those citizens who have rendered their 
 country eminent services ; and it is 
 in consequence of his exigencies that 
 man honours, that he recompenses 
 those whose understanding, whose good 
 deeds, whose assistance, whose virtues, 
 have procured for him real or supposed 
 advantages, pleasures, or agreeable sen- 
 sations of any sort : it is by this means 
 that genius gains an ascendency over 
 the mind of man, and obliges a whole 
 people to acknowledge its power. Thus, 
 the diversity, the inequality of the facul- 
 ties, as well corporeal, as mental or in- 
 tellectual, render man necessary to his
 
 OP THE INTELLECT. 
 
 Gl 
 
 fellow man, makes him a social being, 
 and incontestably proves to him the 
 necessity of morals. 
 
 According to this diversity of facul- 
 ties, the individuals of the human spe- 
 cies are divided into different classes, 
 each in proportion to the effects pro- 
 duced, to the different qualities that 
 may be remarked : all these varieties 
 in man flow from the individual pro- 
 perties of his mind, or from the particu- 
 lar modification of his brain. It is thus 
 that wit, imagination, sensibility, ta- 
 lents, &c. diversify to infinity the differ- 
 ences that are to be found in man. It 
 is thus that some are called good, others 
 wicked ; some are denominated virtu- 
 ous, others vicious ; some are ranked as 
 learned, others as ignorant ; some are 
 considered reasonable, others unreason- 
 able, &c. 
 
 If all the various faculties attributed 
 to the soul are examined, it will be 
 found that like those of the body they 
 are to be ascribed to physical causes, 
 to which it will be very easy to recur. 
 It will be found that the powers of the 
 soul are the same as those of the body ; 
 that they always depend on the organi- 
 zation of this body, on its peculiar 
 properties, on the permanent or- transi- 
 tory modifications that it undergoes ; 
 in a word, on its temperament. 
 
 Temperament, is, in each individual, 
 the habitual state in which he finds the 
 fluids and the solids of which his body 
 is composed. This temperament varies 
 by reason of the elements or matter that 
 predominates in him; inconsequence of 
 the different combinations, of the various 
 modifications, which this matter, diversi- 
 fied in itself, undergoes in his machine. 
 T hus, i n one the blood is superabundant ; 
 in another, the bile ; in a third, phlegm, 
 &c. 
 
 It is from nature from his parents 
 from causes, which from the first mo- 
 ment of his existence have unceasingly 
 modified him, that man derives his tem- 
 perament. It is in his mother's womb 
 that he has attracted the matter which, 
 during his whole life, shall have an 
 influence on his intellectual faculties 
 on his energies on his passions on 
 his conduct. The very nourishment he 
 takes, the quality of the air he respires, 
 the climate he inhabits, the education 
 he receives, the ideas that are presented 
 to him, the opinions he imbibes, modify 
 
 this temperament. As these circum- 
 stances can never be rigorously the 
 same in every point for any two men, 
 it is by no means surprising that such 
 an amazing variety, so great a contra- 
 riety, should be found in man, or that 
 there should exist as many different 
 temperaments as there are individuals 
 in the human species. 
 
 Thus, although man may bear a gene- 
 ral resemblance, he differs essentially, 
 as well by the texture of his fibres, the 
 disposition of his nerves, as by the 
 nature, the quality, the quantity of mat- 
 ter that gives them play, and sets his 
 organs in motion. Man, already differ- 
 ent from his fellow, by the elasticity of 
 his fibres, the tension of his nerves, 
 becomes still more distinguished by a 
 variety of other circumstances: he is 
 more active, more robust, when he 
 receives nourishing aliments, when he 
 drinks wine, when he takes exercise ; 
 whilst another, who drinks nothing but 
 water, who takes less juicy nourish- 
 ment, who languishes in idleness, shall 
 be sluggish and feeble. 
 
 All these causes have necessarily an 
 influence on the mind, on the passions, 
 on the will, in a word, on what are 
 called the intellectual faculties. Thus, 
 it may be observed, that a man of a san- 
 guine constitution is commonly lively r 
 ingenious, full of imagination, passion- 
 ate, voluptuous, enterprising ; whilst 
 the phlegmatic man is dull, of a heavy 
 understanding, slow of conception, in- 
 active, difficult to be moved, pusillani- 
 mous, without imagination, or possess- 
 ing it in a less lively degree, incapable 
 of taking any strong measures, or of 
 willing resolutely. 
 
 If experience was consulted in the 
 room of prejudice, the physician would 
 collect from morals the key to the 
 human heart : and in curing the body, 
 he would sometimes be assured of 
 curing the mind. Man, in making a 
 spiritual substance of his soul, has 
 contented himself with administering 
 to it spiritual remedies, which either 
 have no influence over his tempera- 
 ment, or do it an injury. The doctrine 
 of the spirituality of the soul has ren- 
 dered morals a conjectural science, that 
 does not furnish a knowledge of the 
 true motives which ought to be put in 
 activity in order to influence man to 
 his welfare. If, calling experience to
 
 62 
 
 OF THE INTELLECT. 
 
 his assistance, man sought out the 
 elements which form the basis of his 
 temperament, or of the greater numbe 
 of the individuals composing a nation 
 he would then discover what would be 
 most proper for him, that which couk 
 be most convenient to his mode ol 
 existence, which could most conduce 
 to his true interest ; what laws woulc 
 be necessary to his happiness what 
 institutions would be most useful for 
 him what regulations would be most 
 beneficial. In short, morals and poli- 
 tics would be equally enabled to draw 
 from materialism advantages which 
 the dogma of spirituality can never 
 supply, of which it even precludes the 
 idea. Man will ever remain a mystery 
 to those who shall obstinately persist 
 in viewing him with eyes prepossessed 
 by theology, or to those who shall per- 
 tinaciously attribute his actions to a 
 principle of which it is impossible to 
 form to themselves any distinct idea. 
 When man shall be seriously inclined 
 to understand himself, let him sedu- 
 lously endeavour to discover the matter 
 that enters into his combination, which 
 constitutes his temperament ; these dis- 
 coveries will furnish him with the clue 
 to the nature of his desires, to the qua- 
 lity of his passions, to the bent of his 
 inclinations, and will enable him to 
 foresee his conduct on given occasions ; 
 will indicate the remedies that may be 
 successfully employed to correct the 
 defects of a vicious organization and 
 of a temperament as injurious to him- 
 self as to the society of which he is a 
 member. 
 
 Indeed, it is not to be doubted that 
 man's temperament is capable of being 
 corrected, of being modified, of being 
 changed, by causes as physical as the 
 matter of which it is constituted. We 
 are all in some measure capable of 
 forming our own temperament : a man 
 of a sanguine constitution, by taking 
 less juicy nourishment, by abating its 
 quantity, by abstaining from strong 
 liquor, &c., may achieve the correction 
 of the nature, the quality, the quantity, 
 the tendency, the motion of the fluids, 
 which predominate in his machine. 
 A bilious man, or one who is melan- 
 choly, may, by the aid of certain reme- 
 dies, diminish the mass of this bilious 
 fluid; he may correct the blemish of 
 his humours by the assistance of exer- 
 
 cise; he may dissipate his gloom by 
 the gaiety which results from increased 
 motion. A European transplanted into 
 Hindostan will by degrees become quite 
 a different man in his humours, in his 
 ideas, in his temperament, and in his 
 character. 
 
 Although but few experiments have 
 been made with a view to learn what 
 constitutes the temperament of man, 
 there are still enough if he would but 
 deign to make use of them, or if he 
 would vouchsafe to apply to useful 
 purposes the little experience he has 
 gleaned. It would appear, speaking 
 generally, that the igneous principle 
 which chymists designate under the 
 name of phlogiston, or inflammable 
 matter, is that which in man yields 
 him the most active life, furnishes him 
 with the greatest energy, affords the 
 greatest mobility to his frame, supplies 
 the greatest spring to his organs, gives 
 the greatest elasticity to his fibres, the 
 greatest tension to his nerves, the great- 
 est rapidity to his fluids. From these 
 causes, which are entirely material, 
 commonly result the dispositions or 
 faculties, called sensibility, wit, ima- 
 gination, genius, vivacity, &c., which 
 give the tone to the passions, to the 
 will, to the moral actions of man. In 
 this sense, it is with great justice we 
 apply the expressions, " warmth of 
 soul," " ardency of imagination," " fire 
 of genius," &c.* 
 
 It is this fiery element, diffused in 
 different doses, distributed in various 
 proportions, through the beings of the 
 human species, that sets man in motion, 
 gives him activity, supplies him with 
 animal heat, and which, if we may be 
 allowed the expression, renders him 
 more or less alive. This igneous mat- 
 ter, so active, so subtile, dissipates 
 itself with great facility, then requires 
 to be reinstated in his system by means 
 of aliments that contain it, which there- 
 jy become proper to restore his machine, 
 ;o lend new warmth to the brain, to 
 urnish it with the elasticity requisite 
 
 * It would not be unreasonable to suppose, 
 hat what physicians call the nervous fluid, 
 which so promptly gives notice to the brain 
 of all that happens to the body, is nothing 
 more than electric matter; that the various 
 >roportions of this matter, diffused through 
 nis system, is the cause of that great diversity 
 to be discovered in the human being, and in 
 the faculties he possesses.
 
 OF THE INTELLECT. 
 
 63 
 
 iO the performance of those functions 
 which are called intellectual. It is this 
 ardent matter, contained in wine, in 
 strong liquor, that gives to the most 
 torpid, to the dullest, to the most slug- 
 gish man, a vivacity, of which, without 
 it, he would be incapable, and which 
 urges even the coward on to battle. 
 When this fiery element is too abundant 
 in man, whilst he is labouring under 
 certain diseases, it plunges him into 
 delirium ; when it is in too weak, or 
 in too small a quantity, he swoons, he 
 sinks to the earth. This igneous matter 
 diminishes in his old age, it totally 
 dissipates at his death.* 
 
 If the intellectual faculties of man, 
 or his moral qualities, be examined 
 according to the principles here laid 
 down, the conviction must be com- 
 plete, that they are to be attributed to 
 material causes, which have an influ- 
 ence more or less marked, either transi- 
 tory or durable over his peculiar organi- 
 zation. But where does he derive this 
 organization except it be from the pa- 
 rents from whom he receives the ele- 
 ments of a machine necessarily analo- 
 gous to their own ? From whence does 
 he derive the greater or less quantity 
 of igneous matter, or vivifying heat, 
 which gives the tone to his mental 
 qualities ? It is from the mother, who 
 bore him in her womb, who has com- 
 municated to him a portion of that fire 
 with which she was herself animated, 
 which circulated through her veins with 
 Her blood: it is from the aliments that 
 have nourished him : it is from the cli- 
 mate he inhabits : it is from the atmo- 
 sphere that surrounds him : for, all these 
 causes have an influence over his fluids, 
 over his solids, and decide on his natu- 
 ral dispositions. In examining these 
 dispositions, from whence his faculties 
 depend, it will ever be found that they 
 are corporeal and material. 
 
 The most prominent of these dis- 
 positions in man, is that physical sensi- 
 bility from which flows all his intel- 
 
 * If we reflect a little we shall find that 
 heat is the principle of life. It is by means of 
 heat that beings pass from inaction into mo- 
 tion from repose into fermentation from 
 a state of torpor into that of active life. This 
 is proved by the egg, which heat hatches into 
 a chicken ; and this example, among thou- 
 sands which we might cite, must suffice to 
 establish the fact, that without heat, there is 
 no generation. 
 
 lectual or moral qualities. To feel, 
 according to what has been said, is to 
 receive an impulse, to be moved, and 
 to have a consciousness of the changes 
 operated on his system. To have sensi- 
 bility, is nothing more than to be so 
 constituted as to feel promptly, and in, 
 a very lively manner, the impressions 
 of those objects which act upon him. 
 A sensible soul, is only man's brain 
 disposed in a mode to receive the motion 
 communicated to it with facility and 
 with promptness, by giving an instan- 
 taneous impulse to the organs. Thus, 
 the man is called sensible, whom the 
 sight of the distressed, the contempla- 
 tion of the unhappy, the recital of a 
 melancholy tale, the witnessing of an 
 afflicting catastrophe, or the idea of a 
 dreadful spectacle, touches in so lively 
 a manner as to enable the brain to give 
 play to his lachrymal organs, which 
 cause him to shed tears ; a sign by 
 which we recognise the effect of ex- 
 treme anguish in the human being. 
 The man in whom musical sounds 
 excite a degree of pleasure, or produce 
 very remarkable effects, is said to have 
 a sensible or a fine ear. In short, when 
 it is perceived that eloquence, the 
 beauty of the arts, the various objects 
 that strike his senses, excite in him 
 very lively emotions, he is said to pos- 
 sess a soul full of sensibility.f 
 
 Wit is a consequence of this physical 
 sensibility; indeed, wit is nothing more 
 than the facility which some beings of 
 the human species possess of seizing 
 with promptitude, of developing with 
 quickness a whole, with its different 
 relations to other ob : ects. Genius, is 
 the facility with which some men com- 
 prehend this whole, and its various 
 relations, when they are difficult to be 
 known, but useful to forward great and 
 mighty projects. Wit, may be com- 
 pared to a piercing eye, which perceived 
 things quickly. Genius, is an eye that 
 I comprehends at one view ail the points 
 
 t Compassion depends on physical sensi- 
 bility, which is never the same in all men. 
 How absurd, then, to make compassion the 
 source of all our moral ideas, and of those 
 feelings which we experience for our lellow 
 creatures. Not only all men are not alike 
 sensible, but there are many in whom sensi- 
 bility has not been developed such as in 
 kings, priests, statesmen, 
 " And the hired bravoes who defend 
 
 The tyrant's throne the bullies of his fear !"
 
 64 
 
 OF THE INTELLECT. 
 
 of an extended horizon, or what the 
 French term coup (Vce.il. True wit, 
 is that which perceives objects with 
 their relations, such as they really are. 
 False wit, is that which catches at 
 relations which do not apply to the 
 object, or which arises from some 
 blemish in the organization. True wit 
 resembles the direction on a hand-post. 
 
 Imagination, is the faculty of com- 
 bining with promptitude ideas or images ; 
 it consists in the power man possesses 
 of reproducing with ease the modifica- 
 tions of his brain ; of connecting them, 
 and of attaching them to the objects to 
 which they are suitable. When imagi- 
 nation does this, it gives pleasure ; its 
 fictions' are approved, it embellishes 
 nature, it is a proof of the soundness 
 of the mind, it aids truth: when, on 
 the contrary, it combines ideas not 
 formed to associate themselves with 
 each other ; when it paints nothing 
 but disagreeable phantoms, it disgusts. 
 Thus poetry, calculated to render nature 
 more pathetic, more touching, pleases 
 when it adorns the object it portrays 
 with all those beauties with which it 
 can with propriety be associated. True, 
 it only creates ideal beings, but as they 
 move us agreeably, we forgive the illu- 
 sions it has held forth on account of the 
 pleasure we have reaped from them. 
 The hideous chimeras of superstition 
 displease, because they are nothing 
 more than the productions of a dis- 
 tempered imagination, which can only 
 awaken afflicting sensations. 
 
 Imagination, when it wanders, pro- 
 duces fanaticism religious terrours 
 inconsiderate zeal phrensy the most 
 enormous crimes. When imagination 
 is well regulated, it gives birth to a 
 strong predilection for useful objects 
 an energetic passion for virtue an 
 enthusiastic love of our country the 
 most ardent friendship : the man who 
 is divested of imagination, is commonly 
 one in whose torpid constitution phlegm 
 predominates over that sacred fire, 
 which is the great principle of his 
 mobility, of his warmth of sentiment, 
 and which vivifies all his intellectual 
 faculties'. There must be enthusiasm 
 for transcendent virtues as well as for 
 atrocious crimes. Enthusiasm places 
 the soul, or brain, in a state similar to 
 that of drunkenness ; both the one and 
 the other excite in man that rapidity of 
 
 motion which is approved when good 
 results, but which is called folly, de- 
 lirium, crime, fury, when it produces 
 nothing but disorder. 
 
 The mind is out of order, it is incapa- 
 ble of judging sanely, and the imagina- 
 tion is badly regulated, whenever man's 
 organization is not so modified as to 
 perform its functions with precision. 
 At each moment of his existence man 
 gathers experience ; every sensation he 
 has, furnishes a fact that deposites in his 
 brain an idea, which his memory recalls 
 with more or less fidelity : these facts 
 connect themselves, these ideas are 
 associated, and their chain constitutes 
 experience and science. Knowledge"^ 
 is that consciousness which arises from 
 reiterated experience, made with pre- 
 cision of the sensations, of the ideas, 
 of the effects which an object is capable 
 of producing, either in ourselves or in 
 others. A1J science must be founded, 
 on truth. Truth itself rests on the 
 constant and faithful relation of our 
 senses. Thus truth is that conformity 
 or perpetual affinity which man's senses, 
 when well constituted, when aided by 
 experience, discover to him, between 
 the objects of which he has a know- 
 ledge, and the qualities with which he 
 clothes them. In short, truth is nothing 
 more than the just, the precise associa- 
 tion of his ideas. But how can he, 
 without experience, assure himself of 
 the accuracy of this association ? How, 
 if he do not reiterate this experience, 
 can he compare it? If his senses are 
 vitiated, how is it possible they can 
 convey to him, with precision, the 
 sensations, the facts, with which they 
 store his brain 1 It is only by multi- 
 plied, by diversified, by repeated expe- 
 rience, that he is enabled to rectify the 
 errours of his first conceptions. 
 
 Man is in errour every time his organs, 
 either originally defective in their na- 
 ture, or vitiated by the durable or transi- 
 tory modifications which they undergo, 
 render him incapable of judging soundly 
 of objects. Errour consists in the false 
 association of ideas, by which qualities 
 are attributed to objects which they do 
 not possess. Man is in errour, when 
 he supposes those beings really to have 
 existence which have no local habita- 
 tion but in his own imagination : he is 
 in errour, when he associates the idea 
 of happiness with objects capable of
 
 OF THE INTELLECT. 
 
 65 
 
 injuring him, whether immediately or 
 by remote consequences which he can- 
 not foresee. 
 
 But how can he foresee effects of 
 which he has not yet any knowledge ? 
 It is by the aid of experience. By the 
 assistance which this experience affords 
 it is known, that analogous, or like 
 causes, produce analogous or like ef- 
 fects: memory, by recalling these effects, 
 enables him to form a judgment of those 
 he may expect, whether it be from the 
 same causes, or from causes that bear 
 a relation to those of which he has al- 
 ready experienced the action. From 
 this it will appear, that prudence, fore- 
 sight, are faculties that grow out of 
 experience. If he has felt that fire 
 excited in his organs a painful sensa- 
 tion, this experience suffices him to fore- 
 see that fire so applied, will eventually 
 excite the same sensations. If he has 
 discovered that certain actions, on his 
 part, stirred up the hatred, and elicited 
 the contempt of others, this experience 
 sufficiently enables him to foresee, 
 that every time he shall act in a similar 
 manner, he will be either hated or 
 despised. 
 
 The faculty man has of gathering 
 experience, of recalling it to himself, 
 of foreseeing effects, by which he is 
 enabled to avoid whatever may have 
 the power to injure him, or procure 
 that which may be useful to the con- 
 servation of his existence and his felici- 
 ty, which is the sole end of all his 
 actions, whether corporeal or mental, 
 constitutes that which in one word is 
 designated under the name of reason. 
 Sentiment, imagination, temperament, 
 may be capable of leading him astray ; 
 may have the power to deceive him ; 
 but experience and reflection will place 
 him again in the right road, and teach 
 him what can really conduct him to 
 happiness. From this it will appear, 
 that reason is man's nature modified 
 by experience, moulded by judgment, 
 regulated by reflection : it supposes a 
 sober temperament, a sound mind, a 
 well regulated imagination, a know- 
 ledge of truth grounded upon tried expe- 
 rience ; in fact, prudence and foresight : 
 and this proves, that, although nothing 
 is more common than the assertion 
 that man is a reasonable bein<r, yet 
 there are but a very small number of 
 t he individuals who compose the human 
 
 No. III. 9 
 
 species who really enjoy the faculty of 
 reason, or who combine the dispositions 
 and the experience by which it is con- 
 stituted. 
 
 It ought not then to excite surprise 
 that the individuals of the human race 
 who are in a capacity to make true 
 experience, are so few in number. 
 Man, when he is born, brings with 
 him organs susceptible of receiving 
 impulse, and of collecting experience ; 
 but whether it be from the vice of his 
 system, the imperfection of his organi- 
 zation, or from those causes by which 
 it is modified, his experience is false, 
 his ideas are confused, his images are 
 badly associated, his judgment is erro- 
 neous, his brain is saturated with vicious 
 systems, which necessarily have an in- 
 fluence over his conduct, and continu- 
 ally disturb his reason. 
 
 Man's senses, as it has been shown, 
 are the only means by which he is en- 
 abled to ascertain whether his opinions 
 are true or false, whether his conduct 
 is useful to himself, and whether it is 
 advantageous or disadvantageous. But 
 that his senses may be competent to 
 make a faithful relation, or be in a ca- 
 pacity to impress true ideas on his 
 brain, it is requisite they should be 
 sound ; that is to say, in the state ne- 
 cessary to maintain his existence in 
 that order which is suitable to his pre- 
 servation and his permanent felicity. 
 It is also indispensable that his brain 
 itself should be healthy, or in the pro- 
 per state to enable it to fulfil its func- 
 tions with precision and to exercise its 
 faculties with vigour. It is necessary 
 that memory should faithfully retrace 
 its anterior sensations and ideas, to the 
 end, that he may be competent to judge 
 or to foresee the effects he may have to 
 hope or to fear from those actions to 
 which he may be determined by his 
 will. If his interior or exterior organs 
 be defective, whether by their natural 
 conformation, or from those causes by 
 which they are regulated, he feels but 
 imperfectly, and in a manner less dis- 
 tinct than is requisite ; his ideas are 
 either false or suspicious ; he judges 
 badly ; he is in a delusion, or in a state 
 of ebriety that prevents his grasping 
 the true relation of things. In short, if 
 his memory be faulty, if it be treacher- 
 ous, his reflection is void ; his imagina- 
 tion leads him astray ; his mind de-
 
 OF THE INTELLECT. 
 
 ceives him ; whilst the sensibility of 
 his organs, simultaneously assailed by 
 a crowd of impressions, oppose him to 
 prudence, to foresight, and to the ex- 
 ercise of his reason. On the other 
 hand, if the confirmation of his organs, 
 as it happens with those of a phleg- 
 matic temperament, does not permit 
 him to move, except with feebleness 
 and in a sluggish manner, his experi- 
 ence is slow, and frequently unprofit- 
 able. The tortoise and the butterfly 
 are alike incapable of preventing their 
 destruction. The stupid man and he 
 who is intoxicated, are in that state 
 which renders it impossible for them 
 to attain the end they have in view. 
 
 But what is the aim of man in the 
 sphere he occupies ? It is to preserve 
 himself and to render his existence 
 happy. It becomes, then, of the ut- 
 most importance that he should un- 
 derstand the true means which reason 
 points out, which prudence teaches him 
 to use, in order that he may always 
 and with certainty arrive at the end 
 which he proposes to himself. These 
 are his natural faculties, his mind, his 
 talents, his industry, his actions deter- 
 mined by those passions of which his 
 nature renders him susceptible, and 
 which give more or less activity to his 
 will. Experience and reason show 
 him again that the men with whom he 
 is associated, are necessary to him 
 are capable of contributing to his hap- 
 piness and to his pleasures, and are 
 competent to assist him by those facul- 
 ties which are peculiar to them : expe- 
 rience teaches him the mode he must 
 adopt to induce them to concur in his 
 designs to determine them to will and 
 to act in his favour. This points out 
 to him the actions they approve those 
 which displease them the conduct 
 which attracts them that which re- 
 pels them the judgment by which 
 they are swayed the advantages that 
 occur, the prejudicial effects that result 
 to him from their various modes of 
 existence and manner of acting. This 
 experience furnishes him with the ideas 
 of virtue and of vice of justice and of 
 injustice of goodness and of wicked- 
 ness of decency and of indecency 
 of probity and of knavery.J In short, 
 he learns to form a judgment of men, 
 to estimate '. their actions to distin- 
 guish the various sentiments excited in 
 
 them, according to the diversity of 
 those effects which they make him ex- 
 perience. 
 
 It is upon the necessary diversity of 
 these effects that is founded the dis- 
 crimination between good and evil 
 between virtue and vice ; distinctions 
 Avhich do not rest, as some thinkers 
 have believed, on the conventions made 
 between men ; still less upon the chi- 
 merical will of a supernatural being, 
 but upon the invariable, the eternal re- 
 lations that subsist between beings of 
 the human species congregated to- 
 gether, and living in society relations 
 which will have existence as long as 
 man shall remain, and as long as so- 
 ciety shall continue to exist. 
 
 Thus virtue is every thing that is 
 truly and constantly useful to the indi- 
 viduals of the human race living to- 
 gether in society ; vice, every thing 
 that is injurious to them. The greatest 
 virtues are those which procure for 
 man the most durable and solid advan- 
 tages : the greatest vices, are those 
 which most disturb his tendency to 
 happiness, and which most interrupt 
 the necessary order of society. The 
 virtuous man is he whose actions tend 
 uniformly to the welfare of his fellow 
 creatures. The vicious man is he 
 whose conduct tends to the misery of 
 those with whom he lives ; from 
 whence his own peculiar misery most 
 commonly results. Every thing that 
 procures for man a true and a perma- 
 nent happiness, is reasonable ; every 
 thing that disturbs his individual feli- 
 city, or that of the beings necessary to 
 his happiness, is foolish or unreasona- 
 ble. The man who injures others, is 
 wicked the man who injures himself, 
 is an imprudent being, who neither has 
 a knowledge of reason, of his own pe- 
 culiar interests, nor of truth. 
 
 Man's duties are the means pointed 
 out to him by experience and reason, 
 by which he is to arrive at that goal he 
 proposes to himself: these duties are 
 the necessary consequence of the rela- 
 tions subsisting between mortals who 
 equally desire happiness, and who are 
 equally anxious to preserve their exist- 
 ence. When it is said, these duties 
 compel him, it signifies nothing more 
 than that, without taking these means, 
 he could not reach the end proposed to 
 him by his nature. Thus, moral obli-
 
 OF THE INTELLECT. 
 
 67 
 
 gation is the necessity of employing 
 the natural means to render the beings 
 with whom he lives happy, to the end 
 that he may determine them in turn, 
 to contribute to his own individual 
 happiness : his obligation towards him- 
 self is the necessity he is under to take 
 those means without which he would 
 be incapable to conserve himself, and 
 render his existence solidly happy. 
 Morals, like the universe, are founded j 
 upon necessity, or upon the eternal re- j 
 lation of things. 
 
 Happiness, is a mode of existence > 
 of which man naturally wishes the j 
 duration, or in which he is willing to 
 continue. It is measured by its dura- 
 tion and its vivacity. The greatest 
 happiness is that which has the longest 
 continuance : transient happiness, or 
 that which has only a short duration, 
 is called pleasure ; the more lively it 
 is, the more fugitive, because man's 
 senses are only susceptible of a certain 
 quantum of motion. When pleasure 
 exceeds this given quantity, it is chang- 
 ed into anguish, or into that painful 
 mode of existence of which he ardently 
 desires the cessation : this is the rea- 
 son why pleasure and pain frequently 
 so closely approximate each other as 
 scarcely to be discriminated. Immod- 
 erate pleasure is the forerunner of re- j 
 gret. It is succeeded by ennui and 
 weariness, and it ends in disgust: 
 transient happiness frequently converts 
 itself into durable misfortune. Ac- 
 cording to these principles, it will be 
 seen that man, who in each moment 
 of his duration seeks necessarily after 
 happiness, ought, when he is reason- 
 able, to regulate his pleasures, and to 
 refuse himself to all those of which the 
 indulgence would be succeeded by re- 
 gret or pain ; whilst he should endea- 
 vour to procure for himself the most 
 permanent felicity. 
 
 Happiness cannot be the same for 
 all the beings of the human species ; 
 the same pleasures cannot equally af- 
 fect men whose confirmation is differ- 
 ent, whose modification is diverse. 
 This, no doubt, is the true reason why 
 the greater number of moral philoso- 
 phers are so little in accord upon those 
 objects in which they have made man's 
 happiness consist, as well as on the 
 means by which it may be obtained, 
 i Nevertheless, in general happiness ap- 
 
 pears to be a state, whether momentary 
 or durable, in which man readily ac- 
 quiesces, because he finds it conform- 
 able to his being. This state results 
 from the accord which is found between 
 himself and those circumstances in 
 which he has been placed by nature : 
 or, if it be preferred, happiness is the 
 co-ordination of man with the causes 
 that give him impulse. 
 
 The ideas which man forms to him- 
 self of happiness, depend not only on 
 his temperament, on his individual con- 
 formation, but also upon the habits he 
 has contracted. Habit, is in man a 
 mode of existence of thinking of 
 acting, which his organs, as well in- 
 terior as exterior, contract by the 
 frequent reiteration of the same mo- 
 tion, from whence results the faculty of 
 performing these actions with prompti^ 
 tude and with facility. 
 
 If things be attentively considered, 
 it will be found that almost the whole 
 conduct of man, the entire system of 
 his actions, his occupations, his con- 
 nexions, his studies, his amusements, 
 his manners, his customs, his very gar- 
 ments, even his aliments, are the ef- 
 fect of habit. He owes equally to habit 
 the facility with which he exercises 
 his mental faculties of thought, of judg- 
 ment, of wit, of reason, of taste, &c. 
 It is to habit he owes the greater part 
 of his inclinations, of his desires, of his 
 opinions, of his prejudices, of the ideas, 
 true or false, he forms to himself of 
 his welfare. In short, it is to habit, 
 consecrated by time, that he owes those 
 errours into which every thing strives 
 to precipitate him, and to prevent him 
 from emancipating himself. It is habit 
 that attaches him either to virtue or to 
 vice.* ^ 
 
 Man is so much modified by habit, 
 that it is frequently confounded with 
 his nature : from hence results, as will 
 presently be seen, those opinions, or 
 those ideas which he has called innate, 
 
 * Experience proves that the first crime is 
 always accompanied by more pangs of re- 
 morse than the second ; this again, by more 
 than the third, and so on to those that follow. 
 A first action is the commencement of a habit ; 
 those which succeed confirm it : by force of 
 combating the obstacles that prevent the 
 commission of criminal actions, man arrives 
 at the power of vanquishing them with ease 
 and with facility. Thus He frequently be- 
 comes wicked from habit.
 
 OF THE INTELLECT. 
 
 because he has been unwilling to re 
 cur back to the source from whence 
 they sprung, which has, as it were 
 identified itself with his brain. How 
 ever this may be. he adheres with 
 great strength of attachment to all those 
 things to which he is habituated ; his 
 mind experiences a sort of violence, or 
 incommodious revulsion, when it i< 
 endeavoured to make him change the 
 course of his ideas : a fatal predilection 
 frequently conducts him back to the 
 old track in despite of reason. 
 
 It is by a pure mechanism that may 
 be explained the phenomena of habit, 
 as well physical as moral ; the soul, 
 notwithstanding its pretended spiritu- 
 ality, is modified exactly in the same 
 manner as the body. Habit, in man, 
 causes the organs of voice to learn the 
 mode of expressing quickly the ideas 
 consigned to his brain, by means of 
 certain motion, which, during his in- 
 fancy, the tongue acquires the power 
 of executing with facility : his tongue, 
 once habituated to move itself in a cer- 
 tain manner, finds much trouble to 
 move itself after another mode ; the 
 throat yields with difficulty to those 
 inflections which are exacted by a 
 language different from that to which 
 he has been accustomed. It is the same 
 with his ideas ; his brain, his interior 
 organ, his soul, inured to a given man- 
 ner of modification, accustomed to at- 
 tach certain ideas to certain objects, 
 long used to form to itself a system 
 connected with certain opinions, wheth- 
 er true or false, experiences a painful 
 sensation whenever he undertakes to 
 give it a new impulse, or alter the di- 
 rection of its habitual motion. It is 
 nearly as difficult to make him change 
 his opinions as his language.* 
 
 Here then, without doubt, is the 
 cause of that almost invincible attach- 
 ment which man displays to those 
 customs, those prejudices, those insti- 
 tutions of which it is in vain that rea- 
 son, experience, good sense, prove to 
 him the inutility, or even the danger. 
 
 * Hobbes says that, "It is the nature of all 
 corporeal beings, who have been frequently 
 moved in the same manner, to continually re- 
 ceive a greater aptitude, or to produce the 
 same motions with more facility." It is this 
 which constitutes habit as well in morals as 
 in physics. V. llabbes's Essay on Human 
 Nature. 
 
 Habit opposes itself to the clearest de- 
 monstrations ; these can avail nothing 
 against those passions and those vices 
 which time has rooted in him against 
 the most ridiculous systems against 
 the strangest customs especially when 
 he has learned to attach to them the 
 ideas of utility of common interest 
 of the welfare of society. Such is the 
 source of that obstinacy which man 
 evinces for his religion for ancient 
 usages for unreasonable customs for 
 laws, so little accordant with justice 
 for abuses, which so frequently make 
 him suffer for prejudices of which he 
 sometimes acknowledges the absurdity, 
 although unwilling to divest himself 
 of them. Here is the reason why na- 
 tions contemplate the most useful 
 novelties as mischievous innovations, 
 and believe they would be lost if they 
 were to remedy those evils which they 
 have learned to consider as necessary 
 to their repose, and which they have 
 been taught to consider dangerous to 
 be cured.* 
 
 Education, is the only art of making' 
 man contract in early life, that is to 
 say, when his organs are extremely 
 flexible, the habits, the opinions, and 
 the modes of existence adopted by the 
 society in which he is placed. The 1 
 irst moments of his infancy are em- 
 }loye3 in collecting experience ; those 
 who are charged with the care of bring- 
 ng him up, teach him how to apply it: 
 it is they who develop reason in him : 
 :he first impulse they give him coni- 
 monly decides of his condition, his 
 passions, the ideas he forms to himself 
 of happiness, and the means he shall 
 employ to procure it of his virtues 
 and his vices. Under the eyes of his 
 masters, the infant acquires ideas, 
 and learns to associate them to think 
 n a certain manner to judge well or 
 11. They point out to him various 
 objects, f which they accustom him 
 either to love or to hate, to desire or to 
 avoid, to esteem or to despise. It is 
 bus opinions are transmitted from 
 athers, from mothers, from nurses, 
 and from masters, to man in his infan- 
 ile state. It is thus that his mind by 
 
 * Assiduitate quotidian a et consuetudine 
 iculorum assuescunt animi, neque admiran- 
 ur, neque requirunt rationes earum rerum 
 quas vident. Cicero de Natur : Deorum Lib. 
 i. Cap. 2.
 
 OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 degrees saturates itself with truth, or 
 fills itself with errour, and as either of 
 them regulates his conduct, it renders 
 him either happy or miserable, virtuous 
 or vicious, estimable or hateful. It is 
 thus he becomes either contented or 
 discontented with his destiny, accord- 
 ing to the objects towards which they 
 have directed his passions, and bent the 
 energies of his mind ; that is to say, 
 in which they have shown him his in- 
 terest, or taught him to place his felici- 
 ty : in consequence he loves and seeks 
 after that which they have instructed 
 him to revere, which they have made 
 the object of his research : he has those 
 tastes, those inclinations, those phan- 
 tasms, which, during the whole course 
 of his life, he is forward to indulge, 
 which he is eager to satisfy, in propor- 
 tion to the activity they have excited 
 in him, and the capacity with which 
 he has been provided by nature. 
 P~ Politics ought to be the art of regu- 
 lating the passions of man, and of di- 
 recting them to the welfare of society ; 
 but too frequently it is nothing more 
 than the detestable art of arming the 
 passions of the various members of 
 society against each other, to accom- 
 plish their mutual destruction, and fill 
 with rancorous animosities that associ- 
 ation, from which, if properly manag- 
 ed, man ought to derive his felicity. 
 Society is commonly so vicious be- 
 cause it is not founded upon nature, 
 upon experience, upon general utility, 
 but on the contrary, upon the passions, 
 the caprices, the particular interests of 
 those by whom it is governed. 
 
 Politics, to be useful, should found 
 its principles upon nature; that is to 
 say, should conform itself to the es- 
 sence of man, and to the great end of so- 
 ciety : and society being a whole, form- 
 ed by the union of a great number of 
 families or individuals, assembled from 
 a reciprocity of interest in order that 
 they may satisfy with greater facility 
 their reciprocal wants, and procure the 
 advantages they desire ; that they may 
 obtain mutual succours ; above all, 
 that they may gain the faculty of en- 
 joying in security those benefits with 
 which nature and industry may furnish 
 them ; it follows, of course, that poli- 
 tics, destined to maintain society, 
 ought to enter into its views, facilitate 
 the means of giving them efficiency, 
 
 and remove all those obstacles that 
 have a tendency to counteract the in- 
 tention with which man entered into 
 association. 
 
 Man in approximating to his fellow^ 
 man to live with him in society, has 
 made, either formally or tacitly, a 
 covenant, by which he engages to 
 render mutual services, and to do noth- 
 ing that can be prejudicial to his neigh- 
 bour. But as the nature of each indi- 
 vidual impels him constantly to seek 
 after his own welfare, which he has 
 mistaken to consist in the gratification 
 of his passions, in the indulgence of 
 his transitory caprices, without any re- 
 gard to the convenience of his fellows; 
 there needed a power to conduct him 
 back to his duty, to oblige him to con- 
 form himself to his obligations, and to 
 recall him to engagements which the 
 hurry of his passions frequently make 
 him forget. This power is the law; 
 it is the collection of the will of society, 
 reunited to fix the conduct of its mem- 
 bers, and to direct their action in such 
 a mode that it may concur to the great 
 end of his association. 
 
 But as society, more especially when 
 very numerous, cannot assemble itself 
 unless with great difficulty, and without 
 tumult make known its intentions, it is 
 obliged to choose citizens in whom it 
 places confidence ; whom it makes the 
 interpreter of its will ; whom it consti- 
 tutes the depositaries of the power 
 requisite to carry it into execution. 
 Such is the origin of all government, 
 which to he legitimate can only be 
 founded on the free consent of society 
 without which it is violence, usurpation, 
 robbery. Those who are charged with 
 the care of governing, call themselves 
 sovereigns, chiefs, legislators, and, 
 according to the form which society 
 has been willing to give to its govern- 
 ment, these sovereigns are styled mon- 
 archs, magistrates, representatives, 
 &c. Government only borrows its 
 power from society : being established 
 for no other purpose than its welfare, 
 it is evident society can revoke this 
 power whenever its interest shall exact 
 it change the form of its government 
 extend or limit the power which it has 
 confided to its chiefs, over whom, by 
 the immutable laws of nature, it al- 
 ways conserves a supreme authority; 
 because these laws enjoin, that the part
 
 70 
 
 OP GOVERNMENT. 
 
 shall always remain subordinate to the 
 whole. 
 
 Thus sovereigns are the ministers of 
 society its interpreters the deposita- 
 ries of a greater or of a less portion of 
 its power, but they are not its absolute 
 masters, neither are they the proprietors 
 of nations. By a covenant, either ex- 
 pressed or implied, they engage them- 
 selves to watch over the maintenance, 
 and to occupy themselves with the 
 welfare, of society ; it is only upon 
 these conditions that society consents 
 to obey them. The price of obedience 
 is protection.* No society upon earth 
 was ever willing or competent to confer 
 irrevocably upon its chiefs the right of 
 doing it injury. Such a compact would 
 be annulled by nature ; because she 
 wills that each society, the same as 
 each individual of the human species, 
 shall tend to its own conservation ; it 
 has not, therefore, the capacity to con- 
 sent to its permanent misery. 
 
 Laws, in order that they maybe just, 
 ought invariably to have for their end 
 the general interest of society ; that is 
 to say, to assure to the greater number 
 of citizens those advantages for which 
 man originally associated. These ad- 
 vantages are, liberty, property, secu- 
 rity. 
 
 Liberty, to man, is the faculty of 
 doing, for his own peculiar happiness, 
 every thing which does not injure or 
 diminish the happiness of his associates : 
 in associating, each individual renounc- 
 ed the exercise of that portion of his 
 natural liberty, which would be able to 
 prejudice or injure the liberty of his 
 fellows. The exercise of that liberty 
 which is injurious to society is called 
 licentiousness. Property is the faculty 
 of enjoying those advantages which 
 spring from labour those benefits which 
 industry or talent has procured to each 
 member of society. Security is the 
 certitude that each individual ought to 
 have, of enjoying in his person and his 
 property, the protection of the laws, as 
 long as he shall faithfully perform his 
 engagements with society. Justice 
 assures to all the members of society, 
 
 * There ought to be a reciprocity of interest 
 between the governed and the governor : when- 
 ever this reciprocity is wanting, society is in 
 that state of confusion, spoken of in the fifth 
 chapter, it is verging on destruction. 
 
 the possession of those advantages or 
 rights which belong to them. From 
 this it will appear, that, without justice, 
 society is not in a condition to procure 
 the happiness of any man. Justice is 
 also called equity, because, by the 
 assistance of the laws, made to com- 
 mand the whole, she reduces all its 
 members to a state of equality ; that is 
 to say, she prevents them from prevail- 
 ing one over the other by the inequality 
 which nature or industry may have 
 made between their respective powers. 
 Rights are every thing which society, 
 by equitable laws, permits each indi- 
 vidual to do for his own peculiar felicity. 
 These rights are evidently limited by 
 the invariable end of all association; 
 society has, on its part, rights over all 
 its members, by virtue of the advantages 
 which it procures for them ; all its mem- 
 bers, in turn, have a right to claim from 
 society, or secure from its ministers, 
 those advantages for the procuring of 
 which they congregated, and renounced 
 a portion of their natural liberty. A 
 society of which the chiefs, aided by 
 the laws, do not procure any good for 
 its members, evidently loses its right 
 over them : those chiefs who injure 
 society, lose the right of commanding. 
 It is not our country without it secures 
 the welfare of its inhabitants ; a society 
 without equity contains only enemies; 
 a society oppressed is composed only 
 of tyrants and slaves ; slaves are in- 
 capable of being citizens ; it is liberty 
 property security, that render our 
 country dear to us ; and it is the true 
 love of his country that forms the 
 citizen.j 
 
 For want of having a proper know- 
 ledge of these truths, or for want of 
 applying them when known, some na- 
 tions have become unhappy have con- 
 tained nothing but a vile heap of slaves, 
 separated from each other, and detached 
 from society, which neither procures for 
 them any good, nor secures to them any 
 one advantage. In consequence of the 
 imprudence of some nations, or of the 
 craft, the cunning, the violence of those 
 to whom they have confided the power 
 of making laws, and of carrying them 
 into execution, their sovereigns have 
 rendered themselves absolute masters 
 
 t An ancient poet has justly said, Sermrum 
 nulla est unquam civitas.
 
 OP GOVERNMENT. 
 
 71 
 
 of society. These, mistaking the true 
 source of their power, pretended to hold 
 it from heaven; to be accountable for 
 their actions to God alone ; to owe 
 nothing to society, in a word, to be 
 Gods upon earth, and to possess the 
 right of governing arbitrarily, as the 
 God or Gods above. From thence 
 politics became corrupted, they were 
 only a mockery. Such nations, dis- 
 graced and grown contemptible, did 
 not dare resist the will of their chiefs 
 their laws were nothing more than the 
 expression of the caprice of these chiefs ; 
 public welfare was sacrificed to their 
 peculiar interests the force of society 
 was turned against itself its members 
 withdrew to attach themselves to its 
 oppressors, to its tyrants ; these, to 
 seduce them, permitted them to injure 
 it with impunity, to profit by its mis- 
 fortunes. Thus liberty, justice, security, 
 virtue, were banished from many na- 
 tions politics was no longer any thing 
 more than the art of availing itself of 
 the forces of a people, of the treasure 
 of society, of dividing it on the subject 
 of its interest, in order to subjugate it 
 by itself: at length a stupid and me- 
 chanical habit made them love their 
 chains. 
 
 Man, when he has nothing to fear,"' 
 presently becomes wicked ; he who] 
 believes he has not occasion for his 
 fellow, persuades himself he may fol- 
 low the inclinations of his heart, with- 
 out caution or discretion. Thus, fear: 
 is the only obstacle society can effecftH 
 ally oppose to the passions of its chiefs: 
 without it they will quickly become 
 corrupt, and will not scruple to avail 
 themselves of the means society has 
 placed in their hands to make them 
 accomplices in their iniquity. To pre- 
 vent these abuses it is requisite society 
 should set bounds to its confidence ; 
 should limit the power which it dele- 
 gates to its chiefs ; should reserve to 
 itself a sufficient portion of authority 
 to prevent them from injuring it ; it 
 must establish prudent checks ; it must 
 cautiously divide the powers it confers, 
 because united it will be infallibly 
 oppressed. The slightest reflection will 
 make men feel, that the burden of 
 governing is too ponderous to be borne 
 by an individual that the scope and 
 the multiplicity of his duties must 
 always render him negligent that the 
 
 extent of his power has ever a tendency 
 to render him mischievous. In short, 
 the experience of all ages will convince 
 nations that man is continually tempted 
 to the abuse of power: that therefore 
 the sovereign ought to be subject to the 
 law, not the law to the sovereign. 
 
 Government has necessarily an equal 
 influence over the philosophy as over 
 the morals of nations. In the same 
 manner that its care produces labour, 
 activity, abundance, salubrity, justice, 
 and its negligence induces idleness, 
 sloth, discouragement, penury, conta- 
 gion, injustice, vices and crimes. It 
 depends upon government either to 
 foster industry, mature genius, give a 
 spring to talents, or to stifle them. 
 Indeed, government, the distributer of 
 dignities, of riches, of rewards, of pun- 
 ishments the master of those objects 
 in which man from his infancy has 
 learned to place his felicity acquires 
 a necessary influence over his conduct ; 
 it kindles his passions ; gives them 
 direction ; makes him instrumental to 
 whatever purpose it pleases: it modifies 
 him; determines his manners; which 
 in a whole people, as in the individual, 
 is nothing more than the conduct, or 
 the general system of wills and of 
 actions that necessarily result from his 
 education, his government, his laAvs, 
 his religious opinions, his institutions, 
 whether rational or irrational. In short, 
 manners are the habits of a people : 
 these are good whenever society draws 
 from them true and solid happiness ; 
 they are detestable in the eye of reason, 
 when the happiness of society does not 
 spring from them, and when they have 
 nothing more in their favour than the 
 suffrage of time, or the countenance of 
 prejudice, which rarely consults expe- 
 rience and good sense. If experience 
 be consulted, it will be found there is 
 no action, however abominable, that 
 has not received the applause of some 
 people. Parricide the sacrifice of 
 children- robbery usurpation cruel- 
 ty intolerance prostitution, have all 
 in their turn been licensed actions, 
 and have been deemed laudable and 
 meritorious deeds with some nations 
 of the earth. Above all, Religion has 
 consecrated the most unreasonable, the 
 most revolting customs. 
 
 Man's passions depending on the 
 motion of attraction and of repulsioa
 
 72 
 
 OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 of which he is rendered susceptible by 
 nature, who enables him, by his pecu- 
 liar essence, to be attracted by those 
 objects which appear useful to him, to 
 be repelled by those which he considers 
 prejudicial; it follows that government, 
 by holding the magnet, has the power 
 either of restraining them, or of giving 
 them a favourable or an unfavourable 
 direction. All his passions are con- 
 stantly limited by either loving or 
 hating seeking or avoiding desiring 
 or fearing. These passions, so neces- 
 sary to the conservation of man, are 
 a consequence of his organization, and 
 display themselves with more or less 
 energy, according to his temperament: 
 education and habit develop them, and 
 government conducts them towards 
 those objects which it believes itself 
 interested in making desirable to its 
 subjects. The various names which 
 have been given to these passions are 
 relative to the different objects by which 
 they are excited, such as pleasure 
 grandeur riches, which produce volup- 
 tuousness ambition vanity avarice. 
 If the source of those passions which 
 predominate in nations be attentively 
 examined, it will be commonly found 
 in their governments. It is the impulse 
 received from their chiefs that renders 
 them sometimes warlike sometimes 
 superstitious sometimes aspiring after 
 glory sometimes greedy after wealth 
 sometimes rational sometimes unrea- 
 sonable. If sovereigns, in order to 
 enlighten and to render happy their 
 dominions, were to employ onlv the 
 tenth part of the vast expenditures 
 which they lavish, and only a tithe of 
 the pains which they employ to stupify 
 them to deceive them to afflict them, 
 their subjects would presently be as 
 wise and as happy, as they are now 
 remarkable for being blind, ignorant, 
 and miserable. 
 
 Let the vain project of destroying 
 passions from the heart of man be 
 abandoned ; let an effort be made to 
 direct them towards objects that may 
 be useful to himself and to his associates. 
 Let education, let government, let the 
 laws, habituate him to restrain his pas- 
 sions within those just bounds which 
 experience and reason prescribe. Let 
 the ambitious have honours, titles, dis- 
 tinctions, power, when they shall have 
 usefully served their country ; let riches 
 
 be given to those who covet them, when 
 they shall have rendered themselves 
 necessary to their fellow citizens ; let 
 eulogies encourage those who shall be 
 actuated by the love of glory. In short, 
 let the passions of man have a free 
 course, whenever there shall result from 
 their exercise real and durable advan- 
 tages to society. Let education kindle 
 only those which are truly beneficial to 
 the human species ; let it favour those 
 alone which are really necessary to the 
 maintenance of society. The passions 
 of man are dangerous, only because 
 every thing conspires to give them an 
 evil direction. 
 
 Nature does not make man either 
 good or wicked ;* she combines ma- 
 chines more or less active, mobile, and 
 energetic ; she furnishes him with or- 
 gans, with temperament, of which his 
 passions, more or less impetuous, are 
 the necessary consequence ; these pas- 
 sions have always his happiness for 
 thefr; object; therefore they are legiti- 
 mate 'and natural, and they can only 
 be called bad or good, relatively to the 
 influence they have on the beings of 
 his species. Nature gives man legs 
 proper to sustain his weight, necessary 
 to transport him from one place to 
 another ; the care of those who rear 
 them, strengthens them ; habituates him 
 to avail himself of them ; accustoms 
 him to make either a good or a bad use 
 of them. The arm which he has re- 
 ceived from nature is neither good nor 
 bad ; it is necessary to a great number 
 of the actions of life ; nevertheless the 
 use of this arm becomes criminal if he 
 has contracted the habit of using it to 
 rob or to assassinate, with a view to 
 obtain that money which he has been 
 taught from his infancy to desire ; which 
 the society in whicn he lives renders 
 necessary to him, but which his industry 
 will enable him to obtain without doing 
 injury to hi 5 fellow man. 
 
 The heart of man is a soil which 
 nature has made equally suitable to 
 the pioduction of brambles or of useful 
 grain of deleterious poison or of re- 
 fre ;hing fruit, by virtue of the seeds 
 which may he sown in it by the cul- 
 tivation that may be bestowed upon it. 
 In his infancy those objects are pointed 
 
 * Seneca has said with great reason, Erras 
 si existimes vitia nobiscum nasci ; supervene- 
 runt, in^esta sum. V. Senec. Epist. 91, 95, 124.
 
 OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 73 
 
 out to him which he is to estimate or to 
 despise to seek after or to avoid to 
 love or to hate. It is his parents and 
 his instmcters who render him either 
 virtuous or wicked wise or unreason- 
 able studious or dissipated steady or 
 trifling solid or vain. Their example 
 and their discourse modify him through 
 his whole life, teaching him what are 
 the things he ought either to desire or 
 to avoid: he desires them in conse- 
 quence ; and he imposes on himself 
 the task of obtaining them according 
 to the energy of his temperament, which 
 ever decides the force of his passions. 
 It is thus that education, by inspiring 
 him with opinions and ideas either true 
 or false, gives him those primitive im- 
 pulsions after which he acts in a man- 
 ner either advantageous or prejudicial, 
 both to himself and to others. Man, 
 at his birth, brings with him into the 
 world nothing but the necessity of con- 
 serving himself and of rendering his 
 existence happy : instruction, example, 
 the customs of the world, present him 
 with the means, either real or imagi- 
 nary, of achieving it: habit procures 
 for him the facility of employing these 
 means ; and he attaches himself strongly 
 to those he judges best calculated to 
 secure to him the possession of those 
 objects which he has learned to desire 
 as the preferable good attached to his 
 existence. Whenever his education^ 
 whenever the examples which have 
 been afforded him, whenever the means 
 with which he has been provided, are 
 approved by reason, are the result of 
 experience, every thing concurs to ren- 
 der him virtuous: habit strengthens 
 these dispositions in him; and he be- 
 comes, in consequence, a useful meny 
 ber of society, to the interests of which 
 every thing ought to prove to him that 
 his own permanent well-being is neces- 
 sarily allied. If, on the contrary, his 
 education his institutions the exam- 
 ples which are set before him the 
 opinions which are suggested to him 
 in his infancy, are of a nature to exhibit 
 to his mind virtue as useless and repug- 
 nant, and vice as useful and congenial 
 to his own individual happiness, he will 
 become vicious ; he will believe him- 
 self interested in injuring society; he 
 will be carried along by the general 
 current : he will renounce virtue, which 
 to him will no longer be any thing more 
 No. III. 10 
 
 than a vain idol, without attractions to 
 induce him to follow it ; without charms 
 to tempt his adoration, because it will 
 appear to exact that he should immolate 
 at its shrine all those objects which he 
 has been constantly taught to consider 
 the most dear to himself and as benefits 
 the most desirable. 
 
 In order that man may become vir- 
 tuous, it is absolutely requisite that he 
 should have an interest or should find 
 advantages in practising virtue. For 
 this end, it is necessary that education 
 should implant in him reasonable ideas ; 
 that public opinion should lean towards 
 virtue as the most desirable good ; that 
 example should point it out as the object 
 most worthy esteem ; that government 
 should faithfully reward it ; that honour 
 should always accompany its practice ; 
 that vice and crime should invariably 
 be despised and punished. Is virtue in 
 this situation amongst men ? Does the 
 education of man infuse into him just 
 ideas of happiness; true notions of 
 virtue ; dispositions really favourable 
 to the beings with whom he is to live ? 
 The examples spread before him, are 
 they suitable to innocence of manners 1 
 are they calculated to make him respect 
 decency to cause him to love probity 
 to practise honesty to value good faith 
 to esteem equity to revere conjugal 
 fidelity to observe exactitude in ful- 
 filling his duties ? Religion, which 
 alone pretends to regulate his manners, 
 does it render him sociable does it 
 make him pacific does it teach him 
 to be humane ? The arbiters of society, 
 are they faithful in rewarding those 
 who have best served their country, 
 in punishing those who have plundered, 
 divided, and ruined it? Justice, does 
 she hold her scales with an even hand 
 between all the citizens of the state? 
 The laws, do they never support the 
 strong against the weak ; favour the 
 rich against the poor ; uphold the happy 
 against the miserable ? In short, is it 
 an uncommon spectacle to behold crime 
 frequently justified, or crowned with 
 success, insolently triumphing over that 
 merit which it disdains, over that virtue 
 which it outrages ? Well, then, in 
 societies thus constituted, virtue can 
 only be heard by a very small number 
 of peaceable citizens, who know how 
 to estimate its value, and who enjoy it 
 in secret. For the others, it is only a
 
 74 
 
 OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 disgusting object, as they see in it 
 nothing but the supposed enemy to 
 their happiness, or the censor of their 
 individual conduct. 
 
 If man, according to his nature, is 
 necessitated to desire his welfare, he 
 is equally obliged to cherish the means 
 by which he believes it is to be acquired : 
 it would be useless, and perhaps unjust, 
 to demand that a man should be virtu- 
 ous, if he could not be so without ren- 
 dering himself miserable. Whenever 
 he thinks vice renders him happy, he 
 must necessarily love vice ; whenever 
 he sees inutility or crime rewarded and 
 honoured, what interest will he find in 
 occupying himself with the happiness 
 of his fellow creatures, or in restraining 
 the fury of his passions 1 In fine, when- 
 ever his mind is saturated with false 
 ideas and dangerous opinions, it follows 
 of course that his whole conduct will 
 become nothing more than a long chain 
 of errours, a series of depraved actions. 
 
 We are informed, that the savages, 
 in order to flatten the heads of their 
 children, squeeze them between two 
 boards, by that means preventing them 
 from taking the shape designed for 
 them by nature. It is pretty nearly the 
 same thing with the institutions of 
 man ; they commonly conspire to coun- 
 teract nature to constrain to divert 
 to extinguish the impulse nature has 
 given him, to substitute others which 
 are the source of all his misfortunes. 
 In almost all the countries of the earth 
 man is bereft of truth, is fed with false- 
 hoods, is amused with marvellous chi- 
 meras : he is treated like those children 
 whose members are, by the imprudent 
 care of their nurses, swathed with little 
 fillets, bound up with rollers, which 
 deprive them of the free use of their 
 limbs, obstruct their growth, prevent 
 their activity, and oppose themselves 
 to their health. 
 
 Most of the religious opinions of man 
 have for their object only to display to 
 him his supreme felicity in those illu- 
 sions for which they kindle his passions : 
 but as the phantoms which are present- 
 ed to his imagination are incapable of 
 being considered in the same light by all 
 who contemplate them, he is perpetually 
 in dispute concerning these objects ; he 
 hates and persecutes his neighbour 
 his neighbour in turn persecutes him 
 he believes in doing this he is doing 
 
 well ; that in committing the greatest 
 crimes to sustain his opinions he is act- 
 ing right. It is thus religion infatuates 
 man from his infancy, fills him with 
 vanity and fanaticism : if he has a 
 heated imagination it drives him on to 
 fury ; if he has activity, it makes him 
 a madman, who is frequently as cruel 
 to himself, as he is dangerous and in- 
 commodious to others: if, on the con- 
 trary, he be phlegmatic or of a slothful 
 habit, he becomes melancholy and is 
 useless to society. 
 
 Public opinion every instant offers to 
 man's contemplation false ideas of ho- 
 nour and wrong notions of glory : it 
 attaches his esteem not only to frivo- 
 lous advantages, but also to prejudicial 
 and injurious actions, which example 
 authorizes which prejudice conse- 
 crates which habit precludes him from 
 viewing with disgust, from eying with 
 the horrour they merit. Indeed, habit 
 familiarizes his mind with the most 
 absurd ideas with the most unreason- 
 able customs with the most blame- 
 able actions with prejudices the most 
 contrary to his own interests, the most 
 detrimental to the society in which he 
 lives. He finds nothing strange, noth- 
 ing singular, nothing despicable, noth- 
 ing ridiculous, except those opinions 
 and those objects to which he is him- 
 self unaccustomed. There are coun- 
 tries in which the most laudable actions 
 appear very blameable and extremely 
 ridiculous, and where the foulest, the 
 most diabolical actions, pass for very 
 honest and perfectly rational.* 
 
 Authority commonly believes itself 
 interested in maintaining the received 
 opinions ; those prejudices and those 
 errours which it considers requisite to 
 the maintenance of its power, are sus- 
 tained by force, which is never ration- 
 
 * In some nations they kill the old men ; in 
 some the children strangle their fathers. The 
 Phenicians andtheCarthagenians immolated 
 their children to their Gods. Europeans ap- 
 prove duels ; and those who refuse to blow 
 out the brains of another are contemplated by 
 them as dishonoured. The Spaniards, the 
 Portuguese, think it meritorious to burn a 
 heretic. Christians deem it right to cut the 
 throats of those who differ from them in opi- 
 nion. In some countries women prostitute 
 themselves without dishonour; in others it is 
 the height of hospitality for man to present 
 his wife to the embraces of the stranger : the 
 refusal to accept this, elicits hia scorn, calls 
 forth his resentment.
 
 OP THE SOUL. 
 
 al. Princes filled with deceptive im- 
 ages of happiness ; with mistaken no- 
 tions of power ; with erroneous opin- 
 ions of grandeur ; with false ideas of 
 glory, are surrounded with flattering 
 courtiers, who are interested in keeping 
 up the delusion of their masters : these 
 contemptible men have acquired ideas 
 of virtue only that they may outrage 
 it : by degrees they corrupt the people, 
 these become depraved, lend them- 
 selves to their debaucheries, pander to 
 the vices of the great, then make a 
 merit of imitating them in their irregu- 
 larities. A court is the true focus of 
 the corruption of a people. 
 
 This is the true source of moral evil. 
 It is thus that every thing conspires to 
 render man vicious, to give a fatal im- 
 pulse to his soul ; from whence results 
 the general confusion of society, which 
 becomes unhappy from the misery of 
 almost every one of its members. The 
 strongest motive-powers are put in ac- 
 tion to inspire man with a passion fcr 
 futile or indifferent objects, which 
 make him be'come dangerous to his 
 fellow man by the means which he is 
 compelled to employ in order to obtain 
 them. Those who have the charge of 
 guiding his steps, either impostors 
 themselves, or the dupes to their own 
 prejudices, forbid him to hearken to 
 reason ; they make truth appear dan<- 
 gerous to him, and exhibit errour as re- 
 quisite to his welfare, not only in this 
 world but in the next. In short, habit 
 strongly attaches him to his irrational 
 opinions to his perilous inclinations 
 to his blind passion for objects either 
 useless or dangerous. Here then is the 
 reason why for the most part man finds 
 himself necessarily determined to evil; 
 the reason why the passions, inherent 
 in his nature and necessary to his con- 
 servation, become the instruments of 
 his destruction, the bane of that society 
 which they ought to preserve. Here, 
 then, the reason why society becomes 
 a state of warfare, and why it does 
 nothing but assemble enemies, who are 
 envious of each other and always rivals 
 for the prize. If some virtuous beings 
 are to be found in these societies, they 
 must be sought for in the very small 
 number of those, who, born with a 
 phlegmatic temperament, have moder- 
 ate passions, who therefore either do 
 not desire at all, or desire very feebly, 
 
 those objects with which their associ 
 ates are continually inebriated. 
 
 Man's nature diversely cultivated, 
 decides upon his faculties, as well cor- 
 poreal as intellectual upon his quali- 
 ties, as well moral as physical. The 
 man who is of a sanguine, robust con- 
 stitution, must necessarily have strong 
 passions : he who is of a bilious, me- 
 lancholy habit, will as necessarily have 
 fantastical and gloomy passions: the 
 man of a gay turn, of a sprightly ima- 
 gination, will have cheerful passions ; 
 while the man, in whom phlegm 
 abounds, will have those which are 
 gentle, or which have a very slight de- 
 gree of violence. It appears to be upon 
 the equilibrium of the humours that de- 
 pends the state of the man who is call- 
 ed virtuous : his temperament seems 
 to be the result of a combination, in 
 which the elements or principles are 
 balanced with 'such precision, that no 
 one passion predominates over another, 
 or carries into his machine more dis- 
 order than its neighbour. Habit, as 
 we have seen, is man's nature modifi- 
 ed : this latter furnishes the matter ; 
 education, domestic example, national 
 manners, give it the form : these acting 
 on his temperament, make him either 
 reasonable or irrational, enlightened or 
 stupid, a fanatic or a hero, an enthu- 
 thiast for the public good, or an un- 
 bridled criminal, a wise man smitten 
 with the advantages of virtue or a liber- 
 tine plunged into every kind of vice. 
 All the varieties of the moral man de- 
 pend on the diversity of his ideas. ' 
 which are themselves arranged and 
 combined in his brain by the interven- 
 tion of his senses. His temperament 
 is the produce of physical substances ; 
 his habits are the effect of physical mo- 
 difications ; the opinions, whether good 
 or bad, injurious or beneficial, true or 
 false, which form themselves in his 
 mind, are never more than the effect of 
 those physical impulsions which the 
 brain receives by the medium of the . 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 The Soul does not derive its Ideas from itself. 
 It has no innate Ideas. 
 
 WHAT has preceded suffices to prove 
 that the interior organ of man, which
 
 76 
 
 OP THE SOUL. 
 
 is called his m/, is purely material. 
 He will be enabled to convince him- 
 self of this truth, by the manner in 
 which he acquires his ideas ; from those 
 impressions, which material objects 
 successively make on his organs, which 
 are themselves acknowledged to be 
 material. It has been seen that the fa- 
 culties which are called intellectual, 
 are to be ascribed to that of feeling ; 
 the different qualities of those faculties, 
 which are called moral, have been ex- 
 plained after the necessary laws of a 
 very simple mechanism : it now re- 
 mains to reply to those who still ob- 
 stinately persist in making the soul 
 a substance distinguished from the 
 body, or who insist on giving it an 
 essence totally distinct. They seem 
 to found their distinction upon this, 
 that this interior organ has the facultv 
 of drawing its ideas from within itself; 
 they will have it that man, at his birth, 
 brings with him ideas into the world, 
 which according to this wonderful no- 
 tion, they have called innate.* They 
 have believed, then, that the soul, by a 
 special privilege, in a nature where 
 every thing is connected, enjoyed the 
 faculty of moving itself without receiv- 
 ing any impulse ; of creating to itself 
 ideas, of thinking on a subject, without 
 being determined to such action by any 
 exterior object, which, by moving its 
 organs, should furnish it with an image 
 of the subject of its thoughts. In con- 
 sequence of these gratuitous supposi- 
 tions, which it is only requisite to ex- 
 pose in order to confute, some very able 
 speculators, who were prepossessed by 
 their superstitious prejudices, have 
 ventured the length to assert, that, 
 without model, without prototype, to 
 act on the senses, the soul is competent 
 
 * Some ancient philosophers have held, that 
 the soul originally contains the principles of 
 several notions or doctrines: the Stoics de- 
 signated this by the term n^^'"' anticipa- 
 ted opinions ; the Gre'ek mathematicians 
 Ko/m Evr;c, universal ideas. The Jews 
 have a similar doctrine which they borrowed 
 from the Chaldeans; their Rabbins taught 
 that each soul, before it was united to the 
 seed that must form an infant in the womb 
 of a woman, is confided to the care of an 
 angel, which causes him to behold heaven, 
 earth, and hell : this, they pretend, is done by 
 the assistance of a lamp which extinguishes 
 itself, as soon as the infant comes into the 
 world. See Gaulmin. De vita el morte 
 Afotis. 
 
 to delineate to itself the whole uni- 
 verse, with all the beings it contains. 
 Descartes and his disciples have as- 
 sured us, that the body went absolutely 
 for nothing in the sensations or ideas 
 of the soul ; that it can feel that it 
 can perceive, understand, taste, and 
 touch, even when there should exist 
 nothing that is corporeal or material 
 exterior to ourselves. 
 
 But what shall be said of a Berke- 
 ley, who has endeavoured to prove to 
 man, that every thing in this world is 
 nothing more than a chimerical illu- 
 sion, and that the universe exists no- 
 where but in himself: that it has no 
 identity but in his imagination ; who 
 has rendered the existence of all things 
 problematical by the aid of sophisms, 
 insolvable even to those who maintain 
 the doctrine of the spirituality of the 
 soul.f 
 
 To justify such monstrous opinions, 
 they assert that ideas are only the ob- 
 jects of thought. But according to 
 the last analysis, these ideas can only 
 reach man from exterior objects, which, 
 in giving impulse to his senses, modify 
 his brain ; or from the material beings 
 contained within the interior of his 
 machine, who make some parts of his 
 body experience those sensations which 
 he perceives, and which furnish him 
 with ideas, which he relates, faithfully 
 or otherwise, to the cause that moves 
 him. Each idea is an effect, but how- 
 ever difficult it may be to recur to the 
 cause, can we possibly suppose it is 
 not ascribable to a cause? If we*can 
 only form ideas of material substances, 
 
 t Extravagant as this doctrine of the bishop 
 of Cloyne may appear, it cannot well be more 
 so than that of Malebranche, the champion 
 of innate ideas, who makes the divinity the 
 common bond between the soul and thebodv : 
 or than that of those metaphysicians who 
 maintain, that the soul is a substance hetero- 
 geneous to the body, and, who, by ascribing 
 to this soul the thoughts of man, have, in fact, 
 rendered the body superfluous. They have 
 not perceived, they were liable to one solid 
 objection, which is, that if the ideas of man 
 are innate, if he derives them from a superior 
 being, independent of exterior causes, if he 
 sees every thing in God ; how comes it that 
 so many false ideas are afloat, that so many 
 errours prevail with which the human mind is 
 saturated ? From whence come those opin- 
 ions which, according to the theologians, are 
 so displeasing to God? Might it not be a 
 question to the Malebranchists, was it in the 
 Divinity that Spinosa beheld his system ?
 
 OP THE~SOUL. 
 
 77 
 
 how can we suppose the cause of ou 
 ideas can possibly be immaterial? To 
 pretend that man, without the aid of 
 exterior objects, without the interven- 
 tion of his senses, is competent to form 
 ideas of the Universe, is to assert, tha 
 a blind man is in a capacity to form i 
 true idea of a picture that represents 
 some fact of which he has never heard 
 any one speak. 
 
 It is very easy to perceive the source 
 of those errours into which men, other- 
 wise extremely profound and very en- 
 lightened, have fallen, when they have 
 been desirous to speak of the soul and 
 of its operations. Obliged, either by 
 thei own prejudices, or by the fear of 
 combating the opinions of an imperi- 
 ous theology, they have become the 
 advocates of the principle, that the 
 soul was a pure spirit, an immaterial 
 substance, of an essence directly dif- 
 ferent from that of the body, or from 
 every thing we behold : this granted, 
 they have been incompetent to conceive 
 how material objects could operate, or 
 in what manner gross and corporeal 
 organs were enabled to act on a sub- 
 stance that had no kind of analogy with 
 them, and how they were in a capacity 
 to modify it by conveying it ideas ; in 
 the impossibility of explaining this phe- 
 nomenon, at the same time perceiving 
 that the soul had ideas, they concluded 
 that it must draw them from itself, and 
 not from those beings, which accord- 
 ing to their own hypothesis, were in- 
 capable of acting on it ; they therefore 
 imagined that all the modifications of 
 this soul, sprung from its own peculiar 
 energy, were imprinted on it from its 
 first formation by the author of nature 
 an immaterial being like itself; and 
 that these did not in any manner de- 
 pend upon the beings of which we 
 have a knowledge, or which act upon 
 it by the gross means of our senses. 
 
 There are, however, some phenom- 
 ena which, considered superficially, 
 appear to support the opinion of these 
 philosophers, and to announce a facul- 
 ty in the human soul of producing ideas 
 within itself, without any exterior aid ; 
 these are dreams, in which the interior 
 organ of man, deprived of objects that 
 move it visibly, does not, however, 
 cease to have ideas, to be set in ac- 
 tivity, and to be modified in a manner 
 that is sufficiently sensible to have an 
 
 influence upon his body. But if a little 
 reflection be called in, the solution to 
 this difficulty will be found : it will be 
 perceived, that, even during sleep, his 
 brain is supplied with a multitude of 
 ideas, with which the eve or time be- 
 fore has stocked it ; these ideas were 
 communicated to it by exterior and cor- 
 poreal objects, by which it has been 
 modified : it will be found that these 
 modifications renew themselves, not by 
 any spontaneous or voluntary motion 
 on its part, but by a chain of involun- 
 tary movements which take place in 
 his machine, which determine or ex- 
 cite those that give play to the brain ; 
 these modifications renew themselves 
 with more or less fidelity, with a great- 
 er or lesser degree of conformity to 
 those which it has anteriorly experi- 
 enced. Sometimes in dreaming he has 
 memory, then he retraces to himself 
 the objects which have struck him 
 faithfully ; at other times, these modi- 
 fications renew themselves without 
 order, without connexion, or very dif- 
 ferently from those which real objects 
 have before excited in his interior 
 organ. If in a dream he believe he 
 sees a friend, his brain renews in itself 
 the modifications or the ideas which 
 this friend had formerly excited, in the 
 same order that they arranged them- 
 selves when his eyes really beheld 
 him ; this is nothing more than an ef- 
 fect of memory. If, in his dream, he] 
 fancy he sees a monster which has no 
 model in nature, his brain is then mo- 
 dified in the same manner that it was 
 by the particular or detached ideas with 
 which it then does nothing more than 
 compose an ideal whole, by assembling 
 and associating, in a ridiculous man- 
 ner, the scattered ideas that were con- 
 signed to its keeping ; it is then, that 
 in dreaming he has imagination. 
 
 Those dreams that are troublesome^ 
 extravagant, whimsical, or unconnect- 
 ed, are commonly the effect of some 
 onfusion in his machine ; such as 
 sainful indigestion, an overheated 
 slood, a prejudicial fermentation, &c. 
 these material causes excite in his 
 5ody a disorderly motion, which pre- 
 cludes the brain from being modified 
 n the same manner it was on the day 
 Before ; in consequence of this irregu- 
 ar motion, the brain is disturbed, it 
 only represents to itself confused ideas
 
 79 
 
 OP THE SOUL. 
 
 that want connexion. When in a 
 dream he believes he sees a sphinx,* 
 either he has seen the representation 
 of one when he was awake, or else the 
 disorderly motion of the brain is such, 
 that it causes it to combine ideas, to 
 connect parts, from which there results 
 a whole without model, of which the 
 parts were not formed to be united. 
 It is thus, that his brain combines the 
 head of a woman, of which it already 
 has the idea, with the body of a lioness, 
 of which it also has the image. In this 
 his head acts in the same manner as 
 when, by any defect in the interior or- 
 gan, his disordered imagination paints 
 to him some objects, notwithstanding 
 he is awake. He frequently dreams 
 without being asleep : his dreams never 
 produce any thing so strange but that 
 they have some resemblance with the 
 objects which have anteriorly acted on 
 his senses, or have already communi- 
 cated ideas to his brain. The crafty 
 theologians have composed at their 
 leisure, and in their waking hours, those 
 phantoms of which they avail them- 
 selves to terrify man ; they have done 
 nothing more than assemble the scat- 
 tered traits which they have found in 
 the most terrible beings of their own 
 species ; by exaggerating the powers 
 and the rights claimed by tyrants, they 
 have formed Gods before whom man 
 trembles. 
 
 Thus it is seen that dreams, far from 
 proving that the soul acts by its own 
 peculiar energy, or draws its ideas from 
 its own recesses, prove, on the contrary, 
 that in sleep it is entirely passive, that 
 it does not even renew its modifica- 
 tions, but according to the involuntary 
 confusion, which physical causes pro- 
 duce in the body, of which every thing 
 tends to show the identity and the con- 
 substantiality with the soul. What 
 appears to have led those into a mis- 
 take, who maintained that the soul 
 drew its ideas from itself, is this, they 
 have contemplated these ideas as if 
 they were real beings, when, in point 
 of fact, they are nothing more than the 
 modifications produced in the brain of 
 man by objects to which this brain is 
 
 * A being supposed by the poets to have a 
 head and face like a woman, a body like a 
 dog, wings like a bird, and claws like a lion, 
 who put forth riddles and killed those who 
 could not expound them. 
 
 a stranger; they are these objects, who 
 are the true models or archetypes to 
 which it is necessary to recur : here is 
 the source of their errours. 
 
 In the individual who dreams, the 
 soul does not act more from itself than 
 it does in the man who is drunk, that 
 is to say, who is modified by some 
 spirituous liquor ; or than it does in the 
 sick man when he is delirious, that is 
 to say, when he is modified by those 
 physical causes which disturb his ma- 
 chine in the performance of its func- 
 tions; or than it does in him whose 
 brain is disordered : dreams, like these 
 various states, announce nothing more 
 than a physical confusion in the human 
 machine, under the influence of which 
 the brain ceases to act after a precise 
 and regular manner : this disorder may 
 be traced to physical causes, such as 
 the aliments, the humours, the combina- 
 tions, the fermentations, which are but 
 little analogous to the salutary state of 
 man; from which it will appear, that 
 his brain is necessarily confused when- 
 ever his body is agitated in an extra- 
 ordinary manner. 
 
 Do not let him, therefore, believe that" 
 his soul acts by itself, or without a 
 cause, in any one moment of his exist- 
 ence; it is, conjointly with the body, 
 submitted to the impulse of beings who i 
 act on him necessarily, and according.] 
 to their various properties. Wine, taken 
 in too great a quantity, necessarily dis- 
 turbs his ideas, causes confusion in his 
 corporeal functions, occasions disorder 
 in his mental faculties. 
 
 If there really existed a being in 
 nature with the capability of moving 
 itself by its own peculiar energies, that 
 is to say, able to produce motion inde- 
 pendent of all other causes, such a 
 being would have the power of arrest- 
 ing itself, or of suspending the motion 
 of the universe, which is nothing more 
 than an immense chain of causes linked 
 one to the other, acting and reacting 
 by necessary and by immutable laws, 
 which cannot be changed or suspended, 
 unless the essences of every thing in it 
 were changed nay, annihilated. In 
 the general system of the world, nothing 
 more can be perceived than a long series 
 of motion, received and communicated 
 in succession by beings capacitated to 
 give impulse to each other: it is thus 
 that each body is moved, by the collision
 
 OF THE SOUL. 
 
 79 
 
 of some other body. The invisible mo- 
 tion of his soul , is to be attributed to 
 causes concealed within himself; he 
 believes that it is moved by itself, 
 because he does ^ot see the springs 
 which put it in motion, or because he 
 conceives those motive-powers are in- 
 capable of producing the effects he so 
 much admires : but, does he more 
 clearly conceive how a spark in ex- 
 ploding gunpowder is capable of pro- 
 ducing the terrible effects he witnesses? 
 The source of his errours arises from 
 this, that he regards his body as gross 
 and inert, whilst this body is a sensible 
 machine, which has necessarily an 
 instantaneous conscience the moment 
 it receives an impression, and which is 
 conscious of its own existence by the 
 recollection of impressions successively 
 experienced ; memory, by resuscitating 
 an impression anteriorly received, by 
 detaining it, or by causing an impression 
 which it receives to remain, whilst it 
 associates it with another, then with 
 a third, gives all the mechanism of 
 reasoning. 
 
 An idea, which is only an impercep- 
 tible modification of the brain, gives 
 play to the organ of speech, which dis- 
 plays itself by the motion it excites in 
 the tongue : this, in its turn, breeds 
 ideas, thoughts, passions, in those beings 
 who are provided with organs suscep- 
 tible of receiving analogous motion; 
 in consequence of which, the wills of 
 a great number of men are influenced, 
 who, combining their efforts, produce 
 a revolution in a state, or even have an 
 influence over the entire globe. It is 
 thus that an Alexander decided the 
 fate of Asia ; it is thus that a Mahomet 
 changed the face of the earth ; it is thus 
 that imperceptible causes produce the 
 most terrible, the most extended effects, 
 by a series of necessary motion im- 
 printed on the brain of man. 
 
 The difficulty of comprehending the 
 effects produced on the soul of man, 
 has made him attribute to it those 
 incomprehensible qualities which have 
 been examined. By the aid of imagina- 
 tion, by the power of thought, this soul 
 appears to quit his body, to transport 
 itself with the utmost facility towards 
 the most distant objects; to run over 
 and to approximate in the twinkling of 
 an eye all the points of the universe : 
 he has therefore believed that a being. 
 
 who is susceptible of such rapid motion, 
 must be of a nature very distinguished 
 from all others ; he has persuaded him- 
 self that this soul in reality does travel, 
 that it actually springs over the immense 
 space necessary to meet these various 
 objects ; he did not perceive, that to do 
 it in an instant, it had only to run over 
 itself, and approximate the ideas con- 
 signed to its keeping by means of the 
 senses. 
 
 Indeed, it is never by any other means 
 than by his senses, that beings become 
 known to man, or furnish him with 
 ideas ; it is only in consequence of the 
 impulse given to his body, that his brain 
 is modified ; or that his soul thinks, wills, 
 and acts. If, as Aristotle asserted more 
 than two thousand years ago, " nothing 
 enters the mind of man, but through, 
 the medium of his sensts ;" it follows 
 as a consequence, that every thing that 
 issues from it, must find some sensible 
 object to which it can attach its ideas, 
 whether immediately, as a man, a tree, 
 a bird, &c., or in the last analysis or 
 decomposition, such as pleasure, happi- 
 ness, vice, virtue, &c.* Whenever, 
 therefore, a word or its idea, does not 
 connect itself with some sensible object, 
 to which it can be related, this word, 
 or this idea, is unmeaning, is void of 
 sense : it were better for man that the 
 idea was banished from his mind, struck 
 out of his language. This principle is 
 only the converse of the axiom of Aris- 
 totle ; if the direct be evident, the inverse 
 must be so likewise. 
 
 How has it happened, that the pro- 
 found Locke, who, to the great morti- 
 fication of the metaphysicians, has 
 placed this principle of Aristotle in the 
 clearest point of view ; how is it that 
 all those who, like him, have recognised 
 the absurdity of the system of innate 
 ideas, have not drawn the immediate 
 and necessary consequences 1 How 
 has it come to pass, that they have not 
 had sufficient courage to apply so clear 
 a principle to all those fanciful chimeras 
 with which the human mind has for 
 such a length of time been so vainly 
 occupied 1 Did they not perceive, that 
 their principle sapped the very founda- 
 
 * This principle, so true, so luminous, so 
 important in its consequence, has been set 
 forth in all its lustre by a great number of 
 philosophers; among the rest, by the great 
 Locke.
 
 80 
 
 OF THE SOUL, 
 
 lions of that theology, which never 
 occupies man but with those objects, of 
 which, as they are inaccessible to his 
 senses, he, consequently, can never 
 form to himself any accurate idea ? 
 But prejudice, particularly when it is 
 held sacred, prevents him from seeing 
 the most simple application of the most 
 self-evident principles ; in religious mat- 
 ters, the greatest men are frequently 
 nqthing more than children, who are 
 -incapable of either foreseeing or de- 
 ducing the consequence of their own 
 data. 
 
 Locke, as well as all those who have 
 adopted his system, which is so demon- 
 . strable, or the axiom of Aristotle, which 
 is" so clear, ought to have concluded 
 from it, that all those wonderful things 
 with which theologians have amused 
 themselves, are mere chimeras ; that 
 an immaterial spirit or substance, with- 
 out extent, without parts, is nothing 
 more than an absence of ideas ; in short, 
 they ought to have felt, that the ineffable 
 intelligence which they have supposed 
 to preside at the helm of the world, is 
 nothing more than a being of their own 
 imagination, of which it is impossible 
 his senses can ever prove either the 
 existence or the qualities. 
 
 For the same reason moral philoso- 
 phers ought to have concluded, that 
 what is called moral sentiment, moral 
 instinct, that is, innate ideas of virtue, 
 anterior to all experience of the good 
 or bad effects resulting from its practice, 
 are mere chimerical notions, which, like 
 a great many others, have for their 
 guarantee and base only theological 
 speculation.* Before man can judge, 
 he must feel ; before he can distinguish 
 good from evil, he must compare. 
 
 To undeceive him with respect to 
 innate ideas or modifications imprinted 
 on his soul at the moment of his birth, 
 it is simply requisite to recur to their 
 source; he will then see, that those 
 
 * Morals is a science of facts : to found 
 it, therefore, on an hypothesis inaccessible 
 to his senses, of which he has no means 
 of proving the reality, is to render it uncer 
 tain ; it is to cast the log of discord into his 
 lap ; to cause him unceasingly to dispute upon 
 that which he can never understand. To 
 assert that the ideas of morals are innate, or 
 the effect of instinct, is to pretend that man 
 knows how to read before he has learned the 
 letters of the alphabet ; that he is acquainted 
 with the laws of society, before they are either 
 made or promulgated. " 
 
 with which he is familiar, which have, 
 as it were, identified themselves with 
 his existence, have all come to him 
 through the medium of some of his 
 senses; that they are sometimes en- 
 graven on his brain with great difficulty, 
 that they have never been permanent,, 
 and that they have perpetually varied 
 in him : he will see that these pretended 
 inherent ideas of his soul, are the effect 
 of education, of example, above all, of 
 habit, which, by reiterated motion, has 
 taught his brain to associate his ideas, 
 either in a confused or perspicuous 
 manner ; to familiarize itself with sys- 
 tems, either rational or absurd. In short, 
 he takes those for innate ideas, of which 
 he has forgotten the origin ; he no longer 
 recalls to himself either the precise 
 epoch or the successive circumstances 
 when these ideas were first consigned 
 to his brain : arrived at a certain age, 
 he believes he has always had the same 
 notions ; his memory, crowded with 
 experience and a multitude of facts, 
 is no longer able to distinguish the 
 particular circumstances which have 
 contributed to give his brain its present 
 modifications, its instantanetfus mode 
 of thinking, its actual opinions. For 
 example, not one of his race recollects 
 the first time the word God struck his 
 ears, the first ideas that it formed in 
 him, the first thoughts that it produced 
 in him ; nevertheless, it is certain that 
 from thence he has searched for some 
 being with whom to connect the idea 
 which he has either formed to himself, 
 or which has been suggested to him: 
 accustomed to hear God continually 
 spoken of, he has, when in other respects 
 most enlightened, regarded this idea as 
 if it were infused into him by nature ; 
 whilst it is clearly to be attributed to 
 those delineations of it which his pa- 
 rents or his instructers have made to 
 him, and which he has afterwards modi 
 fied according to his own particular 
 organization, and the circumstances in 
 which he has been placed : it is thu? 
 that each individual forms to himself 
 a God of which he is himself the model, 
 or which he modifies after his own 
 fash ion. f 
 
 His ideas of morals, although more 
 real than those of metaphysics, are not, 
 however, innate : the moral sentiments 
 he forms on the will, or the judgment 
 
 t See Vol. II., Chapter iv.
 
 OF THE SOUL. 
 
 he passes on the actions of man, are 
 founded on experience, which, alone, 
 can enable him to discriminate those 
 which are either useful or prejudicial, 
 virtuous or vicious, honest or dishonest, 
 worthy his esteem or deserving his cen- 
 sure. His moral sentiments are the fruit 
 of a multitude of experience, frequently 
 very long and very complicated. He 
 gathers it with time : it is more or less 
 faithful, by reason of his particular 
 organization, and the causes by which 
 he is modified ; he ultimately applies 
 this experience with greater or lesser 
 facility, and on this depends his habit 
 of judging. The celerity with whic 
 he applies his experience, when h 
 judges of the moral actions of hi 
 fellow man, is what has been terme 
 moral instinct. 
 
 That which in natural philosophy is 
 called instinct, is only the effect of 
 some want of the body, the consequence 
 of some attraction, or some repulsion, 
 in man or animals. The child that is 
 newly bqrn, sucks for the first time: 
 the nipple of the breast is put into 
 his mouih : the natural analogy that is 
 found between the conglomerate glands 
 which line his mouth, and the milk 
 which flows from the bosom of the 
 nurse through the medium of the nipple, 
 causes the child to press it with his 
 mouth, in order to express the fluid 
 appropriate to nourish his tender age ; 
 from all this the infant gathers' expe- 
 rience ; by degrees the ideas of a nipple, 
 of milk, of pleasure, associate them- 
 selves in his brain, and every time he 
 sees the nipple, he seizes it, promptly 
 conveys it to his mouth, and applies it 
 to the use for which it is designed. 
 
 What has been said will enable us 
 to judge of those prompt and sudden 
 sentiments, which have been designated 
 the force of blood. Those sentiments"! 
 of love, which fathers and mothers have 
 for their children; those feelings of 
 affection, which children, with good 
 inclinations, bear towards their parents, 
 are by no means innate sentiments ; 
 they are nothing more than the effect 
 of experience, of reflection, of habit, in 
 souls of sensibility. These sentimentsj 
 do not even exist in a great number of 
 human beings. We but too often wit- 
 ness tyrannical parents, occupied with 
 making enemies of their children, who 
 appear to have been formed only to 
 
 No. III. 11 
 
 be the victims of their irrational ca- 
 prices. 
 
 From the instant in which man com- 
 mences, until that in which he ceases 
 to exist, he feels, he is moved either 
 agreeably or unpleasantly, he collects 
 facts, he gathers experience, which pro- 
 duce ideas in his brain that are either 
 cheerful or gloomy. Not one individual 
 has this experience present to his memo- 
 ry at the same time, nor does it ever 
 represent to him the whole clew at once : 
 it is however this experience that me- 
 chanically, and without his knowledge, 
 directs him in all his actions-; it was to 
 designate the rapidity with which he 
 applied this experience, of which he so 
 frequently loses the connexion, of which 
 he is so often at a loss to render himself 
 an account, that he imagined the word 
 instinct : it appears to be the effect of 
 a magical and supernatural power to 
 the greater number of individuals ; but 
 it is a Avord devoid of sense to many 
 others ; however, to the philosopher it 
 is the effect of a very lively feeling, 
 which, to him, consists in the faculty 
 of .combining promptly a multitude of 
 experiences and a long and numerous 
 train of extremely complicated ideas. 
 It is want that causes the inexplicable 
 instinct we behold in animals, which 
 have been denied souls without reason ; 
 whilst they are susceptible of an infinity 
 qf actions that prove they think, they 
 judge, have memory, are capable of 
 experience, can combine ide&s, can 
 apply them with more or less facility 
 to satisfy the wants engendered by their 
 particular organization; in short, that 
 prove they have passions, and that these 
 are capable of being modified.* 
 
 The embarrassments which animals 
 have thrown in the way of the partisans 
 of the doctrine of spirituality is well 
 known : they have been fearful, if they 
 allowed them to have a spiritual soul, 
 of elevating them to the condition of 
 humarr creatures ; on the other hand, 
 in not allowing them to have a soul, 
 they have furnished their adversaries 
 with authority to deny it in like manner 
 
 * Nothing but the height of folly can refuse 
 intellectual faculties to animals; they feel, 
 choose, deliberate, express love, show hati sd ; 
 in many instances their senses are much keener 
 than those of man. Fish will return periodi- 
 cally to the spot whers it is the custom to 
 throw them bread.
 
 OF THE SOUL. 
 
 to man, who thus finds himself debased 
 to the condition of the animal. Theo- 
 logians have never known how to extri- 
 cate themselves from this difficulty. 
 Descartes fancied he solved it by say- 
 ing that beasts have no souls, are mere 
 machines. Nothing can be nearer the 
 surface than the absurdity of this prin- 
 ciple. Whoever contemplates nature 
 without prejudice, will readily acknow- 
 ledge, that there is no other difference 
 between the man and the beast than 1 
 that which is to be attributed to the 
 diversity of his organization. 
 
 In some beings of the human species, 
 who appear to be endowed with a greater 
 sensibility of organs than others, may 
 be seen an instinct, by the assistance 
 of which they very promptly judge of 
 the concealed dispositions of their fel- 
 lows, simply by inspecting the linea- 
 ments of their face. Those who are 
 denominated physiognomists, are only 
 men of very acute feelings, who have 
 gathered an experience of which others, 
 whether from the coarseness of their 
 organs, from the little attention they 
 have paid, or from some defect in their 
 senses, are totally incapable : these last 
 do not believe in the science of physi- 
 ognomy, which appears to them per- 
 fectly ideal. Nevertheless, it is certain 
 that the action of this soul, which has 
 been made spiritual, makes impressions 
 that are extremely marked upon the. 
 exterior of the body ; these impressions 
 continually reiterated, their image re- 
 mains : thus, the habitual passions of 
 man paint themselves on his counte- 
 nance, by which the attentive observer, 
 who is endowed with acute feeling, is 
 enabled to judge with great rapidity of 
 his mode of existence, and even to 
 foresee his actions, his inclinations, his 
 desires, his predominant passions, &c. 
 Although the science of physiognomy 
 appears chimerical to a great number 
 of persons, yet there are few who have 
 not a clear idea of a tender regard, of 
 a cruel eye, of an austere aspect, of a 
 false and dissimulating look, of an open 
 countenance, &c. Keen and practised 
 optics acquire, without doubt, the faculty 
 of penetrating the concealed motion of 
 the soul, by the visible traces it leaves 
 upon features that it has continually 
 modified. Above all, the eyes of man 
 very quickly undergo changes, accord- 
 ing to the motion which is excited in 
 
 him : these delicate organs are visibly 
 altered by the smallest shock com- 
 municated to his brain. Serene eyes 
 announce a tranquil soul ; wild eyes 
 indicate a restless mind ; fiery eyes 
 portray a choleric and sanguine tem- 
 perament ; fickle or inconstant eyes 
 give room to suspect a soul either 
 alarmed or dissimulating. It is the 
 study of this variety of shades that 
 renders man practised and acute : upon 
 the spot he combines a multitude of 
 acquired experience, in order to form 
 his judgment of the person he beholds. 
 His judgment partakes in nothing of 
 the supernatural or the wonderful : 
 such a man is only distinguished by 
 the fineness of his organs, and by the 
 celerity with which his brain performs 
 its functions. 
 
 It is the same with some beings of 
 the human species, in whom may be 
 discovered an extraordinary sagacity, 
 which to the uninformed appears Divine 
 and miraculous.* Indeed, we see men 
 who are capable of appreciating in the 
 twinkling of an eye a multitude of cir- 
 cumstances, and who have sometimes 
 the faculty of foreseeing the most dis- 
 tant events, yet this species of prophetic 
 talent has nothing in it of the super- 
 natural ; it indicates nothing more than 
 great experience, with an extremely 
 delicate organization, from which they 
 derive the faculty of judging with ex- 
 treme facility of causes, and of fore- 
 seeing their very remote effects. This 
 faculty is also found in animals, who 
 foresee much better than man the varia- 
 tions of the atmosphere, with the various 
 changes of the weather. Birds have 
 long been the prophets and even the 
 guides of several nations who pretend 
 to be extremely enlightened. 
 
 It is, then, to their organization, 
 exercised after a particular manner, 
 that must be attributed those won- 
 drous faculties which distinguish some 
 beings. To have instinct only signifies 
 to judge quickly, without requiring to 
 make a long reasoning on the subject. 
 Man's ideas upon vice and upon virtue 
 are by no means innate ; they are, like 
 
 * It appears that the most skilful practi- 
 tioners in medicine have been men endowed 
 with very acute feelings, similar to those of the 
 physiognomists, by the assistance of which 
 they judged with great facility of diseases, and 
 very promptly drew their prognostics.
 
 OP THE SOUL. 
 
 all others, acquired; the judgment he 
 forms is founded upon experience, whe- 
 ther true or false : this depends upon 
 his conformation, and upon the habits 
 that have modified him. The infant 
 has no ideas either of the Divinity 01 
 of virtue : it is from those who instruct 
 him that he receives these ideas : he 
 makes more or less use of them, accord- 
 ing to his natural organization, or as 
 his dispositions have been more or less 
 exercised. Nature gives man legs, t 
 nurse teaches him their use, his agilit^ 
 depends upon their natural conforma- 
 tion, and the manner in which he 
 exercises them. 
 
 What is called taste in the fine arts, 
 is to be attributed, in the same manner, 
 only to the acuteness of man's organs 
 practised by the habit of seeing, of 
 comparing, and of judging certain ob- 
 jects: from whence results, to some of 
 his species, the faculty of judging with 
 great rapidity, or in the twinkling of 
 an eye, the whole with its various rela- 
 tions. It is by the force of seeing, of 
 feeling, of experiencing objects, that 
 he attains to a knowledge of them ; it 
 is in consequence of reiterating this 
 experience, that he acquires the power 
 and the habit of judging with celerity. 
 But this experience is by no means 
 innate, for he did not possess it before 
 he was born ; he is neither able to think, 
 to judge, nor to have ideas, before he 
 has feeling ; he is neither in a capacity 
 to love nor to hate ; to approve nor to 
 blame, before he has been moved either 
 agreeably or disagreeably. This is, 
 however, what must be supposed by 
 those who are desirous to make man 
 admit innate ideas, or opinions infused 
 by nature, whether in morals, theology, 
 or in any science. That his mind 
 should have the faculty of thought, 
 and should occupy itself with an object. 
 it is requisite it should be acquainted 
 with its qualities ; that it may have a 
 knowledge of these qualities, it is neces- 
 sary that some of his senses should have 
 been struck by them : those objects, 
 therefore, of which he does not know 
 any of the qualities are nullities, or at 
 least they do not exist for him. 
 
 It will be asserted, perhaps, that the 
 universal consent of man upon certain 
 propositions, such as the whole is 
 greater than its part, and upon all 
 geometrical demonstrations, appear to 
 
 warrant the supposition of certain pri- 
 mary notions that are innate, or not 
 acquired. It may be replied, that these 
 notions are always acquired, and that 
 they are the fruit of an experience more 
 or less prompt ; that it is requisite to 
 have compared the whole with its part 
 before conviction can ensue that the 
 whole is the greater of the two. Man, 
 when he is born, does not bring with 
 him the idea that two and two make 
 dour; but he is, nevertheless, very 
 'speedily convinced of its truth. Be- 
 fore forming any judgment whatever, 
 it is absolutely necessary to have com- 
 pared facts. 
 
 It is evident that those who have 
 gratuitously supposed innate ideas, or 
 notions inherent in man, have con- 
 founded his organization, or his natur- 
 al dispositions, with the habit by which 
 he is modified, and with the greater or 
 less aptitude he has of making experi- 
 ments, and of applying them in his 
 judgment. A man who has taste in 
 painting, has, without doubt, brought 
 with him into the world eyes more 
 acute and more penetrating than an- 
 other; but these eyes would by no 
 means enable him to judge with 
 promptitude if he had never had occa- 
 sion to exercise them ; much less, in 
 some respects, can those dispositions 
 which are called natural be regarded 
 as innate. Man is not at twenty years 
 of age the same as he was when he 
 came into the world ; the physical 
 causes that are continually acting upon 
 him, necessarily have an influence upo| 
 his organization, and so modify it, th^t 
 liis natural dispositions themselves a|e 
 not at one period what they are at ap- 
 other.* Every day may be seen chil- 
 dren who, to a certain age, display a 
 great deal of ingenuity, a strong apti- 
 tude for the sciences, and who finish 
 by falling into stupidity. Others may 
 ae observed, \vho, during their infancy, 
 lave shown dispositions but little fa- 
 vourable to improvement, yet develop 
 themselves in the end, and astonish us 
 
 * "We think," says La Motte Le Vayer, 
 1 quite otherwise of things at one time than at 
 another : when young than when old when 
 lungry than when our appetite is satisfied 
 n the night than in the day when peevish 
 :han when cheerful ; thus varying every hour, 
 ">y a thousand other circumstances which 
 ceep us in a state of perpetual inconstancy 
 and instability."
 
 84 
 
 OF THE SOUL. 
 
 by an exhibition of those qualities of 
 which we judged them deficient: there 
 arrives a moment in which the mind 
 makes use of a multitude of experience 
 which it has amassed without its hav- 
 ing been perceived, and, if I may be 
 allowed the expression, without their 
 own knowledge. 
 
 Thus, it cannot be too often repeat- 
 ed, all the ideas, all the notions, all the 
 modes of existence, all the thoughts of 
 man are acquired. His mind cannot 
 act and exercise itself but upon that of 
 which it has knowledge ; it can under- 
 stand either well or ill only those things 
 which it has previously felt. Such of 
 his ideas that do not suppose some ex- 
 terior material object for their model, 
 or one to which he is able to relate 
 them, which are therefore called ab- 
 stract ideas, are only modes in which 
 his interior organ considers its own pe- 
 culiar modifications, of which it chooses 
 some without respect to others. The 
 words which he uses to designate these 
 ideas, such as bounty, beauty, order, 
 intelligence, virtue, &c., do not offer 
 any one sense if he does not relate them 
 to, or if he does not explain them by 
 those objects which his senses have 
 shown him to be susceptible of those 
 qualities, or of those modes of exist- 
 ence and of acting, which are known 
 to him. What is it that points out to 
 him the vague idea of beauty, if he 
 does not attach it to some object that 
 has struck his senses in a particular 
 manner, to which, in consequence, he 
 attributes this quality ? What is it 
 that represents the word intelligence, 
 if he does not connect it with a certain 
 mode of being and of acting? Does 
 the word order signify any thing, if he 
 does not relate it to a series of actions, 
 to a chain of motion, by which he is 
 affected in a certain manner? Is not 
 the word virtue void of sense, if he 
 does not apply it to those dispositions 
 of his fellows which -produce known 
 effects, different from those which re- 
 sult from contrary inclinations ? What 
 do the words pain and pleasure offer 
 to his mind in the moment Avhen his 
 organs neither suffer nor enjoy, if it be 
 not the modes in which he has been 
 affected, of which his brain conserves 
 the remembrance or the impressions, 
 and which experience has shown him 
 to be either useful or prejudicial ? But 
 
 when he hears the words spirituality, 
 immateriality, incorporeality, divini- 
 ty, &c., pronounced, neither his senses 
 nor his memory afford him any assist- 
 ance: they do not furnish him Avith 
 any means by which he can form an 
 idea of their qualities, nor of the objects 
 to which he ought to apply them : in 
 that which is not matter, he can only 
 see vacuum and emptiness, which can- 
 not be susceptible of any one quality. 
 
 All the errours and all the disputes 
 of men, have their foundation in this, 
 that they have renounced experience 
 and the evidence of their senses, to give 
 themselves up to the guidance of no- 
 tions which they have believed infused 
 or innate, although in reality they are 
 no more than the effect of a distemper- 
 ed imagination; of prejudices in which 
 they have been instructed from their 
 infancy ; with which habit has famili- 
 arized them ; and which authority has 
 obliged them to conserve. Languages 
 are rilled with abstract words, to which 
 are attached confused and vague ideas ; 
 of which, when they come to be ex- 
 amined, no model can be found in na- 
 ture ; no object to which they can be 
 related. When man gives himself the 
 trouble to analyze things, he is quite 
 surprised to find that those words which 
 are continually in the mouths of men, 
 never present any fixed and determi- 
 nate idea: he hears them unceasingly 
 speaking of spirits of the soul and 
 its faculties of God and his attributes 
 of duration of space of immen- 
 sity of infinity of perfection of 
 virtue of reason of sentiment of 
 instinct of taste, &c., without his 
 being able to tell precisely Avhat they 
 themselves understand by these words. 
 And yet words appear to have been in- 
 vented but for the purpose of represent- 
 ing the images of things, or to paint, 
 by the assistance of the senses, those 
 knoAvn objects on Avhich the mind is 
 able to meditate, which it is compe- 
 tent to appreciate, to compare, and to 
 judge. 
 
 For man to think of that Avhich has 
 not acted on any of his senses, is to 
 think on words: it is a dream of sounds; 
 it is to seek in his own imagination for 
 objects to which he can attach his 
 Avandenng ideas. To assign qualities 
 to these objects is, unquestionably, to 
 redouble his extravagance. The word
 
 OF THE SOUL. 
 
 85 
 
 God is destined to represent to him an 
 object that has not the capacity to act 
 on any one of his organs, of which, con- 
 sequently, it is impossible for him to 
 prove either the existence or the quali- 
 ties ; still, his imagination, by dint of 
 racking itself, Will in some measure 
 supply him with the ideas he wants, 
 ind compose some kind of a picture 
 Avith the images or colours he is always 
 obliged to borrow from those objects 
 of which he has a knowledge : thus the 
 Divinity has been represented under 
 the character of a venerable old man, 
 or under that of a puissant monarch, 
 &c. It is evident, however, that man 
 with some of his qualities has served 
 for the model of this picture. But if 
 he be informed that this God is a pure 
 spirit ; that has neither body nor ex- 
 tent ; that he is not contained in space ; 
 that he is beyond nature ; here then he 
 Is plunged into emptiness ; his mind 
 no longer has any ideas : it no longer 
 knows upon what it meditates. This, 
 as will be seen in the sequel, is the 
 source of those unformed notions which 
 men have formed of the divinity ; they 
 themselves annihilate him, by assem- 
 bling incompatible and contradictory 
 attributes.* In giving him moral and 
 'known qualities, they make him a 
 man ; in assigning him the negative 
 attributes of theology, they destroy all 
 antecedent ideas ; they make him a 
 mere nothing a chimera. From this 
 it will appear that those sublime sci- 
 ences which are called theology, psy- 
 chology, metaphysics, have been mere 
 sciences of words: morals and politics, 
 which they too often infect, have, in 
 consequence, become inexplicable enig- 
 mas, which nothing short of the study 
 of nature can enable us to expound. 
 f _ Man has occasion for truth ; it con- 
 I sists in a knowledge of the true rela- 
 j tions he has with those things which 
 can have an influence on his welfare : 
 these relations are to be known only by 
 experience : without experience there 
 can be no reason ; without reason man 
 is only a blind creature who conducts 
 himself by chance. But how is he to 
 acquire experience upon ideal objects, 
 which his senses neither enable him 
 to know nor to examine ? How is he 
 to assure himself of the existence and 
 
 * See Vol. II., Chap. iv. 
 
 the qualities of beings he is not able to 
 feel ? How can he judge whether 
 these objects be favourable or prejudi- 
 cial to him ? How is he to know what 
 he ought to love, what he should hate, 
 what to seek after, what to shun, what 
 to do, what to leave undone ? Yet it 
 is upon this knowledge that his condi- 
 tion in this world rests the only world 
 of which he knows any thing ; it is 
 upon this knowledge that morals is 
 founded. From whence it may be seen, 
 that, by causing him to blend vague 
 theological notions with morals, or the 
 science of the certain and invariable re- 
 lations which subsist between man- 
 kind, or by weakly establishing them 
 upon chimerical beings, which have no 
 existence but in his imagination, this 
 science, upon which the welfare of so- 
 ciety so much depends, is rendered 
 uncertain and arbitrary, is abandoned 
 to the caprices of fancy, is not fixed 
 upon any solid basis. 
 
 Beings essentially different by their 
 natural organization, by the modifica- 
 tions they experience, by the habits 
 they contract, by the opinions they ac- 
 quire, must of necessity think different- 
 ly. His temperament, as we have seen, 
 decides the mental qualities of man ; 
 this temperament itself, is diversely 
 modified in him ; from whence it con- 
 secutively follows, his imagination can- 
 not possibly be the same, neither can 
 it create to him the same images. 
 Each individual is a connected whole, 
 of which all the parts have a necessary 
 correspondence. Different eyes must 
 see differently, must give extremely 
 varied ideas of the objects they con- 
 template, even when these objects are 
 real. What, then, must be the diver- 
 sity of these ideas if the objects medi- 
 tated upon do not act upon the senses ? 
 Mankind have pretty nearly the same 
 ideas, in the gross, of those substances 
 that act on his organs with vivacity; 
 he is sufficiently in unison upon some 
 qualities which he contemplates very 
 nearly in the same manner ; I say very 
 nearly, because the intelligence, the 
 notion, the conviction of any one pro- 
 position, however simple, however evi- 
 dent, however clear it may be suppos- 
 ed, is not, nor cannot be strictly the 
 same in any two men. Indeed, one 
 man not being another man, the first 
 cannot, for example, have rigorously
 
 68 
 
 OF THE SOUL. 
 
 and mathematically the same notion 
 of unity as the second, seeing that an 
 identical effect cannot be the result of 
 two different causes. Thus when men 
 agree in their ideas, in their modes of 
 thinking, in their judgment, in their 
 passions, in their desires, and in their 
 tastes, their consent does not arise from 
 their seeing or feeling the same objects 
 precisely in the same manner, but 
 pretty nearly, for language is not,, nor 
 cannot be, sufficiently copious to de- 
 signate the vast variety of shades, the 
 multiplicity of imperceptible differ- 
 ences which are to be found in their 
 modes of seeing and thinking. Each 
 man has, I may say, a language which 
 is peculiar to himself alone, and this 
 language is incommunicable to others. 
 What harmony, then, can possibly ex- 
 ist between them when they discourse 
 with each other upon objects only 
 known to their imagination 1 Can 
 this imagination in one individual, ever 
 be the same as in another 1 How can 
 they possibly understand each other 
 when they assign to these objects quali- 
 ties that can only be attributed to the 
 particular manner in which their brain 
 is affected. 
 
 For one man to exact from another 
 that he shall think like himself, is to 
 insist that he shall be organized pre- 
 cisely in the same manner, that he shall 
 have been modified exactly the same in 
 every moment of his existence ; that 
 he shall have received the same tem- 
 perament, the same nourishment, the 
 same education ; in a word, that he 
 shall require that other to be himself. 
 Wherefore is it not exacted that all 
 men shall have the same features ? Is 
 man more the master of his opinions ? 
 Are not his opinions the necessary con- 
 sequence of his nature, and of those 
 peculiar circumstances which, from his 
 infancy, have necessarily had an influ- 
 ence upon his mode of thinking and his 
 manner of acting? If man be a con- 
 nected whole, Avhenever a single fea- 
 ture differs from his own, ought he not 
 to conclude that it is not possible his 
 brain can either think, associate ideas, 
 imagine, or dream precisely in the 
 same manner with that other. 
 
 The diversity in the temperament 
 of man is the natural and necessary 
 source of the diversity of his passions, 
 of his taste, of his ideas of happiness, 
 
 of his opinions of every kind. Thus 
 the same diversity will be the fatal 
 source of his disputes, of his hatreds, 
 and of his injustice, every time he shall 
 reason upon unknown objects, but to 
 which he shall attach the greatest im- 
 portance. He will never understand 
 either himself or others in speaking of 
 a spiritual soul, or of an immaterial God 
 distinguished from nature; he will, 
 from that moment, cease to speak the 
 same language, and he will never at- 
 tach the same ideas to the same words. 
 What, then, shall be the common 
 standard that shall decide which is the 
 man that thinks most correctly ? What 
 is the scale by which to measure who 
 has the best regulated imagination ? 
 what balance shall be found sufficient- 
 ly exact to determine whose knowledge 
 is most certain when he agitates sub- 
 jects which experience cannot enable 
 him to examine ; that escape all his 
 senses; that have no model; that are 
 above reason? Each individual, each 
 legislator, each speculator, each nation, 
 has ever formed to himself different 
 ideas of these things, and each believes 
 that his own peculiar reveries ought to 
 be preferred to those of his neighbours ; 
 which always appear to him as absurd, 
 as ridiculous, as false as his own can 
 possibly have appeared to his fellow. 
 Each clings to his own opinion, be- 
 cause each retains his own peculiar 
 mode of existence, and believes his 
 happiness depends upon his attachment 
 to his prejudices, which he never 
 adopts but because he believes them 
 beneficial to his welfare. Propose to 
 a man to change his religion for yours, 
 he will believe you a madman ; you 
 will only excite his indignation, elicit 
 his contempt ; he will propose to you, 
 in his turn, to adopt his own peculiar 
 opinions ; after much reasoning, you 
 will treat each other as absurd beings, 
 ridiculously opiniated and stubborn ; 
 and he will display the least folly who 
 shall first yield. But if the adversaries 
 become heated in the dispute, which 
 always happens when they suppose the 
 matter important, or when they Avould 
 defend the cause of their own self-love, 
 then their passions sharpen, they grow 
 angry, quarrels are provoked, they hate 
 each other, and end by reciprocal in- 
 jury. It is thus, that for opinions 
 which no man can demonstrate, we
 
 OF THE SOUL. 
 
 see the Brahmin despised; the Mo- 
 hammedan hated ; the Pagan held in 
 contempt; and that they oppress and 
 disdain each other with the most ran- 
 corous animosity : the Christian burns 
 the Jew because he clings to the faith 
 of his fathers ; the Roman Catholic 
 condemns the Prote%tant to the flames, 
 and makes a conscience of massacring 
 him in cold blood ; this reacts in his 
 turn ; again the various sects of Chris- 
 tians have leagued together against the 
 incredulous, and for a moment sus- 
 pended their own bloody disputes, that 
 they might chastise their enemies : 
 then, having glutted their revenge, they 
 returned with redoubled fury to wreak 
 over again their infuriated vengeance 
 on each other. 
 
 If the imaginations of men were the 
 same, the chimeras which they bring 
 forth would be everywhere the same ; 
 there would be no disputes among them 
 on this subject if they all dreamt in the 
 same manner; great numbers of hu- 
 man beings would be spared, if man 
 occupied his mind with objects capable 
 of being known, of which the existence 
 was proved, of which he was compe- 
 tent to discover the true qualities by 
 sure and reiterated experience. Sys- 
 tems of philosophy are subject to dis- 
 pute only when their principles are not 
 sufficiently proved ; by degrees expe- 
 rience, in pointing out the truth, ter- 
 minates these quarrels. There is no 
 variance among geometricians upon 
 the principles of their science ; it is 
 only raised when their suppositions are 
 false, or their objects too much com- 
 plicated. Theologians find so much 
 difficulty in agreeing among them- 
 selves, simply because in their contests 
 they divide without ceasing, not known 
 and examined propositions, but preju- 
 dices with which they have been im- 
 bued in their youth, in the schools, in 
 their books, &c. They are perpetually 
 reasoning, not upon real objects, of 
 which the existence is demonstrated, 
 but upon imaginary systems, of which 
 they have never examined the reality ; 
 they found these disputes not upon 
 averred experience nor upon constant 
 facts, but upon gratuitous suppositions, 
 which each endeavours to convince the 
 other are without solidity. Finding 
 these ideas of long standing, and that 
 few people refuse to admit them, they 
 
 take them for incontestable truths, that 
 ought to be received merely upon being 
 announced ; whenever they attach great 
 importance to them, they irritate them- 
 selves against the temerity of those 
 who have the audacity to doubt, or even 
 to examine them. 
 
 If prejudice had been laid aside, it 1 
 would perhaps have been discovered 
 that many of those objects which have 
 given birth to the most shocking, the 
 most sanguinary disputes among men, 
 were mere phantoms which a little ex- 
 amination would have shown to be un- 
 worthy their notice. The most trifling 
 reflection would have shown him the 
 necessity of this diversity in his no- 
 tions, of this contrariety in his imagina- 
 tion, which depends upon his natural 
 conformation diversely modified, and 
 which necessarily has an influence over 
 his thoughts, over his will, and over 
 his actions. In short, if he had con- 
 sulted morals and reason, every thing 
 would have proved to him, that beings 
 who call themselves rational, were 
 made to think variously, without on 
 that account, ceasing to live peaceably 
 with each other, love each other, and 
 lend each other mutual succours ; and 
 that whatever might be their opinions 
 upon subjects either impossible to be 
 known or to be contemplated under the 
 same point of view : every thing would 
 have joined in evidence to convince him 
 of the unreasonable tyranny, of the un- 
 just violence, and of the useless cruelty 
 of those men of blood, who persecute 
 mankind in order that they may mould 
 others to their own peculiar opinions : 
 every thing would have conducted 
 mortals to mildness, to indulgence, to 
 toleration; virtues unquestionably of 
 more real importance to the welfare 
 of society than the marvellous specula- 
 tions by which it is divided, and by 
 which it is frequently hurried on to sa- 
 crifice the pretended enemies to these 
 revered opinions. 
 
 From this it must be evident of what 
 importance it is to morals to examine 
 the ideas to which it has been agreed to 
 attach so much worth, and to which 
 man, at the irrational command of fan- 
 atical and cruel guides, is continually 
 sacrificing his own peculiar happiness 
 and the tranquillity of nations. Let 
 lim return to experience, to nature, and 
 o reason ; let him consult those objects
 
 OF MAN'S FREE AGENCY. 
 
 that are real and useful to his perma- 
 nent felicity ; let him study nature's 
 laws; let him study himself; let him 
 consult the bonds which unite him to 
 his fellow mortals ; let him tear asun- 
 der the fictitious bonds that enchain 
 him to a mere phantom. If his ima- 
 gination must always feed itself with 
 illusions, if he remains steadfast in his 
 own opinions, if his prejudices are dear 
 to him, let him at least permit others 
 to ramble in their own manner or seek 
 after truth as best suits their inclina- 
 tion ; but let him always recollect, that 
 all the opinions, all the ideas, all the 
 systems, all the wills, all the actions 
 of man, are the necessary consequence 
 of his nature, of his temperament, of 
 his organization, and of those causes, 
 e ; ther transitory or constant, which 
 modify him : in short, that man is not 
 more a free agent to think than to act : 
 a truth that will be again proved in the 
 following chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Of the System of Man's Free Agency. 
 
 THOSE who have pretended that the 
 soul is distinguished from the body, is 
 immaterial, draws its ideas from its 
 own peculiar source, acts by its own 
 energies, without the aid of any exterior 
 object, have, by a consequence of their 
 own system, enfranchised it from those 
 physical laws according to which all 
 beings of which we have a knowledge 
 are obliged to act. They have believed 
 that the soul is mistress of its own 
 conduct, is able to regulate its own 
 peculiar operations, has the faculty to 
 determine its will by its own natural 
 energy ; in a word, they have pretended 
 that man is a. free agent. 
 
 It has been already sufficiently proved 
 that the soul is nothing more than the 
 :' body considered relatively to some of its 
 ( functions more concealed than others: 
 it has been shown that this soul, even 
 when it shall be supposed immaterial, 
 is continually modified conjointly with 
 the body, is submitted to all its motion, 
 and that without this it would remain 
 inert and dead : that, consequently, it 
 is subjected to the influence of those 
 material and physical causes which 
 give impulse to the body ; of which 
 the mode of existence, whether habitual 
 
 or transitory, depends upon the material 
 elements by which it is surrounded, 
 that form its texture, constitute its tem- 
 perament, enter into it by means of the 
 aliments, and penetrate it by their sub- 
 tility. The faculties which are called 
 intellectual, and those qualities which 
 are styled raoraZ, h^ve been explained 
 in a manner purely physical and natu- 
 ral. In the last place it has been demon- 
 strated that all the ideas, all the systems, 
 all the affections, all the opinions, whe- 
 ther true or false, which man forms to 
 himself, are to be attributed to his 
 physical and material senses. Thus 
 man is a being purely physical ; in 
 whatever manner he is considered, he 
 is connected to universal nature, and 
 submitted to the necessary and immu- 
 table laws that she imposes on all the 
 beings she contains, according to their 
 peculiar essences or to the respective 
 properties with which, without consult- 
 ing them, she endows each particular 
 species. Man's life is a line that nature 
 commands him to describe upon the 
 surface of the earth, without his ever 
 being able to swerve from it. even for 
 an instant. He is born without hisl 
 own consent ; his organization does in' 
 nowise depend upon himself; his ideas 1 
 come to him involuntarily ; his habits 
 are in the power of those who cause 
 him to contract them ; he is unceasingly 
 modified by causes, whether visible or 
 concealed, over which he has no con- 
 trol, which necessarily regulate his 
 mode of existence, give the hue to his 
 way of thinking, and determine his 
 manner of acting. He is good or bad, 
 happy or miserable, wise or foolish, 
 reasonable or irrational, without his 
 will being for any thing in these various 
 states. Nevertheless, in despite of the 
 shackles by Avhich he is bound, it is 
 pretended he is a free agent, or that 
 independent of the causes by which he 
 is moved, he determines his own will, 
 and regulates his own condition. 
 
 However slender the foundation of 
 this opinion, of which every thing ought 
 to point out to him the errour, it is 
 current at this day and passes for an 
 incontestable truth with a great number 
 of people, otherwise extremely enlight- 
 ened ; it is the basis of religion, which, 
 supposing relations between man and 
 the unknown being she has placed above 
 nature, has been incapable of imagining
 
 OF MAN'S FREE AGENCY. 
 
 how man could either merit reward or 
 deserve punishment from this being, 
 if he was not a free agent. Society 
 has been believed interested in this 
 system ; because an idea has gone 
 abroad, that if all the actions of man 
 were to be contemplated as necessary, 
 the right of punishing those who injure 
 their associates would no longer exist. 
 At length human vanity accommodated 
 itself to a hypothesis which, unques- 
 tionably, appears to distinguish man 
 from all other physical beings, by 
 assigning to him the special privilege 
 of a total independence of all other 
 causes, but of which a very little reflec- 
 tion would have shown him the impos- 
 sibility. 
 
 As a part subordinate to the great 
 Whole, man is obliged to experience its 
 influence. To be a free agent, it were 
 needful that each individual was of 
 greater strength than the entire of 
 nature ; or that he was out of this 
 nature, who, always in action herself, 
 obliges all the beings she embrace? to 
 act, and to concur to her general motion ; 
 or, as it has been said elsewhere, to 
 conserve her active existence by the 
 motion that all beings produce in con- 
 sequence of their particular energies, 
 submitted to fixed, eternal, and immu- 
 table laws. In order that man might 
 be a free agent, it were needful that all 
 beings should lose their essences; it 
 would be equally necessary that he 
 himself should no longer enjoy physical 
 sensibility ; that he should neither know 
 good nor evil, pleasure nor pain ; but if 
 this were the case, from that moment he 
 would no longer be in a state to con- 
 serve himself, or render his existence 
 happy ; all beings would become in- 
 different to him; he would no longer 
 have any choice ; he would cease to 
 know what he ought to love, what it 
 was right he should fear ; he would 
 not have any acquaintance with that 
 which he should seek after, or with 
 that which it is requisite he should 
 avoid. In short, man would be an 
 unnatural being, totally incapable of 
 acting in the manner we behold. It is 
 the actual essence of man to tend to 
 his well being, or to be desirous to 
 conserve his existence ; if all the motion 
 of his machine spring as a necessary 
 consequence from this primitive im- 
 pulse ; if pain warn him of that which 
 
 No. III. 12 
 
 he ought to avoid; if pleasure announce 
 to him that which he should desire ; if 
 it be in his essence to love that which 
 either excites delight, or that from 
 which he expects agreeable sensations; 
 to hate that which either makes him 
 fear contrary impressions or that which 
 afflicts him with uneasiness; it must 
 necessarily be that he will be attracted 
 by that which he deems advantageous ; 
 that his will shall be determined by 
 those objects which he judges useful; 
 that he will be repelled by those beings 
 which he believes prejudicial, either to 
 his habitual or to his transitory mode 
 of existence. It is only by the aid of 
 experience that man acquires the faculty 
 of understanding what he ought to love 
 or to fear. Are his organs sound 1 his 
 experience will he true ; are they un- 
 sound? it will be false: in the first 
 instance he will have reason, prudence, 
 foresight ; he will frequently foresee 
 very remote effects ; he will know that 
 what he sometimes contemplates as a 
 good, may possibly become an evil by 
 its necessary or probable consequences ; 
 that what must be to him a transient 
 evil, may by its result procure him a 
 solid and durable good. It is thus 
 experience enables him to foresee, that 
 the amputation of a limb will cause 
 him painful sensation, he consequently 
 is obliged to fear this operation, and he 
 endeavours to avoid the pain ; but, if 
 experience has also shown him that 
 the transitory pain this amputation will 
 cause him may be the means of saving 
 his life ; the preservation of his exist- 
 ence being of necessity dear to him, 
 he is obliged to submit himself to the 
 momentary pain, with a view to pro- 
 curing a permanent good by which it 
 will be overbalanced. 
 
 The will, as we have elsewhere said, 
 is a modification of the brain, by which 
 it is disposed to action, or prepared to 
 give play to the organs. This will is 
 necessarily determined by the qualities, 
 good or bad, agreeable or painful, of the 
 object or the motive that acts upon his 
 senses, or of which the idea remains 
 with him, and is resuscitated by his 
 memory. In consequence, he acts ne- 
 cessarily, his action is the result of the 
 impulse he receives either from the 
 motive, from the object, or from the 
 idea which has modified his brain, or 
 disposed his will. When he does not
 
 90 
 
 OF MAN'S FREE AGENCY. 
 
 act according to this impulse, it is 
 because there comes some new cause, 
 some new motive, some new idea, 
 which modifies his brain in a different 
 manner, gives him a new impulse, 
 determines his will in another way, 
 by which the action of the former 
 impulse is suspended: thus, the sight 
 of an agreeable object, or its idea, 
 determines his will to set him in action 
 to procure it ; but if a new object or a 
 new idea more powerfully attracts him, 
 it gives a new direction to his will, 
 annihilates the effect of the former, 
 and prevents the action by which it 
 was to be procured. This is the mode 
 in which reflection, experience, reason, 
 necessarily arrests or suspends the ac- 
 tion of man's will : without this he 
 would of necessity have followed the 
 anterior impulse which carried him 
 towards a then desirable object. In 
 all this he always acts according to 
 necessary laws, from which he has no 
 means of emancipating himself. 
 
 If when tormented with violent thirst, 
 he figures to himself in idea, or really 
 perceives a fountain, whose limpid 
 streams might cool his feverish want, 
 is he sufficient master of himself to 
 desire or not to desire the object com- 
 petent to satisfy so lively a want? It 
 will no doubt be conceded, that it is 
 impossible he should not be desirous 
 to satisfy it ; but it will be said if at 
 this moment it is announced to him 
 that the Avater he so ardently desires 
 is poisoned, he will, notwithstanding 
 his vehement thirst, abstain from drink- 
 ing it : and it has, therefore, been falsely 
 concluded that he is a free agent. The 
 fact, however, is, that the motive in 
 either case is exactly the same : his 
 own conservation. The same necessity 
 that determined him to drink before he 
 knew the water was deleterious, upon 
 this new discovery equally determines 
 him not to drink; the desire of con- 
 serving himself either annihilates or 
 suspends the former impulse ; the 
 second motive becomes stronger than 
 the preceding, that is, the fear of death, 
 or the desire of preserving himself, 
 necessarily prevails over the painful 
 sensation caused by his eagerness to 
 drink : but, it will be said, if the thirst 
 is very parching, an inconsiderate man 
 without regarding the danger will risk 
 swallowing the water. Nothing is 
 
 gained by this remark: in this case, 
 the anterior impulse only regains the 
 ascendency ; he is persuaded that life 
 may possibly be longer preserved, or 
 that he shall derive a greater good by 
 drinking the poisoned water than by 
 enduring the torment, which, to his 
 mind, threatens instant dissolution : 
 thus the first becomes the strongest 
 and necessarily urges him on to action. 
 Nevertheless, in either case, whether 
 he partakes of the water, or whether 
 he does not, the two actions will be 
 equally necessary ; they will be the 
 effect of that motive which finds itself 
 most puissant ; which consequently acts 
 in the most coercive manner upon his 
 will. 
 
 This example will serve to explain 
 the whole phenomena of the human 
 will. This will, or rather the brain, 
 finds itself in the same situation as a 
 bowl, which, although it has received 
 an impulse that drives it forward in a 
 straight line, is deranged in its course 
 whenever a force superior to the first 
 obliges it to change its direction. The 
 man who drinks the poisoned water 
 appears a madman; but the actions of 
 fools are as necessary as those of the 
 most prudent individuals. The motives 
 that determine the voluptuary and the 
 debauchee to risk their health, are as 
 powerful, and their actions are as neces- 
 sary, as those which decide the wise 
 man to manage his. But, it will be 
 insisted, the debauchee may be pre- 
 vailed on to change his conduct : this 
 does not imply that he is a free agent ; 
 but that motives may be found suffi- 
 ciently powerful to annihilate the effect 
 of those that previously acted upon him ; 
 then these new motives determine his 
 will to the new mode of conduct he 
 may adopt as necessarily as the former 
 diJ to the old mode. 
 
 Man is said to deliberate, when the 
 action of the will is suspended ; this 
 happens when two opposite motives 
 act alternately upon him. To delibe- 
 rate, is to hate and to love in succession; 
 it is to be alternately attracted and re- 
 pelled ; it is to be moved, sometimes 
 by one motive, sometimes by another. 
 Man only deliberates when he does 
 not distinctly understand the quality 
 of the objects from which he receives 
 impulse, or when experience has not 
 sufficiently apprised him of the effect?"
 
 OF MAN'S FREE AGENCY". 
 
 more or less remote, which his actions 
 will produce. He would take the air, 
 but the weather is uncertain ; he delibe- 
 rates in consequence ; he weighs the 
 various motives that urge his will to go 
 out or to stay at home ; he is at length 
 determined by that motive which is 
 most probable ; this removes his inde- 
 cision, which necessarily settles his 
 will, either to remain within or to go 
 abroad : this motive is always either 
 the immediate or ultimate advantage 
 he finds, or thinks he finds, in the action 
 to which he is persuaded. 
 
 Man's will frequently fluctuates be- 
 tween two objects, of which either the 
 presence or the ideas move him alter- 
 nately : he waits until he has contem- 
 plated the objects, or the ideas they 
 have left in his brain which solicit him 
 to different actions; he then compares 
 these objects or ideas ; but even in the 
 time of deliberation, during the com- 
 parison, pending these alternatives of 
 love and hatred which succeed each 
 other, sometimes with the utmost ra- 
 pidity, he is not a free agent for a single 
 instant ; the good or the evil which he- 
 believes he finds successively in the 
 objects, are the necessary motives of 
 these momentary wills; of the rapid 
 motion of desire or fear, that he expe- 
 riences as long as his uncertainty con- 
 tinues. From this it will be obvious 
 that deliberation is necessary ; that 
 uncertainty is necessary ; that what- 
 ever part he takes, in consequence of 
 this deliberation, it will always neces- 
 sarily be that which he has judged, 
 whether well or ill, is most probable to 
 turn to his advantage. 
 
 When the soul is assailed by two 
 motives that act alternately upon it, 
 or modify it successively, it deliberates; 
 the brain is in a sort of equilibrium, 
 accompanied with perpetual oscilla- 
 tions, sometimes towards one object, 
 sometimes towards the other, until the 
 most forcible carries the point, and 
 thereby extricates it from this state of 
 suspense, in which consists the inde- 
 cision of his will. But when the brain 
 is simultaneously assailed by causes 
 equally strong that move it in opposite 
 directions, agreeable to the general law 
 of all bodies when they are struck 
 equally by contrary powers, it stops, 
 it is in nisu; it is neither capable to 
 will nor to act ; it waits until one of 
 
 the two causes has obtained sufficient 
 force to overpower the other ; to deter- 
 mine its will; to attract it in such a 
 manner that it may prevail over the 
 efforts of the other cause. 
 
 This mechanism, so simple, so natu- 
 ral, suffices to demonstrate why uncer- 
 tainty is painful, and why suspense is 
 always a violent state for man. The 
 brain, an organ so delicate and so 
 mobile, experiences such rapid modi- 
 fications that it is fatigued ; or when it 
 is urged in contrary directions, by causes 
 equally powerful, it suffers a kind of 
 compression, that prevents the activity 
 which is suitable to the preservation of 
 the whole, and which is necessary to 
 procure what is advantageous to its 
 existence. This mechanism will also 
 explain the irregularity, the indecision, 
 the inconstancy of man, and account 
 for that conduct which frequently ap- 
 pears an inexplicable mystery, and 
 which is, indeed, the effect of the 
 received systems. In consulting expe- 
 rience, it will be found that the soul is 
 submitted to precisely the same physi- 
 cal laws as the material body. If the 
 will of each individual, during a given 
 time, was only moved by a single cause 
 or passion, nothing would be more easy 
 than to foresee his actions; but his 
 heart is frequently assailed by contrary 
 powers, by adverse motives, which 
 either act on him simultaneously or in 
 succession ; then his brain, attracted in 
 opposite directions, is either fatigued, 
 or else tormented by a state of com- 
 pression, which deprives it of activity. 
 Sometimes it is in a state of incom- 
 modious inaction ; sometimes it is the 
 sport of the alternate shocks it under- 
 goes. Such, no doubt, is the state in 
 which man finds himselt when a lively 
 passion solicits him to the commission 
 of crime, whilst fear points out to him 
 the danger by which it is attended : 
 such, also, is the condition of him whom 
 remorse, by the continued labour of his 
 distracted soul, prevents from enjoying 
 the objects he has criminally obtained. 
 
 If the powers or causes, whether 
 exterior or interior, acting on the mind 
 of man, tend towards opposite points, 
 his soul, as well a? all other bodies, 
 will take a mean direction between the 
 two ; and in consequence of the violence 
 with which his soul is urged, his con- 
 dition becomes sometimes so painful
 
 92 
 
 OF MAN'S FREE AGENCY. 
 
 that his existence is troublesome : he 
 has no longer a tendency to his own 
 peculiar conservation ; he seeks after 
 death as a sanctuary against himself, 
 and as the only remedy to his despair : 
 it is thus we behold men, miserable 
 and discontented, voluntarily destroy 
 themselves whenever life becomes in- 
 supportable. Man cannot cherish his 
 existence any longer than life holds out 
 charms to him: when he is wrought 
 upon by painful sensations, or drawn 
 by contrary impulsions, his natural 
 tendency is deranged ; he is under the 
 necessity to follow a new route ; this 
 conducts him to his end, which it even 
 displays to him as the most desirable 
 good. In this manner may be explained 
 the conduct of those melancholy beings, 
 whose vicious temperaments, whose 
 tortured consciences, whose chagrin, 
 whose ennui sometimes determine them 
 to renounce life.* 
 
 The various powers, frequently very 
 complicated, that act either successively 
 or simultaneously upon the brain of man, 
 which modify him so diversely in the 
 different periods of his existence, are the 
 true causes of that obscurity in morals, 
 of that difficulty which is found, when 
 it is desired to unravel the concealed 
 springs of his enigmatical conduct. The 
 heart of man is a labyrinth, only because 
 it very rarely happens that we possess 
 the necessary gift of judging it ; from 
 whence it will appear, that his circum- 
 stances, his indecision, his conduct, 
 whether ridiculous or unexpected, are 
 the necessary consequences of the 
 changes operated in him ; are nothing 
 but the effect of motives that succes- 
 sively determine his will ; which are 
 dependant on the frequent variations 
 experienced by his machine. According 
 to these variations the same motives 
 have not always the same influence 
 over his will ; the same objects no 
 longer enjoy the faculty of pleasing 
 him ; his temperament has changed, 
 either for the moment, or for ever: it 
 follows as a consequence, that his taste, 
 his desires, his passions, will change ; 
 
 * See Chapter xiv. Man is oftener induced 
 to destroy himself by mental than by bodily 
 pains. A thousand things may cause him to 
 forget his bodily sufferings, whilst in those of 
 the mind his brain is whollv absorbed ; and 
 this is the reason why intellectual pleasures 
 are superior to all others. 
 
 there can be no kind of uniformity in 
 his conduct; nor any certitude in the 
 effects to be expected. 
 
 Choice by no means proves the free 
 agency of man : he only deliberates 
 when he does not yet know which to 
 choose of the many objects that move 
 him, he is then in an embarrassment, 
 which does not terminate until his will 
 is decided by the greater advantage he 
 believes he shall find in the object he 
 chooses, or the action he undertakes. 
 From whence it may be seen, that 
 choice is necessary, because he Avould 
 not determine for an object, or for an 
 action, if he did not believe that he 
 should find ink some direct advantage. 
 That man should have free agency it 
 were needful that he should be able to 
 will or choose without motive, or that 
 he could prevent motives coercing his 
 will. Action always being the effect 
 of his will once determined, and as his 
 will cannot be determined but by a 
 motive which is not in his own power, 
 it follows that he is never the master 
 of the determination of his own pecu- 
 liar will ; that consequently he never 
 acts as a free agent. It has been be- 
 lieved that man was a free agent be- 
 cause he had a will with the power of 
 choosing; but attention has not been 
 paid to the fact that even his will is 
 moved by causes independent of him- 
 self; is owing to that which is inherent 
 in his own organization, or which be- 
 longs to the nature of the beings acting 
 on him.t Is he the master of willing 
 not to withdraw his hand from the tire 
 when he fears it will be burnt ? Or 
 has he the power to take away from 
 fire the property which makes him fear 
 it? Is he the master of not choosing a 
 dish of meal, which he knows to be 
 agreeable, or analogous to his palate ; 
 
 t Man passes a great portion of his life 
 without even willing. His will depends on 
 the motive by which he is determined. If he 
 were to render an exact account of every thing 
 he does in the course of each day from rising 
 in the morning to lying down at night he 
 would find that not one of his actions have been 
 in the least voluntary ; that they have been 
 mechanical, habitual, determined by causes 
 he was not able to foresee ; to which he was 
 either obliged to yield, or with which he was 
 allured to acquiesce : he would discover, that 
 all the motives of his labours, of his amuse- 
 ments, of his discourses, of his thoughts, have 
 been necessary; that they have evidently 
 I either seduced him or drawn him along.
 
 OF MAN'S FREE AGENCY. 
 
 93 
 
 of not preferring it to that which he 
 Jknows to be disagreeable or dangerous? 
 It is always according to his sensa- 
 tions, to his own peculiar experience, 
 or to his suppositions, that he judges 
 of things, either well or ill; but what- 
 ever may be his judgment, it depends 
 necessarily on his mode of feeling, 
 whether habitual or accidental, and the 
 qualities he finds in the causes that 
 move him, which exist in despite of 
 himself. 
 
 All the causes by which his will is 
 actuated, must act upon him in a man- 
 ner sufficiently marked to give him 
 some sensation, some perception, some 
 idea ; whether complete or incomplete, 
 true or false: as soon as his will is de- 
 termined, he must have felt either 
 strongly or feebly ; if this was not the 
 case he would have determined with- 
 out motive : thus, to speak correctly, 
 there are no causes which are truly in- 
 different to the will : however faint the 
 impulse he receives, whether on the 
 part of the objects themselves, or on 
 the part of their images or ideas, as 
 soon as his will acts, the impulse has 
 been competent to determine him. In 
 consequence of a slight or feeble im- 
 pulse, the will is weak ; it is this weak- 
 ness in his will, that is called indiffer- 
 ence. His brain with difficulty per- 
 ceives the sensation it has received ; it 
 consequently acts with less vigour, 
 either to obtain or to remove the object 
 or the idea that has modified it. If the 
 impulse is powerful, the will is strong, 
 it makes him act vigorously to obtain 
 or to remove the object which appears 
 to him either very agreeable or very in- 
 commodious. 
 
 It has been believed that man was a 
 free agent, because it has been imagin- 
 ed that his soul could at will recall ideas 
 which sometimes suffice to check his 
 most unruly desires.* Thus, the idea 
 of a remote evil, frequently prevents 
 him from enjoying a present and actual 
 good : thus remembrance, which is an 
 almost insensible or slight modification 
 of his brain, annihilates, at each in- 
 stant, the real objects that act upon his 
 will. But he is not master of recalling 
 to himself his ideas at pleasure; their 
 association is independent of him; they 
 
 * St. Augustine says : " Non enim cuiquam 
 in potestate est quid veniat in mentem." 
 
 are arranged in his brain in despite of 
 him and without his own knowledge, 
 where they have made an impression 
 more or less profound ; his memory it- 
 self depends upon his organization ; its 
 fidelity depends upon the habitual or 
 momentary state in which he finds him- 
 self; when his will is vigorously deter- 
 mined to some object or idea that 
 excites a very lively passion in him, 
 those objects or ideas that would be 
 able to arrest his action, no longer pre- 
 sent themselves to his mind ; in those 
 moments his eyes are shut to the 
 dangers that menace him; of which the 
 idea ought to make him forbear; he 
 marches forwards headlong towards 
 the object by whose image he is hur- 
 ried on ; reflection cannot operate upon 
 him in any way ; he sees nothing but 
 the object of his desires ; the salutary 
 ideas which might be able to arrest his 
 progress disappear, or else display 
 themselves either too faintly or too late 
 to prevent his acting. Such is the case 
 with all those who, blinded by some 
 trong passion, are not in a condition to 
 recall to themselves those motives, of 
 which the idea alone, in cooler mo- 
 ments, would be sufficient to deter them 
 from proceeding ; the disorder in which 
 they are, prevents their judging sound- 
 ly ; renders them incapable of foresee- 
 ing the consequence of their actions ; 
 precludes them from applying to their 
 experience ; from making use of their 
 reason ; natural operations which sup- 
 pose a justness in the manner of asso- 
 ciating their ideas, but to which their 
 brain is then not more competent, in, 
 consequence of the momentary deliri- 
 um it suffers, than their hand is to 
 write whilst they are taking violent 
 exercise. 
 
 Man's mode of thinking is necessari- 
 ly determined by his manner of being; 
 it must therefore depend on his natural 
 organization, and the modification his 
 system receives independently of his 
 will. From this, we are obliged to 
 onclude, that his thoughts, his reflec- 
 tions, his manner of viewing things, of 
 feeling, of judging, of combining ideas, 
 is neither voluntary nor free. In a 
 word, that his soul is neither mistress 
 of the motion excited in it, nor of rep- 
 resenting to itself, when wanted, those 
 images or ideas that are capable of 
 counterbalancing the impulse it re-
 
 OF MAN'S FREE AGENCY. 
 
 ceives. This is the reason, why man, 
 when in a passion, ceases to reason ; at 
 that moment reason is as impossible to 
 be heard, as it is during an ecstacy, or 
 in a fit of drunkenness. The wicked 
 are never more than men Avho are 
 either drunk or mad ; if they reason, it 
 is not until tranquillity is re-establish^ 
 ed in their machine ; then, and not til| 
 then, the tardy ideas that present them- 
 selves to their mind enable them to see 
 the consequence of their actions, and 
 give birth to ideas that bring on them 
 that trouble, which is designated shame, 
 regret, remorse. 
 
 The errours of philosophers on the 
 free agency of man, have arisen from 
 their regarding his will as theprimum 
 mobile, the original motive of his ac- 
 tions ; for want of recurring back, they 
 have not perceived the multiplied, the 
 complicated causes which, independ- 
 ently of him. give motion to the will 
 itself; or which dispose and modify 
 his brain, whilst he himself is purely 
 passive in the motion he receives. Is 
 he the master of desiring or not desir- 
 ing an object that appears desirable to 
 him? Without doubt it will be an- 
 swered, no : but he is the master of re- 
 sisting his desire, if he reflects on the 
 consequences. But, I ask, is he capa- 
 ble of reflecting on these consequences, 
 when his soul is hurried along by a 
 very lively passion, which entirely de- 
 pends upon his natural organization, 
 and the causes by which he is modi- 
 fied 1 Is it in his power to add to these 
 consequences all the weight necessary 
 to counterbalance his desire? Is he 
 the master of preventing the qualities 
 which render an object desirable from 
 residing in it? I shall be told: he 
 ought to have learned to resist his pas- 
 sions ; to contract a habit of putting a 
 a curb on his desires. I agree to it 
 Avithout any difficulty. But in reply, I 
 again ask, is his nature susceptible of 
 this modification ? Does his boiling 
 blood, his unruly imagination, the ig- 
 neous fluid that circulates in his veins, 
 permit him to make, enable him to ap- 
 ply true experience in the moment 
 when it is wanted? And even when 
 his temperament has capacitated him, 
 has his education, the examples set be- 
 fore him, the ideas with which he has 
 been inspired in early life, been suitable 
 to make him contract this habit of re- 
 
 pressing his desires? Have not all 
 these things rather contributed to in- 
 duce him to seek with avidity, to make 
 him actually desire those objects which 
 jiou say he ought to resist. 
 f* The ambitious man cries out : you 
 will have me resist my passion ; but 
 fhave they not unceasingly repeated to 
 me that rank, honours'; power, are the 
 most desirable advantages in life ? 
 Have I not seen my fellow citizens 
 envy them, the nobles of my country 
 sacrifice every thing to obtain them ? 
 In the society in which I live, am I not 
 obliged to feel, that if I am deprived 
 of these advantages, I must expect to 
 languish in contempt ; to cringe under 
 the rod of oppression ? 
 
 The miser says : you forbid me to 
 love money, to seek after the means of 
 acquiring it : alas ! does not every thing 
 tell me that, in this world, money is 
 the greatest blessing ; that it is amply 
 sufficient to render me happy ? In the 
 country I inhabit, do I not see all my 
 fellow citizens covetous of riches ? but 
 do I not also witness that they are little 
 scrupulous in the means of obtaining 
 wealth ? As soon as they are enrich- 
 ed by the means which you censure, 
 are they not cherished, considered and 
 respected ? By what authority, then, 
 do you defend me from amassing trea- 
 sure ? what right have you to prevent 
 my using means, which, although you 
 call them sordid and criminal, I see ap- 
 proved by the sovereign ? Will you 
 have me renounce my happiness ? 
 
 The voluptuary argues : you pre 
 tend that I should resist my desires ; 
 but was I the maker of my own tem- 
 perament, which unceasingly invites 
 me to pleasure ? You call my plea- 
 sures disgraceful ; but in the country 
 in which I live, do I not witness the 
 most dissipated men enjoying the most 
 distinguished rank ? Do I not behold 
 that no one is ashamed of adultery but 
 the husband it has outraged ? do not I 
 see men making trophies of their de- 
 baucheries, boasting of their libertinism, 
 rewarded with applanse ? 
 
 The choleric man vociferates : you 
 advise me to put a curb on my passions, 
 and to resist the desire of avenging 
 myself: but can I conquer my nature ? 
 Can I alter the received opinions of the 
 world ? Shall I not be for ever dis- 
 graced, infallibly dishonoured in so-
 
 OF MAN'S FREE AGENCY. 
 
 95 
 
 ciety, if I do not wash out in the blood 
 of my fellow creature the injuries I 
 have received? 
 
 The zealous enthusiast exclaims : 
 you recommend me mildness ; you ad- 
 vise me to be tolerant; to be indulgent 
 to the opinions of my fellow men ; but 
 is not my temperament violent? Do 
 I not ardently love my God ? Dp they 
 not assure me, that zeal is pleasing to 
 him ; that sanguinary inhuman perse- 
 cutors have been his friends ? As I 
 wish to render myself acceptable in 
 his sight, I therefore adopt the same 
 means. 
 
 (r- In short, the actions of man are never 
 free ; they are always the necessary 
 | consequence of his temperament, of the 
 received idea?, and of the notions, 
 I either true or false, which he has form- 
 j ed to himself of happiness ; of his opin- 
 ions, strengthened by example, by edu- 
 cation, and by daily experience. So 
 many crimes are witnessed on the 
 earth only because every thing con- 
 spires to render man vicious and crimi- 
 nal ; the~religion he has adopted, his 
 government, his education, the exam- 
 ples set before him, irresistibly drive 
 him on to evil : under these circum- 
 stances, morality preaches virtue to 
 him in vain. In those societies where 
 vice is esteemed, where crime is crown- 
 ed, where venality is constantly re- 
 compensed, where the most dreadful 
 disorders are punished only in those 
 who are too weak to enjoy the privilege 
 of committing them with impunity, the 
 practice of virtue is considered nothing 
 more than a painful sacrifice of happi- 
 ness. Such societies chastise, in the 
 lower orders, those excesses which they 
 respect in the higher ranks ; and fre- 
 quently have the injustice to condemn 
 those in the penalty of death, whom 
 public prejudices, maintained by con- 
 stant example, have rendered criminal. 
 
 Man, then, is not a free agent in any- 
 one instant of his life ; he is necessari- 
 ly guided in each step by those advan- 
 tages, whether real or fictitious, that he 
 attaches to the objects by which his 
 passions are roused: these passions 
 themselves are necessary in a being 
 who unceasingly tends towards his own 
 happiness ; their energy is necessary, 
 since that depends on his tempera- 
 ment ; his temperament is necessary, 
 because it depends on the physical ele- 
 
 ments which enter into his composi- 
 tion ; the modification of this tempera- 
 ment is necessary, as it is the infalli- 
 ble and inevitable consequence of the 
 impulse he receives from the incessant 
 action of moral and physical beings. 
 
 In despite of these proofs of the want 
 of free agency in man, so clear to un- 
 prejudiced minds, it will, perhaps, be 
 insisted upon with no small feeling of 
 triumph, that if it be proposed to any 
 one, to move or not to move his hand, 
 an action in the number of those called 
 indifferent, he evidently appears to be 
 the master of choosing ; from which it 
 is concluded that evidence has been 
 offered of his free agency. The reply 
 is, this example is perfectly simple ; 
 man in performing some action which 
 he is resolved on doing, does not by 
 any means prove his free agency : the 
 very desire of displaying this quality, 
 excited by the dispute, becomes a ne- 
 cessary motive, which decides his will 
 either for the one or the other of these 
 actions : what deludes him in this in- 
 stance, or that which persuades him he 
 is a free agent at this moment, is, that 
 he does not discern the true motive 
 which sets him in action, namely, the 
 desire of convincing his opponent: if 
 in the heat of the dispute he insists and 
 asks, " Am I not the master of throwing 
 myself out of the window ?" I shall 
 answer him, no ; that whilst he pre- 
 serves his reason there is no probability 
 that the desire of proving his free 
 agency, will become a motive suffi- 
 ciently powerful to make him sacrifice 
 his life to the attempt: if, notwith- 
 standing this, to prove he is a free 
 agent, he should actually precipitate 
 himself from the window, it would not 
 be a sufficient warranty to conclude 
 he acted freely, but rather that it was 
 the violence of his temperament which 
 spurred him on to this folly. Madness 
 is a state, that depends upon the heat 
 of the blood, not upon the will. A 
 fanatic or a hero, braves death as ne- 
 cessarily as a more phlegmatic man or 
 a coward flies from it.* 
 
 * There is, in point of fact, no difference 
 between the man that is cast out of the win- 
 dow by another, and the man who throws 
 himself out of it, except that the impulse in 
 the first instance comes immediately from 
 without, whilst that which determines the 
 fall in the second case, springs from within 
 his own peculiar machine, having its more re-
 
 9G 
 
 OF MAX'S FREE AGENCY. 
 
 It i.s said that free agency is the ab- 
 sence of those obstacles competent to 
 oppose themselves to the actions of 
 man. or to the exercise of his faculties : 
 it is pretended that he is a free agent 
 whenever, making use of these facul- 
 ties, he produces the effect he has pro- 
 posed to himself. In reply to this rea- 
 soning, it is sufficient to consider that 
 it in nowise depends upon himself to 
 place or remove the obstacles that 
 either determine or resist him ; the 
 motive that causes his action is no 
 more in his own power than the obsta- 
 cle that impedes him, whether this ob- 
 stacle or motive be within his own ma- 
 chine or exterior of his person : he 
 is not master of the thought presented 
 to his mind, which determines his will ; 
 this thought is excited by some cause 
 independent of himself. 
 
 To be undeceived on the system of 
 his free agency, man has simply to re- 
 cur to the motive by which his will is 
 determined ; he will always find this 
 motive is out of his own controul. It 
 is said : that in consequence of an idea 
 to which the mind gives birth, man acts 
 freely if he encounters no obstacle. 
 But the question is, what gives birth to 
 this idea in his brain? was he the 
 master either to prevent it from pre- 
 senting itself, or from renewing itself 
 in his brain ? Does not this idea depend 
 either upon objects that strike him ex- 
 teriorly and in despite of himself, or 
 upon causes, that without his know- 
 ledge, act within himself and modify 
 his brain ? Can he prevent his eyes, 
 cast without design upon any object 
 whatever, from giving him an idea of 
 this object, and from moving his brain? 
 He is not more master of the obstacles ; 
 they are the necessary effects of either 
 interior or exterior causes, which al- 
 
 mote cause also exterior. When Mutius 
 Scaevola held his hand in the fire, he was as 
 much acting under the influence of necessity 
 (caused by interior motives') that urged him 
 to this strange action, as if his arm had been 
 held by strong men : pride, despair, the desire 
 of braving his enemy, a wish to astonish him, 
 an anxiety to intimidate him, &c., were the 
 invisible chains that held his hand bound to 
 the fire. The love of glory, enthusiasm for 
 their country, in like manner caused Codrus 
 and Decius to devote themselves for their 
 fellow-citizens. The Indian Colanus and the 
 philosopher Peregrinus were equally obliged 
 to burn themselves, by desire of exciting the 
 astonishment of the Grecian assembly. 
 
 ways act according to their given pro- 
 perties. A man insults a coward, this 
 necessarily irritates him against his in- 
 sulter, but his will cannot vanquish the 
 obstacle that cowardice places to the 
 object of his desire, because his natural 
 conformation, which does not depend 
 upon himself, prevents his having 
 courage. In this case, the coward is 
 insulted in despite of himself; and 
 against his will is obliged patiently to 
 brook the insult he has received. 
 
 The partisans of the system of free 
 agency appear ever to have confound- 
 ed constraint with necessity. Man be- 
 lieves he acts as a free agent, every 
 time he does not see any thing that 
 places obstacles to his actions ; he does 
 not perceive that the motive which 
 causes him to will, is always necessary 
 and independent of himself. A pris- 
 oner loaded with chains is compelled 
 to remain in prison ; but he is not a 
 free agent in the desire to emancipate 
 himself; his chains prevent him from 
 acting, but they do not prevent him 
 from willing ; he would save himself 
 if they would loose his fetters ; but he 
 would not save him, elf as a free agent; 
 fear or the idea of punishment would 
 be sufficient motives for his action. 
 
 Man may, therefore, cease to be 
 restrained, without, for that reason, 
 becoming a free agent : in whatever 
 manner he acts, he will act necessarily, 
 according to motives by which he shall 
 be determined. He may be compared 
 to a heavy body that finds itself arrested 
 in its descent by any obstacle whatever: 
 take away this obstacle, it will gravi- 
 tate or continue to fall; but who shall 
 say this dense body is free to fall or 
 not? Is not its descent the necessary 
 effect of its own specific gravity ? The 
 virtuous Socrates submitted to the laws 
 of his country, although they were 
 unjust; and though the doors of his 
 jail were left open to him, he would 
 not save himself; but in this he did 
 not act as a free agent: the invisible 
 chains of opinion, the secret love of 
 decorum, the inward respect for the 
 laws, even when they were iniquitous, 
 the fear of tarnishing his glory, kept 
 him in his prison ; they were motives 
 sufficiently powerful with this enthu- 
 siast for virtue, to induce him to wait 
 death with tranquillity ; it was not in 
 his power to save himself, because he
 
 OF MAN'S FREE AGENCY. 
 
 97 
 
 could find no potential motive to bring 
 him to depart, even for an instcnt, from 
 those principles to which his mind was 
 accustomed. 
 
 Man, it is said, frequently acts against 
 his inclination, from whence it is falsely 
 concluded ha is a free agent; but when 
 he appears to act contrary to his inclina- 
 tion, he is always determined to it by 
 some motive sufficiently efficacious to 
 vanquish this inclination. A sick man, 
 Avith a view to his cure, arrives at 
 conquering his repugnance to the most 
 disgusting remedies : the fear of pain, 
 or the dread of death, then becomes 
 necessary motives ; consequently this 
 sick man cannot be said to act freely. 
 
 When it is said, that man is not a 
 free agent, it is not pretended to com- 
 pare him to a body moved by a simple 
 impulsive cause : he contains within 
 himself causes inherent to his existence ; 
 he is moved by an interior organ, which 
 has its own peculiar laws, and is itself 
 necessarily determined in consequence 
 of ideas formed from perceptions result- 
 ing from sensations which it receives 
 from exterior objects. As the mechanism 
 of these sensations, of these perceptions, 
 and the manner they engrave ideas on 
 the brain of man, are not known to him ; 
 because he is uuable to unravel all these 
 motions ; because he cannot perceive 
 the chain of operations in his soul, or 
 the motive principle that acts within 
 him, he supposes himself a free agent ; 
 which, literally translated, signifies, 
 that he moves himself by himself; 
 that he determines himself without 
 cause: when he rather ought to say, 
 that he is ignorant how or for why he 
 acts in the manner he does. It is true 
 the soul enjoys an activity peculiar to 
 itself: but it is equally certain that this 
 activity would never be displayed, if 
 some motive or some cause did not put 
 it in a condition to exercise itself: at 
 least it will not be pretended that the 
 soul is able either to love or to hate 
 without being moved, without knowing 
 the objects, without having some idea 
 of their qualities. Gunpowder has 
 unquestionably a particular activity, 
 but this activity will never display 
 itself, unless fire be applied to it ; this, 
 however, immediately sets it in motion. 
 
 It is the great complication of motion 
 in man, it is the variety of his action, 
 it is the multiplicity of causes that move 
 
 No. IV. 13 
 
 him, whether simultaneously or in con- 
 tinual succession, that persuades him 
 he is a free agent : if all his motions 
 were simple, if the causes that move 
 him did not confound themselves with 
 each other, if they were distinct, if his 
 machine were less complicated, he 
 would perceive that all his actions 
 were necessary, because he would be 
 enabled to recur instantly to the cause 
 that made him act. A man who should 
 be always obliged to go towards the 
 west, would always go on that side ; 
 but he would feel that, in so going, he 
 was not a free agent : if he had another 
 sense, as his actions or his motion, 
 augmented by a sixth, would be still 
 more varied and much more compli- 
 cated, he would believe himself still 
 more a free agent than he does with 
 h's five senses. 
 
 It is, then, for want of recurring to 
 the causes that move him ; for want of 
 being able to analyze, from not being 
 competent to decompose the compli- 
 cated motion of his machine, that man 
 believes himself a free agent: it is only 
 upon his own ignorance that he founds 
 the profound yet deceitful notion he 
 has of his free agency ; that he builds 
 those opinions which he brings forward 
 as a striking proof of his pretended 
 freedom of action. If, for a short time, 
 each man was willing to examine his 
 own peculiar actions, search out their 
 true motives to discover their concatena- 
 tion, he would remain convinced that 
 me sentiment he has of his natural free 
 agency, is a chimera that must speedily 
 be destroyed by experience. 
 
 Nevertheless it must be acknowledged 
 that the multiplicity and diversity of the 
 causes which continually act upon man, 
 frequently without even his knowledge, 
 render it impossible, oral least extremely 
 difficult for him to recur to the true prin- 
 ciples of his own peculiar actions, much 
 less the actions of others : they frequent- 
 ly depend upon causes so fugitive, so 
 remote from their effects, and which, 
 superficially examined, appear to have 
 so little analogy, so slender a relation 
 with them, that it requires singular 
 sagacity to bring them into light. This 
 is what renders the study of the moral 
 man a task of such difficulty ; this is 
 the reason why his heart is an abyss, 
 of which it is frequently impossible for 
 him to fathom the depth. He is then
 
 OP MAN'S FREE AGENCY. 
 
 obliged to content himself with a know- 
 ledge of the general and necessary laws 
 by which the human heart is regulated : 
 for the individuals of his own species 
 these laws are pretty nearly the same ; 
 they vary only in consequence of the 
 organization that is peculiar to each, 
 and of the modification it undergoes: 
 this, however, cannot be rigorously the 
 same in any two. It suffices to know, 
 that by his essence, man tends to con- 
 serve himself, and to render his exist" 
 ence happy : this granted, whatever 
 may be his actions, if he recur back 
 to this first principle, to this generalj 
 this necessary tendency of his will, he 
 never can be deceived with regard to 
 his motives. Man, without doubt, for 
 want of cultivating reason and expe- 
 rience, frequently deceives himself upon 
 the means of arriving at this end ; some- 
 times the means he employs are un- 
 pleasant to his fellows, because they 
 are prejudicial to their interests; or 
 else those of which he avails himself 
 appear irrational, because they remove 
 him from the end to which he would 
 approximate : but whatever may be 
 these mean*, they have always neces- 
 sarily and invariably for object either 
 an existing or imaginary happiness, 
 directed to preserve himself in 'a state 
 analogous to his mode of existence, to 
 his manner of feeling, to his way of 
 thinking, whether durable or transitory. 
 It is from having mistaken this truth, 
 that the greater number of moral philo-_ 
 sophers have made rather the romance^ 
 than the history of the human heart ; 
 they have attributed the actions of man 
 to fictitious causes ; at least they have 
 not sought out the necessary motives 
 of his conduct. Politicians and legis- 
 lators have been in the same state of 
 ignorance, or else impostors have found 
 it much shorter to employ imaginaiy 
 motive-powers, than those which really 
 have existence : they have rather chosen 
 to make him tremble under incommo- 
 dious phantoms, than guide him to virtue 
 by the direct road to happiness, notwith- 
 standing the conformity of the latter 
 with the natural desires of his heart. 
 
 However this may be, man either 
 sees or believes he sees much more 
 distinctly the necessary relation of 
 effects with their causes in natural 
 philosophy than in the human heart: 
 at least he sees in the former sensible 
 
 causes constantly produce sensible 
 effects, ever the same, when the cir- 
 cumstances are alike. After this he 
 hesitates not to look upon physical 
 effects as necessary ; whilst he refuses 
 to acknowledge necessity in the acts 
 of the human will : these he has, with- 
 out any just foundation, attributed to a 
 motive-power that acts independently 
 by its own peculiar energy, Avhich is 
 capable of modify ing itself without the 
 concurrence of exterior causes, and 
 which is distinguished from all ma- 
 terial or physical beings. Agriculture 
 is founded upon the assurance, afforded 
 by experience, that the earth, cultivated 
 and sown in a certain manner, when it 
 has otherwise the requisite qualities, 
 will furnish grain, fruit and flowers, 
 either necessary for subsistence or 
 pleasing to the senses. If things were 
 considered without prejudice, it would 
 be perceived, that in morals, education, 
 is nothing more than the agriculture 
 of the mind ; that, like the earth, by 
 reason of its natural disposition, of the 
 culture bestowed upon it, of the seeds 
 with which it is sown, of the seasons, 
 more or less favourable that conduct it 
 to maturity, we may be assured that 
 the soul will produce either virtue or 
 vice moral fruit, that will be either 
 salubrious for man or baneful to society. 
 Morals is the science of the relations 
 that subsist between the minds, the 
 wills, and the actions of men, in the 
 same manner that geometry is the 
 science of the relations that are found 
 between bodies. Morals would be a 
 chimera and would have no certain 
 principles, if it was not founded upon 
 the knowledge of the motives which 
 must necessarily have an influence 
 upon the human will, and which must 
 necessarily determine the actions of 
 human beings. 
 
 If, in the moral as well as in the 
 physical world, a cause, of which the 
 action is not interrupted, be necessarily 
 followed by a given effect, it flows 
 consecutively that a reasonable educa- 
 tion, grafted upon truth, and founded 
 upon wise laws ; that honest principles 
 instilled during youth ; virtuous exam- 
 ples continually held forth ; esteem 
 attached solely to merit and good 
 actions ; contempt and shame and 
 chastisements regularly visiting vice 
 and falsehood and crime, are causes
 
 OP MAN'S FREE AGENCY. 
 
 that would necessarily act on the will 
 of man, and would determine the greater 
 .number of his species to exhibit virtue. 
 But if, on the contrary, religion, politics, 
 example, public opinion, all labour to 
 countenance wickedness and to train 
 man viciously ; if instead of fanning 
 his virtues, they stifle good principles ; 
 if instead of directing his studies to his 
 advantage, they render his education 
 cither useless or unprofitable ; if this 
 education itself, instead of grounding 
 him in virtue, only inoculates him with 
 vice ; if, instead of inculcating reason 
 it imbues him with prejudice ; if, instead 
 of making him enamoured of truth, it 
 furnishes him with false notions and 
 with dangerous opinions ; if, instead of 
 fostering mildness and forbearance, it 
 kindles in his breast only those passions 
 which are incommodious to himself and 
 hurtful to others ; it must be of necessity 
 that the will of the greater number shalj. 
 determine them to evil.* Here, witli- 
 out doubt, is the real source from whence 
 springs that universal corruption of 
 which moralists, with great justice, so 
 loudly complain, without, however, 
 pointing out those causes of the evil, 
 which are as true as they are necessary. 
 Instead of this, they search for it in 
 human nature ; say it is corrupt ;f blame 
 
 * Many authors have acknowledged the 
 importance of a good education, and that 
 youth was the season to feed the human heart 
 with wholesome diet ; but they have not felt 
 that a good education is incompatible, nay 
 impossible, with the superstition of man, since 
 this commences with giving his mind a false 
 bias ; that it is equally inconsistent with arbi- 
 trary government, because this always dreads, 
 lest he should become enlightened, and is ever 
 sedulous to render him servile, mean, con- 
 temptible, and cringing ; that it is incongruous 
 with laws that are too frequently bottomed on 
 injustice; that it cannot obtain with those 
 received customs that are opposed to good 
 sense ; that it cannot exist whilst public 
 opinion is unfavourable to virtue ; above all, 
 that it is absurd to expect it from incapable 
 instructers, from masters with weak minds, 
 who have only the ability to infuse into their 
 scholars those false ideas with which they are 
 themselves infected. 
 
 t We can scarcely conceive a more baneful 
 doctrine than that which inculcates the natu- 
 ral corruption of man, and the absolute need 
 of the grace of God to make him good. Such 
 a doctrine tends necessarily to discourage him; 
 it either makes him sluggish or drives him to 
 despair whilst waiting for this grace. What 
 a strange system of morals is 'that of theo- 
 logians, who attribute all moral evil to an 
 
 man for loving himself; stigmatize him 
 for seeking after his own happiness ; 
 insist that he must have supernatural 
 assistance to enable him to become 
 good ; yet, notwithstanding the sup- 
 posed free agency of man, it is insisted 
 that nothing less than the author of 
 nature himself, is necessary to destroy 
 the wicked desires of his heart : but, 
 alas ! this powerful agent himself is 
 found inefficacious to controul those 
 unhappy propensities, which, under the 
 fatal constitution of things, the most 
 vigorous motives, as has been before 
 observed, are continually infusing into 
 the will of man. He is indeed inces- 
 santly exhorted to resist these passions; 
 to stifle and root them out of his heart: 
 but is it not evident they are necessary 
 to his welfare, and inherent in his 
 nature 1 Does not experience prove 
 them to be useful to his conservation, 
 since they have for object, only to avoid 
 that Avhich may be injurious and to 
 procure that which may be advan- 
 tageous? In short, is it not easy to be 
 seen, that these passions well directed, 
 that is to say, carried towards objects 
 that are truly useful, that are really 
 interesting to himself, which embrace 
 the happiness of others, would neces- 
 sarily contribute to the substantial and 
 permanent well-being of society ? The 
 passions of man are like fire, at once 
 necessary to the wants of life, and 
 equally capable of producing the most 
 terrible ravages.J 
 
 Every thing becomes an impulse to 
 the will : a single word frequently 
 suffices to modify a man for the whole 
 course of his life ; to decide for ever 
 his propensities; an infant, who has 
 burned his finger by having approached 
 it too near to the flame of a lighted 
 taper, is warned that he ought to abstain 
 from indulging a similar temptation ; 
 a man once punished and despised for 
 having committed a dishonest action, 
 is not often tempted to continue so 
 
 original sin, and all moral good to the pardon 
 of it ! But it ought certainly not to excite 
 surprise that a moral system, founded upon 
 such ridiculous hypotheses, is of no efficacy. 
 See Vol. II. chap. viii. 
 
 t Theologians themselves, have felt, they 
 have acknowledged, the necessity of the pas- 
 sions : many of the fathers of the church have 
 broached this doctrine ; among the rest Father 
 Senault has written a book expressly on the 
 subject, entitled, Of the Use of the Passions.
 
 100 
 
 OF MAN'S FREE AGENCY. 
 
 unfavourable a course. Under what- 
 ever point of view man is considered, 
 he never acts but after the impulse 
 given to his will, whether it be by the 
 will of others, or by more perceptible 
 physical causes. The particular organi- 
 zation decides the nature of the impulse ; 
 souls act upon souls that are analogous ; 
 fiery imaginations act with facility upon 
 strong passions, and upon imaginations 
 easy to be intiamed : : the surprising pro- 
 gress of enthusiasm, the hereditary pro- 
 pagation of superstition, the transmis- 
 sion of religious errours from race to 
 race, the excessive ardour Avith \vhich 
 man seizes on the marvellous, are effects 
 as necessary as those which result from 
 the action and reaction of bodies. 
 
 In despite of the gratuitous ideas 
 which man has formed to himself on 
 his pretended free agency ; in defiance 
 of the illusions of this supposed intimate 
 sense, which, maugre his experience, 
 persuades him that he is master of his 
 will ; all his institutions are really 
 founded upon necessity : on this, as on 
 a variety of other occasions, practice 
 throws aside speculation. Indeed, if 
 it was not believed that certain motives 
 embraced the poAver requisite to deter- 
 mine the Avill of man, to arrest the 
 progress of his passions ; to direct them 
 towards an end, to modify him, of what 
 _use Avould be the faculty of speech? 
 What benefit could arise from educa- 
 tion, from legislation, from morals, 
 even from religion itself? What does 
 education achieve, save give the first 
 impulse to the human \vill ; make man 
 contract habits ; oblige him to persist 
 in them; furnish him with motives, 
 whether true or false, to act after a 
 given manner ? When the father either 
 menaces his son with punishment, or 
 promises him a reAvard, is he not con- 
 vinced these things will act upon his 
 will? What does legislation attempt 
 except it be to present to the citizens 
 of a state those motives Avhich are 
 supposed necessary to determine them 
 to perform some actions that are con- 
 sidered worthy ; to abstain from com- 
 mitting others that are looked upon as 
 unworthy ? What is the object of 
 morals, if it be not to show man that 
 his interest exacts he should suppress 
 the momentary ebullition of his pas- 
 sions, with a vieAV to promote a more 
 certain happiness, a more lasting well- 
 
 being, than can possibly result from 
 the gratification of his transitory desires? 
 Does not the religion of all countries 
 suppose the human race, together Avith 
 the entire of nature, submitted to the 
 irresistible \vill of a necessary being 
 who regulates their condition after the 
 eternal laAvs of immutable Avisdom ? 
 Is not this God, which man adores, 
 the absolute master of their destiny ? 
 Is it not this divine being Avho chooses 
 and Avho rejects ? The anathemas 
 fulminated by religion, the promises it 
 holds forth, are they not founded upon 
 the idea of the effects these chimeras 
 AA r ill necessarily produce upon ignorant 
 and. timid people? Is not man brought 
 into existence by this kind Divinity 
 without his own knowledge ? Is he 
 not obliged to play a part against his 
 Avill ? Does not either his happiness 
 or his misery depend ,on the part he 
 mlays?* 
 
 * Education, then, is only necessity 
 shown to children : legislation, is ne- 
 cessity shoAvn to the members of the 
 body politic: morals, is the necessity of 
 the relations subsisting between men, 
 shown to reasonable beings : in short, 
 man grants necessity in every thing for 
 which he believes he has certain un- 
 erring experience : that of which he 
 does not comprehend the necessary 
 connexion of causes with their effects 
 he styles probability : he \vould not act 
 as he does, if he Avas not convinced, 
 or, at least, if he did not presume that 
 certain effects Avill necessarily folloAv 
 his actions. The moralist preaches 
 reason, because he believes it necessary 
 
 * Every religion is evidently founded upon 
 fatalism. Among the Greeks they supposed 
 men were punished for their necessary laulls 
 as may be seen in Orestes, in OZdipus, etc., 
 who only committed crimes predicted by the 
 oracles. Christians have made vain efforts 
 to justify God Almighty in throwing the faults 
 of men on their free irill, which is opposed to 
 Predestination, another name for fatalism. 
 However, their system of Grace will by no 
 means obviate the difficulty, for God gives 
 grace only to those whom he pleases. In all 
 countries religion has no other foundation than 
 the fatal decrees of an irresistible being who 
 arbitrarily decides the fate of his creatures. 
 All theological hypotheses turn upon this 
 point ; and yet those theologians who regard 
 the system of fatalism as false or dangerous, 
 do not see that the Fall of Angels, Original 
 Sin, Predestination, the System of Grace, the 
 small number of the Elect, etc. incontestably 
 prove that religion is a true system of fatalism.
 
 OF MAN'S FREE AGENCY. 
 
 101 
 
 to man : the philosopher writes, because 
 he believes truth must sooner or later 
 prevail over falsehood : theologians and 
 tyrants necessarily hate truth and de- 
 spise reason, because they believe them 
 prejudicial to their interests : the sove- 
 reign, who strives to terrify crime by 
 the severity of his laws, but who, never- 
 theless, oftener renders it useful and 
 even necessary to his purposes, pre- 
 sumes the motives he employs will be 
 sufficient to keep his subjects within 
 bounds. All reckon equally upon the 
 power or upon the necessity of the 
 motives they make use of, and each 
 individual flatters himself, either with 
 or without reason, that these motives 
 will, have an influence on the conduct 
 of mankind. The education of man 
 is commonly thus defective or ineffi- 
 cacious, only because it is regulated by 
 prejudice : even when this education 
 is good, it is but too often speedily 
 counteracted and annihilated by every 
 thing that takes place in society. Legis- 
 lation and politics are very frequently 
 iniquitous, and serve no better purpose 
 than to kindle passions in the bosom 
 of man, which, once set afloat, they are 
 no longer competent to restrain. Thel 
 Preat art of the moralist should be to 
 point out to man and to those who are 
 intrusted with the office of regulating 
 his will, that their interests are identi- 
 fied ; that their reciprocal happiness 
 depends upon the harmony of their 
 passions ; that the safety, the power, 
 the duration of empires, necessarily 
 depend on the good sense diffused 
 among the individual members ; on 
 the truth of the notions inculcated in 
 the mind of the citizens ; on the moral 
 goodness that is sown in their hearts ; 
 on the virtues that are cultivated inj 
 their breasts. Religion should not be 
 admissible unless it truly fortified and 
 strengthened these motives, and unless 
 it were possible for falsehood to lend 
 real assistance to truth. But in the 
 miserable state into which errour has 
 plunged a considerable portion of the 
 human species, man, for the most part, 
 is obliged to be wicked or to injure his 
 fellow creature ; the strongest motives 
 invite him to the commission of evil. 
 Religion renders him a useless being; 
 makes him an abject slave ; causes him 
 to tremble under its terrours ; or else 
 turns him into a furious fanatic, who 
 
 is at once cruel, intolerant and inhuman : 
 arbitrary power crushes him and obliges 
 him to become cringing and vicious : 
 law visits crime with punishment only 
 in those who are too feeble to oppose 
 its course, or when it has become 
 incapable of restraining the violent 
 excesses to which a bad government 
 gives birth. In short, education neg- 
 lected and despised, depends either 
 upon priests, who are impostors, or 
 else upon parents without understand- 
 ing and devoid of morals, who impress 
 on the ductile mind of their scholars 
 those vices with which they are them- 
 selves tormented, and who transmit to 
 them the false opinions which they 
 have an interest in making them adopt. 
 
 All this proves the necessity of recur- 
 ring to the primitive source of man's 
 wanderings, if it be seriously intended 
 to furnish him with suitable remedies. 
 It is useless to dream of correcting his 
 mistakes, until the true causes that 
 move his will are unravelled, or until 
 more real, more beneficial, more certain 
 motives, are substituted for those which 
 are found so inefficacious and so danger- 
 ous both to society and to himself. It is 
 for those who guide the human will 
 who regulate the condition of nations, 
 to seek after these motives with which 
 reason will readily furnish them ; even 
 a good book, by touching the heart of 
 a great prince, may become a very 
 powerful cause that shall necessarily 
 have an influence over the conduct of 
 a whole people ; that shall decide upon 
 the felicity of a portion of the human 
 race. 
 
 From all that has been advanced in 
 this chapter, it results, that in no one 
 moment of his existence is man a free 
 agent. He is not the architect of his 
 own conformation, which he holds from 
 nature ; he has no controul over his 
 own ideas, or over the modification of 
 his brain ; these are due to causes, that, 
 in despite of him, and without his own 
 knowledge, unceasingly act upon him ; 
 he is not the master of not loving or 
 coveting that which he finds amiable 
 or desirable ; he is not capable of 
 refusing to deliberate, when he is un- 
 certain of the effects certain objects 
 will produce upon him ; he cannot 
 avoid choosing that which he believes 
 will be most advantageous to him ; iri 
 the moment when his will is determined
 
 102 
 
 OF MAN'S FREE AGENCY. 
 
 by his choice he is not competent to 
 act otherwise than he does. In what 
 instance, then, is he the master of his 
 own actions ? In what moment is he 
 a free agent ?* 
 
 That which a man is about to do, 
 is always a consequence of that which 
 he has been of that which he is of 
 that which he has done up to the 
 moment of the action: his total and 
 actual existence, considered under all 
 its possible circumstances, contains the 
 sum of all the motives to the action he 
 is about to commit ; this is a principle 
 the truth of which no thinking being 
 ' -will be able to refuse accrediting : his 
 life is a series of necessary moments ; 
 his conduct, whether good or bad, vir- 
 tuous or vicious, useful or prejudicial, 
 either to himself or to others, is a con- 
 catenation of action, as necessary as 
 all the moments of his existence. To 
 live, is to exist in a necessary mode 
 during the points of that duration which 
 succeed each other necessarily : to will, 
 is to acquiesce or not in remaining such 
 as he is : to be free, is to yield to the 
 necessary motives he carries within 
 himself. 
 
 If he understood the play of his 
 organs, if he was able to recall to 
 himself all the impulsions they have 
 received, all the modifications they 
 have undergone, all the effects they 
 have produced, he would perceive that 
 all his actions are submitted to that 
 fatality, which regulates his own par- 
 ticular system, as it does the entire 
 system of the universe : no one effect 
 in him, any more than in nature, pro- 
 duces itself by chance ; this, as has 
 been before proved, is a word void of 
 sense. All that passes in him; all that 
 is done by him ; as well as all that 
 happens in nature, or that is attributed 
 
 * The question of Free Will may be reduced 
 ; to this: Liberty, or Free Will, cannot be 
 associated with any known functions of the 
 soul ; for the soul, at the moment in which it 
 acts, deliberates, or wills, cannot act, delibe- 
 rate, or will otherwise than it does, because 
 a thing cannot exist and not exist at the same 
 time. Now, it is my will, such as it is, that 
 makes me deliberate ; my deliberation, that 
 makes me choose; my choice that makes me 
 act ; my determination that makes me execute 
 that which my deliberation has made me 
 choose, and I have only deliberated because I 
 have had motives which rendered it impossible 
 for me not to be willing to deliberate. Thus 
 liberty is not found either in the will, in the , 
 
 to her, is derived from necessary causes, 
 which act according to necessary laws, 
 and which produce necessary effects 
 from whence necessarily flow others. 
 
 Fatality, is the eternal, the immu- 
 table, the necessary order, established 
 in nature ; or the indispensable con- 
 nexion of causes that act, with the 
 effects they operate. Conforming to 
 this order, heavy bodies fall ; light 
 bodies rise ; that which is analogous 
 in matter reciprocally attracts ; that 
 which is heterogeneous mutually repels ; 
 man congregates himself in society, 
 modifies each his fellow ; becomes 
 either virtuous or wicked ; either con- 
 tributes to his mutual happiness, or 
 reciprocates his misery ; either loves 
 his neighbour, or halts his companion 
 necessarily, according to the manner 
 in which the one acts upon the other. 
 From whence it may be seen, that the 
 same necessity which regulates the 
 physical, also regulates the moral world, 
 in which every thing is in consequence 
 submitted to fatality. Man, in running 
 over, frequently without his own know- 
 ledge, often in despite of himself, the 
 route which nature has marked out for 
 him, resembles a swimmer who is 
 obliged to follow the current that car' 
 ries him along : he believes himself 
 a free agent, because he sometimes 
 consents, sometimes does not consent, 
 to glide with the stream, which, not- 
 withstanding, alwavs hurries him for- 
 ward ; he believes himself the master 
 of his condition, because he is obliged 
 (0 use his arms under the fear of sinking. 
 
 Volentem ducunt fata, nolentem trahunt. 
 
 Sencc. 
 
 The false ideas he has formed to 
 himself upon free agency, are in gene- 
 ral thus founded : there are certain 
 
 deliberation, in the choice, or in the action. 
 Theologians must not, therefore, connect 
 liberty with these operations of the soul, other- 
 wise there will be a contradiction of ideas. 
 If the soul is not free when it wills, deliberates, 
 chooses, or acts, will theologians tell us when 
 it can exercise its liberty? 
 
 It is evident that the system of liberty, or 
 free will, has been invented to exonerate God 
 from the evil that is done in this world. But 
 is it not from God man received this liberty 1 
 Is it not from God he received the faculty of 
 choosins evil and rejecting the good? If so, 
 God created him with a determination to sin, 
 else liberty is essential to man and independent 
 of God. See " Treatise of Systems" p. 124.
 
 OP FATALISM. 
 
 103 
 
 events which he judges necessary; 
 either because he sees that they are 
 effects constantly and invariably linked 
 to certain causes, which nothing seems 
 to prevent ; or because he believes he 
 has discovered the chain of causes and 
 effects that is put in play to produce 
 those events: whilst he contemplates 
 as contingent other events of whose 
 causes he is ignorant, and with whose 
 mode of acting he is unacquainted: 
 but in nature, where every thing is 
 connected by one common bond, there 
 exists no effect without a cause. In 
 the moral as well as in the physical 
 world, every thing that happens is a 
 necessary consequence of causes, either 
 visible or concealed, which are of 
 necessity obliged to act after their pe- 
 culiar essences. In man, free agency] 
 is nothing more than necessity con-\ 
 tained within himself. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 An Examination of the Opinion which pre- 
 tends that the System of fatalism is 
 Dangerous. 
 
 FOR a being whose essence obliges 
 him to have a constant tendency to his 
 own conservation and to render him- 
 self happy, experience is indispensable : 
 without it he cannot discover truth, 
 which is nothing more, as has been 
 already said, than a knowledge of the 
 constant relations which subsist be- 
 tween man and those objects that act 
 upon him ; according to his experience 
 lie denominates those that contribute 
 to his permanent welfare, useful and 
 salutary ; those that procure him plea- 
 sure, more or less durable, he calls 
 agreeable. Truth itself becomes .the 
 object of his desires, only when he 
 believes it is useful ; he dreads it when- 
 ever he presumes it will injure him. 
 But has truth the power to injure him? 
 Is it possible that evil can result to 
 man from a correct understanding of 
 the relations he has with other beings? 
 Can it be true that he can be harmed 
 by becoming acquainted with those 
 things of which, for his own happiness, 
 he is interested in having a knowledge? 
 No ! unquestionably not : it is upon its 
 utility that truth founds its worth and 
 its rights : sometimes it may be dis- 
 agreeable to individuals, it may even 
 
 appear contrary to their interests ; but 
 it will always be useful to the whole 
 human species, whose interests must 
 for ever remain distinct from those of 
 men who, duped by their own peculiar 
 passions, believe their advantage con- 
 sists in plunging others into errour. - 
 
 Utility, then, is the touchstone of thei 
 systems, the opinions, and the actions 
 of man ; it is the standard of the esteem 
 and the love he owes to truth itself: 
 the most useful truths are the most 
 estimable : those truths which are most 
 interesting for his species, he styles 
 eminent ; those, of which the utility 
 limits itself to the amusement of some 
 individuals who have not correspondent 
 ideas, similar modes of feeling, wants 
 analogous to his own, he either disdains, i 
 or else calls them barren. 
 
 It is according to this standard that 
 the principles laid down in this work 
 ought to be judged. Those who are 
 acquainted with the immense chain of 
 mischief produced on the earth by 
 erroneous systems of superstition, will 
 ackn o wledge the importance of opposing 
 to them systems more accordant with 
 truth, drawn from nature, and founded 
 on experience. Those who are, or be- 
 lieve they are, interested in maintaining 
 the established errours, will contemplate 
 with horrour the truths here presented 
 to them : in short, those infatuated mor- 
 tals, who only feel very faintly the enor- 
 mous load of misery brought upon man- 
 kind by theological prejudices, will 
 regard all our principles as useless, or, 
 at most, as steril truths, calculated to 
 amuse the idle hours of a few specu- 
 lators. 
 
 No astonishment, therefore, need be 
 excited at the various judgments formed 
 by man : his interests never being the 
 same, any more than his notions of 
 utility, he condemns or disdains every 
 thing that does not accord with his own 
 peculiar ideas. This granted, let us 
 examine if, in the eyes of the disinte- 
 rested man, who is not entangled by 
 prejudice, who is sensible to the happi- 
 ness of his species, the doctrine of 
 fatalism be useful or dangerous ? Let 
 us see if it be a barren speculation, that 
 has not any influence upon the felicity 
 of the human race? It has been already 
 shown that it will furnish morals with 
 efficacious arguments, with real motives 
 to determine the will, supply politics
 
 104 
 
 OF FATALISM. 
 
 with the true lever to raise the proper 
 activity in the mind of man. It will 
 also be seen that it serves to explain 
 in a simple manner the mechanism of 
 man's actions, and the most striking 
 phenomena of the human heart : on 
 the other hand, if his ideas are only 
 the result of unfruitful speculations, 
 they cannot interest the happiness of 
 the human species. Whether he be- 
 lieves himself a free agent, or whether 
 he acknowledges the necessity of things, 
 he always equally follows the desires 
 imprinted on his soul. A rational edu- 
 cation, honest habits, t wise systems, 
 equitable laws, rewards uprightly dis- 
 tributed, punishments justly inflicted, 
 will render man virtuous i while thorny 
 speculations, filled with difficulties, can, 
 at most, only have an influence over 
 persons accustomed to think. 
 
 After these reflections it will be very 
 easy to remove the difficulties that are 
 unceasingly opposed to the system of 
 fatalism ; which so many persons, 
 blinded by their religious systems, are 
 desirous to have considered as danger- 
 ous ; as deserving of punishment ; as 
 calculated to disturb public tranquillity; 
 as tending to unchain the passions, and 
 to confound ideas of vice and of A r irtue. 
 
 The opposers of necessity say : that 
 if all the actions of man are necessary, 
 no right whatever exists to punish bad 
 ones, or even to be angry with those 
 who commit them ; that nothing ought 
 to be imputed to them ; that the laws 
 would be unjust, if they should decree 
 punishment for necessary actions; in 
 short, that under this system, man 
 could neither have merit nor demerit. 
 In reply it may be argued, that, to 
 impute an action to any one, is to 
 attribute that action to him to. ac- 
 knowledge him for the author: thus, 
 when even an action was supposed to 
 be the effect of an agent, and that agent 
 necessity, the imputation would still 
 lie : the merit or demerit that is ascribed 
 to an action are ideas originating in the 
 effects, whether favourable or perni- 
 cious, that result to those who expe- 
 rience its operation : when, therefore, 
 it should be conceded that the agent 
 was necessity, it is not less certain 
 that the action would be either gocd 
 or bad ; estimable or contemptible, to 
 those who must feel its influence; in 
 short, that it would be capable of either 
 
 eliciting their love, or exciting their 
 anger. Love and anger are modes of 
 existence suitable to modify beings of 
 the human species : when, therefore, 
 man irritates himself against his fellow, 
 he intends to excite his fear, or even to 
 punish him. Moreover, his anger is 
 necessary -f it is the result of his nature 
 and of his temperament. The painful 
 sensation produced by a stone that falls 
 on the arm, does not displease the less 
 because it comes from a cause deprived 
 of will, and which acts by the necessity 
 of its natore. In, contemplating man 
 as acting necessarily, it is impossible 
 to avoid distinguishing that mode of 
 action or. .being which, is agreeable, 
 which elicits approbation, from that 
 which is afflicting, which irritates, 
 which nature obliges him to blame 
 and to prevent. From this it will be 
 seen that the system of fatalism does 
 not in any manner change the actual 
 state of things, and is by no means 
 calculated to confound man's ideas of 
 virtue and vice.* 
 
 Laws are made with a view to 
 maintain society, and to prevent man 
 associated from injuring his neighbour; 
 they are therefore competent to punish 
 those who disturb its harmony, or those 
 who commit actions that are injurious 
 to their fellows ; whether these asso- 
 ciates may be the agents of necessity, 
 or whether they are free agents, it 
 suffices to know that they are sus- 
 ceptible of modification, and are there- 
 fore submitted to the operation of the 
 law. Penal laws are those motives 
 which experience has shown capable 
 of restraining or of annihilating the 
 impulse passions give to man's will: 
 from whatever necessary cause man 
 may derive these passions, the legis- 
 lator proposes to arrest their effect, and 
 when he takes suitable means he is 
 certain of success. The jurisconsult, 
 
 * Man's nature always revolts against that 
 which opposes it : there are men so choleric, 
 that they infuriate themselves even against 
 insensible and inanimate objects ; reflection 
 on their own impotence to modify these objects 
 ought to conduct them back to reason. Pa- 
 rents are frequently very much to be blamed 
 for correcting their children with anger : they 
 should be contemplated as beings who are not 
 yet modified, or who have, perhaps, been very 
 badly modified by themselves : nothing is more 
 common in life, than to see men punish faults 
 of which thev are themselves the cause.
 
 OP FATALISM. 
 
 105 
 
 in decreeing to crime, gibbets, tortures, 
 or any other chastisement 'whatever, 
 does nothing more than is done by the 
 architect, who in building a house 
 places gutters to carry off the rain, and 
 prevent it from sapping the foundation. 
 
 Whatever may be .the cause that 
 obliges man to act, society possesses 
 the right to crush the effects : as much 
 as the man whose land would be ruined 
 by a river, has to restrain its waters by 
 a bank, or even, if he is able, to turn its 
 course. It is by virtue of this right, 
 that society has the power to intimidate 
 and to punish, with a view to its own 
 conservation, those who may be tempted 
 to injure it; or those who commit ac- 
 tions which are acknowledged really to 
 interrupt its repose, to be inimical to its 
 security, or repugnant to his happiness. 
 
 It will perhaps be argued, that society 
 does not usually punish those faults 
 in which the will has no share ; that 
 it punishes the will alone ; that this 
 it is which decides the nature of the 
 crime, and the degree of its atrocity : 
 that if this will be not free, it ought 
 not to be punished. I reply, that society" 
 is an assemblage of sensible beings, 
 susceptible of reason, who desire their 
 own welfare, who fear evil, and seek 
 after good. These dispositions enable 
 their will to be so modified or deter- 
 mined, that they are capable of holding 
 such a conduct as will conduce to the 
 end they have in view. Educational 
 the laws, public opinion, example, 
 habit, fear, are the causes that must 
 modify associated man, influence his 
 will, regulate his passions, restrain the 
 actions of him who is capable of in- 
 juring the end of his association, and 
 thereby make him concur to the gene^_ 
 ral happiness. These causes are of a 
 nature to make impressions on every 
 man whose organization and whose 
 essence place him in a capacity to 
 contract the habits, the modes of think- 
 ing, and the manner of acting, with 
 which society is willing to inspire him. 
 All the individuals of the human species 
 are susceptible of fear ; from whence it 
 flows as a natural consequence, that 
 the fear of punishment, or the privation 
 of the happiness he desires, are motives 
 that must necessarily more or less influ- 
 ence his will, and regulate his actions. 
 If the man is to be found, who is so 
 badly constituted as to resist or to be 
 
 No. IV. 14 
 
 insensible to those motives which 
 operate upon all his fellows, he is not 
 fit to live in society ; he would contra- 
 dict the very end of his association ; 
 he would be its enemy ; he would 
 place obstacles to its natural tendency ; 
 his rebellious disposition, his unsociable 
 will, not being susceptible of that modi- 
 fication which is convenient to his own 
 true interests and to the interests of his 
 fellow citizens, these would unite them- 
 selves against such an enemy ; and the 
 law which is the expression of the 
 general will, would visit with condign 
 punishment that refractory individual 
 upon whom the motives presented to 
 him by society had not the effect which 
 it had been induced to expect : in con- 
 sequence such an unsociable man would 
 be chastised ; he would be rendered 
 miserable ; and according to the nature 
 of his crime he would be excluded from 
 society, as a being but little calculated 
 to concur in its views. 
 
 If society has the right to conserve 
 itself, it has also the right to take the 
 means : these means are the laws which 
 present to the will of man those motives 
 which are most suitable to deter him 
 from committing injurious actions. If 
 these motives fail of the proper effect, 
 if they are unable to influence him, 
 society, for its own peculiar good, is 
 obliged to wrest from him the power 
 of doing it farther injury. From what- 
 ever source his actions may arise, 
 whether they are the result of free 
 agency, or whether they are the off- 
 spring of necessity, society coerces him, 
 if after having furnished him with mo- 
 tives sufficiently powerful to act upon 
 reasonable beings, it perceives that 
 these motives have not been compe- 
 tent to vanquish his depraved nature. 
 It punishes him with justice, Avhen the 
 actions from which it dissuades him 
 are truly injurious to society ; it has an 
 unquestionable right to punish, when it 
 only commands or defends those things 
 that are conformable to the end pro- 
 posed by man in his association. But," 7 
 on the other hand, the law has not 
 acquired the right to punish him, if it 
 has failed to present to him the motives 
 necessary to have an influence over his 
 will ; it has not the right to coerce hi 
 if the negligence of society has deprived 
 nim of the means of subsisting, of 
 exercising his talents, of exerting his
 
 106 
 
 OF FATALISM. 
 
 f-industry, and of labouring for its wel- 
 ' fare. It is unjust, when it punishes 
 those to whom it has neither given an 
 education, nor honest principles ; whom 
 it has not enabled to contract habits 
 necessary to the maintenance of society : 
 it is unjust, when it punishes them for 
 faults which the wants of their nature, 
 or the constitution of society has ren- 
 dered necessary to them: it is unjust 
 and irrational, whenever it chastises 
 them for having followed those pro- 
 pensities which example, which public 
 opinion, which the institutions, which 
 society itself conspires to give them. 
 In short, the law is defective when it 
 does not proportion the punishment to 
 the real evil which society has sustained. 
 The last degree of injustice and folly is, 
 when society is so blinded as to inflict 
 punishment on those citizens who have 
 served it usefully. 
 
 Thus penal laws in exhibiting ter- 
 rifying objects to man who must he 
 supposed susceptible of fear, present 
 him with motives calculated to have 
 an influence over his will. The idea 
 of pain, the privation of liberty, the fear 
 of death, are, to a being well constituted 
 and in the full enjoyment of his faculties, 
 rery puissant obstacles that strongly 
 oppose themselves to the impulse of his 
 unruly desires : when these do not co- 
 erce his will, when they fail to arrest 
 his progress, he is an irrational being, 
 a madman, a being badly organized, 
 against whom society has the right to 
 guaranty itself and to take measures 
 for its own security. Madness is, 
 vithout doubt, an involuntary and a 
 necessary state ; nevertheless, no one 
 feels it unjust to deprive the insane of 
 their liberty, although their actions can 
 only be imputed to the derangement 
 of their brain. The wicked are men 
 whose brain is either constantly or 
 transitorily disturbed ; still they must 
 be punished by reason of the evil they 
 commit ; they must always be placed 
 in the impossibility of injuring society; 
 if no hope remains of bringing them 
 back to a reasonable conduct, and to 
 adopt a mode of action conformable to 
 the great end of association, they must 
 be for ever excluded its benefits. 
 
 It will not be requisite to examine 
 here how far the punishments, which 
 society inflicts upon those who offend 
 against it, may be reasonably carried. 
 
 Reason should seem to indicate, that 
 the law ought to show to the necessary 
 crimes of man all the indulgence that 
 is compatible with the conservation of 
 society. The system of fatalism, as 
 we have seen, does not leave crime 
 unpunished ; but it is at least calculated 
 to moderate the barbarity with which 
 a number of nations punish the victims- 
 to their anger. This cruelty becomes 
 still more absurd when experience has 
 shown its inutility : the habit of wit- 
 nessing ferocious punishments, famil- 
 iarizes criminals with the idea. If it 
 be true that society possesses the right 
 of taking away the life of its members ; 
 if it be really a fact that the death of a 
 criminal, thenceforth useless, can be 
 advantageous for society, (which it will 
 be necessary to examine,) humanity 
 at least exacts, that this death should 
 not be accompanied with useless tor- 
 tures with which laws too frequently 
 seem to delight in overwhelming their 
 victim. This cruelty defeats its own. 
 end, as it only serves to make the 
 culprit, who is immolated to the public 
 vengeance, suffer without any advan- 
 tage to society : it moves the compassion 
 of the spectator, and interests him in 
 favour of the miserable offender who 
 groans under its weight: it impresses 
 nothing upon the wicked ; whilst the 
 sight of those cruelties destined for 
 himself but too frequently renders him 
 more ferocious, more cruel, and more 
 the enemy of his associates : if the 
 example of death were less frequent, 
 even without being accompanied with 
 tortures, it would be more efficacious.* 
 
 * The greater number of criminals only 
 look upou death as a bad quarter of an hour. 
 A thief weeing one of his comrades display a 
 want of firmness under the punishment, said 
 to him : " Is not this what I have often told 
 you, that in our business we have one evil 
 more than the rest of mankind?" Robberies 
 are daily committed even at the foot of the 
 scaffolds where criminals are punished. In 
 those nations, where the penalty of death is 
 so lightly inflicted, has sufficient attention 
 been paid to the fact, that society is yearly 
 deprived of a great number of individuals who 
 would be able to render it very pseful service, 
 if made to work, and thus indemnify the com- 
 munity for the injuries they have committed ? 
 The facility with which the lives of men are 
 taken away, proves the tyranny and incapa- 
 city of legislators : they find it a much shorter 
 road to destroy the citizens, than to seek after 
 the means to render them better.
 
 OF FATALISM. 
 
 107 
 
 What shall be said for the unjust 
 cruelty of some nations, in which the 
 law, that ought to have for its object 
 the advantage of the whole, appears to 
 be made only for the security of the 
 most powerful ; in which punishments 
 the most disproportionate to the crime, 
 unmercifully take away the lives of 
 men, whom the most urgent necessity 
 has obliged to become criminal? It is 
 thus, that in a great number of civilized 
 nations, the life of the citizen is placed 
 in the same scales with money ; that 
 the unhappy wretch, who is perisning 
 from hunger and misery, is put to death 
 for having taken a pitiful portion of the 
 superfluity of another whom he beholds 
 rolling in abundance ? It is this, that 
 in many otherwise very enlightened 
 societies, is called justice^ or making 
 the punishment commensurate with the 
 crime. 
 
 This dreadful iniquity becomes yet 
 more crying, when the laws decree the 
 most cruel tortures for crimes to which 
 the most irrational customs give birth; 
 which bad institutions multiply. Man, 
 as it cannot be too frequently repeated, 
 is so prone to evil, only because every 
 thing appears to urge him on to the 
 commission, by too frequently showing 
 him vice triumphant : his education is 
 void in most states ; he receives from 
 society no other principles, save those 
 of an unintelligible religion, which 
 make but a feeble barrier against his 
 propensities : in vain the law cries out 
 to him : " abstain from the goods of thy 
 neighbour;" his wants, more powerful, 
 loudly declare to him that he must live 
 at the expense of a society who has 
 done nothing for him, and who con- 
 demns him to groan in misery and in 
 indigence ; frequently deprived of the 
 common necessaries, he compensates 
 himself by theft, and by assassination ; 
 he becomes a plunderer by profession, 
 a murderer by trade, and seeks, at the 
 risk of his life, to satisfy those wants, 
 whether real or imaginary, to which 
 every thing around him conspires to 
 give birth. Deprived of education, he 
 has not been taught to restrain the fury 
 of his temperament. Without ideas of 
 decency, destitute of the true principles 
 of honour, he engages in criminal pur- 
 suits that injure his country, which has 
 been to him nothing more than a step- 
 
 mother. In the paroxysm of his rage, 
 he only sees the gibbet that awaits 
 him; his unruly desires have become 
 too potent ; they have given an invete- 
 racy to his habits which preclude him 
 from changing them ; laziness has made 
 him torpid; despair has rendered him, 
 blind ; he rushes on to death ; and 
 society punishes him rigorously for 
 those fatal and necessary dispositions, 
 which it has itself engendered in his 
 heart, or which at least it has not taken 
 the pains seasonably to root out and to 
 oppose by motives calculated to give 
 him honest principles. Thus society 
 frequently punishes those propensities 
 ofwhichitis itself the author, or which 
 its negligence has suffered to spring up 
 in the mind of man : it acts like those 
 unjust fathers, who chastise their chil- 
 dren for vices which they have them- 
 selves made them contract. 
 
 However unjust and unreasonable \ 
 this conduct may be, or appear to be, 
 it is not the less necessary : society, 
 such as it is, whatever may be its cor- 
 ruption, whatever vices may pervade 
 its institutions, like every thing else in 
 nature, tends to subsist and to conserve 
 itself: in consequence it is obliged to 
 punish those excesses which its own 
 vicious constitution has produced : in 
 despite of its peculiar prejudices and 
 vices, it feels cogently that its own 
 immediate security demands, that it 
 should destroy the conspiracies of those 
 who make war against its tranquillity : 
 if these, hurried on by necessary pro- 
 pensities, disturb its repose and injure 
 its interests, this following the natural 
 law, which obliges it to labour to its 
 own peculiar conservation, removes 
 them out of its road, and punishes 
 them with more or less rigour, accord- 
 ing to the objects to which it attaches 
 the greatest importance, or which it 
 supposes best suited to further its owa 
 peculiar welfare : without doubt it de- 
 ceives itself frequently, but it deceives 
 itself necessarily, for want of the know- 
 ledge calculated to enlighten it with 
 regard to its true interests, or for want 
 of those, who regulate its movements, 
 possessing proper vigilance, suitable 
 talents, and the requisite virtue. From 
 this it will appear, that the injustice 
 of a society badly constituted, and 
 blinded by its prejudices, is as neew- 

 
 108 
 
 OF FATALISM. 
 
 sary as the crimes of those by whom 
 it is hostily attacked and distracted.* 
 The body politic, when in a state of 
 insanity, cannot act more consistently 
 with reason than one of its members 
 whose brain is disturbed by madness. 
 
 .It will still be said that these max- 
 ims, by submitting every thing to ne- 
 cessity, must confound, or even de- 
 stroy, the notions man forms of justice 
 and injustice, of good and evil, of 
 merit and demerit. ,1 deny it-: although 
 man, in every thing he does, acts neces- 
 sarily, his actions are good, just, and 
 meritorious, every time they tend to the 
 real utility -of his fellows, and of the 
 society of which he makes a part : they 
 are, of necessity, distinguished from 
 those which are really prejudicial to 
 the welfare of his associates. Society 
 is just, good, and worthy our reverence, 
 when it procures for all its members 
 their physical wants, affords them pro- 
 tectionj secures their liberty, and puts 
 them in possession of their natural 
 rights. It is in this that consists all 
 the happiness of which the social com- 
 pact is susceptible. Society is unjust, 
 and unworthy our esteem, w.hen it is 
 partial to a few, and cruel to the great- 
 er number: it is then that it multi- 
 plies its enemies, and obliges them to 
 revenge themselves by criminal actions 
 which it is under the necessity to pun- 
 ish. It is not upon the caprices of 
 political society that depend the true 
 notions of justice and injustice, the 
 right ideas of moral good and evil, a 
 just appreciation of merit and demerit ', 
 it is upon utility upon the necessity 
 of things which always forces man 
 to feel that there exists a mode of act- 
 ing which he is obliged to venerate and 
 approve, either in his fellows or in 
 society : whilst there is another mode 
 which his nature makes him hate, 
 which his feelings compel him to con- 
 demn. It is upon his own peculiar 
 essence that man founds his ideas of 
 pleasure and of pain, of right and of 
 wrong, of vice and of virtue : the only 
 difference between these is, that pleas- 
 ure and pain make them instantane- 
 
 r * A society punishing excesses to which it 
 has itself given birth, may be compared to a 
 man attacked with the lousy disorder, who is 
 obliged to kill the insects, although it is his 
 own diseased constitution which every mo- 
 irnent produces thorn. 
 
 ously felt in his brain ; whilst the ad- 
 vantages that accrue to him from jus- 
 tice and virtue, frequently do not dis- 
 play themselves but after a long train 
 of reflections, and after multiplied ex- 
 periences, which many, either from a 
 defect in their conformation or from the 
 peculiarity of the circumstances under 
 which they are placed, are prevented 
 from making, or, at least, from making 
 correctly. 
 
 By a necessary consequence of this 
 truism, the system of fatalism, although 
 it has frequently been so accused, does 
 not tend to encourage man in crime, 
 and to make remorse vanish from his 
 mind. His propensities are to be as- 
 cribed to his nature ; the use he makes 
 of his passions depends upon his habits, 
 upon his opinions, upon the ideas he 
 has received in his education, and upon 
 the examples held forth by the society 
 in which he lives. These things are 
 what necessarily decide his conduct. 
 Thus when his temperament renders 
 him susceptible of strong passions, he 
 is violent in his desires, whatever may 
 be his speculations. 
 
 Remorse is the painful sentiment 
 excited in him by grief caused either 
 by the immediate or probable future 
 effect of his passions : if these effects 
 were always useful to him, he would 
 not experience remorse ; but, as soon 
 as he is assured that his actions render 
 him hateful or contemptible ; or as soon 
 as he fears he shall be punished in 
 some mode or other, he becomes rest- 
 less and discontented with himself: he 
 reproaches himself with his own con- 
 duct; he feels ashamed; he fears the 
 judgment of those beings whose affec- 
 tion he has learned to esteem ; in 
 whose good will he finds his own com- 
 fort deeply interested. His experience 
 proves to him, that the wicked man is 
 odious to all those upon whom his ac- 
 tions have any influence : if these ac- 
 tions are concealed at the moment, he 
 knows it very rarely happens they 
 remain so forever. The smallest re- 
 flection convinces him, that there is no 
 wicked man who is not ashamed of 
 his own conduct; who is truly con- 
 tented with himself; who does not 
 envy the condition of the good man ; 
 who is not obliged to acknowledge, 
 that he has paid very dearly for those 
 advantages he is never able to enjoy
 
 OF FATALISM. 
 
 109 
 
 without making the most bitter re- 
 proaches against himself: then he feels 
 ashamed, despises himself, hates him- 
 self, his conscience becomes alarmed, 
 remorse follows in its train. To be 
 convinced of the truth of this principle, 
 it .is only requisite to cast our eyes on 
 the extreme precautions that tyrants 
 and villains, who are otherwise suffi- 
 ciently powerful not to dread the pun- 
 ishment of man, take to prevent expo- 
 sure ; to what lengths they push their 
 cruelties against some, to what mean- 
 ness they stoop to others, of those who 
 are able to hold them up to public 
 scorn. Have they not then a con- 
 sciousness of their own iniquities ? Do 
 they not know, that they are hateful 
 and contemptible ? Have they not re- 
 morse ? Is their condition happy ? Per- 
 sons well brought up acquire these 
 sentiments in their education; which 
 are either strengthened or enfeebled 
 by public opinion, by habit, by the ex- 
 amples set before them. In a depraved 
 society, remorse, either does not exist, 
 or presently disappears : because in all 
 his actions, it is ever the judgment of 
 his fellow man that man is obliged 
 necessarily to regard. He never feels 
 either shame or remorse for actions he 
 sees approved, that are practised by all 
 the worlo 1 . Under corrupt governments, 
 venal souls, avaricious beings, merce- 
 nary individuals, do not blush, either 
 at meanness, robbery, or rapine, when 
 it is authorized by example : in licen- 
 tious nations no one blushes at adul- 
 tery ; in superstitious countries, man 
 does not blush to assassinate his fel- 
 low for his opinions. It will be obvi- 
 ous, therefore, that his remorse, as well 
 as the ideas, whether right or wrong, 
 which man has of decency, virtue, 
 justice, &c. are the necessary conse- 
 quence of his temperament, modified 
 by the society in which he lives : as- 
 sassins and thieves, when they live 
 only among themselves, have neither 
 shame nor remorse. 
 
 Thus, I repeat, all the actions of 
 man, are necessary ; those which are 
 always useful, which constantly con- 
 tribute to the real, tend to the perma- 
 nent happiness of his species, are call- 
 ed virtues, and are necessarily pleas- 
 ing to all who experience their influ- 
 ence at least, if their passions or false 
 opinions do not oblige them to judge 
 
 in that manner which is but little ac- 
 cordant with the nature of things : 
 each man acts, each individual judges 
 necessarily according to his own pecu- 
 liar mode of existence, and after the 
 ideas, whether true or false, which he 
 has formed with regard to his happi-J 
 ness. There are necessary actions, 
 which man is obliged to approve ; 
 there are others, that in despite of him- 
 self, he is compelled to censure, of 
 which the idea generates shame, when 
 his reflection permits him to contem- 
 plate them under the same point of 
 view that they are regarded by his as- 
 sociates. The virtuous man and the 
 wicked act from motives equally ne- 
 cessary; they differ simply in their or- 
 ganization, and in the ideas they form 
 to themselves of happiness : we love 
 the one, necessarily, -we detest the 
 other from the same necessity. The 
 laAV of his nature which wills that a 
 s'ensible being shall constantly labour 
 to preserve himself, has not left to man 
 the power to choose, or the free agency 
 to prefer pain to pleasure, vice to util- 
 ity, crime to virtue. It is then the es- 
 sence of man himself, that obliges 
 him to discriminate those actions which 
 are advantageous to him, from those 
 which are prejudicial. 
 
 This distinction subsists even in the 
 most corrupt societies, in which the 
 ideas of virtue, although completely 
 effaced from their conduct, remain the 
 same in their mind. Let us suppose a 
 man, who had decidedly determined 
 for villany, who should say to himself: 
 " It is folly to be virtuous in a society 
 that is depraved, in a community that 
 is debauched." Let us suppose also that 
 he has sufficient address and good for- 
 tune to escape censure or punishment 
 during a long series of years ; I say, that 
 despite of all these circumstances, ap- 
 parently so advantageous for himself, 
 such a man has neither been happy nor 
 contented with his own conduct. He 
 has been in continual agonies : ; ever at 
 war with his own actions ; in a state 
 of constant agitation. How much pain, 
 how much- anxiety, has he not endured 
 in this perpetual conflict with himself? 
 how many precautions, what excessive 
 labour, what endless solicitude, has he 
 not been compelled to employ in thU 
 continued struggle ; how many embar- 
 rassments, how many cares, has he not
 
 110 
 
 OF FATALISM. 
 
 experienced in this eternal wrestling 
 with his associates, whose penetration 
 he dreads ? Demand of him what he 
 thinks of himself, he will shrink from 
 the question. Approach the bedside 
 of this villain at the moment he is 
 dying, ask him if he would be willing 
 to recommence, at the same price, a 
 life of similar agitation 1 If he is in- 
 genuous, he will avow that he has tast- 
 ed neither repose rior happiness ; that 
 each crime filled him with inquietude; 
 that reflection prevented him from 
 sleeping ; that the world has been to 
 him only one continued scene of alarm 
 and an everlasting anxiety of mind ; 
 that to live peaceably upon bread and 
 water, appears to him to be a much 
 happier, a more easy condition, than to 
 possess riches, credit, reputation, hon- 
 ours, on the same terms that he has him- 
 self acquired them. If this villain, mau- 
 gre all his success, finds his condition 
 so deplorable, what must be thought of 
 the feelings of those who have neither 
 the same resources, nor the same ad- 
 vantages, to succeed in their criminal 
 projects? 
 
 Thus the system of necessity, is a 
 truth not only founded upon certain 
 experience, but, again, it establishes 
 morals upon an immoveable basis. Far 
 from sapping the foundations of virtue, 
 it points out its necessity; it clearly 
 shows the invariable sentiments it must 
 excite sentiments so necessary, so 
 strong, that all the prejudices and all 
 the vices of man's institutions, have 
 never been able entirely to eradicate 
 them from his mind. When he mis- 
 takes the advantages of virtue, it ought 
 to be ascribed to the errours that are 
 infused into him ; to the irrationality 
 of his institutions. All his wander- 
 ings are the fatal and necessary conse- 
 quences of errour and of prejudices 
 which have identified themselves with 
 his existence. Let it not therefore any 
 longer be imputed to his nature that he 
 has become wicked, but to those bane- 
 ful opinions he has imbibed with his 
 mother's milk which have rendered 
 him ambitious, avaricious, envious, 
 haughtv, arrogant, debauched, intole- 
 rant, obstinate, prejudiced, incommodi- 
 ous to his fellows, and mischievous to 
 himself. 1 It is education that carries 
 into his system the germ of those vices, 
 
 which necessarily torment him during 
 the whole course of his life. 
 -fa-Fatalism is reproached with dis- 
 couraging man, damping the ardour of 
 his soul, plunging him into apathy, and 
 with destroying the bonds that should 
 connect him with society. Its oppo- 
 nents say: " If every thing is necessary, 
 we must let things go on, and not be 
 disturbed at. any thing." But does it 
 depend on man to be sensible or not? 
 Is he master of feeling, or not feeling 
 pain ? If nature has endowed him 
 with a humane and tender soul, is it 
 possible he should not interest himself 
 in a very lively manner in the welfare 
 of beings whom he knows are necessary 
 to his own peculiar happiness ? His 
 feelings are necessary ; they depend on 
 his own peculiar nature, cultivated by 
 education. His imagination, prompt to 
 concern itself with the felicity of his 
 race, causes his heart to be oppressed 
 at the sight of those evils his fellow 
 creature is obliged to endure : makes 
 his soul tremble in the contemplation 
 of the misery arising from the despotism 
 that crushes him ; from the superstition 
 that leads him astray ; from the pas- 
 sions that distract him ; from the follies 
 that are perpetually ranking him in a 
 state of warfare against his neighbour. 
 Although he knows that death is the 
 fatal and necessary period to the form 
 of all beings, his soul is not affected in 
 a less lively manner at the loss of a 
 beloved wife at the demise of a child 
 calculated to console his old age at 
 the final separation from an esteemed 
 friend, who had become dear to his 
 heart. Although he is not ignorant 
 that it is the essence of fire to burn, he 
 does not believe he is dispensed from 
 using his utmost efforts to arrest the 
 progress of a conflagration. Although 
 he is intimately coiwinced that the' 
 evils to which he is a witness are the- 
 necessary consequence of primitive' 
 errours with which his fellow citizens 
 are imbued, yet he feels he ought to- 
 display truth to them, (if nature has 
 given him the necessary courage,) 
 under the conviction that if they listen 
 to it, it will by degrees become a cer- 
 tain remedy for their sufferings that 
 it will produce those necessary effects 
 which it is of its essence to operate. 
 If the speculations of man modify
 
 OP FATALISM. 
 
 Ill 
 
 his conduct, if they change his tem- 
 perament, he ought not to doubt that 
 the system of necessity would have the 
 most advantageous influence over him : 
 not only is it suitaule to calm the greater 
 part of his inquietude, but it will also 
 contribute to inspire him with a useful 
 submission, a rational resignation to the 
 decrees of a destiny, with which his 
 too great sensioility frequently causes 
 him to be overwhelmed. This happy 
 apathy without doubt would be desirable 
 to those whose souls, too tender to brook 
 the inequalities of life, frequently render 
 them the deplorable sport of their fate ; 
 or whose organs, too weak to make 
 resistance to the buffetings of fortune, 
 incessantly expose them to be dashed 
 in pieces under the rude blows of ad- 
 versity. 
 
 But, of all the important advantages 
 the human race would be enabled to 
 derive from the doctrine of fatalism 
 if man was to apply it to his conduct, 
 none would be of greater magnitude, 
 none of more happy consequence, none 
 that would more efficaciously corrobo- 
 rate his happiness, than that general 
 indulgence, that universal toleration, 
 that must necessarily spring from the 
 opinion that all is necessary. In con- 
 sequence of the adoption of this prin- 
 ciple, the fatalist, if he had a sensible 
 soul, would commiserate the prejudices 
 of his fellow man, would lament over 
 his wanderings, would seek to unde- 
 ceive him, without ever irritating him- 
 self against his weakness without 
 ever insulting his misery. Indeed, 
 what right have we to hate or despise 
 man for his opinions ? His ignorance} 
 his prejudices, his imbecility, his vicesy 
 his passions, his weakness, are they; 
 not the inevitable consequence oY vicious 
 institutions ? Is he not sufficiently pun-i 
 ished by the multitude of evils that 
 afflict him on every side? Those despots 
 who crush him with an iron sceptre, are 
 they not continual victims to their own 
 peculiar restlessness, and eternal slaves 
 to their suspicious ? Is there one wicked 
 individual who enjoys a pure, an un- 
 mixed, a real happiness ? Do not nations 
 unceasingly suffer from their follies ? 
 Are they not the incessant dupes to 
 their prejudices? Is not the ignorance 
 of chiefs, the ill-will they bear to rea- 
 son, the hatred they have for truth, 
 punished by the imbecility of their citi- 
 
 zens, and by the ruin of the states they 
 govern? In short, the fatalist would 
 grieve to witness necessity each moment 
 exercising its severe decrees upon mor- 
 tals who are ignorant of its power, or 
 who feel its castigation, without being 
 willing to acknowledge the hand from 
 whence it proceeds ; he will perceive, 
 that ignorance is necessary, that credu- 
 lity is the necessary result of ignorance, 
 that slavery and bondage are necessary 
 consequences of ignorant credulity ; 
 that corruption of manners springs 
 necessarily from slavery ; that the 
 miseries of society and of its members, 
 are the necessary offspring of this cor- 
 ruption. 
 
 The fatalist, in consequence of these"* 
 ideas, will neither be a gloomy mis- 
 anthrope, nor a dangerous citizen. He 
 will pardon in his brethren those wan- 
 derings which their nature vitiated by 
 a thousand causes, has rendered neces- 
 sary ; he will offer them consolation ; 
 he will endeavour to inspire them with 
 courage ; he will be sedulous to unde- 
 ceive them in their idle notions ; in 
 their chimerical ideas ; but he will 
 never show them that rancorous ani- 
 mosity which is more suitable to make 
 them revolt from his doctrines than to 
 attract them to reason. H.e__wilLjaot 
 disturb the repose of society ; he will 
 not raise the people to insurrection 
 against the sovereign authority ; on the 
 contrary, he will feel that the miserable 
 blindness and perverseness of so many 
 conductors of the people, are the neces- 
 sary consequence of that flattery admin- 
 istered to them in their infancy ; of the 
 depraved malice of those who surround 
 them, and who wickedly corrupt them, 
 tnat they may profit by their folly : in 
 short, that these things are the inevi- . 
 table effect of that profound ignorance 
 of their true interest, in which everyj 
 thing strives to keep them. 
 
 The fatalist has no right to be vain 
 of his peculiar talents or of his virtues : 
 he knows that these qualities are only 
 the consequence of his natural organiza- 
 tion, modified by circumstances that 
 have in nowise depended upon himself. 
 He will neither have hatred nor feel 
 contempt for those whom nature and 
 circumstances have not favoured in a 
 similar manner. It is the fatalist who 
 ought to be humble and modest from 
 principle : is he not obliged to acknow-
 
 112 
 
 OP FATALISM. 
 
 ledge that he possesses nothing that he 
 has not previously received ? 
 
 In fact, every thing will conduct to 
 indulgence the fatalist whom experience 
 has convinced of the necessity of things. 
 He will see with pain that it is the 
 essence of a society badly constituted, 
 unwisely governed, enslaved to preju- 
 dice, attached to unreasonable customs, 
 submitted to irrational laws, degraded 
 under despotism, corrupted by luxury, 
 inebriated with false opinions, to be 
 filled with trifling members ; to be 
 composed of vicious citizens ; to be 
 made up of cringing slaves, who are 
 proud of their chains ; of ambitious 
 men, without ideas of true glory ; of 
 misers and prodigals ; of fanatics and 
 libertines ! Convinced of the necessary 
 connexion of things, he will not be 
 surprised to see that the supineness of 
 their chiefs carries discouragement into 
 their country ; or that the influence of 
 their governors stirs up bloody wars by 
 which it is depopulated ; causes useless 
 expenditures that empoverish it ; and 
 that all these excesses united is the 
 reason why so many nations contain 
 only men wanting happiness, who are 
 devoid of morals, destitute of virtue. 
 In all this, he will contemplate nothing 
 more than the necessary action and 
 reaction of physics upon morals, of 
 morals upon physics. In short, all 
 who acknowledge fatality, will remain 
 persuaded that a nation badly governed 
 is a soil very abundant in poisonous 
 plants ; that these have such a plentiful 
 growth as to crowd each other and 
 choke themselves. It is in a country 
 cultivated by the hands of a Lycurgus, 
 that he will witness the production of 
 intrepid citizens, of noble-minded indi- 
 viduals, of disinterested men, who are 
 strangers to irregular pleasures. In a 
 country cultivated by a Tiberius, he 
 will find nothing but villains, with 
 depraved hearts, men with mean con- 
 temptible souls, despicable informers, 
 and execrable traitors. It is the soil, 
 it is the circumstances in which man 
 finds himself placed, that renders him 
 either a useful object or a prejudicial 
 being: the wise man avoids the one, 
 as he would those dangerous reptiles 
 whose nature it is to sting and com- 
 municate their deadly venom ; he at- 
 taches himself to the other, esteems 
 him, loves him, as he does those deli- 
 
 cious fruits, with whose rich maturity 
 his palate is pleasantly gratified, and 
 with whose cooling juices he finds 
 himself agreeably refreshed : -he sees 
 the wicked without anger ; he cherishes 
 the good with pleasure ; he delights in 
 the bountiful ; he knows full well that 
 the tree which is languishing without 
 culture in the arid, sandy desert ; that 
 is stunted for want of attention ; leafless 
 for want of moisture ; that has grown 
 crooked from neglect; become barren 
 from want of loam ; would perhaps 
 have expanded far and wide its verdant 
 boughs, brought forth delectable fruit, 
 afforded an umbrageous refreshing shel- 
 ter, if its seed had been fortunately 
 sown in a more fertile soil, or if it had 
 experienced the fostering cares of a 
 skilful cultivator. 
 
 Let it not then be said, that it is 
 degrading man to reduce his functions 
 to a pure mechanism ; that it is shame- 
 fully to undervalue him, to compare him 
 to a tree to an abject vegetation. The 
 philosopher devoid of prejudice, does 
 not understand this language invented 
 by those who are ignorant of what con- 
 stitutes the true dignity of man. A tree 
 is an object which, in its station, joins 
 the useful with the agreeable ; it merits 
 our approbation when it produces sweet 
 and pleasant fruit, and when it affords 
 a favourable shade. All machines are 
 precious, whenever they are truly useful, 
 and when they faithfully perform the 
 functions for which they are designed. 
 Yes, I speak it with courage, the honest 
 man, when he has talents and possesses 
 virtue, is, for the beings of his species, 
 a tree that furnishes them with delicious 
 fruit, and affords them refreshing shelter : 
 the honest man is a machine, of which 
 the springs are adapted to fulfil its func- 
 tions in a manner that must gratify the 
 expectation of all his fellows. No, I 
 should not blush to be a machine of this 
 sort ; and my heart would leap with joy 
 if I could foresee that the fruit of my 
 reflections would one day be useful and 
 consoling to my fellow man. 
 
 Is not nature herself a vast machine, 
 of which the human species is but a 
 very feeble spring? I see nothing con- 
 temptible either in her or in her pro- 
 ductions : all the beings who come out 
 of her hands are good, are noble, are 
 sublime, whenever they co-operate to 
 the production of order ; to the main-
 
 OF FATALISM. 
 
 113 
 
 tenance of harmony in the sphere where 
 they must act. Oi whatever nature the 
 soul may be, whether mortal or immor- 
 tal ; whether it be regarded as a spirit, 
 or whether it be looked upon as a por- 
 tion of the body ; it will be found noble, 
 great, and sublime, in a Socrates, in an 
 Aristides, in a Cato : it will be thought 
 abject, it will be viewed as despicable 
 and corrupt in a Claudius, in a Sejanus, 
 in a Nero : its energies will be admired 
 in a Shakspeare, in a Corneille, in a 
 Newton, in a Montesquieu: its base- 
 ness will be lamented when we behold 
 mean men, who flatter tyranny, or who 
 servilely cringe at the foot of super- 
 stition. 
 
 f~~ All that has been said in the course 
 of this work, proves clearly that every 
 thing is necessary ; that every thing is 
 always in order relatively to nature, 
 where all beings do nothing more than 
 follow the laws that are imposed on 
 their respective classes. It is part of 
 her plan, that certain portions of the 
 earth shall bring forth delicious fruits, 
 whilst others shall only furnish bram- 
 bles and noxious vegetables : she has 
 been willing that some societies should 
 produce wise men and great heroes , 
 that others should only give birth to 
 contemptible men, without energy, and 
 destitute of virtue. Winds, tempests, 
 hurricanes, volcanoes, wars, plagues, 
 famine, diseases, death, are as necessary 
 to her eternal march, as the beneficent 
 heat of the sun, the serenity of the 
 atmosphere, the gentle showers of 
 spring, plentiful years, peace, health, 
 harmony, life : vice and virtue, dark- 
 ness and light, ignorance and science, 
 are equally necessary ; the one are not 
 benefits, the other are not evils, except 
 for those beings whose happiness they 
 influence, by either favouring or de- 
 ranging their peculiar mode of existence. 
 The whole cannot be miserable, but it 
 may contain unhappy individuals. 
 
 Nature, then, distributes with the 
 same hand that which is called order, 
 and that which is called disorder ; 
 that which is called pleasure, and that 
 which is called pain; in short, she 
 diffuses, by the necessity of her exist- 
 ence, good and evil, in the world we 
 inhabit. Let not man therefore either 
 arraign her bounty, or tax her with 
 malice ; let him not imagine that his 
 vociferations or his supplications, can 
 
 No. IV. 15 
 
 ever arrest her colossal power, always 
 acting after immutable laws. Let him 
 submit silently to his condition ; and 
 when he suffecs, let him not seek a 
 remedy by recurring to chimeras that 
 his own distempered imagination has 
 created ; let him draw from the stores 
 of nature herself the remedies which 
 she offers for the evil she brings upon, 
 him : if she send him diseases, let 
 him search in her bosom for those 
 salutary productions to which she has 
 given birth. If she gives him errours, 
 she also furnishes him with experience 
 and truth to counteract and destroy 
 their fatal effects. If she permits man 
 to groan under the pressure of his vices, 
 beneath the load of his follies, she also 
 shows him in virtue a sure remedy for 
 his infirmities : if the evils that some 
 societies experience are necessary , when 
 they shall have become too incommo- 
 dious, they will be irresistibly obliged to 
 search for those remedies which nature 
 will always point out to them. If this 
 nature has rendered existence insup- 
 portable to some unfortunate beings 
 whom she may appear to have selected 
 for her victims, still death is a door 
 that will surely be opened to them, 
 and will deliver them from their mis- 
 fortunes, although they may be deemed 
 impossible of cure. 
 
 Let not man, then, accuse nature 
 with being inexorable to him; since 
 there does not exist an evil for which 
 she has not furnished the remedy to 
 those who have the courage to seek 
 and apply it. Nature follows general 
 and necessary laws in all her opera- 
 tions; physical and moral evil are not 
 to be ascribed to her want of kindness, 
 but to the necessity of things. Physical 
 calamity is the derangement produced 
 in man's organs by physical causes 
 which he sees act : moral evil is the 
 derangement produced in him by physi- 
 cal causes, of which the action is to 
 him a secret. These causes always 
 terminate by producing sensible effects, 
 which are capable of striking his senses; 
 neither the thoughts nor the will of man 
 ever show themselves but by the marked 
 effects they produce either in himself 
 or upon those beings whom nature has 
 rendered susceptible of feeling their 
 impulse. He suffers, because it is of 
 the essence of some beings to derange 
 the economy of his machine ; he enjoys,
 
 114 
 
 OF FATALISM. 
 
 because the properties of some beings 
 are analogous to his own mode of 
 existence ; he is born, because it is of 
 the nature of some matter to combine 
 itself under a determinate form ; he 
 lives, he acts, he thinks, because it is 
 of the essence of certain combinations 
 to maintain themselves in existence for 
 a season ; at length he dies, because a 
 necessary law prescribes that all the 
 combinations which are formed, shall 
 either be destroyed or dissolve them- 
 selves. From all this it results, that 
 nature is impartial to all its productions; 
 she submits man, like all other beings, 
 to those eternal laws from which she 
 has not been able to exempt herself: 
 if she was to suspend these laws, even 
 for an instant, from that moment dis- 
 order would reign in her system, and 
 her harmony would be disturbed. 
 
 Those who wish to study nature, 
 must take experience for their guide; 
 this, and this only, can enable them to 
 dive into her secrets, and to unravel by 
 degrees the frequently imperceptible 
 woof of those slender causes of which 
 she avails herself to operate the greatest 
 phenomena : by the aid of experience, 
 man often discovers in her new proper- 
 ties, perceives modes of action entirely 
 unknown to the ages which have pre- 
 ceded him ; those eifects which his 
 grandfathers contemplated as marvel- 
 lous, which they regarded as super- 
 natural efforts, looked upon as miracles, 
 have become familiar to him in the 
 present day ; are at this moment con- 
 templated as simple and natural conse- 
 quences of which he comprehends the 
 mechanism and the cause. Man, in 
 fathoming nature, has arrived at dis- 
 covering the true causes of earthquakes, 
 of the periodical motion of the sea, of 
 subterraneous conflagrations, of me- 
 teors, of the electrical fluid, the whole 
 of which were considered by his ances- 
 tors, and are still so by the ignorant, 
 as indubitable signs of heaven's wrath. 
 His posterity, in following up, in recti- 
 fying the experience already made, will 
 go still farther, and discover effects and 
 causes which are totally veiled from 
 present eyes. The united efforts of the 
 human species, Avill one day perhaps 
 penetrate even into the sanctuary of 
 nature, and throw into light many of 
 those mysteries, which, up to the pre- 
 
 sent time, she seems to hare refused 
 to all his researches. 
 
 In contemplating man under his true 
 aspect ; in quitting authority to follow 
 experience ; in laying aside errour to 
 consult reason ; m submitting every 
 thing to physical laws, from which his 
 imagination has vainly exerted its ut- 
 most power to withdraw them ; it will 
 be found, that the phenomena of the 
 moral world follow exactly the same 
 general rules as those of the physical, 
 and that the greater part of those asto- 
 nishing effects, which ignorance aided 
 by his prejudices, makes him consider 
 as inexplicable and as wonderful, are 
 natural consequences flowing from sim- 
 ple causes. He will find, that the erup- 
 tion of a volcano and the birth of a 
 Tamerlane are to nature the same thing j 
 in recurring to the primitive causes of 
 those striking events which he beholds- 
 with consternation, of those terrible 
 revolutions, those frightful convulsions' 
 that distract mankind, lay waste the 
 fairest works of nature, and ravage- 
 nations, he will find the wills that 
 compassed the most surprising changes, 
 that operated the most extensive altera- 
 tions in the state of things, were moved 
 by physical causes, whose exility made 
 him treat them as contemptible, and 
 as utterly incapable to give birth to the 
 phenomena, whose magnitude strikes 
 him with awe and amazement. 
 
 If man was to judge of causes by 
 their effects, there would be no small 
 causes in the universe. In a nature 
 where every thing is connected ; where 
 every thing acts and reacts, moves and 
 changes, composes and decomposes, 
 forms and destroys, there is not an 
 atom which does not play an important 
 and necessary part ; there is not an. 
 imperceptible particle, however minute, 
 which, placed in convenient circum- 
 stances, does not operate the most 
 prodigious effects. If man was in a 
 capacity to follow the eternal chain, 
 to pursue the concatenated links that 
 connect with their causes all the effects 
 he witnesses, without losing sight of 
 any one of its rings, if he could unravel 
 the ends of those insensible threads 
 that give impulse to the thoughts, 
 decision to the will, direction to the 
 passions of those men who are called 
 mighty, according to their actions ; he
 
 OF FATALISM. 
 
 would find that they arc true atoms 
 which nature employs to move the 
 moral world ; that it is the unexpected 
 but necessary junction of these indis- 
 cernible particles of matter, it is their 
 aggregation, their combination, their 
 proportion, their fermentation, which 
 modifying the individual by degrees, 
 in despite of himself, and frequently 
 without his own knowledge, make him 
 think, will and act in a determinate 
 but necessary mode. If the will and 
 the actions of this individual have an 
 influence over a great number of other 
 men, here is the moral world in a state 
 of the greatest combustion. Too much 
 acrimony in the bile of a fanatic, blood 
 too much inflamed in the heart of a 
 conqueror, a painful indigestion in the 
 stomach of a monarch, a whim that 
 passes in the mind of a woman, are 
 sometimes causes sufficient to bring on 
 war, to send millions of men to the 
 slaughter, to root out an entire people, 
 to overthrow Avails, to reduce cities into 
 ashes, to plunge nations into slavery, 
 to put a whole people into mourning, 
 to breed famine in a land, to engender 
 pestilence, to propagate calamity, to 
 extend misery, to spread desolation far 
 and wide upon the surface of our globe, 
 through a long series of ages. 
 
 The dominant passion of an indi- 
 vidual of the human species, when it 
 disposes of the passions of many others, 
 arrives at combining their will, at 
 uniting their efforts, and thus decides 
 the condition of man. It is after this 
 manner that an ambitious, crafty, and 
 voluptuous Arab gave to his country men 
 an impulse, of which the effect was 
 the subjugation and desolation of vast 
 countries in Asia, in Africa, and in 
 Europe; whose consequences were suf- 
 ficiently potential to give a novel system 
 of religion to millions of human beings ; 
 to overturn the altars of their former 
 gods ; in short, to alter the opinions, to 
 change the customs of a considerable i 
 portion of the population of the earth, j 
 But in examining the primitive sources 
 of this strange revolution, what Avere 
 the concealed causes that had an influ- 
 ence over this man, that excited his 
 peculiar passions, that modified his 
 temperament? What was the matter 
 from the combination of Avhich resulted 
 a crafty, ambitious, enthusiastic, and 
 eloquent man ; in short, a personage 
 
 competent to impose on his fellow 
 creatures, and capable of making them 
 concur in his vieAVs. They were the 
 insensible particles of his blood, the 
 imperceptible texture of his fibres, the 
 salts, more or less acrid, that stimu- 
 lated his nerves, the proportion of 
 igneous fluid that circulated in his 
 system. From Whence came these 
 elements 1 It Avas from the Avomb of 
 his mother, from the aliments Avhich 
 nourished him, from the climate in 
 which he had his birth, from the ideas 
 he received, from the air which he 
 respired, without reckoning a thousand 
 inappreciable and transitory causes, 
 that, in the instance given, had modi- 
 fied, had determined the passions of 
 this important being, who had thereby 
 acquired the capacity to change the 
 face of this mundane sphere. 
 
 To causes so weak in their principles, 
 if in the origin the slightest obstacle 
 had been opposed, these Avonderful 
 events, which have astounded man, 
 would never have been produced. The 
 fit of an ague, the consequence of bile 
 a little too much inflamed, had sufficed, 
 perhaps, to have rendered abortive all 
 the vast projects of the legislator of the 
 Mussulmen. Spare diet, a glass of 
 water, a sanguinary evacuation, Avould 
 sometimes have been sufficient to have 
 saved kingdoms. 
 
 It Avill be seen, then, that the con- 
 dition of the human species, as well as 
 that of each of its individuals, every 
 instant depends on insensible causes, 
 to Avhich circumstances, frequently fugi- 
 tive, give birth ; that opportunity de- 
 velops, and convenience puts in action: 
 man attributes their effects to chance, 
 AA r hilst these causes operate necessarily 
 and act according to fixed rules : he 
 has frequently neither the sagacity, nor 
 the honesty, to recur to their true prin- 
 ciples ; he regards such feeble motives 
 Avith contempt, because he has been 
 taught to consider them as incapable 
 of producing such stupendous events. 
 They are, hoAvever, these motives, 
 Aveak as they may appear to be, these 
 springs, so pitiful in his eyes, which, 
 according to her necessary laAvs, suffice 
 in the hand of nature, to move the 
 universe. The conquests of a Gengis- 
 khan have nothing in them that is more 
 strange to the eye of a philosopher than 
 the explosion of a mine, caused in its
 
 116 
 
 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 principle by a feeble spark, which com- 
 mences with setting fire to a single 
 grain of powder; this presently com- 
 municates itself to many millions of 
 other contiguous grains, of which the 
 united and multiplied powers, terminate 
 by blowing Up mountains, overthrow- 
 ing fortifications, or converting populous 
 cities into heaps of ruins. 
 
 Thus,imperceptible causes, concealed 
 in the bosom of nature until the moment 
 their action is displayed, frequently 
 decide the fate of man. The happiness 
 or the wretchedness, the prosperity or 
 the misery of each individual, as well 
 as that of whole nations, are attached 
 to powers which it is impossible for 
 him to foresee, to appreciate, or to arrest 
 the action. Perhaps, at this moment, 
 atoms are amassing, insensible particles 
 are combining, of which the assemblage 
 shall form a sovereign, who will be 
 either the scourge or the saviour of a 
 mighty empire.* Man cannot answer 
 for his own destiny one single instant; 
 he has no cognizance of what is passing 
 within himself; he is ignorant of the 
 causes which act in the interior of his 
 machine ; he knows nothing of the cir- 
 cumstances that will give them activity 
 and develop their energy ; it is, never- 
 theless, on these causes, impossible to 
 be unravelled by him, that depends his 
 condition in life. Frequently an un- 
 foreseen rencounter gives birth to a 
 passion in his soul, of which the con- 
 sequences shall necessarily have an 
 influence over his felicity. It is thus 
 that the most virtuous man, by a whim- 
 sical combination of unlocked for cir- 
 cumstances, may become in an instant 
 the most criminal of his species. 
 
 This truth, without doubt, will be 
 found frightful and terrible : but at 
 bottom, what has it more revolting 
 than that which teaches him that an 
 infinity of accidents, as irremediable as 
 they are unforeseen, may every instant 
 wrest from him that life to which he 
 is so strongly attached ? Fatalism 
 reconciles the good man easily to death : 
 it makes him contemplate it as a certain 
 means of withdrawing himself from 
 wickedness ; this system shows death, 
 even to the happy man himself, as a 
 medium between him and those mis- 
 
 * By a strange coincidence, Napoleon 
 Buonaparte was born the same year in which 
 the System of Nature was first published. 
 
 fortunes which frequently terminate by 
 poisoning his happiness, and with im- 
 
 bittering the most fortunate existence. 
 
 - 
 
 Let man then submit to necessity : 
 in despite of himself it will always 
 hurry him forward : let him resign 
 himself to nature ; let him accept the 
 good with which she presents him ; 
 let him oppose to the necessary evil 
 which she makes him experience, those 
 necessary remedies which she consents 
 to aiford him : let him not disturb his 
 mind with useless inquietude ; let him 
 enjoy with moderation, because he will 
 find that pain is the necessary com- 
 panion of excess : let him follow the 
 paths of virtue, because every thing 
 will prove to him, even in this world 
 of perverseness, that it is absolutely 
 necessary to render him estimable in 
 the eyes of others, and to make him 
 contented v/ith himself. 
 
 Feeble, and vain mortal, thou pre- 
 tendest to be a free agent; alas, dost 
 not thou see all the threads which 
 enchain thee 1 Dost thou not perceive 
 that they are atoms which form thee ; 
 that they are atoms which move thee ; 
 that they are circumstances independent 
 of thyself that modify thy being, and 
 rule thy destiny ? In the puissant na- 
 ture that environs thee, shall thou pre- 
 tend to be the only being who is able 
 to resist her power'? Dost thou really 
 believe, that thy weak prayers will 
 induce her to stop in her eternal march, 
 or change her everlasting course 1 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Of the Immortality of the Soul ; Of the Doc- 
 trine, of a future State ; Of Hie Fear of 
 Death. 
 
 THE reflections presented to the reader 
 in this work, tend to show, what ought 
 to be thought of the human soul, as 
 well as of its operations and faculties : 
 every thing proves, in the most con- 
 vincing manner, that it acts and moves 
 according to laws similar to those pre- 
 scribed to the other beings of nature ; 
 that it cannot be distinguished from 
 the body ; that it is born with it ; that 
 it grows up with it; that it is modified 
 in the same progression ; in short, every 
 thing ought to make man conclude that 
 it perishes with it. This soul, as well
 
 IMMORTALITY OP THE SOUL. 
 
 117 
 
 as the body, passes through a state of 
 weakness and infancy ; it is in this 
 stage of its existence that it is assailed 
 by a multitude of modifications and of 
 ideas which it receives from exterior 
 objects through the medium of the 
 organs ; that it amasses facts ; that it 
 collects experience, whether true or 
 false ; that it forms to itself a system 
 of conduct, according to which it thinks 
 and actSj and from whence results either 
 its happiness or its misery, its reason 
 or its delirium, its virtues or its vices : 
 arrived with the body at its full powers ; 
 having in conjunction with it reached 
 maturity, it does not cease for a single 
 instant to partake in common of its 
 sensations, whether these are agreeable 
 or disagreeable ; in consequence it con- 
 jointly approves or disapproves its state ; 
 like it, it is either sound or diseased, 
 active or languishing, awake or asleep. 
 In old age, man extinguishes entirely, 
 his fibres become rigid, his nerves lose 
 their elasticity, his senses are obtunded, 
 his sight grows dim, his ears lose their 
 quickness, his ideas become uncon- 
 nected, his memory fails, his imagina- 
 tion cools ; what, then, becomes of his 
 soul? Alas! it sinks down with the 
 body ; it gets benumbed as this loses 
 its feeling, becomes sluggish as this 
 decays in activity ; like it, when en- 
 feebled by years it fulfils its functions 
 with pain ; and this substance, which 
 is deemed spiritual or immaterial, 
 undergoes the same revolutions, and 
 experiences the same vicissitudes as 
 does the body itself. 
 
 In despite of this convincing proof 
 of the materiality of the soul, and of 
 its identity with the body, some thinkers 
 have supposed that although the latter 
 is perishable, the former does not perish ; 
 that this portion of man enjoys the 
 especial privilege of immortality; that 
 it is exempt from dissolution and free 
 from those changes of form all the 
 beings in nature undergo : in conse- 
 quence of this, man has persuaded 
 himself that this privileged soul does 
 not die : its immortality above all 
 appears indubitable to those who sup- 
 pose it spiritual : after having made it 
 a simple being, without extent, devoid 
 of parts, totally different from any thing 
 of which he has a knowledge, he pre- 
 tended that it was not subjected to the 
 laws of decomposition common to all 
 
 beings, of which experience shows him 
 the continual operation. 
 
 Man, feeling within himself a con- 
 cealed force that insensibly produced 
 action, that imperceptibly gave direc- 
 tion to the motion of his machine, 
 believed that the entire of nature, of 
 whose energies he is ignorant, with 
 whose modes of acting he is unac- 
 quainted, owed its motion to an agent 
 analogous to his own soul, who acted 
 upon the great macrocosm in the same 
 manner that this soul acted upon his 
 body. Man having supposed himself 
 double, made nature double also : he 
 distinguished her from her own pecu- 
 liar energy ; he separated her from her 
 mover, which by degrees he made spi- 
 ritual. Thus this being distinguished 
 from nature was regarded as the soul 
 of the world, and the soul of man was 
 considered as portions emanating from 
 this universal soul. This notion upon 
 the origin of the soul, is of very remote 
 antiquity. It was that of the Egyptians, 
 of the Chaldeans, of the Hebrews, of 
 the greater number of the wise men of 
 the east* It was in these schools that 
 Pherecydes, Pythagoras, Plato, drew up 
 a doctrine so nattering to the vanity of 
 human nature so gratifying to the 
 imagination of mortals. Thus man 
 believed himself a portion of the Divi- 
 nity ; immortal, like the Godhead, in 
 one part of himself; nevertheless, reli- 
 gions subsequently invented have re- 
 nounced these advantages, which they 
 
 * It appears that Moses believed, with the 
 Egyptians, the divine emanation of souls : 
 according to him, " God formed man of the 
 dust of the ground, and breathed into his 
 nostrils the breath of life ; and man became 
 a living soul :" Gen. ii. 7. nevertheless Chris- 
 tians at this day reject this system of Divine 
 emanation, seeing that it supposes the Divinity 
 divisible; besides, their religion having need, 
 of a Hell to torment the souls of the damned, 
 it would have been necessary to send a portion 
 of the Divinity to Hell, conjointly with the 
 souls of those victims that were sacrificed to 
 his own vengeance. Although Moses, in the 
 above quotation, seems to indicate that the 
 soul was a portion of the Divinity, it does not 
 appear that the doctrine, of the immortality 
 of the soul was established in any one of the 
 books attributed to him. It was during the 
 Babylonish captivity that the Jews learned the 
 doctrine of future rewards and punishments, 
 taught by Zoroaster to the Persians, but which 
 the Hebrew Legislator did not understand, or 
 at least he left his people ignorant on the 
 subject
 
 118 
 
 IMMORTALITY OP THE SOUL. 
 
 judged incompatible with the other 
 parts of their systems: they held forth 
 that the sovereign of nature, or her 
 contriver, was not the soul of man, but 
 that in virtue of his omnipotence, he 
 created human souls in proportion as 
 he produced the bodies which they 
 must animate; and they taught, that 
 these souls once produced, by an effect 
 of the same omnipotence, enjoyed im- 
 mortality. 
 
 However it may be with these varia- 
 tions upon the origin of souls, those 
 who supposed them emanating from 
 the Divinity, believed that after the 
 death of the body, which served them 
 for an envelope, they returned by re- 
 funding to their first source. Those 
 who, without adopting the opinion of 
 divine emanation, admired the spiritu- 
 ality and the immortality of the soul, 
 were under the necessity to suppose a 
 region, to find out an abode for these 
 souls, which their imagination painted 
 to them each according to his fears, his 
 hopes, his desires, and his prejudices. " 
 Nothing is more popular than the 
 doctrine of the immortality of the soul; 
 nothing is more universally diffused 
 than the expectation of another life. 
 Nature having inspired man with the 
 most ardent love for his existence, the 
 desire of preserving himself for ever 
 was a necessary consequence : this 
 desire was presently converted into 
 certainty ; from that desire of existing 
 eternally, which nature has implanted 
 in him, he made an argument to prove 
 that man would never cease to exist. 
 Abbadie says : " Our soul has no useless 
 desires, it desires naturally an eternal 
 life;" and by a very strange logic he 
 concludes, that this desire could not 
 fail to be fulfilled.* However this may 
 be, man, thus disposed, listened with 
 avidity to those who announced to him 
 systems so conformable with his wishes. 
 Nevertheless, he ought not to regard 
 as supernatural the desire of existing, 
 which always was, and always will be, 
 
 * Cicero before Abbadie had declared the 
 immortality of the soul to be an innate idea 
 in man ; yet, strange to tell, in another part 
 of his works he considers Pherecydes as the 
 inventor of the doctrine Naturam ipsam de 
 immprtalitate animarum tacitam judicare ; 
 nescio quomodo inhaeret in mentibus quasi 
 eseculorum quodani augurium. Permanere 
 animos arbitramur consensu nationum om- 
 nium. Vusculam Disputed, lib. i. 
 
 of the essence of man ; it ought not to 
 excite surprise if he received with eager- 
 ness an hypothesis that flattered his 
 hopes, by promising that his desire 
 would one day be gratified ; but let him 
 beware how he concludes, that this 
 desire itself is an indubitable proof of 
 the reality of this future life, with which, 
 for his present happiness, he seems to 
 be far too much occupied. The passion 
 for existence, is in man only a natural 
 consequence of the tendency of a sen- 
 sible being, whose essence it is to be 
 willing to conserve himself: in the 
 human being, it follows the energy of 
 his soul or keeps pace with the force 
 of his imagination, always ready to 
 realize that which he strongly desires. 
 He desires the life of the body, never- 
 theless this desire is frustrated ; where- 
 fore should not the desire for the life of 
 the soul be frustrated like the other ?f , 
 The most simple reflection upon the 
 nature of his soul, ought to convince 
 man that the idea of its immortality is 
 only an illusion of the brain. Indeed, 
 what is his soul, save the principle of 
 sensibility? What is it to think, to 
 enjoy, to suffer ; is it not to feel 1 
 What is life, except it be the assem- 
 blage of modifications, the congrega- 
 tion of motion, peculiar to an organized 
 being? Thus, as soon as the body 
 ceases to live, its sensibility can no 
 longer exercise itself; therefore it can 
 no longer have ideas, nor in consequence 
 thoughts. Ideas, as we have proved, 
 can only reach man through his senses ; 
 now, how will they have it, that once 
 deprived of his senses, he is yet capable 
 of receiving sensations, of having per- 
 ceptions, of forming ideas? As they 
 lave made the soul of man a being 
 separated from the animated body, 
 wherefore have they not made life a 
 jeing distinguished from the living 
 >ody ? Life in a body is the totality 
 of its motion ; feeling and thought 
 make a part of this motion : thus, in 
 he dead man, these motions will cease 
 ike all the others. 
 
 Indeed, by what reasoning will it be 
 )roved, that this soul, which cannot 
 
 t The partisans of the doctrine of the im- 
 mortality of the soul, reason thus: "All men 
 desire to live for ever ; therefore they will live 
 "or ever." Suppose the argument retorted on 
 
 hem : " All men naturally desire to be rich ; 
 
 herefore, all men will one day be rich."
 
 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 119 
 
 feel, think, will, or act, but by aid of man's 
 organs, can suffer pain, be susceptible 
 of pleasure, or even have a conscious- 
 ness of its own existence, when the 
 organs which should warn it of their 
 presence, are decomposed or destroyed ? 
 Is it not evident that the soul depends 
 on the arrangement of the various parts 
 of the body, and on the order with which 
 these parts conspire to perform their 
 functions or motions? Thus the or- 
 ganic structure once destroyed, can it 
 be doubted the soul will be destroyed 
 also? Is it not seen, that during the 
 whole course of human life, this soul 
 is stimulated, changed, deranged, dis- 
 turbed, by all the changes man's organs 
 experience ? And yet it will be insisted 
 that this soul acts, thinks, subsists, 
 when these same organs have entirely 
 disappeared ! 
 
 An organized being may be com- 
 pared to a clock, which, once broken, 
 is no longer suitable to the use for 
 which it was designed. To say, that 
 the soul shall feel, shall think, shall 
 enjoy, shall suffer, after the death of 
 the body, is to pretend, that a clock, 
 shivered into a thousand pieces, will 
 continue to strike the hour, and have 
 the faculty of marking the progress of 
 time. Those who say, that the soul of 
 man is able to subsist notwithstanding 
 the destruction of the body, evidently 
 support the position, that the modifica- 
 tion of a body will be enabled to con- 
 serve itself, after the subject is de- 
 stroyed : but this is completely absurd. 
 
 It will be said, that the conservation 
 of the soul after the death of the body, 
 is an effect of the divine omnipotence : 
 but this is supporting an absurdity by 
 a gratuitous hypothesis. It surely is 
 not meant by divine omnipotence, of 
 whatever nature it may be supposed, 
 that a thing shall exist and not exist 
 at the same time: that a soul shall 
 feel and think without the intermediates 
 necessary to thought. 
 
 Let them, then, at least forbear assert- 
 ing, that reason is not wounded by the 
 doctrine of the immortality of the soul, 
 or by the expectation of a future life. 
 These notions, formed to flatter man, 
 or to disturb the imagination of the 
 uninformed who do not reason, cannot 
 appear either convincing or probable to 
 enlightened minds. Reason, exempted 
 from the illusions of prejudice, is, with- 
 
 out doubt, wounded by the supposition 
 of a soul that feels, that thinks, that is 
 afflicted, that rejoices, that has ideas, 
 without having organs ; that is to say, 
 destitute of the only known and natural 
 means by which it is possible for it to 
 feel sensations, have perceptions, or 
 form ideas. If it be replied, that other 
 means are able to exist, which are 
 supernatural or unknown ; it may be 
 answered, that these means of trans- 
 mitting ideas to the soul separated from, 
 the body, are not better known to, or 
 more within the reach of those who 
 suppose it than they are of other men. 
 It is at least very certain, that all those 
 who reject the system of innate ideas, 
 cannot, without contradicting their own 
 principles, admit the groundless doc- 
 trine of the immortality of the soul. 
 
 In defiance of the consolation that 
 so many persons pretend to find in the 
 notion of an eternal existence ; in de- 
 spite of that firm persuasion, which 
 such numbers of men assure us they 
 have, that their souls will survive their 
 bodies, they seem so very much alarmed 
 at the dissolution of this body, that they 
 do not contemplate their end, which 
 they ought to desire as the period of so 
 many miseries, but with the greatest 
 inquietude: so true it is, that the real, 
 the present, even accompanied with 
 pain, has much more influence over 
 mankind, than the most beautiful chi- 
 meras of the future, which he never 
 views but through the clouds of uncer- 
 tainty. Indeed the most religious men, 
 notwithstanding the conviction they 
 express of a blessed eternity, do not 
 find these flattering hopes sufficiently 
 consoling to repress their fears and 
 trembling when they think on the 
 necessary dissolution of their bodies. 
 Death was always for mortals the 
 most frightful point of view ; they 
 regard it as a strange phenomenon, 
 contrary to the order of things, opposed 
 to nature ; in a word, as an effect of 
 the celestial vengeance, as the wages 
 of sin. Although every thing proves 
 to man that death is inevitable, he is 
 never able to familiarize himself with 
 its idea ; he never thinks on it without 
 shuddering, and the assurance of pos- 
 sessing an immortal soul, but feebly 
 indemnifies him for the grief he feels 
 in the deprivation of his perishable body. 
 Two causes contribute to strengthen 

 
 120 
 
 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 and nourish his alarm ; the one is, that 
 this death, commonly accompanied with 
 pain, wrests from him an existence that 
 pleases him, with which heis acquainted, 
 to which he is accustomed ; the other is 
 the uncertainty of the state that must 
 succeed his actual existence. 
 
 The illustrious Bacon has said : that 
 " Men fear death, for the same reason 
 that children dread being alone in dark- 
 ness."* Man naturally challenges every 
 thing with which he is unacquainted ; 
 he is desirous to see clearly, to the end 
 that he may guaranty himself against 
 those objects which may menace his 
 safety, or that he may be enabled to 
 procure for himself those which may 
 be useful to him. The man who exists, 
 cannot form to himself any idea of 
 non-existence ; as this circumstance 
 disturbs him, for want of experience 
 his imagination sets to work ; this 
 points out to him, either well or ill, 
 this uncertain state : accustomed to 
 think, to feel, to be stimulated into 
 activity, to enjoy society, he contem- 
 plates as the greatest misfortune a dis- 
 solution that will strip him of these 
 objects, and deprive him of those sensa- 
 tions which his present nature has 
 rendered necessary to him; that will 
 prevent his heing warned of his own 
 existence; that shall bereave him of his 
 pleasures to plunge him into nothing. 
 In supposing it even exempt from pain, 
 he always looks upon this nothing as 
 an afflicting solitude, as a heap of pro- 
 found darkness ; he sees himself in a 
 state of general desolation, destitute of 
 all assistance, and feeling the rigour 
 of this frightful situation. But does 
 not a profound sleep help to give him 
 a true idea of this nothing ? Does not 
 that deprive him of every thing 1 Does 
 it not appear to annihilate the universe 
 to him, and him to the universe ? Is 
 death any thing more than a profound 
 and permanent sleep? Is it for want 
 of being able to form an idea of death, 
 that man dreads it ; if he could figure 
 to himself a true image of this state of 
 annihilation, he would from thence 
 cease to fear it ; but he is not able to 
 conceive a state in which there is no 
 feeling ; he therefore believes, that 
 
 Nam veluti pueri trepidant, atque omnia csesis 
 In tenebris metuunt : sic nos in luce timemus 
 Interdum, nihilo quae sunt metuenda magis quam 
 Quae pueri in tenebris pavitant, finguntque futura. 
 . Lucretius, Lib. III. v. 87, et seq. 
 
 j when he shall no longer exist, he will 
 have the same feelings and the same 
 consciousness of things which during 
 his existence appear to his mind in 
 such gloomy colours: imagination pic- 
 tures to him his funeral pomp ; the 
 grave they are digging for him ; the 
 lamentations that will accompany him 
 to his last abode ; he persuades himself 
 that these melancholy objects will affect 
 him as painfully, even after his decease, 
 as they do in his present condition in 
 which he is in full possession of his 
 senses.f 
 
 Mortal, led astray by fear ! after thy 
 death thine eyes will see no more ; 
 thine ears will hear no longer ; in the 
 depth of thy grave, thou wilt no more 
 be witness to this scene which thine 
 imagination at present represents to 
 thee under such dismal colours ; thou 
 wilt no longer take part in what shall 
 be done in the world ; thou wilt no 
 more be occupied with what may befall 
 thine inanimate remains, than thou 
 wast able to be the day previous to 
 that which ranked thee among the 
 beings of thy species. To die, is to 
 cease to think, to feel, to enjoy, to 
 suffer ; thy sorrows will not follow thee 
 to the silent tomb. Think of death, 
 not to feed thy fears and to nourish 
 thy melancholy, but to accustom thyself 
 to look upon it with a peaceable eye, 
 and to cheer thee up against those false 
 terrours with which the enemies to thy 
 repose labour to inspire thee ! 
 
 The fears of death are vain illusions, 
 that must disappear as soon as we learn 
 to contemplate this necessary event 
 under its true point of view. A great 
 man has defined philosophy to be 
 a meditation on death ;% he is not 
 desirous by that to have it understood 
 that man ought to occupy himself 
 sorrowfully with his end, with a view 
 to nourish his fears ; on the contrary 
 he wishes to invite him to familiarize 
 himself with an object that nature 
 has rendered necessary to him, and to 
 accustom himself to expect it with a 
 serene countenance. If life is a benefit, 
 if it be necessary to love it, it is no less 
 necessary to quit it, and reason ought 
 
 t Nee videt fn vora nullum fore morte alium, se : 
 Qui possit vivus sibi se lugere peremptum, 
 Stansque jacentum, nee lacerari, urive dolore. 
 Lucret. Lib. HI. 
 
 t MvJtnt T Say*. And Lucan has said : 
 Scire mori sors prima viris. 

 
 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 121 
 
 to teach him a calm resignation to the 
 decrees of fate : his welfare exacts that 
 he should contract the habit of contem- 
 plating without alarm an event that his 
 essence has rendered inevitable: his 
 interest demands that he should not hy 
 continual dread imbitter his -life, the 
 charms of which he must inevitably 
 destroy, if he can never view its termi- 
 nation but with trepidation. Reason 
 and his interest concur to assure him 
 against those vague terrours with which 
 his imagination inspires him in this 
 respect. If he was to call them to his 
 assistance, they would reconcile him to 
 an object that only startles him because 
 he has no knowledge of it, or because 
 it is only shown to him with those 
 hideous accompaniments with which 
 it is clothed by superstition. Let him, 
 then, endeavour to despoil death of 
 these vain illusions, and he will per- 
 ceive that it is only the sleep of life ; 
 that this sleep will not be disturbed 
 with disagreeable dreams, and that an 
 unpleasant awakening will never fol- 
 low it. To die, is to sleep ; it is to re- 
 enter into that state of insensibility in 
 which he was previous to his birth ; 
 before he had senses, before he was 
 conscious of his actual existence. 
 
 I Laws, as necessary as those which 
 gave him birth, will make him return 
 into the bosom of nature from whence 
 he was drawn, in order to reproduce 
 him afterwards under some new form, 
 which it would be useless for him to 
 know.' without consulting him, nature 
 places him for a season in the order of 
 organized beings ; without his consent, 
 she will oblige him to quit it to occupy 
 
 Lsome other order. 
 
 Let him not complain, then, that 
 nature is callous; she only makes him 
 undergo a law from which she does 
 not exempt any one being she contains.* 
 If all are born and perish; if every thing 
 is changed and destroyed ; if the birth 
 of a being is never more than the first 
 step towards its end ; how is it possible 
 to expect that man, whose machine is 
 so frail, of which the parts are so com- 
 
 * Quid de rerum natura querimur, ilia se 
 bene gcssit ; vita si scias mi, longa est. 
 V, Sencc. de Brevitate Vitce. Man complains 
 of the short duration of life of the rapidity 
 with which time flies away; yet the greater 
 number of men do not know how to employ 
 either time or life. 
 
 No. IV. 16 
 
 plicated, the whole of which possesses 
 such extreme mobility, should be ex- 
 empted from the common law which 
 decrees that even the solid earth he 
 inhabits shall experience change, shall 
 undergo alteration perhaps be de- 
 stroyed ! Feeble, frail mortal ! thou 
 pretendest to exist for ever ; wilt thou, 
 then, that for thee alone, eternal nature 
 shall change her undeviating course? 
 Dost thou not behold in those eccentric 
 comets with which thine eyes are 
 sometimes astonished, that the planets 
 themselves are subject to death'/ Live 
 then in peace, for the season that nature 
 permits thee ; and if thy mind be en- 
 lightened by reason, thou wilt die with- 
 out terrour ! 
 
 Notwithstanding the simplicity of 
 these reflections, nothing is more rare 
 than the sight of men truly fortified 
 against the fears of death : the wise 
 man himself turns pale at its approach ; 
 he has occasion to collect the whole 
 force of his mind to expect it with 
 serenity. It cannot then furnish matter 
 for surprise, if the idea of death is so 
 revolting to the generality of mortals; 
 it terrifies the young ; it redoubles the 
 chagrin and sorrow of the old, who are 
 worn down with infirmity : indeed the 
 aged although enfeebled by time, dread 
 it much more than the young who are 
 in the full vigour of life ; the man of 
 many lustres is more accustomed to 
 live ; the powers of his mind are 
 weakened ; he has less energy : at 
 length disease consumes him ; yet the 
 unhappy wretch thus plunged into mis- 
 fortune, and labouring under excru- 
 ciating tortures, has scarcely ever dared 
 to contemplate death which he ought 
 to consider as the period to all his 
 anguish. 
 
 If the source of this pusillanimity be 
 sought, it will be found in his nature, 
 which attaches him to life, and in that 
 deficiency of energy in his soul, which 
 hardly any thing tends to corroborate, 
 but which every thing strives to en- 
 feeble and bruise. All human institu- 
 tions, all the opinions of man, conspire 
 to augment his fears, and to render his 
 ideas of death more terrible and revolt- 
 ing. Indeed, superstition pleases itself 
 with exhibiting death under the most 
 frightful traits ; as a dreadful moment, 
 which not only puts an end to his 
 pleasures, but gives him up without
 
 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 defence to the strange rigour of a piti- 
 less despot, which nothing can soften. 
 According to this superstition, the most 
 virtuous man is never sure of pleasing 
 him ; but has reason to tremble for the 
 severity of his judgments ; to fear the 
 dreadful torments and endless punish- 
 ments which await the victims of his 
 caprice, for involuntary weakness or 
 the necessary faults of a short-lived 
 existence. This implacable tyrant will 
 avenge himself of man's infirmities, 
 his momentary offences, of the pro- 
 pensities that have been planted in his 
 heart, of the errours of his mind, the 
 opinions he has imbibed in the society 
 in which he was born without his own 
 consent, the ideas he has formed, the 
 passions he has indulged, and above all, 
 his not being able to comprehend an 
 inconceivable being, and all the extra- 
 vagant dogmas offered to his accept- 
 ance.* 
 
 Such, then, are the afflicting objects 
 with which religion occupies its un- 
 happy and credulous disciples ; such 
 are the fears, which the tyrant of human 
 thoughts points out to them as salutary. 
 In defiance of the exility of the effect 
 which these notions produce on the 
 greater number of those who say they 
 are, or who believe themselves per- 
 suaded, they are held forth as the most 
 powerful rampart that can be opposed 
 to the irregularities of man. Never- 
 theless, as will be seen presently, it 
 will be found that these systems, or 
 rather these chimeras so terrible to 
 behold, operate little or nothing on the 
 larger portion of mankind, who think 
 
 * Those who dare to think for themselves 
 those who have refused to listen to their 
 enthusiastic guides those who have no reve- 
 rence for the Bible those who have had the 
 audacity to consult their reason those who 
 have boldly ventured to detect impostors 
 those who have doubted the divine mission of 
 Jesus Christ those who believe that Jehovah 
 violated decency in his visit to the carpenter's 
 wife those who look upon Mary as no better 
 than a strolling wench those w'ho think that 
 St Paul was an arch knave, are to smart 
 everlastingly in flaming oceans of burning 
 sulphur, are to float to all eternity in the most 
 excruciating agonies, on seas of liquid brim- 
 stone, wailing and gnashing their teeth : what 
 wonder, then, if man dreads to be cast into 
 these hideous gulfs if his mind loathes the 
 horrific picture if he wishes to defer for a 
 season these dreadful punishments if he 
 clinga to an existence, painful as it may be, 
 rather than encounter such revolting cruelties. 
 
 of them but seldom, and never in the 
 moment that passion, interest, pleasure, 
 or example, hurries them along. If 
 these fears act, it is commonly on those 
 who have but little occasion to abstain 
 from evil: they make honest hearts 
 tremble, -but fail of effect on the per- 
 verse. They torment sensible souls, 
 but leave those that are hardened in 
 repose ; they disturb tractable and gentle 
 minds, but cause no trouble to rebellious 
 spirits : thus they alarm none but those 
 who are already sufficiently alarmed ; 
 they coerce only those who are already 
 restrained. 
 
 These notions, then, impress nothing 
 on the wicked ; when by accident they 
 do act on them, it is only to redouble 
 the wickedness of their natural cha- 
 racter, to justify them in their own 
 eyes, to furnish them with pretexts to 
 exercise it without fear, and to follow 
 it without scruple. Indeed, the expe- 
 rience of a great number of ages has 
 shown to what excess of wickedness, 
 to what lengths the passions of man 
 have carried him, when they have been, 
 authorized and unchained by religion ; 
 or, at least, when he has been enabled 
 to cover himself with its mantle. Man 
 has never been more ambitious, never 
 more covetous, never more crafty, never 
 more cruel, never more seditious, than 
 when he has persuaded himself that 
 religion permitted or commanded him 
 to be so : thus religion did nothing more 
 than lend an invincible force to his na- 
 tural passions, which, under its sacred 
 auspices, he could exercise with im- 
 punity and without remorse ; still more, 
 the greatest villains, in giving free vent 
 to the detestable propensities of their 
 natural wickedness, have believed that 
 by displaying an over-heated zeal they 
 merited well of heaven ; that they ex- 
 empted themselves by crimes from that 
 chastisement at the hand of their God. 
 which they thought their anterior con- 
 duct had richly merited. 
 
 These, then, are the effects which 
 the salutary notions of theology pro- 
 duce on mortals. These reflections 
 will furnish an answer to those who 
 say, that, " if religion promised heaven 
 equally to the wicked as to the righteous, 
 there would be found none incredulous 
 of another life." We reply that, in point 
 of fact, religion does accord heaven to 
 the wicked, since it frequently places
 
 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 in this happy abode the most useless 
 and the most depraved of men.* 
 
 Thus religion, as \ve have seen 
 sharpens the passions of evil disposec 
 men, by legitimating those crimes, a 
 which, without this sanction, they wouh 
 shudd er to commie ; or for which, at least 
 they would feel shame and experience 
 remorse. In short, the ministers of re- 
 ligion furnish to the most profligate men 
 the means of diverting from their OAvn 
 heads the thunderbolt that should strike 
 their crimes, with the promise of a never- 
 fading happiness. 
 
 With respect to the incredulous, with- 
 out doubt there may be amongst them 
 wicked men, as well as amongst the 
 most credulous ; but incredulity no more 
 supposes wickedness than credulity sup- 
 poses righteousness. On the contrary 
 the man who thinks, who meditates, 
 knows far better the true motives tc 
 goodness, than he who suffers himself 
 to be blindly guided by uncertain mo- 
 tives, or by the interest of others. Sensi- 
 ble men have the greatest advantage 
 in examining opinions which it is pre- 
 tended must have an influence over 
 their eternal happiness : if these are 
 found false or injurious to their present 
 life, they will not therefore conclude 
 that they have not another life either 
 to fear or to hope ; that they are per- 
 mitted to deliver themselves up with 
 impunity to vices which would do an 
 injury to themselves, or would draw 
 upon them the contempt and anger of 
 society : the man who does not expect 
 another life, is the more interested in 
 prolonging his existence in this, and in 
 rendering himself dear to his fellows 
 in the only life of which he has any 
 knowledge : he has made, a great stride 
 towards felicity, in disengaging himself 
 from those terrours which afflict others. f 
 
 * Such were Moses, Samuel, and David, 
 among the Jews ; Mahomet amongst the 
 Mussulmen; amongst the Christians, Co.-i- 
 stantine, St. Cyril, St. Athanasius, St. Domi- 
 nic, and a great many more pious robbers and 
 zealous persecutors, whom the Church rcreres! 
 We may also add to this list the Crusnders, 
 Leaguers, Puritans, and our modern heterodox 
 Saints, the Unitarian Inquisitors of Massa- 
 chusetts, who, if they had had the power, 
 would have condemned Abner Kneeland to 
 the devouring flames. 
 
 t A virtuous and good man has nothing to 
 fear, but every thing to hope ; for, if contrary 
 to what he is able to judge, there should be 
 a hereafter existence, will not his actions have 
 
 Superstition, in fact, takes a pride in 
 rendering man slothful, credulous, and 
 pusillanimous ! It is its principle to 
 afflict him without intermission ; to 
 redouble in him the horrours of death : 
 ever ingenious in tormenting him, it 
 has extended his inquietudes beyond 
 even his known existence ; and its 
 ministers, the more- securely to dispose 
 of him in this world, invented future 
 regions, reserving to themselves the 
 privilege of awarding recompenses to 
 those who yielded most implicitly to 
 their arbitrary laws, and of having their 
 God decree punishments to those re- 
 fractory beings who rebelled against 
 their power.J 
 
 Thus, far from holding forth conso- 
 lation to mortals, far from cultivating 
 man's reason, far from teaching him to 
 yield under the hands of necessity, 
 religion strives to render death still 
 more bitter to him, to make its yoke 
 sit heavy, to fill up its retinue with a 
 multitude of hideous phantoms, and to 
 render its approach terrible. By this 
 means it has crowded the world with 
 enthusiasts, whom it seduces by vague 
 promises ; with contemptible slaves, 
 whom it coerces with the fear of imagi- 
 nary evils. It has at length persuaded, 
 man, that his actual existence is only 
 a journey by which he will arrive at a 
 more important life. This irrational 
 doctrine of a future life prevents him 
 from occupying himself with his true 
 happiness ; from thinking of amelior- 
 ating his institutions, of improving his 
 laws, of advancing the progress of 
 science, and of perfectioning his morals. 
 Vain and gloomy ideas have absorbed 
 his attention : he consents to groan 
 under religious and political tyranny ; 
 to live in errour, to languish in mis- 
 
 jeen so regulated by virtue, will he not have 
 so comported himself in his present existence, 
 TS to stand a fair chance of enjoying in their 
 
 idlest extent those felicities prepared for his 
 species 1 
 
 t Let us review the history of Priestcraft in 
 all ages, and we shall invariably find it the 
 same crafty and contemptible system. Tan- 
 
 alus, for divulging their secrets, must eter- 
 
 lally fear, engulfed in burning sulphur, the 
 stone ready to fall on his devoted head ; whilst 
 
 lomulus was beatified and worshipped as a 
 God under the name of Quirinus. The same 
 oystem of Priestcraft caused the philosopher 
 ^alhsthenes to be put to death, for opposing 
 
 he worship of Alexander, and elevated the 
 monk Athanasius to bo a saint in heaven !
 
 124 
 
 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 fortune, in the hope, when he shall be 
 no more, of being one day happier ; in 
 the firm confidence, that his calamities, 
 his stupid patience, will conduct him 
 to a never-ending felicity : he has be- 
 lieved himself submitted to a cruel God, 
 who is willing to make him purchase 
 his future welfare, at the expense of 
 every thing most dear and most valu- 
 able to his existence here below : they 
 have pictured their God as irritated 
 against him, as disposed to appease 
 itself by punishing him eternally for 
 any efforts he should make to withdraw 
 himself from their power. It is thus 
 that the doctrine of a future life has 
 been most fatal to the human species : 
 it plunged whole nations into sloth, 
 made them languid, filled them with 
 indifference to their present welfare ; 
 or else precipitated them into the most 
 furious enthusiasm, which hurried them 
 on to tear each other in pieces in order 
 to merit heaven. 
 
 It will be asked, perhaps, by what 
 road has man been conducted, to form 
 to himself these strange and gratuitous 
 ideas of another world? I reply, that 
 it is a truth man has no idea of a future 
 life, which does not exist for him ; the 
 ideas of the past and the present furnish 
 his imagination with the materials of 
 which he constructs the edifice of the 
 regions of futurity ; and Hobbes says, 
 " We believe that that which is, will 
 always be, and that the same causes 
 will have the same effects." Man in 
 his actual state, has two modes of 
 feeling, one that he approves, another 
 that he disapproves : thus, persuaded 
 that these two modes of feeling must 
 accompany him, even beyond his pre- 
 sent existence, he placed in the regions 
 of eternity two distinguished abodes ; 
 one destined to felicity, the other to 
 misery : the one will contain the friends 
 of his God ; the other is a prison, des- 
 tined to avenge Him on all those who 
 shall not faithfully believe the doctrines 
 promulgated by the ministers of a vast 
 variety of superstitions.* 
 
 * Has sufficient attention been paid to the 
 fact that results as a necessary consequence 
 from this reasoning, which on examination 
 will be found to have rendered the first place 
 entirely useless, seeing that by the number 
 and contradiction of these various systems, 
 let man believe which ever he may, let him 
 follow it in the most faithful manner, still he 
 
 Such is the origin of the ideas upon 
 a future life, so diffused among man- 
 kind. Every where may be seen an 
 Elysium and a Tartarus; a Paradise 
 and a Hell ; in a word, two distin- 
 guished abodes, constructed according 
 to the imagination of the knaves or 
 enthusiasts who have invented them, 
 and who have accommodated them to 
 the peculiar prejudices, to the hopes, 
 to the fears, of the people who believe 
 in them. The Indian figures the first 
 of these abodes as one of inaction and 
 of permanent repose, because, being 
 the inhabitant of a hot climate, he has 
 learned to contemplate rest as the 
 extreme of felicity : the Mussulman 
 promises himself corporeal pleasures, 
 similar to those that actually constitute 
 the object of his research in this life : 
 the Christian iiopes for ineffable and 
 spiritual pleasures in a word, for a 
 happiness of which he has no idea. 
 
 Of whatever nature these pleasures 
 may be, man perceived that a body was 
 needful, in order that his soul might be 
 enabled to enjoy the pleasures, or to 
 experience the pains in reserve for him 
 by the Divinity: from hence the doc- 
 trine of the resurrection ; but as he 
 beheld this body putrify, as he saw it 
 dissolve, as he witnessed its decompo- 
 sition after death, he therefore had re- 
 course to the divine omnipotence, by 
 whose interposition he now believes it 
 will be formed anew. This opinion, 
 so incomprehensible, is said to have 
 originated in Persia, among the Magi, 
 and finds a great number of adherents, 
 who have never given it a serious ex- 
 amination.f Others, incapable of ele- 
 
 must be ranked as an infidel, as a rebel to the 
 Divinity, because he cannot believe in all ; and 
 those from which he dissents, by a conse- 
 quence of their own creed, condemn him to 
 the prison-house ? 
 
 t The doctrine of the resurrection appears 
 perfectly useless to all those who believe in 
 the existence of a soul, that feels, thinks, suf- 
 fers, and enjoys after a separation from the 
 body : indeed, there are already sects who be- 
 gin to maintain, that the body is not necessary, 
 that therefore it will never be resurrected. 
 Like Berkeley, they conceive that "the soul 
 has need neither of body nor any exterior be- 
 ing, either to experience sensations, or to have 
 ideas." The Malcbrandnsts, in particular, 
 must suppose that the rejt-ctcd souls will see 
 hell in the Divinity, and will fed themselves 
 burn without having occasion for bodies for 
 that purpose.
 
 
 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 rating themselves to these suhlime no- 
 tions, believed, that under divers forms, 
 man animated successively different 
 animals, of various species, and that 
 he never ceased to be an inhabitant of 
 the earth ; such was the opinion of 
 those who adopted the doctrine of 
 Met e mpsychos is. 
 
 As for the miserable abode of souls, 
 the imagination of fanatics, who were 
 desirous of governing the people, strove 
 to assemble the most frightful images 
 to render it still more terrible. Fire is 
 of all beings that which produces in 
 man the most pungent sensation ; it 
 was therefore supposed that God could 
 not invent any thing more cruel to 
 punish his enemies : then fire was the 
 point at which their imagination was 
 obliged to stop; and it was agreed 
 pretty generally, that fire would one 
 day avenge the offended divinity :* thus 
 they painted the victims to his anger 
 as confined in fiery dungeons ; as per- 
 petually rolling in a vortex of bitumin- 
 ous flames ; as plunged in unfathomed 
 gulfs of liquid sulphur ; and making 
 the infernal caverns resound with their 
 useless groanings, and with their un- 
 availing gnashing of teeth. 
 
 But it will perhaps be inquired, how 
 could man reconcile himself to the be- 
 lief of an existence accompanied with 
 eternal torments ; above all, as many 
 according to their own religious systems 
 had reason to fear it for themselves? 
 Many causes have concurred to make 
 him adopt so revolting an opinion. In 
 the first place, very few thinking men 
 have ever believed such an absurdity, 
 when they have deigned to make use 
 of their reason ; or, when they have 
 accredited it, this notion was always 
 counterbalanced by the idea of the 
 goodness, by a reliance on the mercy, 
 which they attributed to their God.f 
 
 * It is no doubt to this we owe the atone- 
 ments by fire used by a great number of ori- 
 ental nations, and practised at this very day 
 by the priests of the God of Peace, who are 
 so cruel as to consign to the flames all those 
 who differ from them in their ideas of the 
 Divinity. As a consequence of this absurd 
 system, the civil magistrates condemn to the 
 fire the sacrilegious and the blasphemer that 
 is to say, persons who do no harm to any one ; 
 whilst they are content to punish more mildly 
 thoss who do a real injury to society. So 
 much for religion and its effects ! 
 
 t If, as Christians assume, the torments in 
 
 hell are to be infinite in their duration and in- I order. 
 
 123 
 
 In the second place, those who were 
 blinded by their fears, never rendered 
 to themselves any account of these 
 strange doctrines, which they either 
 received with awe from their legisla- 
 tors, or which were transmitted to them 
 by their fathers. In the third place, 
 each sees the object of his terrours 
 only at a favourable distance ; more- 
 over superstition promises him the 
 means of escaping the tortures he be- 
 lieves he has merited. At length, like 
 those sick people whom we see cling 
 with fondness even to the most painful 
 life, man preferred the idea of an un- 
 happy though unknown existence, to 
 that of non-existence, which he looked 
 upon as the most frightful evil that 
 could befall him, either because he 
 could form no idea of it, or, because 
 his imagination painted to him this 
 non-existence, this nothing, as the con- 
 fused assemblage of all evils. A known 
 evil, of whatever magnitude, alarmed 
 him less, above all when there remain- 
 ed the hope of being able to avoid it, 
 than an evil of which he knew nothing, 
 upon which consequently his imagi- 
 nation was painfully employed, but to 
 which he knew not how to oppose a 
 remedy. 
 
 It will be seen, then, that supersti- 
 tion, far from consoling man upon the 
 necessity of death, only redoubles his 
 terrours, by the evils which it pretends 
 his decease will be followed : these 
 terrours are so strong, that the miser- 
 able wretches who believe strictly in 
 these formidable doctrines, pass their 
 days in affliction, bathed in the most 
 bitter tears. What shall be said of an 
 opinion, so destructive to society, yet 
 adopted by so many nations, which 
 announces to them, that a severe God, 
 may at each instant, like a thief, take 
 them unprovided ; that at each moment 
 they are liable to pass under the most 
 rigorous judgment ? What idea can 
 
 tenseness, we must conclude that man, who 
 is a finite being, cannot suffer infinitely. God 
 himself, in despite of the efforts he might make 
 to punish eteVnally for faults which are limited 
 by time, cannot communicate infinity to man. 
 The same may be said of the joys of Paradise, 
 where a finite being will no more comprehend 
 an infinite God, than he does in this world. 
 On the other hand, if God perpetuates the ex- 
 istence of the damned, as Christianity teaches, 
 he perpetuates the existence of sin, which ia 
 not very consistent with his supposed love of
 
 126 
 
 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 be bettet suited to terrify man, what 
 more likely to discourage him, what 
 more calculated to damp the desire of 
 ameliorating his condition, than the 
 afflicting prospect of a Avorld always 
 on the brink of dissolution, and of a 
 divinity seated upon the ruins of na- 
 ture, ready to pass judgment on \he 
 human species ? Such are, neverthe- 
 less, the fatal opinions with which the 
 mind of nations has been fed for thou- 
 sands of years ; they are so dangerous, 
 that if by a happy want of just infer- 
 ence, he did not derogate in his con- 
 duct from these afflicting ideas, he 
 would fall into the most abject stupid- 
 ity. How could man occupy himself 
 with a perishable world, ready every 
 moment to crumble into atoms ? How 
 think of rendering himself happy on 
 earth, when it is only the porch to an 
 eternal kingdom? Is it, then, surpris- 
 ing that the superstitions to which such 
 doctrines serve for a basis, have pre- 
 scribed to their disciples a total detach- 
 ment from things below : an entire re- 
 nunciation of the most innocent pleas- 
 ures ; and have given birth to a slug- 
 gishness, to a pusillanimity, to an ab- 
 jection of soul, to an insociabilitv, that 
 renders him useless to himself and 
 dangerous to others ? If necessity did 
 not oblige man to depart in his prac- 
 tice from these irrational systems; if 
 his wants did not bring him back to 
 reason, in despite of his religious doc- 
 trines, the whole world would present- 
 ly become a vast desert, inhabited by 
 some few isolated savages, who would 
 not even have courage to multiply 
 themselves. What kind of notions 
 are those which must necessarily be 
 put aside, in order that human associa- 
 tion may subsist ? ' 
 
 Nevertheless, the doctrine of a fu- 
 ture life, accompanied with rewards 
 and punishments, has been regarded 
 for a great number of ages as the most 
 powerful, or even as the only motive 
 capable of coercing the passions of 
 man as the sole means that can oblige 
 him to be virtuous. By degrees, this 
 doctrine has become the basis of almost 
 all religious and political systems, so 
 much so, that at this day it is said this 
 prejudice cannot be attacked without 
 absolutely rending asunder the bonds 
 of society. The founders of religions 
 have made use of it to attach their 
 
 credulous disciples ; legislators have 
 looked at it as the curb best calculated 
 to keep mankind under discipline. 
 Many philosophers themselves have 
 believed with sincerity, that this doc- 
 trine was requisite to terrify man, and 
 thus divert him from crime.* 
 
 It must indeed be allowed, that this 
 doctrine has been of the greatest utility 
 to those who have given religions to 
 nations and made themselves its minis- 
 ters: it was the foundation of their 
 power ; the source of their wealth ; the 
 permanent cause of that blindness, the 
 solid basis of those terrours, which it 
 was their interest to nourish in the hu- 
 man race. It was by this doctrine the 
 priest became first the rival, then the 
 master of kings: it is by this dogma 
 that nations are filled with enthusiasts 
 inebriated with religion, always more 
 disposed to listen to its menaces than 
 to the counsels of reason, to the orders 
 of the sovereign, to the cries of nature, 
 or to the laws of society. Politics it- 
 self, was enslaved to the caprice of the 
 priest ; the temporal monarch was 
 obliged to bend under the yoke of the 
 eternal monarch ; the one only dispos- 
 ed of this perishable world ; the other 
 extended his power into the world to 
 come, much more important for man 
 than the earth, on which he is only a 
 pilgrim, a mere passenger. Thus the 
 doctrine of another life, placed the gov- 
 ernment itself in a state of dependance 
 upon the priest ; the monarcn was no- 
 thing more than his first subject, and 
 he was never obeyed, but Avhen the two 
 were in accord to oppress the human 
 race. Nature in vain cried out to man, 
 to be careful of his present happiness ; 
 the priest ordered him to be unhappy, 
 in the expectation of future felicity. 
 Reason in vain exhorted him to be 
 peaceable, the priest breathed forth fa- 
 naticism and fury, and obliged him to 
 disturb the public tranquillity, every 
 time there was a question of the inte- 
 
 * When the doctrine of the immortality of the 
 soul first came out of the school of Plato, and 
 first diffused itself among the Greeks, it caused 
 the greatest ravages ; it determined a multitude 
 of men, who were discontented with their con- 
 dition, to terminate their existence. Ptolemy 
 Philadelphus, king of Eaypt, seeing the effect 
 this doctrine, which at the present day is look- 
 ed upon as so salutary, produced on the brains 
 of his subjects, defended the teaching of it, 
 under the penalty of death.
 
 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 127 
 
 rests of the invisible monarch of an- 
 other life, or the real interests of his 
 ministers in this. 
 
 Such is the fruit that politics has 
 gathered from the doctrine of a future 
 life. The regions of the woiW to come, 
 have enabled the priesthood to conquer 
 the present world. The expectation 
 of celestial happiness, and the dread 
 of future tortures, only served to pre- 
 vent man from seeking after the means 
 to render himself happy here below. 
 Thus errour, under whatever aspect it 
 is considered, will never be more than 
 a source of evil for mankind. The 
 doctrine of another life, in presenting 
 to mortals an ideal happiness, will ren- 
 der them enthusiasts ; in overwhelming 
 them with fears, it will make useless 
 beings, generate cowards, form atra- 
 biiarious or furious men, who will lose 
 sight of their present abode, to occupy 
 themselves with the pictured regions 
 of a world to come, and with those 
 dreadful evils which they must fear 
 after their death. 
 
 If it be insisted, that the doctrine of 
 future rewards and punishments is the 
 most powerful curb to restrain the 
 passions of man ; we shall reply by 
 calling in daily experience. If we only 
 cast our eyes around, we shall see this 
 assertion contradicted ; and we shall 
 find that these marvellous speculations 
 do not in any manner diminish the 
 number of the wicked, because they 
 are incapable of changing the tempera- 
 ment of man, of annihilating those 
 passions which the vices of society 
 engender in his heart. In those nations 
 who appear the most thoroughly con- 
 vinced of this future punishment, may 
 be seen assassins, thieves, crafty knaves, 
 oppressors, adulterers, voluptuaries; all 
 these pretend they are firmly persuaded 
 of the reality of an hereafter ; yet in the 
 whirlwind of dissipation, in the vortex 
 of pleasure, in the fury of their passions, 
 they no longer behold this formidable 
 future existence, which in those mo- 
 ments has no kind of influence over 
 their earthly conduct. 
 
 In short, in many of those countries 
 where the doctrine of another life is so 
 firmly established that each individual 
 irritates himself against whoever may 
 have the temerity to combat the opinion, 
 or even to doubt it, we see that it is 
 utterly incapable of impressing any 
 
 thing on rulers who are unjust, who 
 are negligent of the welfare of their 
 people, who are debauched ; on courte- 
 sans who are lewd in their habits ; on 
 covetous misers ; on flinty extortioners, 
 who fatten on the substance of a nation ; 
 on women without modesty ; on a vast 
 multitude of drunken, intemperate and 
 vicious men; on great numbers even 
 amongst those priests, whose function 
 it is to announce the vengeance of 
 heaven. If it be inquired of them, how 
 they dare to give themselves up to such 
 scandalous actions, which they ought 
 to know are certain to draw upon them 
 eternal punishment ? They will reply : 
 that the madness of their passions, the 
 force of their habits, the contagion of 
 example, or even the power of circum- 
 stances, have hurried them along, and 
 have made them forget the dreadful 
 consequences in which their conduct 
 is likely to involve them ; besides, they 
 will say that the treasures of the divine 
 mercy are infinite, and that repentance 
 suffices to efface the foulest transgres- 
 sions, the blackest guilt, and the most 
 enormous crimes.* In this multitude 
 of wretched beings, who, each after his 
 own manner, desolates society with his 
 criminal pursuits, you will find only a 
 small number who are sufficiently in- 
 timidated by the fears of a miserable 
 hereafter to resist their evil propensities. 
 What did I say? these propensities are 
 in themselves too weak to carry them 
 forward, and without the aid of the 
 doctrine of another life, the law and 
 the fear of censure would have been 
 motives sufficient to prevent them from 
 rendering themselves criminal. 
 
 It is, indeed, fearful, timorous souls, 
 upon whom the terrours of another life 
 make a profound impression : human 
 beings of this sort come into the world 
 
 * The idea of Divine Mercy cheers up the 
 wicked, and makes him forget Divine Justice. 
 And indeed, these two attributes, supposed to 
 be equally infinite in God, must counterbalance 
 each other in such a manner, that neither the 
 one nor the other are able to act. Yet, the 
 wicked reckon upon an immoveable God, or 
 at leas.t flatter themselves to escape from the 
 effects of his justice by means of his mercy. 
 The highwayman, who knows that sooner or 
 later he must perish on the gallows, says, that 
 he has nothing to fear, as ne will then have 
 an opportunity of making 'i good end. Every 
 Christian believes that true repentance blots 
 out all their sins. The East Indian attributes 
 the same virtues to the waters of the Gangee.
 
 128 
 
 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 with moderate passions, a weakly organ- 
 ization, and a cool imagination ; it is 
 not therefore surprising that in such 
 men, who are already restrained by 
 their nature, the fear of future punish- 
 ment counterbalances the weak efforts 
 of their feeble passions; but it is by 
 no means the same with those hardened 
 criminals, with those men who are 
 habitually vicious, whose unseemly 
 excesses nothing can arrest, and who, 
 in their violence, shut their eyes to the 
 fear of the laws of this world, despising 
 still more those of the other. 
 
 Nevertheless, how many persons say 
 they are, and even believe themselves 
 restrained by the fears of the life to 
 come ! But. either they deceive us, or 
 they impose upon themselves, by attri- 
 buting to these fears that which is only 
 the effect of motives much nearer at 
 hand, such as the feebleness of their 
 machine, the mildness of their tempera- 
 ment, the slender energy of their souls, 
 their natural timidity, the ideas imbibed 
 in their education, the fear of conse- 
 quences immediately resulting from 
 criminal actions, the physical evils 
 attendant on unbridled irregularities : 
 these are the true motives that restrain 
 them, and not the notions of a future 
 life, which men who say they are most 
 firmly persuaded of its existence, forget 
 whenever a powerful interest solicits 
 them to sin. If for a time man would 
 pay attention to what passes before his 
 eyes, he would perceive that he ascribes 
 to the fear of his God that which is in 
 reality only the effect of peculiar weak- 
 ness, of pusillanimity, of the small 
 interest found to commit evil : these 
 men would not act otherwise than they 
 do if they had not this fear before them ; 
 if therefore he reflected, he would feel 
 that it is always necessity that makes 
 men act as they do. 
 
 Man cannot be restrained, when he 
 does not find within himself motives 
 sufficiently powerful to conduct him 
 back to reason. There is nothing, 
 either in this world or in the other, 
 that can render him virtuous when an 
 untoward organization, a mind badly 
 cultivated, a violent imagination, in- 
 veterate habits, fatal examples, power- 
 ful interests, invite him from every 
 quarter to the commission of crime. 
 No speculations are capable of restrain- 
 ing the man who braves public opinion, 
 
 who despises the law, who is careless 
 of its censure, who turns a deaf ear to 
 the cries of conscience, whose power 
 in this world places him out of the 
 reach of punishment.* In the violence 
 of his transports he will fear still less 
 a distant futurity, of which the idea 
 always recedes before that which he 
 believes necessary to his immediate 
 and present happiness. AH lively pas- 
 sions blind man to every thing that is 
 not its immediate object; the terrours 
 of a future life, of which his passions 
 always possess the secret to diminish 
 to him the probability, can effect nothing 
 upon the wicked man who does not fear 
 even the much nearer punishment of 
 the law who sets at naught the assured 
 hatred of those by whom he is sur- 
 rounded. Man, when he delivers him- 
 self up to crime, sees nothing certain 
 except the supposed advantage which 
 attends it ; the rest always appear to 
 him either false or problematical. 
 
 If man would but open his eyes, he 
 would clearly perceive, that to effect 
 any thing upon hearts hardened by 
 crime, he must not reckon upon the 
 chastisement of an avenging Divinity, 
 which the self-love natural to man 
 always shows him as pacified in the 
 long run. He who has arrived at per- 
 suading himself that he cannot be happy 
 without crime, will always readily de- 
 liver himself up to it notwithstanding 
 the menaces of religion. Whoever is 
 sufficiently blind, not to read his infamy 
 in his own heart, to see his own Tile- 
 ness in the countenances of his asso- 
 ciates, his own condemnation in the 
 anger of his fellow men, his own im- 
 worthiness in the indignation of the 
 judges established to punish the offences 
 he may commit ; such a man. I say, will 
 never feel the impression his crimes 
 
 * It will be said, that the fear of another 
 life is a curb useful at least to restrain princes 
 and nobles, who have no other; and that this 
 curb, such as it is, is better than none. But 
 it has been sufficiently proved that the belief 
 in a future life does not controul the actions 
 of sovereigns. The only way to prevent 
 sovereigns from injuring society, is, to make 
 them subservient to the laws, and to prevent 
 their ever having the right or power of enslav- 
 ing and oppressing nations according to the 
 whim or caprice of the moment. Therefore, 
 a good political constitution, founded upon 
 natural rights and a sound education, is the 
 only efficient check to the malpractices of the 
 rulers of nations.
 
 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 129 
 
 shall make on the features of a judge ' 
 that is either hidden from his view, or 
 that he only contemplates at a distance. 
 The tyrant, who with dry eyes can hear 
 the cries of the distressed, who with 
 callous heart can behold the tears of a 
 whole people of whose misery he i the 
 cause, will not see the angry counte- 
 nance of a more powerful master. 
 When a haughty, arrogant monarch, 
 pretends to be accountable for his 
 actions to the Divinity alone, it is 
 because he fears his nation more than 
 he does his God. 
 
 On the other hand, does not religion 
 itself annihilate the effects of those 
 fears which it announces as salutary ? 
 Does it not furnish its disciples with 
 the means of extricating themselves 
 from the punishments with which it 
 has so frequently menaced them? Doe? 
 it not tell them, that a steril repentance 
 will, even at the moment of death, dis- 
 arm the celestial wrath ; that it will 
 purify the filthy souls of sinners 1 Do 
 not even the priests, in some super- 
 stitions, arrogate to themselves the 
 right of remitting to the dying, the 
 punishment due to the crimes com- 
 mitted during the course of a disorderly 
 life 1 In short, do not the most perverse 
 men, encouraged in iniquity, debauchery, 
 and crime, reckon, even to the last mo- 
 ment, upon the aid of a religion that 
 promises them the infallible means of 
 reconciling themselves to the Divinity 
 whom they have irritated, and of avoid- 
 ing his rigorous punishments ? 
 
 In consequence of these notions, so 
 favourable to the wicked, so suitable to 
 tranquillize their fears, we see that 
 the hope of an easy expiation, far from 
 correcting man, engages him to persist 
 until death in the most crying disorders. 
 Indeed, in despite of the numberless 
 advantages which he is assured flows 
 from the doctrine of a life to come, in 
 defiance of its pretended efficacy to 
 repress the passions of men, do not the 
 priests themselves, although so inter- 
 ested in the maintenance of this system, 
 every day complain of its insufficiency 1 
 They acknowledge, that mortals, whom 
 from their infancy they have imbued 
 with these ideas, are not less hurried 
 forward by their evil propensities, less 
 sunk in the vortex of dissipation, le^s 
 the slaves to their pleasures, less capti- 
 vated by bad habits, less driven along 
 
 No. V. 17 
 
 by the torrent of the world, less seduced 
 by their present interest, which make 
 them forget equally the recompense 
 and the chastisement of a future exist- 
 ence. In a word, the ministers of 
 Heaven allow, that their disciples, for 
 the greater part, conduct themselves in 
 this world as if they had nothing either 
 to hope or to fear in another. 
 
 But let it be supposed for a moment 
 that the doctrine of eternal punishments 
 was of some utility, and that it really 
 restrained a small number of indi- 
 viduals ; what are these feeble advan- 
 tages compared to the numberless evils 
 that flow from it? Against one timid 
 man, whom this idea restrains, there 
 are thousands upon whom it operates 
 nothing; there are millions whom it 
 makes irrational ; whom it renders 
 savage persecutors ; whom it converts 
 into useless and wicked fanatics ; there 
 are millions whose mind it disturbs, 
 and whom it diverts from their duties 
 towards society ; there are an infinity 
 whom it grievously afflicts and troubles, 
 without producing any real good for 
 their associates.* 
 
 * Many persons, convinced of the utility of 
 the belief in another life, consider those who 
 do not fall in with this doctrine as the enemies 
 of society. However, it will be found on 
 examination that the wisest and the most 
 enlightened men of antiquity have believed, 
 not only that the soul is material and perishes 
 with the body, but also that they have attacked 
 without hesitation and without subterfuge the 
 opinion of future punishments. This senti- 
 ment was not peculiar to the Epicureans, but 
 was adopted by philosophers of all sects, by 
 Pythagoreans, by Stoics, by Peripatetics, by 
 Academics; in short, by the most godly and 
 the most virtuous men of Greece and Rome. 
 Pythagoras, according to Ovid, speaks thus : 
 
 O Genus attotiifnm pelida? formidine Mortis, 
 Quid stijra, quid tenobras, et noiniua vana timetis 
 Materiem vatum, falsique pericula mundi ! 
 
 Timreus of Locris, who was a Pythagorean, 
 admits that the doctrine of future punishments 
 was fabulous, solely destined for the imbecility 
 of the uninformed, and but little calculated for 
 those who cultivate their reason. 
 
 Aristotle expressly says, that, " Man has 
 neither good to hope, nor evil to fear after 
 death." 
 
 The Platonists, who made the soul immor- 
 tal, could not have any idea of future punish- 
 ments, because the soul according to them 
 was a portion of the Divinity, which, after the 
 dissolution of the body, it returned to rejoin. 
 Now, a portion of the Divinity could not be 
 subject to suffer. 
 
 Zeno, according to Cicero, supposed the 
 sov,l to bo an igneous substance, from whence
 
 130 
 
 EDUCATION, MORALS, &c. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Education, JMorals, and the Laws, suffice to 
 restrain JMan. Of the Desire of Immor- 
 tality. Of Suicide. 
 
 IT is not then in an ideal world, 
 existing no where but in the imagina- 
 tion of man, that he must seek to collect 
 motives calculated to make him act pro- 
 perly in this ; it is in the visible world 
 that will be found incitements to div r ert 
 him from crime and to rouse him to 
 virtue. It is in nature, in experience, 
 
 lie concluded it destroyed itself. Zenoni Stoico 
 animus ignis videtur. Si sit ignis, extinguetur ; 
 interibit cum reliquo corpore. 
 
 This philosophical orator, who was of the 
 sect of the Academics, is not always in accord 
 with himself; however, on several occasions 
 he treats openly as fables the torments of Hell, 
 and looks upon death as the end of every thing 
 for man. Vide 'l\isculan., C. 38. 
 
 Seneca is filled with passages which con- 
 template death as a state of total annihilation : 
 Mors est non esse. Id quale sit jam scio ; hoc 
 erit post me quod ante me fuit. Si quid in hac 
 re tormenti est, necesse est et fuisse antequam 
 prodiremus in lucem ; atqui nullam sensimus 
 tune vexationem. Speaking of the death of 
 his brother, he says : Quid itaque ejus desi- 
 derio maceror, qui aut beatus, aut nullus est ? 
 But nothing can be more decisive than what 
 he writes to Marcia to console him. (chap. 19.) 
 Cogita nullis defunctum malis affici : ilia qua; 
 nobis inferos faciunt terribiles, fabulam esse : 
 nullas imminere mortuis tenebras, nee carce- 
 rem, nee flumina flagrantia igne, nee oblivi- 
 qnis amnem, nee tribunalia, et reos et-in ilia 
 libertate tarn laxa iterum tyrannos: luserunt 
 ista poetee et vanis nos agitavere terroribus. 
 Mors omnium dolorum et solutio est et finis : 
 ultra quam mala nostra non exeunt, quas nos 
 in illam tranquilitatem, in qua antequam 
 nasceremur, jacuimus, reponit. 
 
 Here is also another conclusive passage 
 from this philosopher, which is deserving of 
 the attention of the reader : Si animus fortuita 
 contcmpsit; si deorum hominumque formidi- 
 nem ejecit, et scit non multum ab hominc 
 timendurn, a dco nihil ; sicontemptor omnium 
 quibus torquetur vita eo perductus est ut illi 
 liqueat mortem nullius niali esse material!), 
 multorum finem. V. De Benrficiis, VII. i. 
 
 Seneca, the tragedian, explains himself in 
 the same manner as the philosopher : 
 
 Post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil. 
 
 Velocis spatii meta novissima. 
 
 Quseris quo jaceas post obitum loco 1 
 
 Quo non nnta jacent. 
 
 Mors individua est noxia corpori, 
 
 Nee parcens animffi. 
 
 Troades. 
 
 Epictetus has the same idea. In a passage 
 reported by Arrian, he says : " But where are 
 you going? It cannot be to a place of suffering : 
 you will only return to the place from whence 
 you came ; you are about to be again peace- 
 
 in truth, that he must search out reme- 
 dies for the evils of his species, and 
 for motives suitable to infuse into the 
 human heart propensities truly useful 
 for society. 
 
 If attention has been paid to what 
 has been said in the course of this work, 
 it will be seen, that above all it is 
 education that will best furnish the true 
 means of rectifying the wanderings of 
 mankind. It is this that should scatter 
 the seeds in his heart ; cultivate the 
 tender shoots ; make a profitable use 
 
 ably associated with the elements from whence 
 you are derived. That which in your compo- 
 sition is of the nature of fire, will return to the 
 element of fire ; that which is of the nature of 
 earth, will rejoin itself to the earth ; that which 
 is air, will reunite itself with air ; that which is 
 water, will resolve itself into water ; there is 
 no Hell, no Acheron, no Cocytus, no Phlege- 
 thon." See Arrian. in Epiclet. lib. iii. cap. 13. 
 In another place he says : '' The hour of death 
 approaches ; but do not aggravate your evil, 
 nor render things worse than they are : repre- 
 sent them to yourself under their true point of 
 view. The time is come when the materials 
 of which you are composed, go to resolve 
 themselves into the elements from whence 
 they were originally borrowed. What is there 
 that is terrible or grievous in that 1 Is there 
 any thing in the world, that perishes totally ?" 
 See Arrian. lib. iv. cap. 1. 1. 
 
 The sage and pious Antoninus says : " He 
 who fears death, either fears to be deprived of 
 all feeling, or dreads to experience different 
 sensations. If you lose all feeling, you will 
 no longer be subject either to pain or to misery. 
 If you are provided with other senses of a 
 different nature, you will become a creature 
 of a different species." This great emperor 
 further says : " that we must expect death 
 with tranquillity, seeing that it is only a dis- 
 solution of the elements of which each animal 
 is composed." See the Moral Reflections of 
 Marcus Antoninus, lib. ii. 
 
 To the evidence of so many great men of 
 Pagan antiquity, may be joined that of the 
 author of Ecclesiastes, who speaks of death 
 and of the condition of the human soul, like 
 an Epicurean ; he says : " For that which 
 befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts ; 
 even one thing befalleth them : as the one 
 dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all 
 one breath ; so that a man hath no pre- 
 eminence above a beast ; for all is vanity. 
 All go unto one place; all are of the dust, 
 and all turn to dust again." And further, 
 " wherefore I perceive, that there is nothing 
 better, than that a man should rejoice in his 
 own works ; for that is his portion : for who 
 shall bring him to see what shall be after 
 him?" 
 
 In short, how can Christians reconcile the 
 utility or the necessity of this doctrine with 
 the fact, that the legislator of the Jews, inspired 
 by the Divinity, remained silent on a subject 
 that is said to be of so much importance ?
 
 EDUCATION, MORALS, &c. 
 
 131 
 
 of his dispositions ; turn to account 
 those faculties which depend on his 
 organization ; which should cherish the 
 fire of his imagination, kindle it for 
 useful objects ; damp ,it, or extinguish 
 it for others ; in short, it is this which 
 should make sensible souls contract 
 habits that are advantageous for society, 
 and beneficial to the individual. Brought 
 up in this manner, man would not have 
 occasion for celestial punishments to 
 teach him the value of virtue ; he would 
 not need to behold burning gulfs of 
 brimstone under his feet, to induce him 
 to feel horrour for crime ; nature, with- 
 out these fables, would teach him much 
 better what he owes to himself, and 
 the law would point out to him what 
 lie owes to the body politic of which 
 he is a member. It is thus that edu- 
 cation would form valuable citizens 
 to the state ; the depositaries of power 
 would distinguish those whom educa- 
 tion should have thus formed, by reason 
 of the advantages which they would 
 procure for their country ; they would 
 punish those who should be found 
 injurious to it ; it would make the citi- 
 zens see, that the promises of reward 
 which education and morals held forth, 
 are by no means vain ; and that in a 
 state well constituted, virtue is tli<> trim 
 and only road to happine-s : t;ilcnt> tin- 
 way to gain respect ; mul that inutility 
 and crime lead to contempt and mis- 
 fortune. 
 
 A just, enlightened, virtuous, and vigi- 
 lant government, who should honestly 
 propose the public good, would have 
 no occasion either for fables or for 
 falsehoods to govern reasonable sub- 
 jects ; it would blush to make use of 
 imposture to deceive citizens who. 
 instructed in their duties, would find 
 their interest in submitting to equitable 
 laws ; who would be capable of feeling 
 the benefit these have the power of 
 conferring on them; it would know, 
 that public esteem has more power 
 over men of elevated minds than the 
 terrour of the laws ; it would feel, that 
 habit is sufficient to inspire them with 
 horrour, even for those concealed crimes 
 that escape the eyes of society ; it would 
 understand, that the visible punishments 
 of this world impose much more on the 
 ignorant than those of an uncertain and 
 distant futurity : in short, it would ascer- 
 tain that the sensible benefits within the 
 
 compass of the sovereign power to dis- 
 tribute, touch the imagination of mortals 
 more keenly than those vague recom- 
 penses which are held forth to them in 
 a future existence. 
 
 Man is almost every where so wicked, 
 so corrupt, so rebellious to reason, only 
 because he is not governed according 
 to his nature, nor properly instructed in 
 her necessary laws : he is every where 
 fed with useless chimeras; everywhere 
 submitted to masters who neglect his 
 instruction, or who only seek to deceive 
 him. On the face of this globe we 
 only see unjust sovereigns, enervated 
 by luxury, corrupted by flattery, de- 
 praved by licentiousness, made wicked 
 by impunity, devoid of talents, without 
 morals, destitute of virtue, and incapable 
 of exerting any energy for the benefit 
 of the states they govern ; chey are con- 
 sequently but little occupied with the 
 welfare of their people, and indifferent 
 to their duties, of which indeed they 
 are often ignorant. Stimulated by the 
 desire of continually finding means to 
 feed their insatiable ambition, they 
 engage in useless, depopulating wars, 
 and never occupy their mind with those 
 objects which are the most important 
 to the happiness of their nation : inter- 
 ested in maintaining the received preju- 
 dices, they never wish to consider the 
 means of curing them : in short, de- 
 prived themselves of that understanding 
 which teaches man that it is his interest 
 to be kind, just, and virtuous, they ordi- 
 narily reward only those crimes which 
 their imbecility makes them imagine as 
 useful to them, and they generally pun- 
 ish those virtues which are opposed to 
 their own imprudent passions. Under 
 such masters, is it surprising that society 
 should be ravaged by perverse men 
 who emulate each other in oppressing 
 its members, in sacrificing its dearest 
 interests. The state of society is a state 
 of hostility of the sovereign against the 
 whole, of each of its members the one 
 against the other.* Man is wicked, 
 
 ' It must be observed I do not say here, ; 
 like Hobbes, that the state of nature is a state 
 of war, but that men, by their nature, nro 
 neither good nor wicked; in fact, man will be 
 either good or bad, according as he is modified. 
 If men are so ready to injure one another, it is 
 only because every thing conspires to give 
 them different interests. Each one, if I ma y 
 say so, lives isolated in society, and their chiefs 
 avail themselves of their divisions to subdue
 
 132 
 
 EDUCATION, MORALS, &c. 
 
 not because he is born so, but because 
 he is rendered so ; the great, the power- 
 ful, crush with impunity the indigent 
 and the unhappy ; these, at the risk of 
 their lives, seek to retaliate the evil 
 they have received : they attack either 
 openly or in secret a country who to 
 them is a stepmother, who gives all to 
 some of her children, and deprives the 
 others of every thing : they punish it 
 for its partiality, and clearly show that 
 the motives borrowed from a life here- 
 after are impotent against the fury of 
 those passions to which a corrupt 
 administration has given birth in this 
 life ; that the terrour of the punish- 
 ments in this world are too feeble 
 against necessity, against criminal ha- 
 bits ; against a dangerous organization 
 uncorrected by education. 
 
 In all countries the morals of the 
 people are neglected, and the govern- 
 ment is occupied only with rendering 
 them timid and miserable. Man iy 
 almost every where a slave ; it mus 
 then follow, of necessity, that he is 
 base, interested, dissimulating, without' 
 honour ; in a word, that he has the 
 vices of the state of which he is a 
 citizen. Every where he is deceived, 
 encouraged in ignorance, and prevented 
 from cultivating his reason ; of course 
 he must every where be stupid, irra- 
 tional, and wicked ; every where he 
 sees vice and crime applauded and 
 honoured ; thence he concludes vice 
 to be a good ; virtue only a useless 
 sacrifice of himself: every where he 
 is miserable, therefore he injures his 
 fellow men to relieve his own anguish : 
 it is in vain to show him heaven, in 
 order to restrain him; his views pre- 
 sently descend again to the earth, where 
 he is willing to be happy at any price ; 
 therefore the laws, which have neither 
 provided for his instruction, for his 
 morals, nor Ms happiness, menace him 
 uselessly, and punish him for the un- 
 just negligence of his legislators. If 
 politics, more enlightened, did seriously 
 occupy itself with the instruction and 
 with the welfare of the people ; if laws 
 were more equitable ; if each society, 
 less partial, bestowed on its members 
 the care, the education, and the assist- 
 
 the whole. Divide el impera is the maxim 
 that all bad governments follow by instinct. 
 Tyrants would be badly off if they had to rule 
 over virtuous men only. 
 
 ance which they have a right to expect 5 
 if governments less covetous, and more 
 vigilant, were sedulous to render their 
 subjects more happy, there would not 
 be seen such numbers of malefactors, 
 of robbers, of murderers, who every 
 where infest society ; they would no 1 
 be obliged to destroy life, in order to 
 punish a wickedness, which is com- 
 monly ascribable to the vices of their 
 own institutions : it would be unneces- 
 sary to seek in another life for fanciful 
 chimeras, which always prove abortive 
 against the infuriate passions, and 
 against the real wants of man. In 
 short, if the people were better in- 
 structed and more happy, politics would 
 no longer be reduced to the exigency 
 of deceiving them in order to restrain 
 them; nor to destroy so many unfor- 
 tunates for having procured necessaries 
 at the expense of their hardhearted 
 fellow citizens. 
 
 ' When it shall be desired to enlighten 
 man, let him always have truth laid 
 before him. Instead of kindling his 
 Imagination by the idea of those pre- 
 tended goods that a future state has in 
 reserve for him, let him be solaced, let 
 him be succoured ; or, at least, let him 
 be permitted to enjoy the fruit of his 
 labour; let not his substance be ravaged 
 from him by cruel imposts ; let him not 
 be discouraged from work, by finding 
 all his labour inadequate to support his 
 existence, let him not be driven into 
 that idleness that will surely lead him 
 on to crime : let him consider his pre- 
 sent existence, without carrying his 
 views to that which may attend him 
 after his death : let his industry be 
 excited ; let his talents be rewarded ; 
 let him be rendered active, laborious, 
 beneficent, and virtuous, in the world 
 he inhabits ; let it be shown to him 
 that his actions are capable of having 
 an influence over his fellow men, but 
 not on those imaginary beings located 
 in an ideal world. Let him not be 
 menaced with the tortures of a God 
 when he shall be no more; let him 
 behold society armed against those who 
 disturb its repose ; let him see the con- 
 sequence of the hatred of his associaies; 
 let him learn to feel the value of their 
 affection; let him be taught to esteem 
 himself; let him understand, that to 
 obtain the esteem of others he must 
 have virtue ; above all, that the virtuous
 
 EDUCATION, MORALS, &c. 
 
 133 
 
 man in a well constituted society has 
 nothing to fear either from his fellow 
 citizens or from the Gods. 
 
 If it be de?ired to form honest, 
 courageous, industrious citizens, who 
 may be useful to their country, let 
 them beware of inspiring man from his 
 infancy with an ill-founded dread of 
 death of amu =ing his imagination with 
 marvellous fables of occupying his 
 mind with his destiny in a future life, 
 quite useless to be known, and which 
 has nothing in common with his real 
 felicity. Let them speak of immortality 
 to intrepid and noble souls ; let them 
 show it as the price of their labours to 
 energetic minds, who, springing forward 
 beyond the boundaries of their actual 
 existence, are little satisfied with elicit- 
 ing the admiration and with gaining 
 the love of their contemporaries, but are 
 determined also to wrest the homage, 
 to secure the aifection of future races. 
 Indeed, there is an immortality to which 
 genius, talents, virtue, have a just right 
 to pretend ; do not therefore let them 
 censure or endeavour to stifle so noble 
 a passion in man, which is founded 
 upon his nature, and from which society 
 gathers the most advantageous fruits. 
 
 The idea of being buried in total 
 oblivion ; of having nothing in common 
 after his death, with the beings of his 
 species ; of losing all possibility of 
 again having any influence over them, 
 is a thought extremely painful to man ; 
 it is above all afflicting to those who 
 possess an ardent imagination. The 
 desire of immortality, or of living in 
 the memory of his fellow men, was 
 always the passion of great souls ; it 
 was the motive to the actions of all 
 those who have played a great part on 
 the earth. Heroes, whether virtuous 
 or criminal, philosophers as well as 
 conquerors, men of genius, and men of 
 talents, those sublime personages who 
 have done honour to their species, as 
 well as those illustrious villains who 
 have debased and ravaged it, have had 
 an eye to posterity in all their enter- 
 prises, and have flattered themselves 
 with the hope of acting upon the souls 
 of men, even when they themselves 
 should no longer exist. If man in 
 general does not carry his views so far, 
 he is at least sensible to the idea of 
 seeing himself regenerated in his chil- 
 dren, whom he knows are destined to 
 
 survive him, to transmit his name, to 
 preserve his memory, and to represent 
 him in society ; it is for them that he 
 rebuilds his cottage ; it is for them that 
 he plants the tree which his eyes will 
 never behold in its vigour; it is that 
 they may be happy that he labours. 
 The sorrow which imbitters the life of 
 those rich men, frequently so useless 
 to the world, when they have lost the 
 hope of continuing their race, has its 
 source in the fear of being entirely 
 forgotten : they feel, that the useless 
 man dies entirely. The idea that his 
 name will be in the mouths of men ; 
 the thought that it will be pronounced 
 with tenderness, that it Avill be recol- 
 lected with kindness, that it will excite 
 in their hearts favourable sentiments, 
 is an illusion that is useful and suitable 
 to flatter even those who know that 
 nothing will result from it. Man pleases 
 himself with dreaming that he shall 
 have power ; that he shall pass for 
 something in the universe, even after 
 the term of his human existence ; he 
 partakes by imagination in the projects, 
 in the actions, in the discussions of 
 future ages, and would be extremely 
 unhappy if he believed himself entirely- 
 excluded from their society. The laws 
 in all countries have entered into these 
 views ; they have so far been willing 
 to console their citizens for the neces- 
 sity of dying, by giving them the means 
 of exercising their will, even for a long 
 time after their death : this condescen- 
 sion goes to that length, that the dead 
 frequently regulate the condition of the 
 living during a long series of years. 
 
 Every thing serves to prove the desire 
 in man of surviving himself. Pyra- 
 mids, mausoleums, monuments, epi- 
 taphs, all show that he is willing to 
 prolong his existence, even beyond his 
 decease. He is not insensible to the 
 judgment of posterity ; it is for him 
 the philosopher writes ; it is to astonish 
 him that the monarch erects sumptuous 
 edifices, it is his praises that the great 
 man already hears echo in his ears ; 
 it is to him that the virtuous citizen 
 appeals from prejudiced or unjust con- 
 temporaries. Happy chimera ! Sweet 
 illusion ! that realizes itself to ardent 
 imaginations, and which is calculated 
 to give birth to, and to nurture the 
 enthusiasm of genius, courage, gran- 
 deur of soul, and talent ; its influence
 
 134 
 
 EDUCATION, MORALS, &c. 
 
 is sometimes able to restrain the ex- 
 cesses of the most powerful men, who 
 are frequently very much disquieted 
 for the judgment of posterity, from a 
 conviction that this will, sooner or later, 
 avenge the living of the foul injustice 
 which they have made them suffer. 
 
 No man, therefore, can consent to be 
 entirely effaced from the remembrance 
 of his fellows; some men have not the 
 temerity to place themselves above the 
 judgment of the future human species, 
 to degrade themselves in its eyes. 
 Where is the being who is insensible 
 to the pleasure of exciting the tears of 
 those who shall survive him ; of again 
 acting upon their souls ; of once more 
 occupying their thoughts ; of exercising 
 upon them his power, even from the 
 bottom of his grave ? Let, then, eternal 
 silence be imposed upon those super- 
 stitious and melancholy men who cen- 
 sure a sentiment from which society 
 derives so many real advantages ; let 
 not mankind listen to those passionless 
 philosophers, who are willing to smother 
 this great, this noble spring of his soul ; 
 let him not be seduced by the sarcasms 
 of those voluptuaries, who pretend to 
 despise an immortality towards which 
 they lack the power to set forward. 
 The desire of pleasing posterity and 
 of rendering his name agreeable to 
 generations yet to come, is a laudable 
 motive, when it causes him to undertake 
 those things of which the utility may 
 have an influence over men and nations 
 who have not yet an existence. Let 
 him not treat as irrational the enthu- 
 siasm of those beneficent and mighty 
 geniuses, whose keen eyes have fore- 
 seen him even in their day ; who have 
 occupied themselves of him for his 
 welfare ; who have desired his suffrage ; 
 who have written for him ; who have 
 enriched him by their discoveries ; who 
 have cured him of his errours. Let 
 him render them the homage which 
 they have expected at his hands; let 
 him at least reverence their memory 
 for the benefits he has derived from 
 them ; let him treat their mouldering 
 remains with respect for the pleasure 
 he receives from their labours ; let him 
 pay to their ashes a tribute of grateful 
 recollection for the happiness they have 
 been sedulous to procure for him. Let 
 him sprinkle with his tears the urns of 
 Socrates, of Phocion ; let him wash out 
 
 the stain that their punishment has 
 made on the human species ; let him 
 expiate by his regret the Athenian 
 ingratitude ; let him learn by their 
 example to dread religious and political 
 fanaticism ; let him fear to harass merit 
 and virtue, in persecuting those who 
 may happen to differ from him in his 
 prejudices. 
 
 Let him strew flowers over the tombs 
 of a Homer, of a Tasso, of a Milton ; 
 let him revere the immortal shades of 
 those happy geniuses, whose harmo- 
 nious lays excite in his soul the most 
 tender sentiments ; let him bless the 
 memory of all those benefactors to the 
 people, who were the delight of the 
 human race ; let him adore the virtues 
 of a Titus, of a Trajan, of an Antoninus, 
 of a Julian ; let him merit, in his sphere, 
 the eulogies of future ages ; and let him 
 always remember, that to carry with him 
 to the grave the regret of his fellow man, 
 he must display talents and practise 
 virtue. The funeral ceremonies of the 
 most powerful monarchs, have rarely 
 been wetted with the tears of the 
 people they have commonly drained 
 them while living. The names of 
 tyrants excite the horrour of those who 
 hear them pronounced. Tremble, then, 
 cruel kings ! ye who plunge your sub- 
 jects into misery who bathe them with 
 bitter tears ; who ravage nations, Avho 
 change the fruitful earth into a barren 
 cemetery ; tremble for the sanguinary 
 traits under which the future historian 
 will paint you to generations yet unborn : 
 neither your splendid monuments, your 
 imposing victories, your innumerable 
 armies, nor your sycophant courtiers, 
 can prevent posterity from insulting 
 your odious manes, and from avenging 
 their grandfathers of your transcendent 
 crimes. 
 
 Not only man sees his dissolution with 
 pain, but again he wishes his death may 
 be an interesting event for others. But, 
 as we have already said, he must have 
 talents, he must have beneficence, he 
 must have virtue, in order that those 
 who surround him may interest them- 
 selves in his condition, and may give 
 regret to his ashes. Is it, then, sur- 
 prising if the greater number of men, 
 occupied entirely with themselves, com- 
 pletely absorbed by their own vanity, 
 devoted to their own puerile objects, 
 for ever busied with the care of grati-
 
 EDUCATION, MORALS, &c. 
 
 1.15 
 
 fying their vile passions, at the expense 
 of their family happiness, unheedful of 
 the wants of a wife, unmindful of the 
 necessity of their children, careless of 
 the calls of friendship, regardless of 
 their duty to society, do not by their 
 death excite the sensibilities of their 
 survivors, or that they should be pre- 
 sently forgotten ? There is an infinity 
 of monarchs of whom history does not 
 tell us any thing, save that they have 
 lived. In despite of the inutility in 
 which men for the most part pass their 
 existence ; maugre the little care they 
 bestow to render themselves dear to 
 the beings who environ them ; notwith- 
 standing the numerous actions they 
 commit to displease their associates, 
 the self-love of each individual per- 
 suades him that his death must be an 
 interesting occurrence : shows him, we 
 may say, the order of things as over- 
 turned at his decease., O mortal, feeble 
 and vain ! Dost thou not know the 
 Sesostrises, the Alexanders, the Cesars, 
 are dead ? Yet the course of the uni- 
 verse is not arrested : the demise of 
 those famous conquerors, afflicting to 
 some few favoured slaves, was a subject 
 of delight for the whole human race. 
 Dost thou, then, foolishly believe, that 
 thy talents ought to interest thy species, 
 and put it into mourning at thy decease ? 
 Alas ! the Corneilles, the Lockes, the 
 Newtons, the Boyles, the Harveys, the 
 Montesquieus, are no more ! Regretted 
 by a small uumber of friends, who have 
 presently consoled themselves by their 
 necessary avocations, their death was 
 indifferent to the greater number of 
 their fellow citizens. Darest thou, then, 
 flatter thyself, that thy reputation, thy 
 titles, thy riches, thy sumptuous repasts, 
 thy diversified pleasures, will make thy 
 funeral a memorable event ! It will be 
 spoken of by some few for two days, 
 and do not be at all surprised: learn 
 that there have died in former ages, in 
 Babylon, in Sardis, in Carthage, in 
 Athens, in Rome, millions of citizens, 
 more illustrious, more powerful, more 
 opulent, more voluptuous than thou art, 
 of whom, however, no one has taken 
 care to transmit to thee even the names. 
 Be then virtuous, O man ! in whatever 
 station thy destiny assigns thee, and 
 thou shall be happy in thy lifetime ; 
 do thou good, and thou shall be cher- 
 ished; acquire talents, and thou shall 
 
 be respected; posterity shall admire 
 thee, if those talents, by becoming 
 beneficial to their interests, shall bring 
 them acquainted with the name under 
 which they formerly designated thy 
 annihilated being. But the universe 
 will not be disturbed by thy loss ; and 
 when thou comest to die, whilst thy 
 wife, thy children, thy friends, fondly 
 leaning over thy sickly couch, shall be 
 occupied with the melancholy task of 
 closing thine eyes, thy nearest neigh- 
 bour shall, perhaps, be exulting with 
 
 Let not then man occupy himself 
 with his future condition, but let him 
 sedulously endeavour to make himself 
 useful to those with whom he lives ; 
 let him, for his own peculiar happiness, 
 render himself dutiful to his parents, 
 attentive to his children, kind to his 
 relations, true to his friends, lenient to 
 his servants ; let him strive to become 
 estimable in the eyes of his fellow 
 citizens ; let him faithfully serve a 
 country which assures to him his wel- 
 fare ; let the desire of pleasing posterity 
 excite him to those labours that shall 
 elicit their eulogies ; let a legitimate 
 self-love, when he shall be worthy of it, 
 make him taste in advance those com- 
 mendations which he is willing to de- 
 serve ; let him learn to love and esteem 
 himself; but never let him consent that 
 concealed vices, that secret crimes, shall 
 degrade him in his own eyes, and oblige 
 him to be ashamed of his own conduct. 
 
 Thus disposed, let him contemplale 
 his own decease with the same indiffer- 
 ence that it will be looked upon by the 
 greater number of his fellows ; let him 
 expect death with constancy, and wait 
 for it with calm resignation ; let him 
 learn to shake off those vain terrours, 
 with which superstition would over- 
 whelm him ; let him leave to the 
 enthusiast his vague hopes ; to the 
 fanatic his madbrained speculations ; 
 to the bigot those fears with which he 
 ministers to his own melancholy ; but. 
 let his heart, fortified by reason, no 
 longer dread a dissolution that will 
 destroy all feeling. 
 
 Whatever may be the attachment 
 man has to life, whatever may be his 
 fear of death, it is every day seen that 
 habit, that opinion, that prejudice, are 
 motives sufficiently powerful to anni- 
 hilate these passions in his breast, to
 
 136 
 
 EDUCATION, MORALS, &c. 
 
 make him brave danger, to cause him 
 to hazard his existence. Ambition, 
 pride, jealousy, love, vanity, aA r arice, 
 the desire of glory, that deference to 
 opinion Avhich is decorated with the 
 sounding title of a point of honour, 
 have the efficacy to make him shut his 
 eyes to danger, and to push him on to 
 death ; vexation, anxiety of mind, dis- 
 grace, want of success, softens to him 
 its hard features, and makes him regard 
 it as a door that will afford him shelter 
 from the injustice of mankind : indi- 
 gence, trouble, adversity, familiarizes 
 him with this death, so terrible to the 
 happy. The poor man, condemned to 
 labour, inured to privations, deprived of 
 the comforts of life, views its approach 
 with indifference ; the unfortunate, 
 when he is unhappy, when he is with- 
 out resource, embraces it in despair, 
 and accelerates its march as soon as 
 he sees that happiness is no longer 
 within his grasp. 
 
 Man in different ages, and in dif- 
 ferent countries, has formed opinions 
 extremely various upon the conduct of 
 those who have had the courage to put 
 an end to their own existence. His 
 ideas upon this subject, as upon all 
 others, have taken their tone from his 
 religious and political institutions. The 
 Greeks, the Romans, and other nations, 
 which every thing conspired to render 
 courageous and magnanimous, regarded 
 as heroes and as Gods, those who volun- 
 tarily cut the thread of life. In Hin- 
 dostan, the Brahmin yet knows how 
 to inspire even women with sufficient 
 fortitude to burn themselves upon the 
 dead bodies of their husbands. The 
 Japanese upon the most trifling occa- 
 sion makes no kind of difficulty in 
 plunging a dagger into his bosom. 
 
 Among the people of our own country 
 religion renders man less prodigal of 
 life ; it teaches him that his God, who 
 is willing he should suffer, and who is 
 pleased with his torments, readily con- 
 sents to his being put to a lingering 
 death, but not that he should free him- 
 self from a life of misery by at once 
 cutting the thread of his days. Some 
 moralists, abstracting the height of 
 religious ideas, have held that it never 
 is permitted to man to break the con- 
 ditions of the covenant that he has 
 made with society. Others have looked 
 upon suicide as cowardice, they have 
 
 thought that it was weakness, that it 
 displayed pusillanimity, to suffer him- 
 self to be overwhelmed with the shafts 
 of his destiny, and have held, that there 
 would be much more courage and eleva- 
 tion of soul, in supporting his afflictions 
 and in resisting the blows of fate. 
 
 If nature be consulted upon this point, 
 it will be found, that all the actions of 
 man, that feeble plaything in the hands 
 of necessity, are indispensable ; that 
 they depend on causes which move him 
 in despite of himself, and that without 
 his knowledge make him accomplish at 
 each moment of his existence some one 
 of its decrees. If the same power that 
 obliges all intelligent beings to cherish^ 
 their existence, renders that of man so 
 painful and so cruel that he finds it 
 insupportable, he quits his species ; 
 order is destroyed for him, and he 
 accomplishes a decree of nature thaf" 
 wills he shall no longer exist. This 
 nature has laboured during thousands 
 of years to form in the bowels of the 
 earth the iron that must number his 
 days. 
 
 If the relation of man with nature be 
 examined, it will be found that his 
 engagement was neither voluntary on 
 his part, nor reciprocal on the part of 
 nature or God. The volition of his will 
 had no share in his birth ; it is com- 
 monly against his will that he is obliged 
 to finish life ; and his actions are, as we 
 have proved, only the necessary effects 
 of unknown causes which determine 
 his will. He is, in the hands of nature, 
 that Avhich a sword is in his own hands ; 
 he can fall upon it without its being 
 able to accuse him with breaking his 
 engagements, or of stamping with in- 
 gratitude the hand that holds it : man 
 can only love his existence on condition 
 of being happy ; as soon as the entire 
 of nature refuses him this happiness ; 
 as soon as all that surrounds him be- 
 comes incommodious to him ; as soon 
 as his melancholy ideas offer nothing 
 but afflicting pictures to his imagination, 
 he already exists no longer; he is sus- 
 pended in the void ; and he may quit 
 a rank which no longer suits him ; in 
 which he finds no one interest ; which 
 offers him no protection ; and in which 
 he can no more be useful either to him- 
 self or to others. 
 
 If the covenant which unites man to 
 society, be considered, it will be obvious
 
 EDUCATION, MORALS, &c. 
 
 137 
 
 that every contract is conditional, must 
 be reciprocal ; that is to say, supposes 
 mutual advantages between the con- 
 tracting parties. The citizen cannot 
 be bound to his country, to his asso- 
 ciates, but by the bonds of happiness. 
 Are these bonds cut asunder? he is 
 restored to liberty. Society, or those 
 who represent it, do they use him with 
 harshness, do they treat him with 
 injustice, do they render his existence 
 painful? Does disgrace hold him out 
 to the finger of scorn ; does indigence 
 menace him, in an obdurate world? 
 Perfidious friends, do they forsake him 
 in adversity ? An unfaithful wife, does 
 she outrage his heart ? Rebellious, 
 ungrateful children, do they afflict his 
 old age ? Has he placed Kis happiness 
 exclusively on some object which it is 
 impossible for him to procure ? Chagrin, 
 remorse, melancholy, despair, have they 
 disfigured to him the spectacle of the 
 universe ? In short, for whatever cause 
 it may be, if he is not able to support 
 his evils, let him quit a world which 
 from thenceforth is for him only a fright- 
 ful desert : let him remove himself for 
 ever from a country he thinks no longer 
 willing to reckon him amongst the num- 
 ber of iier children : let him quit a house 
 that to his mind is ready to bury him 
 under its ruins : let him renounce a 
 society to the happiness of which he 
 caa no longer contribute ; which his 
 own peculiar felicity alone can render 
 dear to him. And could the man be 
 blamed, who finding himself useless, 
 who being without resources in the 
 town where destiny gave him birth, 
 should quit it in his chagrin to plunge 
 himself in solitude? Death is to the 
 wretched the only remedy for despair ; 
 the sword is then the only friend the 
 only comfort that is left to the unhappy : 
 as long as hope remains the tenant of 
 his bosom ; as long as his evils appear 
 to him at all supportable ; as long as 
 he flatters himself with seeing them 
 brought to a termination ; as long as 
 he finds some comfort in existence 
 however slender, he will not consent 
 to deprive himself of life: but when 
 nothing any longer sustains in him the 
 love of this existence, then to live, is 
 to him the greatest of evils ; to die, the 
 only mode by which he can avoid the 
 excess of despair.* 
 
 * This has been the opinion of many great 
 No. V. 18 
 
 That society who lias not the_ability, 
 or who is not willing to procure man 
 any one benefit, loses all its rights over 
 Him ; nature, when it has rendered his 
 existence completely miserable, has in 
 fact ordered him to quit it : in dying 
 he does no more than fulfil one of her 
 decrees, as he did when he first drew 
 his breath. To him who is fearless of 
 death, there is no evil without a remedy ; 
 for him who refuses to die, there yet 
 exist benefits which attach him to the 
 world ; in this case let him rally his 
 powers, let him oppose courage to a 
 destiny that oppresses him ; let him 
 call forth those resources with which 
 nature yet furnishes him ; she cannot 
 have totally abandoned him whilst she 
 yet leaves him the sensation of pleasure, 
 and the hopes of seeing a period to his 
 pains. As to the superstitious, there is 
 no end to his sufferings, for he is not 
 allowed to abridge them.f His religion 
 bids him to continue to groan, and for- 
 bids his recurring to death, which would 
 lead him to a miserable state of exist- 
 ence : he would be eternally punished 
 for daring to anticipate the tardy orders 
 of a cruel God, who takes pleasure in 
 
 men : Seneca, the moralist, whom Lactantius 
 calls the divine Pagan, who has been praised 
 equally by St. Austin and by St. Augustine, 
 endeavours by every kind of argument to 
 make death a matter of indifference to man : 
 Malum est in necessitate vivere : sed in neces- 
 sitate yivere, necessitas nulla est. Q,uidni 
 nnlla sit 7 Patent undique ad libertatem viae 
 multa?, breves, faciles. Agamus Deo gratias, 
 quod nemo in vita teneri possit. V. Senec. 
 Epist. xii. Cato has always been com- 
 mended, because he would not survive the 
 cause of liberty, for that he would not live 
 a slave. Curtms, who rode voluntarily into 
 the gap to save his country, has always been 
 held forth as a model of heroic virtue. Is it 
 not evident that those martyrs who have 
 delivered themselves up to punishment, have 
 preferred quitting the world, to living in it 
 contrary to their own ideas of happiness? 
 When the fabulous Samson wished to be 
 revenged on the Philistines, did he not consent 
 to die with them as the only means? If our 
 country is attacked, do we not voluntarily 
 sacrifice our lives in its defence 1 
 
 t Christianity, and the civil laws of Chris- 
 tians, are very inconsistent in censuring suicide. 
 The Old Testament furnishes examples in Sam- 
 son and Eleazar that is to sav, in men who 
 stood very high with God. The Messiah, or 
 the son of the Christians' God, if it be true that 
 he died of his own accord, was evidently a 
 suicide. The same may be said of those peni- 
 tents who have made it a merit of gradually 
 destroying themselves.
 
 138 
 
 EDUCATION, MORALS, fcc. 
 
 seeing him reduced to despair, and who 
 wills that man should not have the 
 audacity to quit, without his consent, 
 the post assigned to him. 
 
 Man regulates his judgment on his 
 fellows only by his own peculiar mode 
 of feeling ; he deems as folly, he calls 
 delirium, all those violent actions which 
 he believes but little commensurate with 
 their causes, or which appear to him 
 calculated to deprive him of that happi- 
 ness towards which he supposes a being, 
 in the enjoyment of his senses, cannot 
 cease to have a tendency : he treats 
 his associate as a weak creature when 
 he sees him affected with that which 
 touches him but lightly, or when he 
 is incapable of supporting those evils 
 which his self-love flatters him he would 
 himself be able to endure with more 
 fortitude. He accuses of madness who- 
 ever deprives himself of life, for objects 
 that he thinks unworthy so dear a sacri- 
 fice ; he taxes him with phrensy, because 
 he has himself learned to regard this life 
 as the greatest blessing. It is thus that 
 he always erects himself into a judge 
 of the happiness of others, of their mode 
 of seeing, and of their manner of feeling. 
 A miser who destroys himself after the 
 loss of his treasure, appears a fool in 
 the eyes of him who is less attached to 
 riches ; he does not feel, that without 
 money life to this miser is only a con- 
 tinued torture, and that nothing in the 
 world is capable of diverting him from 
 his painful sensations : he will proudly 
 tell you, that in his place he had not 
 done so much ; but to be exactly in the 
 place of another man, it is needful to 
 have his organization, his temperament, 
 his passions, his ideas ; it is in fact 
 needful to be that other to be placed 
 exactly in the same circumstances, to 
 be moved by the same causes ; and in 
 this case all men, like the miser, Avould 
 sacrifice their life after being deprived 
 of the only source of their happiness. 
 
 He who deprives himself of his exist- 
 ence, does not adopt this extremity, so 
 repugnant to his natural tendency, but 
 when nothing in this world has the 
 faculty of rejoicing him when no 
 means are left of diverting his afflic- 
 tion. His misfortune, whatever it may 
 be, for him is real ; his organization, 
 be it strong, or be it weak, is his own, 
 not that of another ; a man who is sick 
 only in imagination, really suffers, and 
 
 even troublesome dreams place him in 
 a very uncomfortable situation. Thus 
 when a man kills himself, it ought to 
 be concluded, that life, in the room of 
 being a benefit, had become a very great 
 evil to him ; that existence had lost all 
 its charms in his eyes ; that the entire 
 of nature was to him destitute of attrac- 
 tion; that it no longer contained any 
 thing that could seduce him ; that after 
 the comparison which his disturbed 
 imagination had made of existence 
 with non-existence, the latter appeared 
 to him preferable to the first. 
 
 Many persons will not fail to con- 
 sider as dangerous these maxims, which, 
 in spite of the received prejudices, autho- 
 rize the unhappy to cut the thread of life; 
 but maxims will never induce a man 
 to adopt such a violent resolution : it is 
 a temperament soured by chagrin, a 
 bilious constitution, a melancholy habit, 
 a defect in the organization, a derange- 
 ment in the whole machine, it is in fact 
 necessity, and not reasonable specula- 
 tions, that breed in man the design of 
 destroying himself. Nothing invites 
 him to this step so long as reason 
 remains with him, or whilst he yet 
 possesses hope that sovereign balm 
 for every evil. As for the unfortunate, 
 who cannot lose sight of his sorrows, 
 who cannot forget his pains, who has 
 his evils always present to his mind ; 
 he is obliged to take counsel from these 
 alone. Besides, what assistance or 
 what advantage can society promise to 
 itself from a miserable wretch reduced 
 to despair, from a misanthrope over- 
 whelmed with grief, from a wretch 
 tormented with remorse, who has no 
 longer any motive to render himself 
 useful to others, who has abandoned 
 himself, and who finds no more interest 
 in preserving his life? Those who 
 destroy themselves are such, that had 
 they lived, the offended laws must have 
 ultimately been obliged to remove them 
 from a society which they disgraced. 
 
 As life is, commonly, the greatest 
 blessing for man, it is to be presumed 
 that he who deprives himself of it, is 
 impelled thereto by an invincible force. 
 It is the excess of misery, the height of 
 despair, the derangement of his brain 
 caused by melancholy, that, urges man 
 on to destroy himself. Agitated by 
 contrary impulsions, he is, as we have 
 before said, obliged to follow a middle
 
 OF MAN'S TRUE INTEREST. 
 
 139 
 
 course, that conducts him to his death ; 
 if man be not a free agent, in any one 
 instant of his life, he is again much less 
 so in the act by which it is terminated.* 
 
 It Avill be seen, then, that he who kills 
 himself, does not, as it is pretended, 
 commit an outrage on nature or its 
 author. He follows an impulse of that 
 nature, and thus adopts the only means 
 left him to quit his anguish ; he goes 
 out of a door which she leaves open to 
 him ; he cannot offend her in accom- 
 plishing a law of necessity ; the iron 
 hand of this having broken the spring 
 that renders life desirable to him, and 
 which urged him to self-conservation, 
 shows him he ought to quit a rank or 
 system where he finds himself too 
 miserable to have the desire of remain- 
 ing. His country or his family have no 
 right to complain of a member whom 
 it has no means of rendering happy, 
 and from whom consequently they have 
 nothing more to hope. To be useful to 
 either, it is necessary he should cherish 
 his own peculiar existence ; that he 
 should have an interest in conserving 
 himself; that he should love the bonds 
 by which he is united to others ; that 
 he should be capable of occupying him- 
 self with their felicity. That the suicide 
 should be punished in another world, 
 and should repent of his precipitancy, 
 he should outlive himself, and should 
 carry with him into his future residence 
 his organs, his senses, his memory, his 
 ideas, his actual mode of existing, his 
 determinate manner of thinking. 
 
 In short, nothing is more useful for 
 society than to inspire man with a 
 contempt for death, and to banish from 
 his mind the false ideas he has of its 
 consequences. The fear of death can 
 never do more than make cowards ; the 
 fear of its pretended consequences will 
 make nothing but fanatics or melan- 
 choly beings, who are useless to them- 
 selves and unprofitable to others. Death 
 is a resource that ought not to be taken 
 away from oppressed virtue, which the 
 injustice of man frequently reduces to 
 despair. If man feared death less, he 
 would neither be a slave nor super- 
 
 * Suicide is said to be very common in 
 England, whose climate produces melancholy 
 in its inhabitants. In that country those who 
 kill themselves are looked upon as lunatics ; 
 their disease does not seem more blameable 
 than any other delirium. 
 
 stitiou-s ; truth would find defenders 
 more zealous ; the rights of mankind 
 would be more hardily sustained ; errour 
 would be more powerfully opposed ; 
 tyranny would be banished from na- 
 tions : cowardice nourishes it, fear per- 
 petuates it. In fact, man can neither 
 be contented nor happy, whilst his 
 opinions shall oblige him to tremble. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Of Man's true Interest, or of the Ideas he 
 forms to himself of Hapjnness. Man can- 
 not be Happy without Virtue. 
 
 UTILITY, as has been before observed, 
 ought to be the only standard of the 
 judgment of man. To be useful, is to 
 contribute to the happiness of his fellow 
 creatures ; to be prejudicial, is to further 
 their misery. This granted, let us ex- 
 amine if the principles we have hitherto 
 established be prejudicial or advan- 
 tageous, useful or useless, to the human 
 race. If man unceasingly seeks after 
 his happiness, he can only approve of 
 that which procures for him his object, 
 or furnishes him the means by which 
 it is to be obtained. 
 
 What has been already said will 
 serve in fixing our ideas upon what 
 constitutes this happiness : it has been 
 already shown, that it is only continued 
 pleasure ;t but in order that an object 
 may please, it is necessary that the 
 impressions it makes, the perceptions 
 it gives, the ideas which it leaves, in 
 short, that the motion it excites in man 
 should be analogous to his organization, 
 conformable to his temperament, assimi- 
 lated to his individual nature : modified 
 as it is by habit, determined as it is by 
 an infinity of circumstances, it is neces- 
 sary that the action of the object by 
 which he is moved, or of which the 
 idea remains with him, far from en- 
 feebling him, far from annihilating his 
 feelings should tend to strengthen him ; 
 it is necessary, that without fatiguing 
 his mind, exhausting his faculties or 
 deranging his organs, this object should 
 impart to his machine that degree of 
 activity for which it continually has 
 occasion. What is the object that 
 unites all these qualities? Where is 
 the man whose organs are susceptible 
 
 t See Chapter IX.
 
 140 
 
 OF MAN'S TRUE INTEREST. 
 
 of continual agitation without being 
 fatigued, without experiencing a pain~ 
 ful sensation, without sinking ? Man 
 is always willing to be warned of his 
 existence in the most lively manner, 
 as long as he can be so without pain. 
 What do I say ? He consents fre- 
 quently to suffer, rather than not feel. 
 He accustoms himself to a thousand 
 things, which at first must have affected 
 nim in a disagreeable manner, and 
 which frequently end, either by con- 
 verting themselves into wants, or by 
 no longer affecting him any way.* 
 Where, indeed, can he always find 
 objects in nature capable of continually 
 supplying the stimulus requisite to keep 
 him in an activity that shall be ever 
 proportioned to the state of his own 
 organization, which his extreme mo- 
 bility renders subject to perpetual vari- 
 ation 1 The most lively pleasures are 
 always the least durable, seeing they 
 are those which exhaust him most. 
 
 That man should be uninterruptedly 
 happy, it would be requisite that his 
 powers were infinite ; it would require, 
 that, to his mobility he joined a vigour, 
 a solidity, which nothing could change ; 
 or else it is necessary that the objects 
 from which he receives impulse should 
 either acquire or lose properties, accord- 
 ing to the different states through which 
 his machine is successively obliged to 
 pass ; it would need that the essences 
 of beings should be changed in the 
 same proportion as his dispositions, 
 and should be submitted to the con- 
 tinual influence of a thousand causes, 
 which modify him without his know- 
 ledge, and in despite of himself. If, 
 at each moment his machine undergoes 
 changes, more or less marked, which 
 are ascribable to the different degrees 
 of elasticity, of density, of serenity of 
 the atmosphere, to the portion of igneous 
 fluid circulating through his blood, to 
 
 * Of this truth, tobacco, coffee, and above 
 all, brandy, furnish examples. It was this last 
 which enabled the Europeans to enslave the 
 negro and to subdue the savage. This is also 
 the reason man runs to see tragedies and to 
 witness the execution of criminals. In short, 
 the desire of feeling, or of being powerfully 
 moved, appears to be the principle of curiosity 
 of that avidity with which we seize on the 
 marvellous, the supernatural, the incompre- 
 hensible, and on every thing that excites the 
 imagination. Men cling to their religions as 
 the savage does to brandy. 
 
 the harmony of his organs, to the order 
 that exists between the various parts 
 of his body ; if, at every period of his 
 existence, his nerves have not the same 
 tensions, his fibres the same elasticity, 
 his mind the same activity, his imagi- 
 nation the same ardour, &c., it is evi- 
 dent, that the same causes in preserving 
 to him only the same qualities, cannot 
 always affect him in the same manner. 
 Here is the reason why those objects 
 that please him in one season displease 
 him in another: these objects have nof 
 themselves sensibly changed, but his 
 organs, his dispositions, his ideas, his 
 mode of seeing, his manner of feeling, 
 have changed ; such is the source of 
 man's inconstancy. 
 
 If the same objects a-re not constantly 
 in that state competent to form the hap- 
 piness of the same individual, it is easy 
 to perceive that they are yet less in a 
 capacity to please all men ; or that the 
 same happiness cannot be suitable to 
 all. Beings already various by their 
 temperament, their faculties, then; 
 organization, their imagination, their 
 ideas, of distinct opinions, of contrary 
 habits, which an infinity of circum- 
 stances, whether physical or moral, 
 have variously modified, must neces-. 
 sarily form very different notions of 
 happiness. Those of a miser cannot 
 be the same as those of a prodigal ; 
 those of the voluptuary, the same as 
 those of one who is phlegmatic ; those 
 of an intemperate, the same as those 
 of a rational man who husbands his 
 health. The happiness of each is in 
 consequence composed of his natural 
 organization, and of those circum- 
 stances, of those habits, of those ideas, 
 Avhether true or false, that have modi- 
 fied him : this organization and these 
 
 ! circumstances never being the same in 
 any two men, it follows that what is 
 the object of one man's views, most be 
 
 I indifferent or even displeasing to an- 
 
 j other ; thus, as we have before said, 
 no one can be capable of judging of 
 
 : that which may contribute to the feli- 
 city of his fellow man. 
 
 Interest, is the object to which each 
 
 I individual, according to his tempera- 
 
 | ment and his own peculiar ideas, 
 attaches his welfare ; from which it 
 
 i will be perceived, that this interest is 
 never more than that which each con- 
 templates as necessary to his happiness.
 
 OF MAN'S TRUE INTEREST. 
 
 141 
 
 It must, therefore, be concluded, that 
 no man is totally without interest* 
 That of the miser, .is to amass wealth; 
 that of the prodigal, to dissipate it ; the 
 interest of the ambitious, is to obtain 
 power ; that of the modest philosopher, 
 to enjoy tranquillity : the interest of the 
 debauchee, is to give himself up with- 
 out reserve to all sorts of pleasure 5 that 
 of the prudent man, to abstain from 
 those which may injure him : the inter- 
 est of the wicked, is to gratify his pas- 
 sions at any price: that of the virtuous, 
 to merit .by his conduct the love and 
 the approbation of others ; to do nothing 
 that can degrade himself in his own 
 eyes. 
 
 Thus, when it is said, that interest 
 is the only motive of human actions, 
 it is meant to indicate, that each man 
 labours after his own manner to his 
 OWE peculiar happiness, which he pla- 
 ces to some object, either visible or con- 
 cealed, either real or imaginary, and 
 that the whole system of his conduct 
 is directed to its attainment. This 
 granted, no man can be called disinter- 
 ested ; this appellation is only applied 
 to those of whose motives we are ignor- 
 ant, or whose interest we approve. 
 Thus, the man who finds a greater 
 pleasure in assisting his friends in mis- 
 fortune, than preserving in his coffers 
 useless treasure, is called generous, 
 faithful. and disinterested : in like man- 
 ner all men are denominated disinter- 
 ested, who feel their glory far more 
 precious than their fortune. In short, 
 all men are designated disinterested, 
 who place their happiness in making 
 sacrifices which man considers costly, 
 because he does not attach the same 
 value to the object for which the sacri- 
 fice is made. 
 
 Man frequently judges very errone- 
 ously of the interest of others, either 
 because the motives that animate them 
 are too complicated for him to unravel ; 
 or, because to be enabled to judge of 
 them fairly, it is needful to have the 
 same eyes, the same organs, the same 
 passions, the same opinions: neverthe- 
 less, obliged to form his judgment of 
 the actions of mankind by their effect 
 on himself, he approves the interest that 
 actuates them, whenever the result is 
 advantageous for his species : thus, he 
 admires valour, generosity, the love of 
 liberty, great talents, virtue, &c., he then 
 
 only approves of the objects, in which 
 the beings he applauds, have placed 
 their happiness ; he approves these dis- 
 positions even when he is not in a ca- 
 pacity to feel their effects ; but in this 
 judgment he is not himself disinterest- 
 ed ; experience, reflection, habit, reason, 
 have given him a taste for morals, and 
 he finds as much pleasure in being wit- 
 ness to a great and generous action, as 
 the man of virtu finds in the sight of a 
 fine picture of which he is not the pro- 
 prietor. He who has formed to himself 
 a habit of practising virtue, is a man 
 who has unceasingly before his eyes 
 the interest that he has in meriting the 
 affection, in deserving the esteem, in 
 securing the assistance of others, as 
 well as to love and esteem himself: 
 impressed with these ideas, which have 
 become habitual to him, he abstains 
 even from concealed crimes, since these 
 would degrade him in his own eyes : 
 he resembles a man, who having from 
 his infancy contracted a habit of clean- 
 liness, would be painfully affected at 
 seeing himself dirty, even when no one 
 should witness it. The honest man is 
 he to whom truth has shown his inter- 
 est or his happiness in a mode of acting 
 that others are obliged to love and to 
 approve for their own peculiar interest. 
 These principles, duly developed, are 
 the true basis of morals; nothing is 
 more chimerical than those which are 
 founded upon imaginary motives, pla- 
 ced out of nature ; or upon innate sen- 
 timents, which some speculators have 
 regarded as anterior to man's experi- 
 ence, and as wholly independent of 
 those advantages which result to him 
 from its use : it is the essence of man 
 to love himself: to tend to his own 
 conservation ; to seek to render his ex- 
 istence happy ;* thus interest, or the 
 desire of happiness, is the only real 
 motive of all his actions ; this interest; 
 depends upon his natural organization, 
 his wants, his acquired ideas, the habits, 
 he has contracted ; he is without doubt 
 in errour, when either a vitiated organ- 
 ization or false opinions show him his 
 welfare in objects either useless or in- 
 jurious to himself, as well as to others ; 
 he marches steadily in the paths of vir- 
 
 * Seneca says : Modus ergo diligendi prae- 
 cipiendus est hpmini, id est quomodo so dili- 
 gat aut prosit sibi ; quin autem diligat aut pro- 
 sit sibi, dubitare dementis est.
 
 142 
 
 OF MAN'S TRUE INTEREST. 
 
 tue, when true ideas have made him 
 rest his happiness on a conduct useful 
 to nis species, approved by others, and 
 which renders him an interesting object 
 to his associates. Morals would be a 
 vain science, if it did not incontestably 
 prove to man that his interest consists 
 in being virtuous. Obligation, of what- 
 ever kind, can only be founded upon the 
 probability or the certitude of either ob- 
 taining a good or avoiding an evil. 
 
 Indeed, in no one instant of his dura- 
 tion, can a sensible and intelligent be- 
 ing either lose sight of his own preser- 
 vation or forget his own welfare; he 
 owes happiness to himself; but experi- 
 ence quickly proves to him, that be- 
 reaved of assistance, he cannot alone 
 procure all those objects which are re- 
 quisite to his felicity : he lives with 
 sensible, with intelligent beings, occu- 
 pied like himself with their own pe- 
 culiar happiness, but capable of assist- 
 ing him in obtaining those objects he 
 most desires ; he discovers that these 
 beings will not be favourable to his 
 views, but Avhen they find their interest 
 involved ; from which he concludes, 
 that his own happiness demands that 
 he should conduct himself at all times 
 in a manner suitable to conciliate the 
 attachment, to obtain the approbation, 
 to elicit the esteem, to secure the assist- 
 ance of those beings who are most ca- 
 pacitated to further his designs. He 
 perceives that it is man who is most 
 necessary to the welfare of man, and 
 that to induce him to join in his inter- 
 ests, he ought to make him find real 
 advantages in seconding his projects : 
 but to procure real advantages to the 
 beings of the human species, is to have 
 virtue ; the reasonable man, therefore, 
 is obliged to feel that it is his interest 
 to be virtuous. Virtue is only the art 
 of rendering himself happy, by the feli- 
 city of others. The virtuous man is he 
 who communicates happiness to those 
 beings who are capable of rendering 
 his own condition happy, who are ne- 
 cessary to his conservation, who have 
 the ability to procure him a felicitous 
 existence. 
 
 Such, then, is the true foundation of 
 all morals ; merit and virtue are found- 
 ed upon the nature of man ; have their 
 dependance upon his wants. It is vir- 
 tue, alone, that can render him truly 
 
 happy :* without virtue, society can 
 neither be useful nor indeed subsist; it 
 can only have real utility when it as- 
 sembles beings animated with the de- : 
 sire of pleasing each other, and disposed 
 to labour to their reciprocal advantage : 
 there exists no comfort in those fami- 
 lies whose members are not in the hap- 
 py disposition to lend each other mutual 
 succours ; who have not a reciprocity 
 of feeling that stimulates them to assist 
 one the other; that induces them to 
 cling to each other, to support the sor- 
 rows of life ; to unite their efforts to 
 put away those evils to which nature 
 has subjected them. The conjugal 
 bonds are sweet only in proportion as 
 they identify the interest of two beings, 
 united by the want of legitimate pleas- 
 ure, from whence results the mainte- 
 nance of political society, and the 
 means of furnishing it with citizens. 
 Friendship has charms, only when it 
 more particularly associates two virtu- 
 ous beings ; that is to say, two beings 
 animated with the sincere desire of con- 
 spiring to their reciprocal happiness. 
 In short, it is only by displaying virtue 
 that man can merit the benevolence, the 
 confidence, the esteem, of all those with 
 whom he has relation ; in a word, no 
 man can be independently happy. 
 
 Indeed, the happiness of each human 
 individual depends on those sentiments 
 to which he gives birth, on those feel- 
 ings which he nourishes in the beings 
 amongst whom his destiny has placed 
 him ; grandeur may dazzle them; power 
 and force may wrest from them an in- 
 voluntary homage ; opulence may se- 
 duce mean and venal souls; but it is 
 humanity, it is benevolence, it is com- 
 passion, it is equity, that, unassisted by 
 these, can without efforts obtain for him 
 those delicious sentiments of attach- 
 ment, of tenderness, of esteem, of which 
 all reasonable men feel the necessity. 
 To be virtuous, then, is to place his in- 
 terest in that which accords with the 
 interest of others ; it is to enjoy those 
 benefits and that pleasure which he 
 himself diffuses over his fellows. He, 
 whom his nature, his education, his re- 
 flections, his habits, have rendered sus- 
 
 * Est autem virtus nihil aliud qtiam in ae 
 perfecta et ad summum perducta natura.. 
 Cicero. De Legibus 1. He says elsewhere 
 Virtus rationis absolutio definitur.
 
 OF MAN'S TRUE INTEREST. 
 
 143 
 
 ceptible of these dispositions, and to 
 whom his circumstances have given 
 him the faculty of gratifying them, be- 
 comes an interesting object to all those 
 who approach him : he enjoys every 
 instant; he reads with satisfaction the 
 contentment and the joy which he has 
 diffused over all countenances: his 
 wife, his children, his friends, his ser- 
 vants, greet him with gay and serene 
 faces, indicative of that content and of 
 that peace which he recognises for his 
 own work: every thing that environs 
 him is ready to partake his pleasures 
 and to share his pains ; cherished, re- 
 spected, looked up to by others, every 
 thing conducts him to agreeable reflec- 
 tions : he knows the rights he has ac- 
 quired over their hearts ; he applauds 
 himself for being the source of a felicity 
 that captivates all the world ; his own 
 condition, his sentiments of self-love, 
 become a hundred times more delicious 
 when he sees them participated by all 
 those with whom his destiny has con- 
 nected him. The habit of virtue creates 
 for him no wants but those which vir- 
 tue itself suffices to satisfy ; it is thus 
 that virtue is always its own peculiar 
 reward, that it remunerates itself with 
 all the advantages it incessantly pro- 
 cures for others. 
 
 It will be said, and perhaps even 
 proved, that under the present constitu- 
 tion of things, virtue, far from procuring 
 the welfare of those who practise it, 
 frequently plunges man into misfortune, 
 and often places continual obstacles to 
 his felicity ; that almost every where it 
 is without recompense. What do I say ? 
 A thousand examples could be adduced 
 as evidence that in almost every coun- 
 try it is hated, persecuted, obliged to 
 lament the ingratitude of human nature. 
 I reply, with avowing, that by a neces- 
 sary consequence of the wanderings 
 and errours of his race, virtue rarely 
 conducts man to those objects in which 
 the uninformed make their happiness 
 consist. The greater number of socie- 
 ties, too frequently ruled by those whose 
 ignorance makes them abuse their pow- 
 er, whose prejudices render them the 
 enemies of virtue, Avho flattered by sy- 
 cophants, secure in the impunity their 
 actions enjoy, commonly lavish their 
 esteem, bestow their kindness on none 
 but the most unworthy objects, reward 
 only the most frivolous, recompense 
 
 none but the most prejudicial qualities : 
 and hardly ever accord that justice to 
 merit which is unquestionably its due. 
 But the truly honest man is neither am 
 bilious of remuneration, nor sedulous 
 of the suffrages of a society thus badly 
 constituted : contented with domestic 
 happiness, he seeks not to augment re- 
 lations which would do no more than 
 increase his danger; he knows that a 
 vitiated community is a whirlwind, with 
 Avhich an honest man cannot co-order 
 himself; he therefore steps aside, quits 
 the beaten path, by continuing in which 
 he would infallibly be crushed. He 
 does all the good of which he is capa- 
 ble in his sphere ; he leaves the road 
 free to the wicked, who are willing to 
 wade through its mire ; he laments the 
 heavy strokes they inflict on them- 
 selves ; he applauds the mediocrity 
 that affords him security; he pities 
 those nations made miserable by their 
 errours ; rendered unhappy by those 
 passions which are the fatal but neces- 
 sary consequence ; he sees they contain 
 nothing but wretched citizens, who far 
 from cultivating their true interest, far 
 from labouring to their mutual felicity, 
 far from feeling the real value of virtue, 
 unconscious how dear it ought to be 
 to them, do nothing but either openly 
 attack or secretly injure it ; in short, 
 who detest a quality which would re- 
 strain their disorderly propensities. 
 
 In saying that virtue is its own pe- 
 culiar reward, it is simply meant to an- 
 nounce, that, in a society whose views 
 were guided by truth, by experience, 
 and by reason, each individual would 
 be acquainted with his real interests, 
 would understand the true end of asso- 
 ciation, would have sound motives to 
 perform his duties, and find real advan- 
 tages in fulfilling them ; in fact, would 
 be convinced that to render himself sol- 
 idly happy, he should occupy his ac- 
 tions with the welfare of his fellows, 
 and by their utility, merit their esteem, 
 their kindness, and their assistance. In 
 a well constituted society, the govern- 
 ment, the lawsj education, example, 
 would all conspire to prove to the citi- 
 zen, that the nation of which he forms 
 a part is a whole that cannot be happy 
 that cannot subsist without virtue ; ex- 
 perience would, at each step, convince 
 him that the welfare of its parts can 
 only result from that of the whole body
 
 144 
 
 OP MAN'S TRUE INTEREST. 
 
 Corporate ; justice would make him feel, 
 that no society can be advantageous to 
 .its members where the volition of wills 
 in those who act, is not so conformable 
 to the interests of the whole, as to pro- 
 duce an advantageous reaction. 
 
 But, alas ! by the confusion which 
 the errours of man have carried into his 
 ideas, virtue, disgraced, banished and 
 persecuted, finds not one of those ad- 
 vantages it has a right to expect ; man 
 is indeed shown those pretended re- 
 wards for it in a future life, of which 
 he is almost always deprived in his ac- 
 tual existence. It is thought necessary 
 to deceive, to seduce, to intimidate him, 
 in order to induce him to follow that 
 virtue which every thing renders in- 
 commodious to him ; he is fed with dis- 
 tant hopes, in order to solicit him to 
 practise virtue, while contemplation of 
 the world makes it hateful to him ; he 
 is alarmed by remote terrours to deter 
 him from committing evil, which all 
 -conspires to render amiable and neces- 
 sary. It is thus that politics and su- 
 perstition, by the formation of chime- 
 ras, by the creation of fictitious inter- 
 ests, pretend to supply those true and 
 real motives which nature furnishes, 
 which experience points out, which an 
 enlightened government should hold 
 forth, which the law ought to enforce, 
 which instruction should sanction, 
 which example should encourage, 
 which rational opinions would render 
 pleasant. Man, blinded by his pas- 
 sions, not less dangerous than neces- 
 sary, led away by precedent, authorized 
 by custom, enslaved by habit, pays no 
 attention to these uncertain promises 
 and menaces ; the actual interest of his 
 immediate pleasures, the force of his 
 passions, the inveteracy of his habits, 
 always rise superior to the distant in- 
 terests pointed out in his future wel- 
 fare, or the remote evils with which he 
 is threatened, which always appear 
 doubtful whenever he compares them 
 with present advantages. 
 
 Thus superstition, far from making 
 man virtuous by principle, does nothing 
 more than impose upon him a yoke as 
 severe as it is useless : it is borne by 
 none but enthusiasts, or by the pusillan- 
 imous, who, Avithout becoming better, 
 tremblingly champ the feeble bit put 
 into their mouth. Indeed, experience 
 incontestably proves, that religion is a 
 
 I dike inadequate to restrain the torrent 
 ' of corruption to which so many accu- 
 mulated causes give an irresistible 
 force : nay more, does not this religion 
 i itself augment the public disorder, by 
 the dangerous passions which it lets 
 loose and consecrates ? Virtue, in al- 
 most every climate, is confined to some 
 few rational beings, who have sufficient 
 strength of mind to resist the stream 
 of prejudice; Avho are contented by re- 
 munerating themselves with the bene- 
 fits they diffuse aver society ; whose 
 temperate dispositions are gratified 
 with the suffrages of a small number 
 of virtuous approvers : in short, who 
 are detached from those frivolous ad- 
 vantages which the injustice of society 
 but too commonly accords only to base- 
 ness, to intrigue, and to crime. 
 
 In despite of the injustice that reigns 
 in the world, there are, however, some 
 virtuous men ; in the bosom even of the 
 most degenerate nations, there are some 
 benevolent beings, still enamoured of 
 virtue, who are fully acquainted with 
 its true value, who are sufficiently en- 
 lightened to know that it exacts hom- 
 age even from its enemies ; who are at 
 least satisfied with those concealed 
 pleasures and recompenses, of which 
 no earthly power is competent to de- 
 prive them. The honest man acquires 
 a right to the esteem, the veneration, 
 the confidence, the love, even of those 
 whose conduct is exposed by a contrast 
 with his own. In short, vice is obliged 
 to cede to virtue, of which it blushingly 
 acknowledges the superiority. Inde- 
 pendent of this ascendency so gentle, 
 so grand, so infallible, if even the whole 
 universe should be unjust to him, there 
 yet remains to the honest man the ad- 
 vantage of loving his own conduct, of 
 esteeming himself, of diving with sat- 
 isfaction into the recesses of his own 
 heart, of contemplating his own ac- 
 tions with that delicious complacency 
 that others ought to do, if they were not 
 hoodwinked. No power is adequate 
 to ravish from him the merited esteem 
 of himself; no authority is sufficiently 
 potent to give it to him when he de- 
 serves it not; but when it is not well 
 founded it is then a ridiculous senti- 
 ment : it ought to be censured when it 
 displays itself in a mode that is morti- 
 fying and troublesome to others ; it 15 
 then called arrogance ; if it rest itselt
 
 OF MAN'S TRUE INTEREST. 
 
 145 
 
 upon frivolous actions, it is called van- 
 ity ; but when it cannot be condemned, 
 when it is known for legitimate, when 
 it is discovered to have a solid founda- 
 tion, when it bottoms itself upon talents, 
 when it rises upon great actions that are 
 useful to the community, when it erects 
 its edifice upon virtue, even though so- 
 ciety should not set these merits at their 
 just price, it is noble pride, elevation 
 of mind, grandeur of soul. 
 
 Let us not, then, listen to the preach- 
 ing of those superstitions which, ene- 
 mies to man's happiness, have been 
 desirous of destroying it, even in the 
 inmost recesses of his heart ; which 
 haye prescribed to him hatred of his 
 fellows and contempt for himself; 
 which pretend to wrest from the honest 
 man that self-respect which is frequent- 
 ly the only reward that remains to vir- 
 tue in a perverse world. To annihilate 
 in him this sentiment so full of justice, 
 this love of himself, is to break the 
 most powerful spring that urges him to 
 act right. What motive, indeed, ex- 
 cept it be this, remains for him in the 
 greater part of human societies ? Is 
 not virtue discouraged and contemned ? 
 Is not audacious crime and cunning 
 vice rewarded .' Is not love of the pub- 
 lic weal taxed as folly ; exactitude in 
 fulfilling duties looked upon as a bub- 
 ble? Is not compassion, sensibility, 
 tenderness, conjugal fidelity, sincerity, 
 inviolable friendship, treated with ridi- 
 cule ? Man must have motives for ac- 
 tion: he neither acts well nor ill, but 
 with a view to his own happiness to 
 that which he thinks his interest ; he 
 does nothing gratuitously ; and when 
 reward for useful actions is withheld 
 from him, he is reduced either to be- 
 come as abandoned as others, or else to 
 remunerate himself with his own ap- 
 plause. 
 
 This granted, the honest man can 
 never be completely unhappy ; he can 
 never be entirely deprived of the recom- 
 pense which is his due ; virtue can am- 
 ply make up to him all the happiness de- 
 nied him by public opinion ; but nothing 
 can compensate to him the want of vir- 
 tue. It does not follow that the honest 
 man will be exempted from afflictions : 
 like the wicked, he is subjected to phys- 
 ical evils ; he may be worn down with 
 disease ; he may frequently be the sub- 
 ject of calumny, of injustice, of ingrat- 
 
 No. V. 19 
 
 itude, of hatred ; but in the midst of all 
 his misfortunes, of his sorrows, he finds 
 support in himself, he is contented with 
 his own conduct, he respects himself, 
 he feels his own dignity, he knows the 
 equity of his rights, and consoles him- 
 self with the confidence inspired by the 
 justness of his cause. These supports 
 are not calculated for the wicked. 
 Equally liable with the honest man to 
 infirmities and to the caprices of his 
 destiny, he finds the recesses of his own 
 heart filled with dreadful alarms, cares, 
 solicitude, regret, and remorse ; he dies 
 within himself; his conscience sustains 
 him not, but loads him with reproach; 
 and his mind, overwhelmed, sinks un- 
 der the storm. The honest man is not 
 an insensible stoic ; virtue does not 
 procure impassibility, but if wretched, 
 it enables him to cast off despair ; if 
 infirm, he has less to complain of than 
 the vicious being who is oppressed with 
 sickness ; if indigent, he is less unhap- 
 py in his poverty ; if in disgrace, he is 
 not overwhelmed by its pressure, like 
 the wretched slave to crime. 
 
 Thus the happiness of each indi- 
 vidual depends on the cultivation of his 
 temperament ; nature makes both the 
 happy and the unhappy ; it is culture 
 that gives value to the soil nature has 
 formed, and instruction and reflection 
 make it useful. For man to be happily- 
 born, is to have received from nature a 
 sound body, organs that act with pre- 
 cision, a just mind, a heart whose pas- 
 sions and desires are analogous and 
 conformable to the circumstances in 
 which his destiny has placed him. Na- 
 ture, then, has done every thing for him, 
 when she has joined to these faculties 
 the quantum of vigour and energy suf- 
 ficient to enable him to obtain those 
 things, which his station, his mode of 
 thinking, his temperament, have ren- 
 dered desirable. Nature has made him. 
 a fatal present, when she has filled his 
 sanguinary vessels with an overheated 
 fluid, given him an imagination too ac- 
 tive, desires too impetuous after objects 
 either impossible or improper to be ob- 
 tained under his circumstances ; or 
 which at least he cannot procure with- 
 out those incredible efforts that either 
 place his own welfare in danger or dis- 
 turb the repose of society. The most 
 happy man is commonly he who pos- 
 sesses a peaceable mind, who only de-
 
 HG 
 
 OF MAN'S TRUE INTEREST. 
 
 sires those things which he can procure 
 by labour suitable to maintain his ac- 
 tivity, without causing shocks that are 
 either too violent or troublesome. A 
 philosopher, whose wants are easily 
 satisfied, who is a stranger to ambition, 
 who is contented with the limited cir- 
 cle of a small number of friends, is, 
 without doubt, a being much more hap- 
 pily constituted than an ambitious con- 
 queror, whose greedy imagination is 
 reduced to despair by having only one 
 world to ravage. He Avho is happily 
 born, or whom nature has rendered 
 susceptible of being conveniently mod- 
 ified, is not a being injurious to society : 
 it is generally disturbed by men who 
 are unhappily born, whose organiza- 
 tion renders them turbulent, who are 
 discontented with their destiny, who 
 are inebriated with their own licentious 
 passions, who are smitten with difficult 
 enterprises, who set the world in com- 
 bustion to gather imaginary benefits, in 
 which they make their own happiness 
 consist. An Alexander requires the 
 destruction of empires, nations to be 
 deluged with blood, cities to be laid in 
 ashes, its inhabitants to be extermina- 
 ted, to content that passion for glory of 
 which he has formed to himself a false 
 idea, but which his too ardent imagina- 
 tion anxiously thirsts after : for a Dio- 
 genes there needs only a tub, with the 
 liberty of appearing whimsical : a Soc- 
 rates wants nothing but the pleasure of 
 forming disciples to virtue. 
 
 Man by his organization is a being 
 to whom motion is always necessary, 
 he must therefore always desire it ; 
 this is the reason why too much facility 
 in procuring the objects of his search, 
 renders them quickly insipid. To feel 
 happiness, it is necessary to make ef- 
 forts to obtain it ; to find charms in its 
 enjoyment, it is necessary that the de- 
 sire should be whetted by obstacles ; 
 he is presently disgusted with those 
 benefits which have cost him but little 
 pains. The expectations of happiness, 
 the labour requisite to procure it, the 
 varied and multiplied pictures which 
 his imagination forms to him, supply 
 his brain with that motion for which it 
 has occasion ; this gives impulse to his 
 organs, puts his whole machine into 
 activity, exercises his faculties, sets all 
 his springs in play ; in a word, puts him 
 into that agreeable activity, for the want 
 
 of which the enjoyment of happiness 
 itself cannot compensate him. Action, 
 is the true element of the human mind ; 
 as soon as it ceases to act, it sinks into 
 lassitude. His mind has the same oc- 
 casion for ideas his stomach has for 
 aliment.* 
 
 Thus the impulse given him by de- 
 sire is itself a great benefit ; it is to the 
 mind what exercise is to the body ; 
 without it he would not derive any 
 pleasure in the aliments presented to 
 him; it is thirst that rentiers the pleas- 
 ure of drinking so agreeable. Life is a 
 perpetual circle of regenerated desires 
 and wants satisfied : repose is only a 
 pleasure to him who labours ; it is a 
 source of weariness, the cause of sor- 
 row, the spring of vice to him who has 
 nothing to do. To enjoy without in- 
 terruption is not to enjoy any thing: 
 the man who has nothing to desire is 
 certainly more unhappy than he who 
 suffers. 
 
 These reflections, grounded upon ex- 
 perience, ought to prove to man that 
 good as well as evil depends on the es- 
 sence of things. Happiness to be felt 
 cannot be continued. Labour is neces- 
 sary to make intervals between his 
 pleasures ; his body has occasion for 
 exercise to co-order him with the be- 
 ings who surround him ; his heart must 
 have desires; trouble alone can give 
 him the right relish of his welfare ; it 
 is this which puts in the shadows to 
 the picture of human life. By an ir- 
 revocable law of his destiny, man is 
 obliged to be discontented with his 
 present condition ; to make efforts to 
 change it ; to reciprocally envy that fe- 
 licity which no individual enjoys per- 
 fectly. Thus the poor man envies the 
 opulence of the rich, although this one 
 is frequently more unhappy than his 
 needy neighbour ; thus the rich man. 
 views with pain the advantages of a 
 
 * The advantage which philosophers and 
 men of letters have over the ignorant and the 
 idle, or over those that neither think nor study, 
 is owing to the variety as well as quantity of 
 ideas furnished to the mind by study anq re- 
 flection. The mind of a man who thinks 
 finds more delight in a good book than can 
 be obtained by all the riches at the command 
 of the ignorant. To study is to amass ideas ; 
 and the number and combination of ideas 
 make that difference between man and man 
 which we observe, besides giving him an ad 
 vantage over all other animals. 
 
 vl
 
 OF MAN'S TRUE INTEREST. 
 
 147 
 
 poverty which he sees active, healthy, 
 and frequently jocund even in the bo- 
 som of penury. 
 
 If man were perfectly contented, there 
 would no longer be any activity in the 
 world ; it is necessary that he should 
 desire, act, labour, in order that he may 
 be happy : such is the course of nature, 
 of which the life consists in action. 
 Human societies can only subsist by 
 the continual exchange of those things 
 in which man places his happiness. 
 The poor man is obliged to desire and 
 to labour, that he may procure what he 
 knows is requisite to the preservation 
 of his existence; the primary wants 
 given to him by nature, are to nourish 
 himself, clothe himself, lodge himself, 
 and propagate his species ; has he sat- 
 isfied these? he is quickly obliged to 
 create others entirely new; or rather, 
 his imagination only refines upon the 
 first ; he seeks to diversify them ; he is 
 willing to give them fresh zest ; arrived 
 at opulence, when he has run over the 
 whole circle of wants, when he has 
 completely exhausted their combina- 
 tions, he falls into disgust. Dispensed 
 from labour, his body amasses humours ; 
 destitute of desires, his heart feels a 
 languor; deprived of activity, he is 
 obliged to divide his riches with beings 
 more active, more laborious than him- 
 self: these, following their own pecu- 
 liar interests, take upon themselves the 
 task of labouring for his advantage, of 
 procuring for him means to satisfy his 
 wants, of ministering to his caprices in 
 order to remove the languor that op- 
 presses him. It is thus the great, the 
 rich, excite the energies, the activity, 
 the industry of the indigent ; these la- 
 bour to their own peculiar welfare by 
 working for others : thus the desire of 
 ameliorating his condition, renders man 
 necessary to his fellow man ; thus 
 wants, always regenerating, never sat- 
 isfied, are the principles of life, of activ- 
 ity, the source of health, the basis of 
 society. If each individual were com- 
 petent to the supply of his own exigen- 
 cies, there would be no occasion for 
 him to congregate in society, but his 
 wants, his desires, his whims, place 
 him in a state of dependance on others : 
 these are the causes that each individ- 
 ual, in order to further his own pecu- 
 liar interest, is obliged to be useful to 
 those who have the capability of pro- 
 
 curing for him the objects which he 
 himself has not. A nation is nothing 
 more than the union of a great number 
 of individuals, connected with each 
 other by the reciprocity of their wants, 
 or by their mutual desire of pleasure ; 
 the most happy man is he who has the 
 fewest wants, and the most numerous 
 means of satisfying them.* 
 
 In the individuals of the human spe^l 
 cies, as well as in political society, the 
 progression of wants, is a thing abso- 
 lutely necessary ; it is founded upon the 
 essence of man ; it is requisite that the 
 natural wants once satisfied, should be 
 replaced by those which he calls ima- 
 ginary, or wants of the fancy ; these* 
 become as necessary to his happiness as" 
 the first. Custom, which permits the 
 native American to go quite naked, 
 obliges the more civilized inhabitant of 
 Europe to clothe himself; the poor man 
 contents himself with very simple at- 
 tire, which equally serves him for win- 
 ter and for summer ; the rich man de- 
 sires to have garments suitable to each 
 season ; he would experience pain if he 
 had not the convenience of changing 
 his raiment with every variation of his 
 climate ; he would be unhappy if the 
 expense and variety of his costume did 
 not display to the surrounding multi- 
 tude his opulence, mark his rank, an- 
 nounce his superiority. It is thus habit 
 multiplies the wants of the wealthy ; it 
 is thus that vanity itself becomes a want, 
 which sets a thousand hands in motion, 
 who are all eager to gratify its cra- 
 vings ; in short, this very vanity pro- 
 cures for the necessitous man the means 
 of subsisting at the expense of his opu- 
 lent neighbour. He who is accustom- 
 ed to pomp, who is used to ostentatious 
 splendour, whose habits are luxurious, 
 whenever he is deprived of these insig- 
 nia of opulence to which he has attach- 
 ed the idea of happiness, finds himself 
 just as unhappy as the needy Avretch 
 who has not wherewith to cover his 
 nakedness. The civilized nations oO 
 the present day were in their origin 
 savages composed of erratick tribes, 
 mere wanderers who were occupied 
 Avith war and the chase, obliged to seek 
 a precarious subsistence by hunting in 
 
 * The man who would be truly rich, has no 
 need to increase his fortune, it suffices he 
 should diminish his wants.
 
 143 
 
 OF MAN'S TRUE INTEREST. 
 
 those woods : in time they have become 
 stationary ; they first applied them- 
 selves to agriculture, afterwards to com- 
 merce; by degrees they have refined on 
 their primitive wants, extended their 
 sphere of action, given birth to a thou- 
 sand new wants, imagined a thousand 
 new means to satisfy them; this is the 
 natural and necessary progression of 
 active beings, who cannot live without 
 feeling ; who, to be happy, must of ne- 
 l^essity diversify their sensations. 
 
 In proportion as man's wants multi- 
 ply, the means to satisfy them becomes 
 more difficult; he is obliged to depend 
 on a greater number of his fellow crea- 
 tures ; his interest obliges him to rouse 
 their activity to engage them to concur 
 with his views, consequently he is obli- 
 ged to procure for them those objects 
 by which they can be excited. The 
 savage need only put forth his hand to 
 gather the fruit he finds sufficient for 
 his nourishment. The opulent citizen 
 of a flourishing society is obliged to set 
 numerous hands to work to produce the 
 sumptuous repast and to procure the far- 
 fetched viands become necessary to re- 
 vive his languishing appetite, or to flat- 
 ter his inordinate vanity. From this it 
 will appear, that in the same proportion 
 the wants of man are multiplied, he is 
 obliged to augment the means to satisfy 
 them. Riches are nothing more than 
 the measure of a convention, by the as- 
 sistance of which man is enabled to 
 make a greater number of his fellows 
 concur in the gratification of his de- 
 sires ; by which he is capacitated to 
 invite them, for their own peculiar in- 
 terests, to contribute to his pleasures. 
 What, in fact, does the rich man do, 
 except announce to the needy that he 
 can furnish him with the means of sub- 
 sistence if he consents to lend himself 
 to his will ? What does the man in 
 power except show to others that he is 
 in a state to supply the requisites to 
 render them happy ? Sovereigns, no- 
 bles, men of wealth, appear to be happy 
 only because they possess the ability, 
 are masters of the motives, sufficient to 
 determine a great number of individuals 
 to occupy themselves with their re- 
 spective felicity. 
 
 The more things are considered, the 
 more man will be convinced that his 
 false opinions are the true source of his 
 misery ; and the clearer it will appear 
 
 to him that happiness is so rare only 
 because he attaches it to objects either 
 indifferent or useless to his welfare, or 
 which, when enjoyed, convert them- 
 selves into real evils. 
 
 Riches are indifferent in themselves, 
 it is only by their application that they 
 either become objects of utility to man, 
 or are rendered prejudicial to his wel- 
 fare. Money, useless to the savage, 
 who understands not its value, is 
 amassed by the miser, (to whom it is 
 useless) lest it should be squandered 
 by the prodigal or by the voluptuary, 
 who makes no other use of it than to 
 purchase infirmities and regret. Pleas- 
 ures are nothing for the man who is in- 
 capable of feeling them ; they become 
 real evils when they are too freely in- 
 dulged ; when they are destructive to 
 his health ; when they derange the 
 economy of his machine ; when they 
 make him neglect his duties, and when 
 they render him despicable in the eyes 
 of others. Power is nothing in itself; 
 it is useless to man if he does not avail 
 himself of it to promote his own pecu- 
 liar felicity : it becomes fatal to him as 
 soon as he abuses it ; it becomes odious 
 whenever he employs it to render oth- 
 ers miserable. For. want of being en- 
 lightened on his true interest, the man 
 who enjoys all the means of rendering 
 himself completely happy, scarcely 
 ever discovers the secret of making 
 those means truly subservient to his 
 own peculiar felicity. The art of en- 
 joying is that which of all others is 
 least understood : man should learn 
 this art before he begins to desire; the 
 earth is covered with individuals who 
 only occupy themselves with the care 
 of procuring the means, without ever 
 being acquainted with the end. All 
 the world desire fortune and power, yet 
 very few indeed are those whom these 
 objects render truly happy. 
 
 It is quite natural in man, it is ex- 
 tremely reasonable, it is absolutely ne- 
 cessary, to desire those things which 
 can contribute to augment the sum of 
 his felicity. Pleasure, riches, power, 
 are objects worthy his ambition, and 
 deserving his most strenuous efforts, 
 when he has learned how to employ 
 them to render his existence really 
 more agreeable. It is impossible to 
 censure him who desires them, to de- 
 spise him who commands them, to hate
 
 THE ERROURS OF MAN. 
 
 149 
 
 him who possesses them, but when to 
 obtain them he employs odious means, 
 or when after he has obtained them he 
 makes a pernicious ue of them, inju- 
 rious to himself, prejudicial to others. 
 Let him wish for power, let him seek 
 after grandeur, let him be ambitious of 
 reputation, when he can obtain them 
 without making the purchase at the 
 expense of his own repose, or that of 
 the beings with whom he lives : let 
 him desire riches, when he knows how 
 to make a use of them that is truly ad- 
 vantageous for himself, really benefi- 
 cial for others ; but never let him em- 
 ploy those means to procure them with 
 which he may be obliged to reproach 
 himself, or which may draw upon him 
 the hatred of his associates. Let him al- 
 ways recollect, that his solid happiness 
 should rest its foundations upon his 
 own esteem, and upon the advantages 
 he procures for others ; and above all, 
 that ot all the objects to which his 
 ambition may point, the most imprac- 
 ticable for a being who lives in society, 
 is that of attempting to render himself 
 exclusively happy. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 The Err ours of Man, upon what constitutes 
 Happin ss, the true Source of his Evil. 
 Remedies that may be applied. 
 
 REASON by no means forbids man 
 from forming capacious desires ; am- 
 bition is a passion useful to his species, 
 when it has for its object the happiness 
 of his race. Great minds are desirous 
 of acting on an extended sphere ; gen- 
 iuses who are powerful, enlightened, 
 beneficent, distribute very widely their 
 benign influence; they must necessa- 
 rily, in order to promote their own pe- 
 culiar felicity, render great numbers 
 happy. So many princes fail to enjoy 
 true happiness, only because their fee- 
 ble, narrow souls, are obliged to act in 
 a sphere too extensive for their ener- 
 gies : it is thus that by the supineness. 
 the indolence, the incapacity of their 
 chiefs, nations frequently pine in mis- 
 ery, and are often submitted to masters 
 whose exility of mind is as little cal- 
 culated to promote their own immedi- 
 ate happiness, as it is to further that of 
 their miserable subjects. On the other 
 hand, minds too vehement^ too much 
 
 inflamed, too active, are themselves 
 tormented by the narrow sphere that 
 confines them, and their misplaced ar- 
 dour becomes the scourge of the human 
 race.* Alexander was a monarch, who 
 was as injurious to the earth, as discon- 
 tented with his condition, as the in- 
 dolent despot whom he dethroned. 
 The souls of neither were by any 
 means commensurate with their sphere 
 of action. 
 
 The happiness of man will never 
 be more than the result of the harmony 
 that subsists between his desires and his 
 circumstances. The sovereign power, 
 to him who knows not how to apply it 
 to the advantage of his citizens, is as 
 nothing ; if it renders him miserable, 
 it is a real evil ; if it produces the mis- 
 fortune of a portion of the human race, 
 it is a detestable abuse. The most 
 powerful princes are ordinarily such 
 strangers to happiness, their subjects 
 are commonly so unfortunate only be- 
 cause they first possess all ihe means 
 of rendering themselves happy, with- 
 out ever giving them activity, or be- 
 cause the only knowledge they have of 
 them is their abuse. A wise man, 
 seated on a throne, would be the most 
 happy of mortals. A monarch is a ' 
 man for whom his power, let it be of 
 whatever extent, cannot procure other 
 organs, other modes of feeling, than 
 the meanest of his subjects ; if he has 
 an advantage over them, it is by the 
 grandeur, the variety, the multiplicity 
 of the objects with which he can oc- 
 cupy himself, which, by giving per- 
 petual activity to his mind, can prevent 
 it from decay and from falling into 
 sloth. If his mind is virtuous and ex- 
 pansive, his ambition finds continual 
 food in the contemplation of the power 
 he possesses to unite by gentleness and 
 kindness the will of his subjects with 
 his own ; to interest them in his own 
 conservation, to merit their affections, 
 to draw forth the respect of strangers, 
 and to elicit the eulogies of all nations. 
 Such are the conquests that reason 
 proposes to all those whose destiny it 
 is to govern the fate of empires: they 
 are sufficiently grand to satisfy the 
 
 * .flSstuat infelix augusto limite mundi. 
 Seneca says of Alexander, Post Darium and 
 Indos pauper est Alexander ; inventus est qui 
 concupiscent aliquid post omnia. V. Senec. 
 Epist. 120.
 
 150 
 
 THE ERROURS OF MAN. 
 
 most ardent imagination, to gratify the 
 most capacious ambition. Kings are 
 the most happy of men only because 
 they have the power of making a great 
 number of other men happy, and thus 
 of multiplying the causes of legitimate 
 content with themselves. 
 
 The advantages of the sovereign 
 power are participated by all those 
 who contribute to the government of 
 states. Thus grandeur, rank, reputa- 
 tion, are desirable for all who are 
 acquainted with all the means of ren- 
 dering them subservient to their own 
 peculiar felicity ; they are useless to 
 those ordinary men, who have neither 
 the energy nor the capacity to employ 
 them in a mode advantageous to them- 
 selves ; they are detestable whenever 
 to obtain them man compromises his 
 own happiness and the welfare of so- 
 ciety : this society itself is in an er- 
 rour every time it respects men who 
 only employ to its destruction a power, 
 the exercise of which it ought never to 
 approve but when it reaps from it sub- 
 stantial benefits. 
 
 Riches, useless to the miser, who is 
 no more than their miserable jailer, 
 prejudicial to the debauchee, for whom 
 they only procure infirmities, disgust, 
 and satiety, can, in the hands of the hon- 
 est man, produce unnumbered means 
 of augmenting the sum of his happi- 
 ness ; but before man covets wealth, it 
 is proper he should know how to em- 
 ploy it ; money is only a representative 
 of happiness : to enjoy it so as to make 
 others happy, this is the reality. Mo- 
 ney, according to the compact of man, 
 procures for him all those benefits he 
 can desire ; there is only one which it 
 will not procure, that is, the knowledge 
 how to apply it properly. For man to 
 have money, without the true secret 
 how to enjoy it, is to possess the key 
 of a commodious palace to which he 
 is interdicted entrance ; to lavish it 
 prodigally, is to throw the key into the 
 river ; to make a bad use of it, is only 
 to make it the means of wounding 
 himself. Give the most ample treas- 
 ures to the enlightened man, he will 
 not be overwhelmed with them ; if he 
 has a capacious and noble mind he 
 will only extend more widely his be- 
 nevolence ; he will deserve the affec- 
 tion of a greater number of his fellow 
 UIPD ; he will attract the love, and the 
 
 homage of all those who surround 
 him; he will restrain himself in his 
 pleasures, in order that he may be en- 
 abled truly to enjoy them ; he will 
 know that money cannot re-establish a 
 mind worn out with enjoyment, enfee- 
 bled by excess ; cannot invigorate a 
 body enervated by debauchery, from 
 thenceforth become incapable of sus- 
 taining him, except by the necessity of 
 privations ; he will know that the Keen-, 
 tiousness of the voluptuary stifles pleas- 
 ure in its source, and that all the treas- 
 ure in the world cannot renew his 
 senses. 
 
 From this it will be obvious, that 
 nothing is more frivolous than the de- 
 clamations of a gloomy philosophy 
 against the desire of power, the pur- 
 suit of grandeur, the acquisition of 
 riches, the enjoyment of pleasure. 
 These objects are desirable for man, 
 whenever his condition permits him to 
 make pretensions to them, or whenever 
 he has acquired the knowledge of ma- 
 king them turn to his own real ad- 
 vantage; reason cannot either censure 
 or despise him, when to obtain them 
 he wounds no one's interest : his asso- 
 ciates will esteem him when he em- 
 ploys their agency to secure his own 
 happiness, and that of his fellows. 
 Pleasure is a benefit, it is of the es- 
 sence of man to love it ; it is even ra- 
 tional, when it renders his existence 
 really valuable to himself, when its 
 consequences are not grievous to oth- 
 ers. Riches are the symbols of the 
 great majority of the benefits of this 
 life ; they become a reality in the 
 hands of the man who has the clew to 
 their just application. Power is the 
 most sterling of all benefits, when he 
 who is its depositary has received from 
 nature a mind sufficiently noble, eleva- 
 ted, benevolent, and energetic, which 
 enables him to extend his happy influ- 
 ence over whole nations, which, by this 
 means, he places in a state of legitimate 
 dependance on his will : man only ac- 
 quires the right of commanding men, 
 when he renders them happy. 
 
 The right of man over his fellow- 
 man, can only be founded, either upon 
 the actual happiness he secures to him, 
 or that which gives him reason to hope 
 he will procure for him ; without this, 
 the power he exercises would be vio- 
 lence, usurpation, manifest tyranny : it
 
 THE ERR;OURS OP MAN. 
 
 151 
 
 is only upon the faculty of rendering 
 him happy that legitimate authority 
 builds its structure. No man derives 
 from nature the right of commanding 
 another ; but it is voluntarily accorded 
 to those from whom he expects his 
 welfare. Government is the right of 
 commanding conferred on the sove- 
 reign, only for the advantage of those 
 who are governed. Sovereigns are the 
 defenders of the persons, the guardians 
 of the property, the protectors of the 
 liberty of their subjects : it is only on 
 this condition these consent to obey ; 
 government would not be better than 
 a robbery whenever it availed itself of 
 the powers confided to it to render so- 
 ciety unhappy. The empire of reli- 
 "gion is founded on the opinion man 
 entertains of its having power to ren- 
 der nations happy ; and the Gods are 
 horrible phantoms if they do render 
 man unhappy.* Government and reli- 
 gion, could be reasonable institutions 
 only inasmuch as they equally contrib- 
 uted to the felicity of man : it would 
 be folly in him to submit himself to a 
 yoke from which these resulted nothing 
 but evil : it would be rank injustice to 
 oblige him to renounce his rights, with- 
 out some corresponding advantage. 
 
 The authority which a father exer- 
 cises over his family, is only founded 
 on the advantages which he is suppos- 
 ed to procure for it. Rank, in political 
 society, has only for its basis the real 
 or imaginary utility of some citizens, 
 for which the others are willing to dis- 
 tinguish, respect, and obey them. The 
 rich acquire rights over the indigent, 
 only by virtue of the welfare they are 
 able to procure them. Genius, talents, 
 science, arts, have rights over man, 
 only in consequence of their utility, of 
 the delight they confer, of the advan- 
 tages they procure for society. In a 
 word, it is happiness, it is the expec- 
 tation of happiness, it is its image, that 
 man cherishes, esteems, and unceas- 
 ingly adores. Gods and monarchs, the 
 rich and the great, may easily impose 
 
 * Cicero says Nisi homini placuerit, Deus 
 non erit. " God cannot oblige men to obey 
 him, unless he proves to them that he has the 
 power of rendering them happy or unhappy." 
 See the Defence of Religion, Vol. I. p. 433. 
 Prom this we must conclude that we are right 
 in judging of religion and of the Gods by the 
 advantages or disadvantages they procure to 
 society. 
 
 on him, may dazzle him, may intimi- 
 date him, but they will never be able 
 to obtain the voluntary submission of 
 his heart, which alone can confer upon 
 them legitimate rights, without they 
 make him experience real benefits ami 
 display virtue. Utility is nothing more 
 than true happiness ; to be useful is to 
 be virtuous ; to be virtuous is to make 
 others happy. 
 
 The happiness which man derives 
 from them, is the invariable and neces- 
 sary standard of his sentiments for the 
 beings of his species, for the objects 
 he desires, for the opinions he em- 
 braces, for those actions on which he 
 decides ; he is the dupe of his preju- 
 dices every time he ceases to avail him- 
 self of this standard to regulate his 
 judgment. He will never run the risk 
 of deceiving himself, when he shall 
 examine strictly what is the real utility 
 resulting to his species from the reli- 
 gion, from the laws, from the institu- 
 tions, from the inventions and the va- 
 rious actions of all mankind. 
 
 A superficial view may sometimes 
 seduce him ; but experience, aided by 
 reflection, will re-conduct him to rea- 
 son, which is incapable of deceiving 
 him. This teaches him that pleasure 
 is a momentary happiness, which fre- 
 quently becomes an evil ; that evil is a 
 fleeting trouble, that frequently be- 
 comes a good : it makes him under- 
 stand the true nature of objects, and 
 enables him to foresee the effects he 
 may expect ; it makes him distinguish 
 those desires to which his welfare per- 
 mits him to lend himself from those to 
 whose seduction he ought to make re- 
 sistance. In short, it will always con- 
 vince him, that the true interest of in- 
 telligent beings, who love happiness, 
 who desire to render their own exist- 
 ence felicitous, demands that they 
 should root out all those phantoms, 
 abolish all those chimerical ideas, de- 
 stroy all those prejudices, which ob- 
 struct their felicity in this world. 
 
 If he consults experience, he will 
 perceive that it is in illusions and opin- 
 ions looked upon as sacred, that he 
 ought to search out the source of that 
 multitude of evils, which almost every 
 where overwhelms mankind. From 
 ignorance of natural causes, man has 
 created Gods ; imposture rendered these 
 Gods terrible to him; and these fatal
 
 THE ERROURS OF MAN. 
 
 ideas haunted him without rendering 
 him better, made him tremble without 
 either benefit to himself or to others ; 
 filled his mind with chimeras, opposed 
 themselves to the progress of his rea- 
 son, prevented him from seeking after 
 his happiness. His fears rendered him 
 the slave of those who have deceived 
 him under pretence of consulting his 
 welfare ; he committed evil whenever 
 they told him his Gods demanded 
 crimes ; he lived in misfortune, because 
 they made him believe these Gods con- 
 demned him to be miserable ; the slave 
 of these Gods, he never dared to disen- 
 tangle himself from his chains, because 
 the artful ministers of these Divinities 
 gave him to understand, that stupidity, 
 the renunciation of reason, sloth of 
 mind, abjection of soul, were the sure 
 means of obtaining eternal felicity. 
 
 Prejudices, not less dangerous, have 
 blinded man upon the true nature of 
 government; nations are ignorant of 
 the true foundations of authority ; they 
 dare not demand happiness from those 
 kings who are charged with the care 
 of procuring it for them: they have be- 
 lieved that their sovereigns were Gods 
 disguised, who received with their 
 birth, the right of commanding the rest 
 of mankind ; that they could at their 
 pleasure dispose of the felicity of the 
 people, and that they were not ac- 
 countable for the misery they engen- 
 dered. By a necessary consequence 
 of these opinions, politics have al- 
 most every where degenerated into 
 the fatal art of sacrificing the interests 
 of the many, either to the caprice of 
 an individual, or to some few privile- 
 ged rascals. In despite of the evils 
 which assailed them, nations fell down 
 in adoration before the idols they them- 
 selves had made, and foolishly respect- 
 ed the instruments of their misery ; 
 obeyed their unjust will : lavished their 
 blood, exhausted their treasure, sacri- 
 ficed their lives, to glut the ambition, 
 the cupidity, the never-ending caprices 
 of these men ; they bent the knee to 
 established opinion, bowed to rank, 
 yielded to title, to opulence, to pageant- 
 ry, to ostentation: at length, victims to 
 their prejudices, they in vain expected 
 their welfare at the hands of men who 
 were themselves unhappy from their 
 own vices, whose neglect of virtue had 
 rendered them incapable of enjoying 
 
 true felicity, who were but little dispos- 
 ed to occupy themselves with their 
 prosperity : under such chiefs their 
 physical and moral happiness were 
 equally neglected or even annihilated. 
 
 The same blindness may be perceiv- 
 ed in the science of morals. Religion.''! 
 which never had any thing but ignor- 
 ance for its basis, and imagination for 
 its guide, did not found ethics upon 
 man's nature, upon his relations with 
 his fellows, upon those duties which 
 necessarily flow from these relations , 
 it preferred founding them upon ima- 
 ginary relations, which it pretended 
 subsisted between him and some invis- 
 ible powers it had gratuitously imagin- 
 ed, and had falsely been made to speak Jl , 
 
 It was these invisible Gods which re-^ 
 ligion always paints as furious tyrants, 
 who were declared the arbiters of man's 
 destiny the models of his conduct; 
 when he was: willing to imitate thess 
 tyrannical Gods, when he was willing 
 to conform himself to the lessons of 
 their interpreters, he became wicked, 
 was an unsociable creature, a useless 
 being, or else a turbulent maniac and a 
 zealous fanatic. It was these alone 
 who profited by religion, who advan- 
 taged themselves by the darkness in 
 which it involved the human mind ; 
 nations were ignorant of nature, they 
 knew nothing of reason, they under- 
 stood not truth ; they had only a gloomy 
 religion, without one certain idea of 
 either morals or virtue. When man 
 committed evil against his fellow crea- 
 ture, he believed he had offended his 
 God; but he also believed himself for- 
 given, as soon as he had prostrated him- 
 self before him; as soon as he had made 
 him costly presents, and gained over 
 the priest to his interest. Thus reli- 
 gion, far from giving a sure, a natural, 
 and a known basis to morals, only rest- 
 ed it on an unsteady fc indation, made 
 it consist in ideal duties, impossible to 
 
 * Thus Trophonius, from his cave, made 
 affrighted mortals tremble, shook the stoutest 
 nerves, made them turn pale with fear; his 
 miserable, deluded supplicants, who were obli- 
 ged to sacrifice to him, anointed their bodies 
 with oil, bathed in certain rivers, and after 
 they had offered their cake of honey and re 
 ceived their destiny, became so dejected, s>< 
 wretchedly forlorn, that to this day their de- 
 scendants, when they behold a melanch-,iy 
 man, exclaim, "He has consulted the oracu qf 
 TraphonivH.
 
 THE ERROURS OP MAN. 
 
 153 
 
 be accurately understood. What did I 
 say? It first corrupted him, and his 
 expiations finished by ruining him. 
 THUS when religion was desirous to 
 combat the unruly passions of man, it 
 attempted it in vain; always enthusi- 
 astic, and deprived of experience, it 
 knew nothing of the true remedies ; 
 those which it applied were disgusting, 
 only suitable to make the sick revolt 
 against them ; it made them pass for 
 divine, because they were not made of 
 man ; they were inefficacious, because 
 chimeras could effectuate nothing 
 against those substantive passions to 
 which motives more real and more 
 powerful concurred to give birth, which 
 every thing conspired to nourish in his 
 heart. The voice of religion, or of the 
 Gods, could not make itself heard 
 amidst the tumult of society, where all 
 cried out to man, that he could not 
 render himself happy without injuring 
 his fellow creature; these vain clam- 
 ours only made virtue hateful to him, 
 because they always represented it as 
 the enemy to his happiness as the bane 
 of human pleasures. He consequently 
 failed in the observation of his duties, 
 because real motives were never held 
 forth to induce him to make the requi- 
 site sacrifice: the present prevailed 
 over the future, the visible over the in- 
 visible, the known over the unknown ; 
 and man became wicked, because every 
 tiling informed him he must be so in or- 
 der to obtain happiness. 
 
 Thus, the sum of human misery was 
 never diminished; on the contrary, it 
 was accumulating either by his religion, 
 by his government, by his education, by 
 his opinions, or hy the institutions he 
 adopted under the idea of rendering his 
 condition more pleasant. It cannot be 
 too often repeated, it is in errour that 
 man will find the true spring of those 
 evils with which the human race is af- 
 flicted ; it is not nature that renders 
 him miserable and unhappy ; it is not 
 an irritated Divinity, who is desirous he 
 should live in tears ; it is not hereditary 
 depravation that has caused him to be 
 wicked and miserable, it is to errour 
 that these deplorable effects are to be 
 ascribed. 
 
 The sovereign good, so much sought 
 after by some philosophers, announced 
 with so much emphasis by others, may 
 be considered as a chimera, like unto 
 
 No. V. 20 
 
 that marvellous panacea,, which some 
 adepts have been willing to pass upon 
 mankind for a universal remedy. All 
 men are diseased ; the moment of their 
 birth delivers them over to the contagion 
 of errour ; but individuals are variously 
 affected by it, by a consequence of their 
 natural organization and of their pecu- 
 liar circumstances. If there is a sove- 
 reign remedy which can be indiscrimi- 
 nately applied to the diseases of man, 
 there is without doubt only one, and 
 this remedy is truth, which he must 
 draw from nature. 
 
 At the sight of those errours which 
 blind the greater number of mortals 
 of those delusions which man is doom- 
 ed to suck in with his mother's milk ; 
 at the sight of those desires, of those 
 propensities, by which he is perpetually 
 agitated, of those passions which tor- 
 ment him, of those inquietudes which 
 gnaw his repose, of those evils, as well 
 physical as moral, which assail him on 
 every side, the contemplator of human- 
 ity would be tempted to believe that 
 happiness was not made for this world, 
 and that any effort to cure those minds 
 which every thing unites to poison, 
 would be a vain enterprise. When he 
 considers those numerous superstitions 
 by which man is kept in a continual 
 state of alarm, that divide him from his 
 fellow, that render him irrational ; Avhen 
 he beholds the many despotic govern- 
 ments that oppress him ; when he ex- 
 amines those multitudinous, unintelli- 
 gible, contradictory laws that torture 
 him; the manifold injustice under 
 which he groans ; when he turns his 
 mind to the barbarous ignorance in 
 which he is steeped, almost over the 
 whole surface of the earth ; when he 
 witnesses those enormous crimes that 
 debase society, and render it so hateful 
 to almost every individual ; he has great 
 difficulty to prevent his mind from em- 
 bracing the idea, that misfortune is the 
 only appendage of the human species ; 
 that this world is made solely to assem- 
 ble the unhappy ; that human felicity is 
 a chimera, or at least a point so fugi- 
 tive, that it is impossible it can be fixed. 
 
 Thus superstitious and atrabilious 
 mortals, nourished in melancholy, un- 
 ceasingly see either nature or its author 
 exasperated against the human race; 
 they suppose that man is the constant 
 object of heaven's wrath ; that he ini-
 
 154 
 
 THE ERROURS OP MAN. 
 
 tates it even by his desires, and renders 
 himself criminal by seeking a felicity 
 which is not made for him. Struck 
 with behold ing that those objects which 
 he covets in the most lively manner, 
 are never competent to content his 
 heart, they have decried them as abom- 
 inations, as things prejudicial to his in- 
 terest, as odious ; they prescribe him 
 that he should entirely shun them ; 
 they have endeavoured to put to the 
 rout all his passions, without any dis- 
 tinction even -of those which are the 
 most useful to himself, the most bene- 
 ficial to those beings with whom he 
 lives : they have been willing that man 
 should render himself insensible 
 should become his own enemy that he 
 should separate himself from his fellow 
 creatures that he should renounce all 
 pleasure that he should refuse happi- 
 ness ; in short, that he should cease to 
 be a man ; that he should become un- 
 natural. " Mortals 1" have they said, 
 "ye were born to be unhappy ; the au- 
 thor of your existence has destined ye 
 for misfortune ; enter then into his 
 views, and render yourselves miserable. 
 Combat those desires which have feli- 
 city for their object ; renounce those 
 pleasures which it is your essence to 
 love ; attach yourselves to nothing in 
 this world ; fly a society that only serves 
 to inflame your imagination, to make 
 you sigh after benefits you ought not to 
 enjoy ; break up the spring of your 
 souls ; repress that activity that seeks 
 to put a period to your sufferings ; suffer, 
 afflict yourselves, groan, be wretched ; 
 such is for you the true road to happi- 
 ness." 
 
 Blind physicians ! who have mislay 
 ken for a disease the natural state of! 
 man! they have not seen that his de/ 
 sires and his passions were essential t^ 
 him; that to defend him from lovins 
 and desiring, is to deprive him of thai 
 activity, which is the vital principle of 
 society ; that to tell him to hate anc 
 despise himself, is to take from him the 
 most substantive motive that can con- 
 duct him to virtue. It is thus, that, by 
 its supernatural remedies, religion, far 
 from curing evils, has only increased 
 them, and made them more desperate ; 
 in the room of calming his passions, it 
 gives them inveteracy, makes them 
 more dangerous, renders them more 
 venomous, turns that into a curse which 
 
 nature has given him for his preserva- 
 tion and happiness. It is not by extin- 
 guishing the passions of man that he is 
 to be rendered happier, it is by direct- 
 ing them towards useful objects, which, 
 by being truly advantageous to himself, 
 must of necessity be beneficial to others. 
 
 In despite of the errours which blind 
 the human race; in despite of the ex- 
 travagance of man's religious and polit- 
 ical institutions, notwithstanding the 
 complaints and murmurs he is continu- 
 ally breathing forth against his destiny, 
 there are yet happy individuals on the 
 earth. Man has sometimes the felicity 
 to behold sovereigns animated by the 
 noble passion to render nations flour- 
 ishing and happy ; now and then he 
 encounters an Antoninus, a Trajan, a 
 Julian, an Alfred, a Henri IV.;* he 
 meets with elevated minds, who place 
 their glory in encouraging merit, who 
 rest their happiness in succouring indi- 
 gence, who think it honourable to lend a 
 helping hand to oppressed virtue : he 
 sees genius, occupied with the desire of 
 eliciting the admiration of his fellow- 
 citizens by serving them usefully, and 
 satisfied with enjoying that happiness 
 he procures for others. 
 
 Let it not be believed that the man 
 of poverty himself, is excluded from 
 happiness. Mediocrity and indigence 
 frequently procure for him advantages 
 that opulence and grandeur are obliged 
 to acknowledge. The soul of the needy 
 man, always in action, never ceases to 
 form desires, whilst the rich and the 
 powerful are frequently in the afflicting 
 embarrassment of either not knowing 
 what to wish for, or else of desiring 
 those objects which it is impossible for 
 them to obtain.f The poor man's 
 body, habituated to labour, knows the 
 sweets of repose ; this repose of the 
 body is the most troublesome fatigue to 
 him who is wearied with his idleness. 
 Exercise and frugality procure for the 
 one vigour, health, and contentment; 
 the intemperance and sloth of the other 
 furnish him only with disgust and in- 
 firmities. Indigence sets all the springs 
 of the soul to work ; it is the mother of 
 industry ; from its bosom arise genius, 
 
 * To this scanty list may now be added the 
 names of George Washington and Thomas 
 Jefferson. 
 
 t Petronius says: Nescio quomodo bon 
 mentis foror est paupertas.
 
 THE ERROURS OF MA!T. 
 
 155 
 
 talents, and merit, to which opulence 
 and grandeur pay their homage. In 
 short, the blows of fate find in the poor 
 man a flexible reed, who bends without 
 breaking. 
 
 Thus nature is not a stepmother to 
 the greater number of her children. 
 He whom fortune has placed in an ob- 
 scure station, is ignorant of that am- 
 bition which devours the courtier; 
 knows nothing of the inquietude which 
 deprives the intriguer of his rest; is 
 a stranger to the remorse, disgust, and 
 weariness of the man, who, enriched 
 with the spoils of a nation, does not 
 know how to turn them to his profit. 
 The more the body labours, the more 
 the imagination reposes itself; it is the 
 diversity of the objects man runs over 
 that kindles it ; it is the satiety of those 
 objects that causes him disgust; the 
 imagination of the indigent is circum- 
 scribed by necessity: he receives but 
 few ideas, he is acquainted with but 
 few objects ; in consequence he has but 
 little to desire; he contents himself 
 with that little, whilst the entire of na- 
 ture with difficulty suffices to satisfy 
 the insatiable desires, to gratify the 
 imaginary wants of the man plunged 
 in luxury, who has run over and ex- 
 hausted all common objects. Those, 
 whom prejudice contemplates as the 
 most unhappy of men, frequently enjoy 
 advantages more real and much greater 
 those who oppress them, who despise 
 them, but who are nevertheless often 
 reduced to the misery of envying them. 
 Limited desires are a real benefit: the 
 man of meaner condition, in his hum- 
 ble fortune, desires only bread : he 
 obtains it bjr the sweat of his brow ; he 
 would eat it with pleasure if injustice 
 did not almost always render it bitter to 
 him. By the delirium of governments, 
 those who roll in abundance, without 
 for that reason being more happy, dis- 
 pute with the cultivator even the fruits 
 which the earth yields to the labour of 
 his hands. Princes sacrifice their true 
 happiness, as well as that of their states, 
 to these passions, to those caprices, 
 which discourage the people, which 
 plunge their provinces in misery, which 
 make millions unhappy without any 
 advantage to themselves. Tyrants 
 oblige their subjects to curse their ex- 
 istence, to abandon labour, and take 
 from them the courage of propagating 
 
 a progeny who would be as unhappy as 
 their fathers : the excess of oppression 
 sometimes obliges them to revolt and 
 to avenge themselves by wicked out- 
 rages of the injustice it has heaped on 
 their devoted heads. Injustice, by re- 
 ducing indigence to despair, obliges it 
 to seek in crime resources against its 
 misery. An unjust government pro- 
 duces discouragement ; its vexations 
 depopulate a country ; the earth re- 
 mains without culture ; from thence is 
 bred frightful famine, which gives birth 
 to contagion and plague. The misery 
 of a people produce revolutions : soured 
 by misfortunes their minds get into a 
 state of fermentation, and the overthrow 
 of an empire is the necessary effect. It 
 is thus that physics and morals are al- 
 ways connected, or rather are the same 
 thing. 
 
 If the bad morals of chiefs do not al- 
 ways produce such marked effects, at 
 least they generate slothfulness, of 
 which the effect is to fill society with 
 mendicants and malefactors, whose vi- 
 cious course neither religion nor the 
 terrour of the laws can arrest ; which 
 nothing can induce to remain the un- 
 happy spectators of a welfare they are 
 not permitted to participate. They 
 seek a fleeting happiness at the ex- 
 pense even of their lives, when injus- 
 tice has shut up to them the road of la- 
 bour and industry, which would have 
 rendered them both useful and honest. 
 
 Let it not then be said, that no gov- 
 ernment can render all its subjects hap- 
 py : without doubt it cannot flatter it- 
 self Avith contenting the capricious 
 humours of some idle citizens, who are 
 obliged to rack their imagination to ap- 
 pease the disgust arising from lassi- 
 tude : but it can, and it ought to occupy 
 itself with ministering to the real wauts 
 of the multitude. A society enjoys all 
 the happiness of which it is susceptible, 
 whenever the greater number of its 
 members-are wholesomely fed, decently 
 clothed, comfortably lodged ; in short, 
 when they can without an excess of 
 toil beyond their strength procure 
 wherewith to satisfy those wants which 
 nature has made necessary to their ex- 
 istence. Their minds rest contented 
 as soon as they are convinced no power 
 can ravish from them the fruits of their 
 industry, and that they labour for them- 
 selves. By a consequence pf humaa
 
 156 
 
 THE ERROURS OF MAN. 
 
 folly, whole nations are obliged to toil 
 incessantly, to waste their strength, to 
 sweat under their burdens, to drench 
 the earth with their tears, in order to 
 maintain the luxury, to gratify the 
 whims, to support the corruption of a 
 small number of irrational beings, of 
 some few useless men, to whom happi- 
 ness has become impossible, because 
 their bewildered imaginations no longer 
 know any bounds. It is thus that re- 
 ligious and political errours have chang- 
 ed the fair face of nature into a valley 
 of tears. 
 
 For want of consulting reason, for 
 want of knowing the value of virtue, 
 for want of being instructed in their 
 true interests, for want of being ac- 
 quainted with what constitutes solid 
 and real felicity, the prince and the peo- 
 ple, the rich and the poor, the great and 
 the little, are unquestionably frequently 
 very far removed from content ; never- 
 theless if an impartial eye be glanced 
 over the human race, it will be found 
 to comprise a greater number of bene- 
 fits than of evils. No man is entirely 
 happy, but he is so in detail. Those 
 who make the most bitter complaints 
 of the rigour of their fate, are, however, 
 held in existence by threads frequently 
 imperceptible, which prevent the desire 
 of quitting it. In short, habit lightens 
 to man the burden of his troubles; 
 grief suspended becomes true enjoy- 
 ment ; every want is a pleasure in the 
 moment when it is satisfied ; freedom 
 from chagrin, the absence of disease, is 
 a happy state which he enjoys secretly 
 and without even perceiving it ; hope, 
 which rarely abandons him entirely, 
 helps him to support the most cruel dis- 
 asters. The prisoner laughs in his 
 irons ; the wearied villager returns sing- 
 ing to his cottage ; in short, the man 
 who calls himself the most unfortunate, 
 never sees death approach without dis- 
 may, at least if despair has not totally 
 disfigured nature in his eyes.* 
 
 As long as man desires the continua- 
 tion of his being, he has no right to call 
 himself completely unhappy ; whilst 
 hope sustains him, he still enjoys a 
 great benefit. If man was more just in 
 rendering to himself an account of his 
 pleasures and of his pains, he would 
 
 * See what has been said on suicide in 
 chapter xiv. 
 
 acknowledge that the sum of the first 
 exceeds by much the amount of the 
 last ; he would perceive that he keeps 
 a very exact leger of the evil, but a 
 very unfaithful journal of the good : in- 
 deed he would avow, that there are 
 but few days entirely unhappy during 
 the whole course of his existence. His 
 periodical wants procure for him the 
 pleasure of satisfying them : his mind 
 is perpetually moved by a thousand 
 objects, of which the variety, the mul- 
 tiplicity, the novelty, rejoices him, sus- 
 pends his sorrows, diverts his chagrin. 
 His physical evils, are they violent? 
 They are not of long duration ; they 
 conduct him quickly to his end : the 
 sorrows of his mind conduct him to it 
 equally. At the same time that nature 
 refuses him every happiness, she opens 
 to him a door by which he quits life : 
 does he refuse to enter it? it is that he 
 yet finds pleasure in existence. Are 
 nations reduced to despair? Are they 
 completely miserable ? They have re- 
 course to arms ; and, at the risk o-f per- 
 ishing, they make the most violent ef- 
 forts to terminate their sufferings. 
 
 Thus, as he sees so many of his fel- 
 lows cling to life, man ought to con- 
 clude they aie rot so unhappy as he 
 thinks. Then let him not exaggerate 
 the evils of the human race ; let him 
 impose silence on that gloomy humour, 
 that persuades him these evils are with- 
 out remedy ; let him diminish by de- 
 grees the number of his errours, and 
 his calamities will vanish in the same 
 proportion. He is not to conclude him- 
 self infelicitous, because his heart nev- 
 er ceases to form new desires. Since 
 his body daily requires nourishment, let 
 him infer that it is sound, that it fulfils 
 its functions. As long as he has de- 
 sires, the proper deduction ought to be, 
 that his mind is kept in the necessary 
 activity ; he should also gather from all 
 this that passions are essential to him, 
 that they constitute the happiness of a be- 
 ing who feels, who thinks, who receives 
 ideas, who must necessarily love and 
 desire that which promises him a mode 
 of existence analogous to his natural 
 energies. As long as he exists, as long 
 as the spring of his mind maintains its 
 elasticity, this mind desires ; as long as 
 it desires, he experiences the activity 
 which is necessary to him ; as long as 
 he acts, so long he lives. Human life
 
 REMEDIES FOR THE EVILS OP MAN. 
 
 157 
 
 may be compared to a river, of which 
 the waters succeed each other, drive 
 each other forward, and flow on with- 
 out interruption; these waters obliged 
 to roll over an unequal bed, encoun- 
 ter at intervals those obstacles which 
 prevent their stagnation; they never 
 cease to undulate, recoil, and to rush 
 forward, until they are restored to the 
 ocean of nature. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Those Ideas which are true, or founded upon 
 Nature, are the only Remedies for the Evils 
 of Man. Recapitulation. Conclusion of 
 the first Part. 
 
 WHENEVER man ceases to take expe- 
 rience for his guide, he falls into er- 
 rour. His errours become yet more 
 dangerous and assume a more deter- 
 mined inveteracy, when they are cloth- 
 ed with the sanction of religion : it is 
 then that he hardly ever consents to re- 
 turn into the paths of truth ; he believes 
 himself deeply interested in no longer 
 seeing clearly that which lies before 
 him ; he fancies he has an essential ad- 
 vantage in no longer understanding 
 himself, and that his happiness exacts 
 that he should shut his eyes to truth. 
 If the majority of moral philosophers 
 have mistaken the human heart ; if 
 they have deceived themselves upon its 
 di eases and the remedies that are suit- 
 able ; if the remedies they have admin- 
 istered have been inefficacious or even 
 dangerous, it is because they have aban- 
 doned nature, have resisted experience, 
 and have not had sufficient steadiness 
 to consult their reason ; because, having 
 renounced the evidence of their senses, 
 they have only followed the caprices of 
 an imagination either dazzled by enthu- 
 siasm or disturbed by fear, and have 
 preferred the illusions' it has held forth 
 to the realities of nature, who never de- 
 ceives. 
 
 It is for want of having felt, that an 
 intelligent being cannot for an instant 
 lose sight of his own peculiar conser- 
 vation of his particular interests, ei- 
 ther real or fictitious of his own wel- 
 fare, whether permanent or transitory; 
 in short, of his happiness, either true 
 or false ; it is for want of having con- 
 sidered that desires and passions are 
 essential and natural, that both the one 
 
 and the other are motions necessary to 
 the mind of man, that the physicians 
 of the human mind have supposed su- 
 pernatural causes for his wanderings, 
 and have only applied to his evils topi- 
 cal remedies, either useless or danger- 
 ous. Indeed, in desiring him to stifle 
 his desires, to combat his propensities, 
 to annihilate his passions, they have 
 done no more than give him steril pre- 
 cepts, at once vague and impracticable ; 
 these vain lessons have influenced no 
 one ; they have at most restrained some 
 few mortals, whom a quiet imagination 
 but feebly solicited to evil ; the terrours 
 with which they have accompanied 
 them, have disturbed the tranquillity of 
 those persons, who were moderate by 
 their nature, without ever arresting the 
 ungovernable temperament of those 
 who were inebriated by their passions, 
 or hurried along by the torrent of habit. 
 In short, the promises of superstition, as 
 well as the menaces it holds forth, have 
 only formed fanatics and enthusiasts, 
 who are either dangerous or useless to 
 society, without ever making man truly 
 virtuous, that is to say, useful to his 
 fellow creatures. 
 
 These empirics, guided by a blind 
 routine, have not seen that man, as long 
 as he exists, is obliged to feel, to desire, 
 to have passions, and to satisfy them in 
 proportion to the energy which his or- 
 ganization has given him ; they have 
 not perceived that education planted 
 these desires in his heart, that habit 
 rooted them, that his government, fre- 
 quently vicious, corroborated their 
 growth, that public opinion stamped 
 them with its approbation, that experi- 
 ence rendered them necessary, and that 
 to tell men thus constituted to destroy 
 their passions, was either to plunge 
 them into despair, or else to order them 
 remedies too revolting for their temper- 
 ament. In the actual state of opulent 
 societies, to say to a man who knows 
 by experience that riches procure every 
 pleasure, that he must not desire them, 
 that he must not make any efforts to ob- 
 tain them, that he ought to detach him- 
 self from them, is to persuade him to 
 render himself miserable. To tell an 
 ambitious man not to desire grandeur 
 and power, which every thing conspires 
 to point out to him as the height of fe- 
 licity, is to order him to overturn at 
 one blow the habitual system of his
 
 158 
 
 REMEDIES FOR THE EVILS OF MAN. 
 
 ideas ; it is to speak to a deaf man. To 
 tell a lover of an impetuous tempera- 
 ment, to stifle his passion for the ob- 
 ject that enchants him, is to make him 
 understand that he ought to renounce 
 his happiness. To oppose religion to 
 such puissant interests, is to combat 
 realities by chimerical speculations. 
 
 Indeed, if things were examined 
 without prepossession, it would be 
 found that the greater part of the pre- 
 cepts inculcated by religion, or which 
 fanatical and supernatural morals give 
 to man, are as ridiculous as they are 
 impossible to be put into practice. To 
 interdict passion to man, is to desire 
 of him not to be a human creature ; to 
 counsel an individual of violent ima- 
 gination to moderate his desires, is to 
 advise him to change his temperament 
 to request his blood to flow more 
 sluggishly. To tell a man to renounce 
 his habits, is to be willing that a citi- 
 zen, accustomed to clothe himself, 
 should consent to walk quite naked ; it 
 would avail as much to desire him to 
 change the lineament of his face, to 
 destroy his configuration, to extinguish 
 his imagination, to alter the course of 
 his fluids, as to command him not to 
 have passions analogous with his natu- 
 ral energy, or to lay aside those which 
 habit and his circumstances have con- 
 verted into wants.* Such are, how- 
 ever, the so much boasted remedies 
 which the greater number of moral 
 philosophers apply to human depravity. 
 Is it then surprising they do not pro- 
 duce the desired effect, or that they 
 only reduce man to a state of despair, 
 by the effervescence that results from 
 the continual conflict which they excite 
 between the passions of his heart, be- 
 tween his vices and his virtues, be- 
 tween his habits and those chimerical 
 fears with which superstition is at all 
 times ready to overwhelm him ? The 
 vices of society, aided by the objects 
 
 * It is evident that these counsels, extrava- 
 gant as they are, have been suggested to man 
 by all religions. The Indian, the Japanese, 
 the Mahometan, the Christian, the Jew, each, 
 according to his superstition, has made per- 
 fection to consist in fasting, mortification, ab- 
 stinence from the most rational pleasures, re- 
 tirement from the busy world, and in labour- 
 ing without ceasing to counteract nature. 
 Among the Pagans the priests of the Syrian 
 Goddess were not more rational their piety 
 Jed them to mutilate themselves. 
 
 of which it avails itself to whet the 
 desires of man, the pleasures, the riches, 
 the grandeur, which his government 
 hold? forth to him as so many seductive 
 magnets, the advantage which educa- 
 tion, the benefits, example, public opin- 
 ion render dear to him, attract him on 
 ojie side ; whilst agloomy morality vain- 
 ly solicits him on the other ; ihu?, reli- 
 gion plunges him into misery holds a 
 violent struggle with his heart, without 
 ever gaining the victory ; when by ac- 
 cident it does prevail against so many 
 united forces, it renders him unhappy 
 it completely destroys the spring of 
 his mind. 
 
 Passions are the true counterpoise 
 to passions; then, let him not seek to 
 destroy them, but let him endeavour 
 to direct them ; let him balance those 
 which are prejudicial, by those which 
 are useful to society. Reason, the fruit 
 of experience is only the art of choos- 
 ing those passions to which, for his 
 own peculiar happiness, he ought to 
 listen. Education is the true art of 
 disseminating, the proper method of 
 cultivating advantageous passions in 
 the heart of man. Legislation is the 
 art of restraining dangerous passions, 
 and of exciting those which may be 
 conducive to the public welfare. Reli- 
 gion is only the art of planting and of 
 nourishing in the mind of man those 
 chimeras, those illusions, those impos- 
 tures, those incertitudes, from whence 
 spring passions fatal to himself as well 
 as to others: it is only ty bearing up 
 with fortitude against these, that he 
 can place himself on the road to hap- 
 piness.f 
 
 Reason and morals cannot effect 
 any thing on mankind, if they do not 
 point out to each individual, that his 
 true interest is attached to a conduct 
 useful to others and beneficial to him- 
 self; this conduct to be useful must 
 conciliate for him the favour of those 
 beings who are necessary to his happi- 
 
 t To these we may add philosophy, which 
 is the art of advocating truth, of renouncing 
 errour, of contemplating reality, of drawing 
 wisdom from experience, of cultivating man's 
 nature to his own felicity, by teaching him 
 to contribute to that of his associates; in 
 short, it is reason, education, and legislation, 
 united to further the great end of human ex- 
 istence, by causing the passions of man to 
 flow in a current genial to his own happi-. 
 ness.
 
 REMEDIESFOR THE EVILS OF MAN. 
 
 151 
 
 liess : it is then for the interest of man- 
 kind, for the happiness of the human 
 race, it is for the esteem of himself, for 
 the love of his fellows, for the advan- 
 tages which ensue, that education in 
 early life should kindle the imagina- 
 tion of the citizen ; this is the true 
 means of obtaining those happy results 
 with which habit should familiarize 
 him, which public opinion should ren- 
 der dear to his heart, for which exam- 
 ple ought continually to rouse his fa- 
 culties. Government, by the aid of 
 recompenses, ought to encourage him 
 to follow this plan ; by visiting crime 
 with punishment, it ought to deter 
 those who are willing to interrupt it. 
 Thus the hope of a true welfare, the 
 fear of real evil, will be passions suit- 
 able to countervail those which, by 
 their impetuosity, would injure society ; 
 these last will at least become very 
 rare, if instead of feeding man's mind 
 with unintelligible speculations, in lieu 
 of vibrating on his ears words void of 
 sense, he is only spoken to of realities, 
 only shown those interests which are 
 in unison with truth. 
 
 Man is frequently so wicked, only 
 because he almost always feels him- 
 self interested in being so ; let him be 
 more enlightened and more happy, and 
 he will necessarily become better. An 
 equitable government, a vigilant ad- 
 ministration will presently fill the state 
 with honest citizens ; it will hold forth 
 to them present reasons, real and pal- 
 pable, to be virtuous ; it will instruct 
 them in their duties; it will foster 
 them with its cares ; it will allure them 
 by the assurance of their own peculiar 
 happiness; its promises and its mena- 
 ces faithfully executed, will, unques- 
 tionably, have much more weight than 
 those of superstition, which never ex- 
 hibits to their view other than illusory 
 benefit-;, fallacious punishments, which 
 the man hardened in wickedness will 
 doubt every time he finds an interest in 
 questioning them ; present motives will 
 tell more home to his heart, than those 
 which are distant and at best uncer- 
 tain. The vicious and the wicked are 
 so common upon the earth, so pertina- 
 cious in their evil courses, so attached 
 to their irregularities, only because 
 there are but few governments that 
 make man feel the advantage of being 
 just, honest, and benevolent ; on the 
 
 contrary, there is hardly any place 
 where the most powerful interests do 
 not ?olicit him to crime by favouring 
 the propensities of a vicious organiza- 
 tion, which nothing has attempted to 
 rectify or lead towards virtue.* A sav- 
 age, who in his horde, knows not the 
 value of money, certainly would not 
 commit a crime ; if transplanted into 
 civilized society, he will presently learn 
 to desire it, will make efforts to obtain 
 it, and, if he can without danger, finish 
 by stealing it, above all if he had not 
 been taught to respect the property of 
 the beings who environ him. The 
 savage and the child are precisely in 
 the same state ; it is the negligence of 
 society, of those intrusted with their 
 education, that render both the one 
 and the other wicked. The son of a 
 noble, from his infancy learns to desire 
 power, at a riper age he becomes ambi- 
 tious ; if he has the address to insinu- 
 ate himself into favour, he becomes 
 wicked, and he may be so with impu- 
 nity. It is not therefore nature that 
 makes man wicked, they are his in- 
 stitutions which determine him to 
 vice. The infant brought up amongst 
 robbers, can generally become no- 
 thing but a malefactor; if he had 
 been reared with honest people, the 
 chance is he would have been a virtu- 
 ous man. 
 
 If the source be traced of that pro- 
 found ignorance in which man is with 
 respect to his morals, to the motives 
 that can give volition to his will, it will 
 be found in those false ideas which the 
 greater number of speculators have 
 formed to themselves of human nature. 
 The science of morals has become .an 
 enigma, which it is impossible to un- 
 ravel, because man has made himself 
 double, has distinguished his mind 
 from his body, supposed it of a nature 
 different from all known beings, with 
 modes of action, with properties dis- 
 tinct from all other bodies; because he 
 has emancipated this mind from phys- 
 ical laws, in order to submit it to capri- 
 cious laws derived from imaginary re- 
 gions. Metaphysicians, seized upon 
 these gratuitous suppositions, and by 
 dint of subtilizing them, have rendered 
 
 * Sallust says, Nemo gratuito malus est. 
 We can say in the same manner. Nemo gra, 
 tuito bonus eat.
 
 160 
 
 REMEDIES FOR THE EVILS OF MAN. 
 
 them completely unintelligible. These 
 moralists have not perceived, that mo- 
 tion is essential to the mind as well as 
 to the living body ; that both the one 
 and the other are never moved but by 
 material, by physical objects ; that the 
 wants of each regenerate themselves 
 unceasingly ; that the wants of the 
 mind, as well as those of the body, are 
 purely physical ; that the most inti- 
 mate, the most constant connexion 
 subsists between the mind and the 
 body, or rather they have been unwil- 
 ling to allow, that they are only the 
 same thing considered under different 
 points of view. Obstinate in their 
 supernatural or unintelligible opinions, 
 they have refused to open their eyes, 
 which would have convinced them, 
 that the body in suffering rendered the 
 mind miserable ; that the mind afflict- 
 ed undermined the body and brought it 
 to decay ; that both the pleasures and 
 agonies of the mind, have an influence 
 over the body, either plunge it into 
 sloth or give it activity : they have 
 rather chosen to believe, that the mind 
 draws its thoughts, whether pleasant 
 or gloomy, from its own peculiar sour- 
 ces ; while the fact is, that it derives 
 its ideas only from material objects, 
 that strike on the physical organs ; that 
 it is neither determined to gayety nor 
 led on to sorrow, but by the actual 
 state, whether permanent or transitory, 
 in which the fluids and solids of the 
 body are found. In short, they have 
 been loath to acknowledge, that the 
 mind, purely passive, undergoes the! 
 same changes which the body experi- 
 ences ; that it is only moved by its in- 
 tervention, acts only by its assistance,; 
 receives its sensations, its perceptions,; 
 forms its ideas, derives either its happi- 
 ness, or its misery, from physical ob- 
 jects, through the medium of the or-; 
 gang of which the body is composed, ; 
 frequently without its own cognizance, ( 
 and often in despite of itself. 
 
 By a consequence of these opinions, 
 connected with marvellous systems, or 
 systems invented to justify them, they 
 have supposed the human mind to be 
 a free agent ; that is to say that it has 
 the faculty of moving itself that it 
 enjoys the privilege of acting indepen- 
 dent of the impulse received from ex- 
 terior objects through the organs of the 
 body ; that regardless of these impul- 
 
 sions, it can even resist them, and fol- 
 low its own direction by its own ener- 
 gies; that it is not only different in its 
 nature from all other beings, but has 
 also a separate mode of action ; in oth- 
 er words, that it is an isolated point, 
 which is not submitted to that uninter- 
 rupted chain of motion, which bodies 
 communicate to each other in nature 
 whose parts are always in action. 
 Smitten with their sublime notions, 
 these speculators were not aware, that 
 in thus distinguishing the soul or mind, 
 from the body and from all known be- 
 ings, they rendered it an impossibility 
 to form any true idea of it ; they were 
 unwilling to perceive the perfect anal- 
 ogy which is found between the man- 
 ner of the mind's action, and that by 
 which the body is affected ; they shut 
 their eyes to the necessary and contin- 
 ual correspondence which is found be- 
 tween the mind and the body ; they 
 would not see that like the body it is 
 subjected to the motion of attraction 
 and repulsion, which is ascribable to 
 qualities inherent in tho^e physical 
 substances which give play to the or- 
 gans of the body; that the volition of 
 its will, the activity of its passions, 
 the continual regeneration of its de- 
 sires, are nevermore than consequences 
 of that activity which is produced on 
 the body by material objects which are 
 not under its controul, and that these 
 objects render it either happy or miser- 
 able, active or languishing, contented 
 or discontented, in despite of itself and 
 of all the efforts it is capable of making 
 to render it otherwise : they have rath- 
 er chosen to seek in the heavens for 
 fictitious powers to set it in motion ; 
 they have held forth to man only ima- 
 ginary interests : under the pretext of 
 procuring for him an ideal happiness, 
 he has been prevented from labouring 
 to his true felicity, which has been stu- 
 diously withheld from his knowledge: 
 his regards have been fixed upon the 
 heavens, that he might lose sight of the 
 earth : truth has been concealed from 
 him, and 'it has been pretended he 
 would be rendered happy by dint of ter- 
 rours, by means of phantoms, and of 
 chimeras. In short, hoodwinked and 
 blind, he was only guided through the 
 flexuous paths of life by men as blind 
 as himself, where both the one and the 
 other were lost in the maze.
 
 REMEDIES FOR THE EVILS OF MAN. 
 
 161 
 
 From every thing which has been 
 hitherto said, it evidently results that 
 all the errours of mankind, of what- 
 ever nature they may be, arise from 
 man's having renounced reason, quit- 
 ted experience, and refused the evi- 
 dence of his senses, that he in 
 guided by imagination, frequently de- 
 ceitful, and by authority, always suspi- 
 cious. Man will ever mistake his true 
 happiness, as long as he neglects to 
 study nature, to investigate her immu- 
 table laws, to seek in her alone the 
 remedies for those evils which are the 
 consequence of his present errours : 
 he will be an enigma to himself, as 
 long as he shall believe himself double, 
 and that he is moved by an inconceiv- 
 able power, of the laws and nature of 
 which he is ignorant. His intellectual 
 as well as his moral faculties will re- 
 main unintelligible to him if he does 
 not contemplate them with the same 
 eyes as he does his corporeal qualities, 
 and does not. view them as submitted 
 in every thing to the same regulations. 
 The system of his pretended free 
 agency is without support ; experience 
 contradicts it every instant, and proves 
 that he never ceases to be under the 
 influence of necessity in all his ac- 
 tions ; this truth, far from being dan- 
 gerous to man, far from being destruc- 
 tive of his morals, furnishes him with 
 their true basis, by making him feel 
 the necessity of those relations which 
 subsist between sensible beings united 
 in society, who have congregated with 
 a view of uniting their common efforts 
 for their reciprocal felicity. From the 
 necessity of these relations, spring the 
 necessity of his duties ; these point out 
 to him the sentiments of love which 
 he should accord to virtuous conduct, 
 or that aversion he should have for 
 what is vicious. From hence the true 
 foundation of moral obligation, will 
 be obvious, which is only the necessity 
 of taking means to obtain the end man 
 proposes to himself by uniting in so- 
 ciety, in which each individual for his 
 own peculiar interest, his own particu- 
 lar happiness, his own personal secu- 
 rity, is obliged to display and to hold a 
 conduct suitable to the preservation of 
 the community, and to contribute by 
 his actions to the happiness of the 
 whole. In a word, it is upon the ne- 
 cessary action and reaction of the hu- 
 No. VI. 21 
 
 man will, upon the necessary attrac- 
 tion and repulsion of man's mind, that 
 all his morals are bottomed : it is the 
 unison of his will, the concert of his 
 actions, that maintain society : it is 
 rendered miserable by his discordance ; 
 it is dissolved by his want of union. 
 
 From what has been said it may be 
 concluded, that the names under which 
 man has designated the concealed 
 causes acting in nature, and their vari- 
 ous effects, are never more than neces- 
 sity considered under different points 
 of view. It will be found, that what 
 he calls order, is a. necessary conse- 
 quence of causes and effects, of which 
 he sees, or believes he sees, the entire 
 connexion, the complete routine, and 
 which pleases him as a whole when 
 he finds it conformable to his existence. 
 In like manner it will be seen that 
 what he calls confusion, is a conse- 
 quence of like necessary causes and 
 effects, which he thinks unfavourable 
 to himself, or but little suitable to his 
 being. He has designated by the 
 name of intelligence, those necessary 
 causes that necessarily operate the 
 chain of events which he comprises 
 under the term order. He has called 
 divinity, those necessary but invisible 
 causes which give play to nature, in 
 which every thing acts according to 
 immutable and necessary laws : des- 
 tiny or fatality, the necessary connex- 
 ion of those unknown causes and ef- 
 fects which he beholds in the world : 
 chance, those effects which he is not 
 able to foresee, or of which he ignores 
 the necessary connexion with their 
 causes. Finally, intellectual and mo- 
 ral faculties, those effects and those 
 modifications necessary to an organiz- 
 ed being, whom he has supposed to be 
 moved by an inconceivable agent, that 
 he has believed distinguished from his 
 body, of a nature totally different from 
 it, and which he has designated by the 
 word soul. In consequence, he has 
 believed this agent immortal, and not 
 dissoluble like the body. 
 
 It has been shown that the marvel- 
 lous doctrine of another life, is founded 
 upon gratuitous suppositions, contra- 
 dicted by reflection. It has been prov- 
 ed, that the hypothesis is not only use- 
 less to man's morals, but again, that it 
 is calculated to palsy his exertions, to 
 divert him from actively pursuing the
 
 162 
 
 REMEDIES FOR THE EVILS OP MAX. 
 
 true road to his own happiness, to fill 
 him with romantic caprices, and to in- 
 ebriate him with opinions prejudicial 
 to his tranquillity ; in short, to lull to 
 slumber the vigilance of legislators, by 
 dispensing them from giving to educa- 
 tion, to the institutions, to the laws of 
 society, all that attention which it is the 
 duty and for his interest they should 
 bestow. It must have been felt, that 
 politics has unaccountably rested itself 
 upon opinions little capable of satisfy- 
 ing those passions which every thing 
 conspires to kindle in the heart of man, 
 who ceases to view the future, while 
 the present seduces and hurries him 
 along. It has been shown, that con- 
 tempt of death is an advantageous sen- 
 timent, calculated to inspire man's 
 mind with courage to undertake that 
 which may be truly useful to society. 
 In short, from what has preceded, it 
 will be obvious what is competent to 
 conduct man to happiness, and also 
 what are the obstacles that errour op- 
 poses to his felicity. 
 
 Let us not then be accused of demo- 
 lishing without rebuilding, with com- 
 bating errour without substituting truth, 
 with sapping at one and the same time 
 the foundations of religion and of sound 
 morals. The last is necessary to man ; 
 it is founded upon his nature ; its du- 
 ties are certain, they must last as long 
 as the human race remains ; it imposes 
 obligations on him, because, without 
 it, neither individuals nor society could 
 be able to subsist, either obtain or en- 
 joy those advantages which nature ob- 
 liges them to desire. 
 
 Listen then, O man ! to those morals 
 which are established upon experience 
 and upon the necessity of things ; do 
 not lend thine ear to those superstitions 
 founded upon reveries, imposture, and 
 the capricious whims of a disordered 
 imagination. Follow the lessons of 
 those humane and gentle morals, which 
 conduct man to virtue by the path of 
 happiness : turn a deaf ear to the ineffi- 
 cacious cries of religion which ren- 
 ders man really unhappy ; which can 
 never make him reverence virtue, which 
 it paints in hideous and hateful colours ; 
 in short, let him see if reason, without 
 the assistance of a rival who prohibits 
 its use, will not more surely conduct 
 him towards that great end which is 
 the object and tendency of all his views. 
 
 Indeed, what benefit has the hurnarl 
 race hitherto drawn from those sublime 
 and supernatural notions, with which 
 theology has fed mortals during so 
 many ages ? All those phantoms con- 
 jured up by ignorance and imagination ; 
 all those hypotheses, as subtile as they 
 are irrational, from which experience 
 is banished ; all those words devoid of 
 meaning with which languages are 
 crowded; all those fantastical hopes 
 and panic terrours, which have been 
 brought to operate on the will of man, 
 have they rendered man better, more 
 enlightened to his duties, more faithful 
 in their performance ? Have those 
 marvellous systems, or those sophis- 
 tical inventions by which they have 
 been supported, carried conviction to 
 his mind, reason into his conduct, vir- 
 tue into his -heart? Alas! all these 
 things have done nothing more than 
 plunge the human understanding into 
 that darkness, from which it is difficult 
 to be withdrawn ; sown in man's heart 
 the most dangerous errours, of which 
 it is scarcely possible to divest him ; 
 given birth to those fatal passions, in 
 which may be found the true source of 
 those evils with which his species is 
 afflicted. 
 
 Cease then, O mortal ! to let thyself 
 be disturbed with phantoms, which 
 thine own imagination or imposture 
 hath created. Renounce thy vague 
 hopes ; disengage thyself from thine 
 overwhelming fears, follow without in- 
 quietude the necessary routine which 
 nature has marked out for thee ; strew 
 the road with flowers if thy destiny 
 permits ; remove, if thou art able, the 
 thorns scattered over it. Do not at- 
 tempt to plunge thy views into an im- 
 penetrable futurity ; its obscurity ought 
 to be sufficient to prove to thee that it 
 is either useless or dangerous to fa- 
 thom. Only think then, of making 
 thyself happy in that existence which 
 is known to thee. If thou wouldst 
 preserve thyself, be temperate, mode- 
 rate, and reasonable : if thou seekest 
 to render thy existence durable, be not 
 prodigal of pleasure. Abstain from 
 every thing that can be hurtful to 
 thyself, or to others. Be truly in- 
 telligent ; that is to say, learn to es- 
 teem thyself, to preserve thy being, to 
 fulfil that end which at each moment 
 thou proposest to thyself. Be virtu- 

 
 MAN'S IDEAS UPON THE DIVINITY. 
 
 18S 
 
 ous, to the end that thou mayest ren- 
 der thyself solidly happy, that thou 
 mayest enjoy the affections, secure the 
 esteem, partake of the assistance of 
 those beings whom nature has made 
 necessary to thine own peculiar feli- 
 city. Even when they should be un- 
 just, render thyself worthy of thine 
 own love and applause, and thou shalt 
 live content, thy serenity shall not be 
 disturbed : the end of thy career shall 
 not slander a life which will be ex- 
 empted from remorse. Death will bi 
 to thee the door to a new existence, 
 new order in which thou wilt be sui 
 mitted, as thou art at present, to t 
 eternal laws of fate, which ordain; 
 that to live happy here below, ih< 
 must make others happy. Suffer tl 
 self, then, to be drawn gently along 
 thy journey, until thou shalt sleep 
 peaceably on that bosom which has 
 given thee birth. 
 
 For thou, wicked unfortunate ! who 
 art found in continual contradiction 
 with thyself; thou whose disorderly 
 machine can neither accord with thine 
 own peculiar nature, nor with that of 
 thine associates ; whatever may be 
 thy crimes, whatever may be thy fears 
 of punishment in another life, thou art 
 at least already cruelly punished in 
 this ? Do not thy follies, thy shame- 
 ful habits, thy debaucheries, damage 
 thine health ? Dost thou not linger out 
 life in disgust, fatigued with thine own 
 excesses ? Does not listlessness, pun- 
 ish thee for thy satiated passions ? 
 Has not thy vigour, thy gayety, already 
 yielded to feebleness, to infirmities, and 
 to regret? Do not thy vices every day 
 dig thy grave? Every time thou hast 
 stained thyself with crime, hast thou 
 dared without horrour to return into thy- 
 self ? Hast thou not found remorse, 
 terrour, shame, established in thine 
 heart? Hast thou not dreaded the 
 scrutiny of thy fellow man? Hast 
 thou not trembled when alone, that 
 truth, so terrible for thee, should unveil 
 thy dark transgressions, throw into 
 light thine enormous iniquities ? Do 
 not then any longer fear to part with 
 thine existence, it will at least put an 
 end to those richly merited torments 
 thou hast inflicted on thyself; death, 
 in delivering the earth from an incom- 
 modious burden, will also deliver thee 
 from thy most cruel enemy, thyself. 
 
 CHAPTER XVin. 
 
 The Origin of Man's Ideas upon the, Divinity. 
 
 IF man possessed the courage to 
 recur to the source of those opinions 
 which are most deeply engraven on his 
 brain ; if he rendered to himself a faith- 
 ful account of the reasons which make 
 him hold these opinions as sacred ; if he 
 coolly examined the basis of his hopes, 
 the foundation of his fears, he would 
 find that it very frequently happens, 
 those objects, or those ideas which 
 move him most powerfully, either have 
 no real existence, are words devoid of 
 meaning, or phantoms engendered by 
 a disordered imagination, modified by 
 ignorance. Distracted by contending 
 passions, which prevent him from either 
 reasoning justly, or consulting expe- 
 rience in his judgment, his intellectual 
 faculties are thrown into confusion, his 
 ideas bewildered. 
 
 A sensible being placed in a nature 
 where every part is in motion, has va- 
 rious feelings, in consequence of either 
 the agreeable or disagreeable effects 
 which he is obliged to experience ; in 
 consequence he either finds himself 
 happy or miserable ; and, according to 
 the quality of the sensations excited 
 in him, he will love or fear, seek after 
 or fly from, the real or supposed causes 
 of such marked effects operated on his 
 machine. But if he is ignorant or des- 
 titute of experience, he will frequently 
 deceive himself as to these causes; 
 and he will neither have a true know- 
 ledge of their energy, nor a clear idea 
 of their mode of acting: thus until re- 
 iterated experience shall have formed 
 his judgment, he will be involved in 
 trouble and incertitude. 
 
 Man is a being who brings with him 
 nothing into the world, save an apti- 
 tude to feeling in a manner more or 
 less lively according to his individual 
 organization : he has no knowledge of 
 any of the causes that act upon him : 
 by degrees his faculty of feeling dis- 
 covers to him their various qualities ; 
 he learns to judge of them; time fa- 
 miliarizes him with their properties; 
 he attaches ideas to them, according to 
 the manner in which they have affect- 
 ed him ; and these ideas are correct or 
 otherwise, in a ratio to the soundness 
 of his organic structure, and in propor- 
 tion as these organs are competent to
 
 164 
 
 THE ORIGIN OP MAN'S IDEAS 
 
 afford him sure and reiterated experi- 
 ence. 
 
 The first movements of man are 
 marked by his wants ; that is to say, 
 the first impulse he receives is to con- 
 serve his existence ; this he would not 
 be able to maintain without the concur- 
 rence of many analogous causes: these 
 wants in a sensible being manifest 
 themselves by a general languor, a 
 sinking, a confusion in his machine, 
 which gives him the consciousness of 
 a painful sensation : this derangement 
 subsists and is augmented, until the 
 cause suitable to remove it re-estab- 
 lishes the harmony so necessary to the 
 existence of the human frame. Want, 
 therefore, is the first evil man experi- 
 ences ; nevertheless it is requisite to 
 the maintenance of his existence.- 
 Was it not for this derangement of his 
 body, which obliges him to furnish its 
 remedy, he would not be warned of the 
 necessity of preserving the existence 
 he has received. Without wants man 
 would be an insensible machine, simi- 
 lar to a vegetable, and like it, he would 
 be incapable of preserving himself or 
 of using the means required to conserve 
 his being. To his wants are to be as- 
 cribed his passions, his desires, the ex- 
 ercise of his corporeal and intellectual 
 faculties : they are his wants that 
 oblige him to think, to will, to act ; it is 
 to satisfy them, or rather to put an end 
 to the painful sensations excited by 
 their presence, that, according to his 
 capacity, to the energies which are pe- 
 culiar to himself, he exerts the activity 
 of his bodily strength, or displays the ex- 
 tensive powers of his mind. His wants 
 being perpetual, he is obliged to labour 
 without relaxation to procure objects 
 competent to satisfy them. In a word, 
 it is owing to his multiplied wants that 
 man's energy is kept in a state of con- 
 tinual activity : as soon as he ceases 
 to have wants, he falls into inaction 
 becomes listless declines into apathy 
 sinks into a languor that is incom- 
 modious to his feelings or prejudicial 
 to his existence : this lethargic state of 
 weariness lasts until new wants rouse 
 his dormant faculties, and destroy the 
 sluggishness to which he had become 
 a prey. 
 
 From hence it will be obvious that 
 evil is necessary to man ; without it he 
 would neither be in a condition to 
 
 know that which injures him, to avoid 
 its presence, or to seek his own wel- 
 fare : he would differ in nothing from 
 insensible, unorganized beings, if those 
 evanescent evils which he calls wants, 
 did not oblige him to call forth his fac- 
 ulties, to sef his energies in motion, to 
 cull experience, to compare objects, to 
 discriminate them, to separate those 
 which have the capabilities to injure 
 him, from those which possess the 
 means to benefit him. In short, with- 
 out evil man would be ignorant of 
 good ; he would be continually exposed 
 to perish. He would resemble an in- 
 fant, who, destitute- of experience, runs 
 the risk of meeting his destruction at 
 every step he takes : he would be un- 
 able to judge of any thing ; he would 
 have no preference ; his will would be 
 without volition, he would be destitute 
 of passions, of desire : he would not 
 revolt at the most disgusting objects ; 
 he would not strive to put them away ; 
 he would neither have stimuli to love, 
 nor motives to fear any thing; he 
 would be an insensible automaton he 
 would no longer be a man. 
 
 If no evil had existed in this world, 
 man would never have dreamt of the 
 divinity. If nature had permitted him 
 easily to satisfy all his regenerating 
 wants, if she had given him none but 
 agreeable sensations, his days would 
 have uninterruptedly rolled on in one 
 perpetual uniformity, and he would 
 never have had motives to search after 
 the unknown causes of things. To 
 meditate is pain : therefore man, al- 
 ways contented, would only have oc- 
 cupied himself with satisfying his 
 wants, with enjoying the present, with 
 feeling the influence of objects that 
 would unceasingly warn him of his 
 existence in a mode that he must ne- 
 cessarily approve ; nothing would alarm 
 his heart ; every thing would be anal- 
 ogous to his existence : he would nei- 
 ther know fear, experience distrust, 
 nor have inquietude for the future : 
 these feelings can only be the conse- 
 quence of some troublesome sensation, 
 which must have anteriorly affected 
 him, or Avhich, by disturbing the har- 
 mony of his machine, has interrupted 
 the course of his happiness. 
 
 Independent of those wants which 
 in man renew themselves every in- 
 stant, and which he frequently finds it
 
 UPON THE DIVINITY. 
 
 165 
 
 impossible to satisfy, every individual 
 experiences a multiplicity of evils ; he 
 suffers from the inclemency of the sea- 
 sons, he pines in penury, he is infected 
 with plague, he is scourged by war, he 
 is the victim of famine, he is afflicted 
 with disease, he is the sport of a thou- 
 sand accidents, &c. This is the rea- 
 son why all men are fearful and diffi- 
 dent. The knowledge he has of pain 
 alarms him upon all unknown causes, 
 that is to say, upon all those of which 
 he has not yet experienced the effect ; 
 this experience made with precipita- 
 tion, or if it be preferred, by instinct, 
 places him on his guard against all 
 those objects from the operation of 
 which he is ignorant what conse- 
 quences may result to himself. His 
 inquietude and his fears keep pace with 
 the extent of the disorder which these 
 objects produce in him ; they are mea- 
 sured by their rarity, that is to say, by 
 the inexperience he has of them ; by 
 his natural sensibility, and by the ar- 
 dour of his imagination. The more 
 ignorant man is, the less experience he 
 has, the more he is susceptible of fear ; 
 solitude, the obscurity of a forest, si- 
 lence, and the darkness of night, the 
 roaring of the wind, sudden, confused 
 noises, are objects of terrour to all who 
 are unaccustomed to these things. The 
 uninformed man is a child whom every 
 thing astonishes ; but his alarms dis- 
 appear, or diminish, in proportion as 
 experience familiarizes him, more or 
 less, with natural effects ; his fears cease 
 entirely, as soon as he understands, or 
 believes he understands, the causes that 
 act, and when he knows how to avoid 
 their effects. But if he cannot penetrate 
 the causes which disturb him, or by 
 whom he suffers, if he cannot find to 
 what account to place the confusion he 
 experiences, his inquietude augments ; 
 his fears redouble ; his imagination leads 
 him astray; it exaggerates his evil; 
 paints in a disorderly manner these un- 
 known objects of his terrour ; then ma- 
 king an analogy between them and those 
 terrific objects with whom he is already 
 acquainted, he suggests to himself the 
 means he usually takes to mitigate 
 their anger ; he employs similar mea- 
 sures to soften the auger and to disarm 
 the power of the concealed cause which 
 gives birth to his inquietudes, and 
 alarms his fears. It is thus his weak- 
 
 ness, aided by ignorance, renders him 
 superstitious. 
 
 There are very few men, even in our 
 own day, who have sufficiently studied 
 nature, who are fully apprised of phys- 
 ical causes, or with the effects they 
 must necessarily produce. This igno- 
 rance, without doubt, was much greater 
 in the more remote ages of the world, 
 when the human mind, yet in its in- 
 fancy, had not collected that experi- 
 ence, and made those strides towards 
 improvement, which distinguishes the 
 present from the past. Savages dis- 
 persed, knew the course of nature ei- 
 ther very imperfectly or not at all ; soci- 
 ety alone perfects human knowledge : 
 it requires not only multiplieo\but com- 
 bined efforts to unravel the secrets of 
 nature. This granted, all natural causes 
 were mysteries to our wandering an- 
 cestors ; the entire of nature was an 
 enigma to them; all its phenomena 
 were marvellous, every event inspired 
 terrour to beings who were destitute 
 of experience; almost every thing they 
 saw must have appeared to them 
 strange, unusual, contrary to their idea 
 of the order of things. 
 
 It cannot then furnish matter for sur- 
 prise, if we behold men in the present 
 day trembling at the sight of those ob- 
 jects which have formerly filled their 
 fathers with dismay. Eclipses, comets, 
 meteors, were in ancient days, subjects 
 of alarm to all the people of the earth : 
 these effects so natural in the eyes of 
 the sound philosopher, who has by de- 
 grees fathomed their true causes, have 
 yet the right to alarm the most numer- 
 ous and the least instructed part of 
 modern nations. The people of the 
 present day, as well as their ignorant 
 ancestors, find something marvellous 
 and supernatural in all those objects 
 to which their eyes are unaccustomed, 
 or in all those unknown causes that 
 act with a force of which their mind 
 has no idea it is possible the known 
 agents are capable. The ignorant see 
 wonders, prodigies, miracles, in all 
 those striking effects of which they are 
 unable to render themselves a satisfac- 
 tory account; all the causes which 
 produce them they think supernatural; 
 this, however, really implies nothing 
 more than that they are not familiar to 
 them, or that they have not hitherto 
 witnessed natural agents whose energy
 
 166 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF MAN'S IDEAS 
 
 was equal to the production of effects 
 so astonishing as those with which 
 their sight has been appalled. 
 
 Besides the ordinary phenomena to 
 which nations Avere witnesses without 
 being competent to unravel the causes, 
 they have, in times very remote from 
 ours, experienced calamities, whether 
 general or local, which filled them with 
 the most cruel inquietude, and plunged 
 them into an abyss of consternation. 
 The traditions and apnals of all na- 
 tions, recall, even at this day, melan- 
 choly events, physical disasters, dread- 
 ful catastrophes, which had the effect 
 of spreading universal terrour among 
 our forefathers. But when history 
 should be silent on these stupendous 
 revolutions, would not our own reflec- 
 tion on what passes under our eyes be 
 sufficient to convince us, that all parts 
 of our globe have been, and following 
 the course of things, Avill necessarily 
 be again violently agitated, overturn- 
 ed, changed, overflowed, in a state of 
 conflagration? Vast continents have 
 been inundated : seas breaking their 
 limits have usurped the dominion of 
 the earth ; at length, retiring, these wa- 
 ters have left striking proofs of their 
 presence, by the marine vestiges of 
 shells, skeletons of sea-fish, &c. which 
 the attentive observer meets with at 
 every step in the bowels of those fer- 
 tile countries Ave no\v inhabit. Sub- 
 terraneous fires have opened to them- 
 selves the most frightful volcanoes, 
 Avhose craters frequently issue destruc- 
 tion on every side. In short, the ele- 
 ments unloosed, have, at various times^ 
 disputed among themselves the empire 
 of our globe ; this exhibits evidence of 
 the fact, by those vast heaps of Avreck, 
 those stupendous ruins spread over its 
 surface. What, then, must have been 
 the fears of mankind, who in those 
 countries believed he beheld the entire 
 of nature armed against his peace, and 
 menacing with destruction his very 
 abode ? What must have been the in- 
 quietude of a people taken thus unpro- 
 vided, Avho fancied they saw nature 
 cruelly labouring to their annihilation? 
 Who beheld a Avorld ready to be dash- 
 ed into atoms, the earth suddenly rent 
 asunder, \vhose ya\vning chasm was 
 the grave of large cities, Avhole pro- 
 vinces, entire nations? What ideas 
 must mortals, thus overwhelmed with 
 
 terrour, form to themselves of the irre- 
 sistible cause that could produce such 
 extended effects ? Without doubt they 
 did not attribute these Avide-spreading 
 calamities to nature ; they could not 
 suspect she \vas the author, the accom- 
 plice of the confusion she herself expe- 
 rienced ; they did not see that these 
 tremendous revolutions, these over- 
 pOAvering disorders, Avere the necessary 
 result of her immutable laAvs, and that 
 they contributed to the general order 
 by which she subsists.* 
 
 It Avas under these astounding cir- 
 cumstances, that nations, not seeing 
 on this mundane ball causes sufficiently 
 powerful to operate the gigantic phe- 
 nomena that filled their minds Avith 
 dismay, carried their streaming and 
 tremulous eyes tOAvards heaven, Avhere 
 they supposed these unknoAvn agents, 
 Avhose unprovoked enmity destroyed 
 their earthly felicity, could alone re- 
 side. 
 
 It was in the lap of ignorance, in the 
 season of alarm and calamity, that 
 mankind ever formed his first notions 
 of the Divinity. From hence it is 
 obvious that his ideas on this subject 
 are to be suspected as false, and that 
 they are ahvays afflicting. Indeed, up- 
 on whatever part of our sphere AVC cast 
 our eyes, whether it be upon the frozen 
 climates of the north, upon the parch- 
 ing regions of the south, or under the 
 more temperate zones, we every Avhere 
 behold the people Avhen assailed by 
 misfortunes, have either made to them- 
 selves national Gods, or else have 
 adopted those which have been given 
 them by their conquerors ; before these 
 beings, either of their own creation or 
 adoption, they have tremblingly prostra- 
 ted themselves in the hour of calamity. 
 The idea of these poAverful agents, Avas 
 always associated with that of terrour ; 
 their name was never pronounced Avith- 
 out recalling to man's mind either his 
 own particular calamities or those of 
 his fathers : man trembles at this day, 
 because his progenitors have trembled 
 
 * In point of fact, there is nothing more 
 surprising in the inundation of large portions 
 of the earth, in the swallowing up an entire 
 nation, in a volcanic conflagration, spreading 
 destruction over whole provinces, than there 
 is in a stone falling to the earth, or the death 
 of a fly : each equally has its spring in the 
 necessity of things.
 
 UPON THE DIVINITY. 
 
 167 
 
 thousands of years ago. The thought 
 of Gods always awakens in man the 
 most afflicting ideas: if he recurred to 
 the -source of his actual fears, to the 
 commencement of those melancholy 
 impressions that stamp themselves in 
 his mind when his name is pronounced, 
 he would find it in the deluges, in the 
 revolutions, in those extended disas- 
 ters, that have at various times destroy- 
 ed large portions of the human race, 
 and overwhelmed with dismay those 
 miserable beings who escaped the de- 
 struction of the earth; these, in trans- 
 mitting to posterity the tradition of 
 such afflicting events, have also trans- 
 mitted to him their fears, and those 
 gloomy ideas which their bewildered 
 imaginations, coupled with their bar- 
 barous ignorance of natural causes, 
 had formed to them of the anger of their 
 irritated Gods, to which their alarm 
 falsely attributed these disasters.* 
 
 If the Gods of nations had their birth 
 in the bosom of alarm, it was again in 
 that of despair that each individual 
 formed the unknown power that he 
 made exclusively for himself. Ignor- 
 ant of physical causes, unpractised in 
 their mode of action, unaccustomed to 
 their effects, whenever he experienced 
 any serious misfortune, or any grievous 
 sensation, he was at a loss how to ac- 
 count for it. The motion which in 
 despite of himself was exqited in his 
 machine, his diseases, his troubles, his 
 passions, his inquietude, the painful al- 
 terations his frame underwent without 
 his being able to fathom the true caus- 
 es, at length death, of which the as- 
 pect is so formidable to a being strongly 
 
 * An English author has very correctly re- 
 marked that the universal deluge has been 
 perhaps no less fatal to the moral than to the 
 physical world, the human brain retaining to 
 this day an impression of the shock it men 
 received. See Philemon and Hydaspis. p. 
 355. 
 
 It is not at all probable that the deluge men- 
 tioned in the sacred books of the Jews and 
 Christians, was universal ; but there is every 
 reason to believe that all parts of the earth 
 have at different times been inundated. This 
 is proved by the uniform tradition of every 
 nation in the world, and also by the remains 
 of marine bodies found in every country, im- 
 bedded to greater or less depths. Yet it might 
 be possible that a comet coming in contact 
 with our globe, should have produced such a 
 shock as to submerge at once whole conti- 
 nents J for this a miracle was not necessary ! 
 
 attached to existence, were effects he 
 looked upon as either supernatural, or 
 else he conceived they were repugnant 
 to his actual nature; he attributed 
 them to some mighty cause, which 
 maugre all his efforts, disposed of him 
 at each moment. His imagination, 
 thus rendered desperate by his endur- 
 ance of evils which he found inevi- 
 table, formed to him those phantoms 
 before whom he trembled from a con- 
 sciousness of his own weakness. It 
 was then he endeavoured by prostra- 
 tion, by sacrifices, by prayers, to disarm 
 the anger of these imaginary beings to 
 which his trepidation had given birth ; 
 whom he ignorantly imagined to be 
 the cause of his misery, whom his 
 fancy painted to him as endowed with 
 the power of alleviating his sufferings : 
 it was then, in the extremity of his 
 grief, in the exarcerbation of his mind, 
 weighed down with misfortune, that 
 unhappy man fashioned the phantom 
 God. 
 
 Man never judges of those objects 
 of which he is ignorant but through 
 the medium of those which come with- 
 in his knowledge : thus man, taking 
 himself for the model, ascribed will, 
 intelligence, design, projects, passions ; 
 in a word, qualities analogous to his own, 
 to all those unknown causes of which 
 he experienced the action. As soon 
 as a visible or supposed cause affects 
 him in an agreeable manner, or in a 
 mode favourable to his existence,- he 
 concludes it to be good, to be well in- 
 tentioned towards him: on the con- 
 trary, he judges all those to be bad in 
 their nature, and to have the intention 
 of injuring him, which cause him 
 many painful sensations. He attrib- 
 utes views, plans, a system of conduct 
 like his own, to every thing which to 
 his limited ideas appears of itself to 
 produce connected effects, to act with 
 regularity, to constantly operate in the 
 same manner, that uniformly produces 
 the same sensations in his own per- 
 son. According to these notions, 
 which he always borrows from himself, 
 from his own peculiar mode of action, 
 le either loves or fears those objects 
 which have affected him : he in conse- 
 quence approaches them with confi- 
 dence or timidity ; seeks after them or 
 lies from them in proportion as the 
 feelings they have excited are either
 
 163 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF MAN'S IDEAS 
 
 pleasant or painful. He presently ad- 
 dresses them ; he invokes their aid ; 
 prays to them for succour; conjures 
 them to cease his afflictions ; to for- 
 bear tormenting him ; as he finds him- 
 self sensible to presents, pleased with 
 submission, he tries to win them to his 
 interests by humiliation, by sacrifices ; 
 he exercises towards them the hospi- 
 tality he himself loves ; he gives them 
 an asylum ; he builds them a dwelling ; 
 he furnishes them with all those things 
 which he thinks will please them the 
 most, because he himself places the 
 highest value on them. These dispo- 
 sitions enable us to account for the for- 
 mation of tutelary Gods, which every 
 man makes to himself in savage and 
 unpolished nations. Thus we per- 
 ceive that weak mortals, regard as the 
 arbiters of their fate, as the dispensers 
 of good and evil, animals, stones, un- 
 formed inanimate substances, which 
 they transform into Gods, whom they 
 invest with intelligence, whom they 
 clothe with desires, and to whom they 
 give volition. 
 
 Another disposition which serves to 
 deceive the savage man, which will 
 equally deceive those whom reason 
 shall not enlighten on these subjects, 
 is the fortuitous concurrence of certain 
 effects, with causes which have not 
 produced them, or the co-existence of 
 these effects with certain causes which 
 have not the slighest connexion Avith 
 them. Thus the savage attributes 
 bounty or the will to render him ser- 
 vice, to any object whether animate or 
 inanimate, such as a stone of a certain 
 form, a rock, a mountain, a tree, a ser- 
 pent, an owl, &c., if every time he en- 
 counters these objects in a certain posi- 
 tion, it should so happen that he is 
 more than ordinarily successful in 
 hunting, that he should take an unu- 
 sual quantity of fish, that he should be 
 victorious in war, or that he should 
 compass any enterprise Avhatever, that 
 he may at that moment undertake. 
 The same savage will be quite as gra- 
 tuitous in attaching malice or wicked- 
 ness to either the same object in a dif- 
 ferent position, or any others in a given 
 posture, which may have met his eyes 
 on those days when he shall have suf- 
 fered some grievous accident : incapa- 
 ble of reasoning he connects these 
 effects with causes that are entirely 
 
 due to physical causes, to necessary 
 circumstances, over which neither him- 
 self nor his omens have the least con- 
 troul : nevertheless, he finds it much 
 easier to attribute them to these ima- 
 ginary causes, he therefore deifies 
 them, endows them with passions, 
 gives them design, intelligence, will, 
 and invests them with supernatural 
 powers. The savage in this is never 
 more than an infant that is angry with 
 the object that displeases him, just like 
 the dog who gnaws the stone by which 
 he has been wounded, without recur- 
 ring to the hand by which it was 
 thrown. 
 
 Such is the foundation of man's 
 faith in either happy or unhappy 
 omens : devoid of experience, he looks 
 upon them as warnings given him by 
 his ridiculous Gods, to whom he attri- 
 butes the faculties of sagacity and fore- 
 sight, of which he is himself deficient. 
 Ignorance, when involved in disaster, 
 when immersed in trouble, believes a 
 stone, a reptile, a bird, much better in- 
 structed than himself. The slender 
 observation of the ignorant only serves 
 to render him more superstitious ; he 
 sees certain birds announce by their 
 flight, by their cries, certain changes 
 in the weather, such as cold, heat, 
 rain, storms; he beholds at certain 
 periods vapours arise from the bottom 
 of some particular caverns ; there needs 
 nothing further to impress upon him 
 the belief, that these beings possess the 
 knowledge of future events and enjoy 
 the gifts of prophecy. 
 
 If by degrees experience and reflec- 
 tion arrive at undeceiving him with re- 
 spect to the power, the intelligence, 
 the virtues, actually residing in these 
 objects ; if he at least supposes them 
 put in activity by some secret, some 
 hidden cause, whose instruments they 
 are, to this concealed agent he ad- 
 dresses himself; pays him his vows ; 
 implores his assistance ; deprecates 
 his wrath ; seeks to propitiate him to 
 his interests ; is willing to soften his 
 anger; and for this purpose he employs 
 the same means of which he avails 
 himself either to appease or gain over 
 the beings of his own species. 
 
 Societies in their origin, seeing them- 
 selves frequently afflicted by nature, 
 supposed that either the elements, or 
 the concealed powers who regulated
 
 UPON THE DIVINITY. 
 
 169 
 
 them, possessed a will, views, wants, 
 desires, similar to their own. From 
 hence, the sacrifices imagined to nou- 
 rish them ; the libations poured out to 
 them ; the steams, the incense to grat- 
 ify their olfactery nerves. They be- 
 lieved these elements or their irritated 
 movers were to be appeased like irri- 
 tated man, by prayers ? by humiliation, 
 by presents. Their imagination was 
 ransacked to discover the presents that 
 would be most acceptable to these 
 mute beings who did not make known 
 their inclinations. Thus some brought 
 the fruits of the earth, others offered 
 sheaves of corn ; some strewed flow- 
 ers over their fanes ; some decorated 
 them Avith the most costly jewels ; 
 some served them with meats ; others 
 sacrificed lambs, heifers, bulls. As 
 they appeared to be almost always irri- 
 tated against man, they stained their 
 altars with human gore, and made ob- 
 lations of young children. At length, 
 such was their delirium, such the wild- 
 ness of their imaginations, that they 
 believed it impossible to appease with 
 oblations from the earth the supposed 
 agents of nature, who therefore requir- 
 ed the sacrifice of a God ! It was pre- 
 sumed that an infinite being could not 
 be reconciled to the human race but 
 by an infinite victim. 
 
 The old men as having the most ex- 
 perience, were usually charged with 
 the conduct of these peace-offerings.* 
 These accompanied them with cere- 
 monies, instituted rites, used precau- 
 tions, adopted formalities, retraced to 
 their fellow citizens the notions trans- 
 mitted to them by their forefathers; 
 collected the observations made by 
 their ancestors ; repeated the fables 
 they had received. It is thus the sa- 
 cerdotal order was established ; thus 
 that public worship was established; 
 
 * The Greek word n/>sr$i/s% from whence 
 is derived the name priest, signifies an old man. 
 Men have always felt respect for that which 
 bore the character of antiquity, as they have 
 always associated with it the idea of wisdom 
 and consummate experience. It is probably 
 in consequence of this prejudice that men, 
 when in doubt, generally prefer the authority 
 of antiquity and the decisions of their ances- 
 tors to those of good sense and reason. This 
 we see every day in matters appertaining to 
 religion, which is supposed to have been pure 
 and undented in its infancy, although this 
 idea is certainly without foundation. 
 No. VI. 22 
 
 by degrees each community formed a 
 body of tenets to be observed by the 
 citizens ; these were transmitted from 
 race to race.f Such were the unform- 
 ed, the precarious elements of which 
 rude nations every where availed them- 
 selves to compose their religions : they 
 were always a system of conduct in- 
 vented by imagination, conceived in 
 ignorance, to render the unknown pow- 
 ers, to whom they believed nature was 
 submitted, favourable to their views. 
 Thus some irascible, at the same time 
 placable being, was always chosen for 
 the basis of the adopted religion; it 
 was upon these puerile tenets, upon 
 these absurd notions, that the priests 
 founded their rights ; established their 
 authority : erected temples, raised al- 
 tars, loaded them with wealth, rested 
 their dogmas. In short, it was from 
 such rude foundations that arose the 
 structure of all religions ; under which 
 man trembled for thousands of years : 
 and although these religions were ori- 
 ginally invented by savages, they still 
 have the power of regulating the fate 
 of the most civilized nations. These 
 systems, so ruinous in their principles, 
 have been variously modified by the 
 human mind, of which it is the essence 
 to labour incessantly on unknown ob- 
 jects ; it always commences by attach- 
 ing to these a very first-rate impor- 
 tance, which it afterwards never dares 
 coolly to examine. 
 
 t At length it was deemed sacrilege even to 
 doubt these pandects in any one particular ; 
 he that ventured to reason upon them, was 
 looked upon as an enemy to the common- 
 wealth; as one whose impiety drew down 
 upon them the vengeance of these adored be- 
 ings, to which alone imagination had given 
 birth. Not contented with adopting rituals, 
 with following the ceremonies invented by 
 themselves, one community waged war 
 against another, to oblige it to receive their 
 particular creeds; which the knaves who 
 regulated them, declared would infallibly win 
 them the favour of their tutelary Deities: 
 thus very often to conciliate their favour, the 
 victorious party immolated on the altars of 
 their Gods, the bodies of their unhappy cap- 
 tives ; and frequently they carried their savage 
 barbarity the length of exterminating whole 
 nations, who happened to worship Gods 
 different from their own : thus it frequently 
 happened, that the friends of the serpent, when 
 victorious, covered his altars with the man- 
 gled carcasses of the worshippers of the stone 
 whom the fortune of war had placed in their 
 hands.
 
 170 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF MAN'S IDEAS 
 
 Such was the fate of man's imagi- 
 nation in the successive ideas which he 
 either formed to himself, or which he 
 received upon the divinity. The first 
 theology ot man was grounded on fear, 
 modelled by ignorance : either afflicted 
 or benefited by the elements, he adored 
 these elements themselves, and extend- 
 ed his reverence to every material, 
 coarse object; he afterwards rendered his 
 homage to the agents he supposed pre- 
 siding over these elements ; to powerful 
 genii ; to inferior genii ; to heroes, or to 
 men endowed with great qualities. By 
 dint of reflection, he believed he simplifi- 
 ed the thing in submitting the entire of 
 nature to a single agent to a sovereign 
 intelligence to a spirit to a univer- 
 sal soul, which put this nature and its 
 parts in motion. In recurring from 
 cause to cause, man finished by losing 
 sight of every thing, and in this obscu- 
 rity, in this dark abyss, he placed his 
 God, and formed new chimeras which 
 will afflict him until a knowledge of 
 natural causes undeceives him with re- 
 gard to those phantoms he had always 
 so stupidly adored. 
 
 If a faithful account was rendered 
 of man's ideas upon the Divinity, he 
 would be obliged to acknowledge, that 
 the word God has only been used to 
 express the concealed, remote, un- 
 known causes of the effects he witness- 
 ed ; he uses this term only when the 
 spring of natural and known causes 
 ceases to be visible: as soon as he 
 loses the thread of these causes, or as 
 soon as his mind can no longer follow 
 the chain, he solves the difficulty, ter- 
 minates his research, by ascribing it to 
 God ; thus giving a vague definition to 
 an unknown cause, at which either his 
 idleness, or his limited knoAvledge, 
 obliges him to stop. When, therefore, 
 he ascribes to God the production 
 of some phenomenon, of which his 
 ignorance precludes him from unravel- 
 ling the true cause, does he, in fact, do 
 any thing more than substitute for the 
 darkness of his own mind, a sound to 
 which he has been accustomed to lis- 
 ten with reverential awe 1 Ignorance 
 may be said to be the inheritance of 
 the generality of men ; these attribute 
 to the Divinity not only those uncom- 
 . mon effects that burst upon their senses 
 with an astounding force, but also the 
 most simple events, the causes of 
 
 vhich are the most easy to be knoWU 
 o whoever shall be willing to meditate 
 upon them.* In short, man has al- 
 ways respected those unknown causes, 
 hose surprising effects which his igno- 
 ance prevented him from fathoming. 
 
 It remains, then, to inquire, if man 
 :an reasonably flatter himself with ob- 
 aining a perfect knowledge of the 
 )ower of nature ;f of the properties of 
 
 * If there be a God, can it be possible we 
 are acting rationally, eternally to make him 
 the agent of our stupidity, of our sloth, of our 
 want of information on natural causes ? Do 
 we, in fact, pay any kind of adoration to this 
 seing, by thus bringing him forth on every 
 trifling occasion, to solve the difficulties igno- 
 rance throws in our way 1 Of whatever na- 
 ture the Cause of causes may be, it is evident 
 to the slightest reflection that it has been 
 sedulous to conceal itself from our view; 
 that it has rendered it impossible for us to 
 have the least acquaintance with it, except 
 through the medium of nature, which is un- 
 questionably competent to every thing : this 
 is the rich banquet spread before man ; he is 
 invited to partake, with a welcome he has no 
 right to dispute ; to enjoy therefore is to obey ; 
 to be happy himself is to make others happy ; 
 to make others happy is to be virtuous ; to be 
 virtuous he must revere truth : to know what 
 truth is, he must examine with caution, scruti- 
 nize with severity, every opinion he adopts ; 
 this granted, is it not insulting to a God to 
 clothe him with our wayward passions ; to 
 ascribe to him designs similar to our narrow 
 view of things ; to give him our filthy desires ; 
 to suppose he can be guided by our finite con- 
 ceptions ; to bring him on a level with frail 
 humanity, by investing him with our quali- 
 ties, however much we may exaggerate them ; 
 to indulge an opinion that he can either act or 
 think as we do ; to imagine he can in any 
 manner resemble such a feeble plaything, as 
 is the greatest, the most distinguished man 1 
 No ! it is to fall back into the depth of Cim- 
 merian darkness. Let man therefore sit down 
 cheerfully to the feast ; let him contentedly 
 partake of what he finds ; but let him not 
 worry his may-be- God with his useless pray- 
 ers : these supplications are, in fact, at once 
 to say, that with our limited experience, with 
 our slender knowledge, we better understand 
 what is suitable to our condition, what is con- 
 venient to our welfare, than the Cause of all 
 causes who has left us in the hands of na- 
 ture. 
 
 t How many discoveries in the great sci- 
 ence of natural philosophy has mankind pro- 
 gressively made, which the ignorant prejudi- 
 ces of our forefathers on their first announce- 
 ment considered as impious, as displeasing to 
 the Divinity, as heretical profanations, which 
 could only be expiated by the sacrifice of the 
 inquiring individuals, to whose labour theirpoe- 
 tenty owes such an infinity of gratitude. Even 
 in modern days we have seen a Socrates de-
 
 UPON THE DIVINITY. 
 
 171 
 
 the beings she contains ; of the effects 
 which may result from their various 
 combinations 1 Do we know why the 
 magnet attracts iron? Are we better 
 acquainted with the cause of polar at- 
 traction ? Are we in a condition to ex- 
 plain the phenomenaof light, electricity, 
 elasticity 1 Do we understand the me- 
 chanism by which that modification of 
 our brain, which we call volition, puts 
 our arm or our legs into motion 1 Can 
 we render to ourselves an account of 
 the manner in which our eyes behold 
 objects, in which our ears receive 
 sounds, in which our mind conceives 
 ideas ? If then we are incapable of 
 accounting for the most ordinary phe- 
 nomena, which nature daily exhibits to 
 us, by what chain of reasoning do we 
 refuse to her the power of producing 
 other effects equally incomprehensible 
 to us 1 Shall we be more instructed, 
 when every time we behold an effect 
 of which we are not in a capacity to de- 
 velop the cause, we may idly say, 
 this effect is produced by the power, by 
 the will of God ? that is to say, by 
 -an agent of which we have no know- 
 ledge whatever, and of which we are 
 more ignorant than of natural causes. 
 Does then, a sound, to which we can- 
 
 stroyed, a Galileo condemned, whilst multi- 
 tudes of other benefactors to mankind have 
 been held in contempt by their uninformed 
 contemporaries, for those very researches into 
 nature which the present generation hold in the 
 highest veneration. Whenever ignorant priests 
 are permitted to guide the opinions of na- 
 tions, science can make but a very slender pro- 
 gress: natural discoveries will he always held 
 inimical to the interest of bigoted religious men. 
 It may, to the minds of infatuated mortals, 
 to the shallow comprehension of prejudiced 
 beings, appear very pious to reply on every 
 occasion, our God do this, our God do that ; 
 but to the contemplative philosopher, to the 
 man of reason, it will never be convincing 
 that a sound, a mere word, can attach the 
 reason of things ; can have more than a fixed 
 sense; can suffice to explain problems. The 
 word God is used to denote the impenetrable 
 cause of those effects which astonish man- 
 kind; which man is not competent to ex- 
 plain. But is not this wilful idleness 1 Is it 
 not inconsistent with our nature thus to give 
 the answer of a child to every thing we do 
 not understand; or rather which our own 
 sloth, or our own want of industry has pre- 
 vented us from knowing? Ought we not 
 rather to redouble our efforts to penetrate the 
 cause of those phenomena which strike our 
 mind? When we have given this answer, 
 what have we said 1 Nothing but what every 
 one knows. 
 
 not attach any fixed sense, suffice to 
 explain problems ? Can the word God 
 signify any thing else but the impene- 
 trable cause of those effects which we 
 cannot explain 1 
 
 When we shall be ingenuous with 
 ourselves, we shall be obliged to agree 
 that it was uniformly the ignorance in 
 which our ancestors were involved, 
 their want of knowledge of natural 
 causes, their unenlightened ideas on 
 the powers of nature, which gave birth 
 to the Gods; that it is, again, the im- 
 possibility which the greater part of 
 mankind find to withdraw themselves 
 out of this ignorance, the difficulty they 
 consequently find to form to them- 
 selves simple ideas of the formation of 
 things, the labour that is required to 
 discover the true sources of those events 
 which they either admire or fear, that 
 make them believe the idea of a God 
 is necessary to enable them to render 
 an account of those phenomena, the true 
 cause of Avhich they cannot discover. 
 Here, without doubt, is the reason they 
 treat all those as irrational who do not 
 see the necessity of admitting an un- 
 known agent, or some secret energy, 
 which, for want of being acquainted 
 with nature, they have placed out of 
 herself. 
 
 The phenomena of nature necessa- 
 rily breed various sentiments in man : 
 some he thinks favourable to him, some 
 prejudicial ; some excite his love, his 
 admiration, his gratitude; others fill 
 him with trouble, cause aversion, drive 
 him to despair. According to the va- 
 rious sensations he experiences, he 
 either loves or fears the causes to which 
 he attributes the effects which produce 
 in him these different passions : these 
 sentiments are commensurate with the 
 effects he experiences; his admiration 
 is enhanced, his fears are augmented, 
 in the same ratio as the phenomena 
 which strike his senses are more or 
 less extensive, more or less irresistible 
 or interesting to him. Man necessa- 
 rily makes himself the centre of na- 
 ture; indeed he can only judge of 
 things, as he is himself affected by 
 them ; he can only love that which he 
 thinks favourable to his being; he 
 hates, he fears every thing which causes 
 him to suffer: in short, as we have 
 seen, he calls confusion every thing 
 that deranges the economy of his ma-
 
 172 
 
 THE ORIGIN OP MAN'S IDEAS 
 
 chine, and he believes all is in order, 
 as soon as he experiences nothing but 
 what is suitable to his peculiar mode 
 of existence. By a necessary conse- 
 quence of these ideas, man firmly be- 
 lieves that the entire of nature -was 
 made for him alone; that it was only 
 himself which she had in view in all 
 her works ; or rather that the powerful 
 causes to which this nature was subor- 
 dinate, had only for object man and 
 his convenience, in all the effects \vhich 
 are produced in the universe. 
 
 If there existed on this earth other 
 thinking "beings besides man, they 
 would fall exactly into similar preju- 
 dices with himself; it is a sentiment 
 founded upon that predilection which 
 each individual necessarily has for 
 himself; a predilection that will sub- 
 sist until reason, aided by experience, 
 shall have rectified his errours. 
 
 Thus, whenever man is contented, 
 whenever every thing is in order with 
 respect to himself, he either admires 
 or loves the cause to which he believes 
 he is indebted for his welfare ; when 
 he becomes discontented with his mode 
 of existence, he either fears or hates 
 the cause which he supposes has pro- 
 duced these afflicting effects. But his 
 welfare confounds itself with his exist- 
 ence ; it ceases to make itself felt when 
 it has become habitual and of long con- 
 tinuance ; he then thinks it is inherent 
 to his essence ; he concludes from it 
 that he is formed to be always happy ; 
 he finds it natural that every thing 
 should concur to the maintenance of 
 his being. It is by no means the same 
 when he experiences a mode of exist- 
 ence that is displeasing to himself: the 
 man who suffers is quite astonished at 
 the change which has taken place in 
 his machine ; he judges it to be contrary 
 to nature, because it is incommodious 
 to his own particular nature ; he ima- 
 gines those events by which he is 
 wounded, to be contrary to the order 
 of things ; he believes that nature is 
 deranged every time she does not pro- 
 cure for him that mode of feeling which 
 is suitable to his ideas; and he con- 
 cludes from these suppositions that 
 nature, or the agent who moves her, is 
 irritated against him. 
 
 It is thus that man, almost insensi- 
 ble to good, feels evil in a very lively 
 manner; the first he believes natural, 
 
 the other he thinks opposed to nature, 
 He is either ignorant, or forgets, that 
 he constitutes part of a whole, formed 
 by the assemblage of substances, of 
 which some are analogous, others hete- 
 rogeneous ; that the various beings of 
 which nature is composed, are endowed 
 with a variety of properties, by virtue 
 of which they act diversely on the 
 bodies who find themselves within the 
 sphere of their action; he does not 
 perceive that these beings, destitute of 
 goodness, devoid of malice, act only 
 according to their respective essences 
 and the laws their properties impose 
 upon them, without being in a capacity 
 to act otherwise than they do. It is, 
 therefore, for want of being acquainted 
 with these things, that he looks upon 
 the author of nature, as the cause of 
 those evils to which he is submitted, 
 that he judges him to be wicked or 
 exasperated against him. 
 
 T he fact is, man believes that his wel- 
 fare is a debt due to him from nature ; 
 that when he suffers evil she does him 
 an injustice ; fully persuaded that this 
 nature was made solely for himself, he 
 cannot conceive she would make him 
 suffer, if she was not moved thereto by 
 a power who is inimical to his happi- 
 ness who has reasons for afflicting 
 and punishing him. From hence it 
 will be obvious, that evil, much more 
 than good, is the true motive of those 
 researches which man has made con- 
 cerning the Divinity of those ideas 
 which he has formed of himself of the 
 conduct he has held towards him. The 
 admiration of the works of nature, or 
 the acknowledgment of its goodness, 
 would never alone have determined 
 the human species to recur painfully 
 by thought to the source of these 
 things; familiarized at once with all 
 those effects which are favourable to 
 his existence, he does not by any means 
 give himself the same trouble to seek 
 the causes, that he does to discover 
 those which disquiet him, or by which 
 he is afflicted. Thus, in reflecting up- 
 on the Divinity, it was always upon 
 the cause of his evils that man medi- 
 tated; his meditations were fruitless, 
 because the evils he experiences, as 
 well as the good he partakes, are equal- 
 ly necessary effects of natural causes, 
 to which his mind ought rather to have 
 bent its force, than to have invented
 
 UPON THE DIVINITY. 
 
 173 
 
 fictitious causes of which he never 
 could form to himself any but false 
 ideas, seeing that he always borrowed 
 them from his own peculiar manner of 
 existing, and feeling. Obstinately re- 
 fusing to see any thing but himself, he 
 never became acquainted with that uni- 
 versal nature of which he constitutes 
 such a very feeble part. 
 
 The slightest reflection, however, 
 would have been sufficient to unde- 
 ceive him on these erroneous ideas. 
 Every thing tends to prove that good 
 and evil are modes of existence that 
 depend upon causes by which a man 
 is moved, and that a sensible being is 
 obliged to experience them. In a na- 
 ture composed of a multitude of beings 
 infinitely varied, the shock occasioned 
 by the collision of discordant matter 
 must necessarily disturb the order, de- 
 range the mode of existence of those 
 beings who have analogy with them : 
 these act in every thing they do after 
 certain laws ; the good or evil, there- 
 fore, which man experiences, are ne- 
 cessary consequences of the qualities 
 inherent to the beings, within whose 
 sphere of action he is found. Our 
 birth, which we call a benefit, is an 
 effect as necessary as our death, which 
 we contemplate as an injustice of fate : 
 it is of the nature of all analogous beings 
 to unite themselves to form a whole : it 
 is of the nature of all compound beings 
 to be destroyed, or to dissolve them- 
 selves ; some maintain their union for 
 a longer period than others, and some 
 disperse very quickly. Every being in 
 dissolving itself gives birth to new 
 beings ; these are destroyed in their 
 turn, to execute eternally the immuta- 
 ble laws of a nature that only exists 
 by the continual changes that all its 
 parts, undergo. Thus nature cannot 
 be accused of either goodness or malice, 
 since every thing that takes place in it 
 is necessary is produced by an inva- 
 riable system, to which every other 
 being, as well as herself, is eternally 
 subjected. The same igneous mat- 
 ter that in man is the principle of life, 
 frequently becomes the principle of his 
 destruction, either by the conflagration 
 of a city, or the explosion of a volcano. 
 The aqueous fluid that circulates 
 through his machine, so essentially 
 necessary to his actual existence, fre- 
 quently becomes too abundant, and ter- 
 
 minates him by suffocation, is the cause 
 of those inundations which sometimes 
 swallow up both the earth and its in- 
 habitants. The air, without which he 
 is not able to respire, is the cause of 
 those hurricanes, of those tempests, 
 which frequently render useless the 
 labour of mortals. These elements are 
 obliged to burst their bonds, when they 
 are combined in a certain manner, and 
 their necessary consequences are those 
 ravages, those contagions, those fam- 
 ines, those diseases, those various 
 scourges, against which man, with 
 streaming eyes and violent emotions, 
 vainly implores the aid of those pow- 
 ers who are deaf to his cries : his pray- 
 ers are never granted but when the 
 same necessity which afflicted him, the 
 same immutable laws which over- 
 whelmed him with trouble, replaces 
 things in the order he finds suitable to 
 his species : a relative order of things 
 which was, is, and always will be, the 
 only standard of his judgment. 
 
 Man, however, made no such simple 
 reflections; he did not perceive that 
 every thing in nature acted by invari- 
 able laws ; he continued in contempla- 
 ting the good of which he was parta- 
 ker as a favour, and the evil he experi- 
 enced, as a sign of anger in this na- 
 ture, which he supposed to be anima- 
 ted by the same passions as himself; 
 or at least that it was governed by a 
 secret agent who obliged it to execute 
 their will, that was sometimes favour- 
 able, sometimes inimical to the human 
 species. It was to this supposed agent, 
 with whom in the sunshine of his pros- 
 perity he was but little occupied, that 
 in the bosom of his calamity he ad- 
 dressed his prayers ; he thanked him, 
 however, for his favours, fearing lest 
 his ingratitude might further provoke 
 his fury : thus when assailed by disas- 
 ter, when afflicted with disease, he in- 
 voked him with fervour : 'he required 
 him to change in his favour the mode 
 of acting which was the very essence 
 of beings ; he was willing that to make 
 the slightest evil that he experienced 
 cease, that the eternal chain of things 
 might be broken or arrested. 
 
 It was upon such ridiculous preten- 
 sions, that were founded those fervent 
 prayers, \vhich mortals, almost always 
 discontented with their fate, and never 
 in accord in their respective desires,
 
 174 
 
 OF MYTHOLOGY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 addressed to the Divinity. They were 
 unceasingly prostrate before the ima- 
 ginary power whom they judged had 
 the right of commanding nature ; 
 whom they supposed to have sufficient 
 energy to divert her course ; and whom 
 they considered to possess the means 
 to make her subservient to his particu- 
 lar views ; thus each hoped by pres- 
 ents, by humiliation, to. induce him to 
 oblige this nature to satisfy the dis- 
 cordant desires of their race. The 
 sick man, expiring in his bed, asks that 
 the humours accumulated in his body, 
 should in an instant lose those proper- 
 ties which render them injurious to his 
 existence ; that, by an act of his puis- 
 sance, his God should renew or recre- 
 ate the springs of a machine worn out 
 by infirmities. The cultivator of a low 
 swampy country, makes complaint of 
 the abundance of rain with which the 
 fields are inundated ; whilst the inhabit- 
 ant of the hill, raises his thanks for 
 the favours he receives, and solicits 
 a continuance of that which causes the 
 despair of his neighbour. In this, each 
 is willing to have a God for himself, 
 and asks according to his momentary 
 caprices, to his fluctuating wants, that 
 the invariable essence of things should 
 be continually changed in his favour. 
 
 From this it must be obvious, that 
 man every moment asks a miracle to 
 be wrought in his support. It is not, 
 therefore, at all surprising that he dis- 
 played such ready credulity, that he 
 adopted with such facility the relation 
 of the marvellous deeds which were 
 universally announced to him as the 
 acts of the power, or the effects of the 
 benevolence of the Divinity, and as the 
 most indubitable proof of his empire 
 over nature, in the expectation, that if 
 he could gain them over to his interest, 
 this nature, which he found so sullen, 
 so little disposed to lend herself to his 
 views, would then be controuled in his 
 own favour.* 
 
 * It was easy to perceive that nature was 
 deaf, or at least that it never interrupted its 
 march ; therefore men deemed it their interest 
 to submit the entire of nature to an intelligent 
 agent, whom, reasoning by analogy, they 
 supposed better disposed to listen to them 
 than an insensible nature which they were 
 not able to controul. Now it remains to be 
 shown, whether the selfish interest of man is 
 a proof sufficient of the existence of an agent 
 
 By a necessary consequence of these 
 ideas, nature was despoiled of all pow- 
 er ; she was contemplated only as a 
 passive instrument, who acted at the 
 will, under the influence of the numer- 
 ous, all-powerful agents to whom she 
 was subordinate. It was thus for want 
 of contemplating nature under her true 
 point of view, that man has mistaken 
 her entirely, that he believed her inca- 
 pable of producing any thing by her- 
 self; that he ascribed the honour of 
 all those productions, whether advan- 
 tageous or disadvantageous to the hu- 
 man species, to fictitious powers, whom 
 he always clothed with his own pecu- 
 liar dispositions, only he aggrandized 
 their force. In short it was upon the 
 ruins of nature, that man erected the 
 imaginary colossus of the Divinity. 
 
 If the ignorance of nature gave birth 
 to the Gods, the knowledge of nature 
 is calculated to destroy them. As soon 
 as man becomes enlightened, his pow- 
 ers augment, his resources increase in 
 a ratio with his knowledge ; the sci- 
 ences, the protecting arts, industrious 
 application, furnish him assistance; 
 experience encourages his progress, or 
 procures for him the means of resist- 
 ing the efforts of many causes, which 
 cease to alarm him as soon as he ob- 
 tains a correct knowledge of them. In 
 a word, his terrours dissipate in pro- 
 portion as his mind becomes enlight- 
 ened. Man, when instructed, ceases 
 to be superstitious. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Of Mythology, and Theology. 
 
 THE elements of nature were, as we 
 have shown, the first divinities of 
 man; he has generally commenced 
 with adoring material beings ; each in- 
 dividual, as we have already said, and 
 as may be still seen in savage nations, 
 made to himself a particular God of 
 some physical object, which he sup- 
 posed to be the cause of those events 
 in which he was himself interested; 
 he never wandered to seek out of visi- 
 ble nature the source either of what 
 happened to himself, or of those phe- 
 
 endqwed with intelligence whether, because 
 a thing may be very convenient, it follows 
 that it is so !
 
 OP MYTHOLOGY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 175 
 
 ftomena to wnich he was a witness. As 
 he every where saw only material ef- 
 fects, he attributed them to causes of 
 the same genus ; incapable in his in- 
 fancy of those profound reveries, of 
 those subtile speculations, which are 
 the result of leisure, he did not im- 
 agine any cause distinguished from 
 the objects that met his sight, nor of 
 any essence totally different from every 
 thing he beheld. 
 
 The observation of nature was the 
 first study of those who had leisure to 
 meditate : they could not avoid being 
 struck with the phenomena of the visi- 
 ble world. The rising and setting of 
 the sun, the periodical return' of the 
 seasons, the variations of the atmo- 
 sphere, the fertility and sterility of the 
 earth, the advantages of irrigation, the 
 damages caused by floods, the use- 
 ful effects of fire, the terrible conse- 
 quences of conflagration, were proper 
 and suitable objects to occupy their 
 thoughts. It was natural for them to 
 believe that those beings they saw 
 move of themselves, acted by their 
 own peculiar energies ; according as 
 their influence over the inhabitants of 
 the earth was either favourable or 
 otherwise, they concluded them to have 
 either the power to injure them, or the 
 disposition to confer benefits. Those 
 who first acquired the knowledge of 
 gaining the ascendency over man, then 
 savage, wandering, unpolished, or dis- 
 persed in woods, with but little attach- 
 ment to the soil, of whicn he had not 
 yet learned to reap the advantage, were 
 always more practised observers in- 
 dividuals more instructed in the ways 
 of nature, than the people, or rather 
 the scattered hordes, whom they found 
 ignorant and destitute of experience. 
 Their superior knowledge placed them 
 in a capacity to render them services 
 to discover to them useful inventions, 
 which attracted the confidence of the 
 unhappy beings to whom they came to 
 offer an assisting hand ; savages who 
 were naked, half famished, exposed to 
 the injuries of the weather, and to the 
 attacks of ferocious beasts, dispersed 
 in caverns, scattered in forests, occu- 
 pied with hunting, painfully labouring 
 to procure themselves a very precarious 
 subsistence, had not sufficient leisure 
 to make discoveries calculated to facili- 
 tate their labour, or to render it less in- 
 
 cessant. These discoveries are gene- 
 rally the fruit of society : isolated be- 
 ings, detached families, hardly ever 
 make any discoveries scarcely ever 
 think of making any. The savage is 
 a being who lives in a perpetual state 
 of infancy, who never reaches ma- 
 turity unless some one comes to draw 
 him out of his misery. At first repul- 
 sive, unsociable, intractable, he by de- 
 grees familiarizes himself with those 
 who render him service; once gained 
 by their kindness, he readily lends 
 them his confidence ; in the end he 
 goes the length of sacrificing to them 
 his liberty. 
 
 It was commonly from the bosom of 
 civilized nations that have issued those 
 personages who have carried sociability, 
 agriculture, arts, laws, Gods, religious 
 opinions, forms of worship, to those 
 families or hordes as yet scattered, who 
 were not formed into nations. These 
 softened their manners gathered them 
 together taught them to reap the ad- 
 vantages of their own powers to ren- 
 der each other reciprocal assistance 
 to satisfy their wants with greater fa- 
 cility. In thus rendering their exist- 
 ence more comfortable, they attracted 
 their love, obtained their veneration, 
 acquired the right of prescribing opin- 
 ions to them, made them adopt such as 
 they had either invented themselves, 
 or else drawn up in the civilized coun- 
 tries from whence they came. History 
 points out to us the most famous legis- 
 lators as men, who, enriched with use- 
 ful knowledge they had gleaned in the 
 bosom of polished nations, carried to 
 savages without industry and needing 
 assistance, those arts, of which, until 
 then, these rude people were ignorant : 
 such were the Bacchus's, the Orphe- 
 us's, the Triptolemus's, the Moses's, 
 the Numas, the Zamolixis's ; in short, 
 all those who first gave to nations their 
 Gods their worship the rudiments 
 of agriculture, of science, of theology, 
 of jurisprudence, of mysteries, &c. It 
 will perhaps be inquired, if those na- 
 tions which at the present day we see 
 assembled, were all originally dispers- 
 ed? We reply, that this dispersion 
 may have been produced at various 
 times, by those terrible revolutions, of 
 which it has before been remarked our 
 globe has more than once been the the- 
 atre, in times so remote that history
 
 176 
 
 OP MYTHOLOGY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 has not been able to transmit to us the 
 detail. Perhaps the approach of more 
 than one comet may have produced on 
 our earth several universal ravages, 
 which have at each time annihilated 
 the greater portion of the human spe- 
 cies. Those who were able to escape 
 from the ruin of the world, filled with 
 consternation, plunged in misery, were 
 but little conditioned to preserve to 
 their posterity a knowledge, effaced by 
 those misfortunes of which they had 
 been both the victims and the wit- 
 nesses: overwhelmed with Dismay, 
 trembling with fear, they were not able 
 to hand down the history of their 
 frightful adventures, except by obscure 
 traditions ; much less to transmit to us 
 the opinions, the systems, the arts, the 
 sciences, anterior to these revolutions 
 of our sphere. There have been per- 
 haps men upon the earth from all eter- 
 nity ; but at different periods they may 
 have been nearly annihilated, together 
 with their monuments, their sciences, 
 and their arts; those who outlived 
 these periodical revolutions, each time 
 formed a new race of men, who by dint 
 of time, labour, and experience, have 
 by degrees withdrawn from oblivion 
 the inventions of the primitive races. 
 It is, perhaps, to these periodical revo- 
 lutions of the human species, that is 
 to be ascribed the profound ignorance 
 in which we see man plunged upon 
 those objects that are the most interest- 
 ing to him. This is, perhaps, the true 
 source of the imperfection of his know- 
 ledge of the vices of his political and 
 religious institutions over which ter- 
 rour has always presided ; here, in all 
 probability, is the cause of that puerile 
 inexperience, of those jejune prejudices, 
 which every where keep man in a state 
 of infancy, and which render him so 
 little capable of either listening to rea- 
 son or of consulting truth. To judge 
 by the slowness of his progress, by the 
 feebleness of his advance, in a number 
 of respects, we should be inclined to 
 say, the human race has either just 
 quitted its cradle, or that he was never 
 destined to attain the age of virility or 
 of reason.* 
 
 * These hypotheses will unquestionably ap- 
 pear bold to those who have not sufficiently 
 medjtated on nature, but to the philosophic 
 inquirer they are by no means inconsistent. 
 There may have not only have been one gen- 
 
 However it may be with these con- 
 jectures, whether the human race may 
 always have existed upon the earth, or 
 whether it may have been a recent pro- 
 
 eral deluge, but even a great number since 
 the existence of our planet ; this globe itself 
 may have been a new production in nature ; 
 it may not always have occupied the place it 
 does at present. See Ch. VI. Whatever idea 
 may be adopted on this subject, it is very cer- 
 tain that, independent of those exterior causes 
 which are competent to totally change its 
 face, as the impulse of a comet may do, this 
 globe contains within itself a cause adequate 
 to alter it entirely, since, besides the diurnal 
 and sensible motion of the earth, it has one 
 extremely slow, almost imperceptible, by 
 which every thing must eventually be chang- 
 ed in it : this is the motion from whence 
 depends the precession of the equinoctial 
 points, observed by Hipparchus and other 
 mathematicians; by this motion, the earth 
 must at the end of several thousand years 
 change totally: this motion will at length 
 cause the ocean to occupy that space which 
 at present forms the lands or continents. 
 From this it will be obvious that our globe, 
 as well as all the beings in nature, has a con- 
 tinual disposition to change. This motion 
 was known to the ancients, and was what 
 gave rise to what they called their great year, 
 which the Egyptians fixed at thirty-six thou- 
 sand, five hundred and twenty-five years : the 
 Sabines at thirty-six thousand, four hundred 
 and twenty-five/whilst others have extended 
 it to one hundred thousand, some to even seven 
 hundred and fifty-three thousand years. 
 Again, to those general revolutions which our 
 planet has at different times experienced, may 
 be added those that have been partial, such 
 as inundations of the sea, earthquakes, sub- 
 terraneous conflagrations, which have some- 
 times had the effect of dispersing particular 
 nations, and to make them forget all those 
 sciences with which they were "before ac- 
 quainted. It is also probable that the first 
 volcanic fires, having had no previous vent, 
 were more central, and greater in quantity, 
 before they burst the crust of earth ; as the 
 sea washed the whole, it must have rapidly 
 sunk down into every opening, where, falling 
 on the boiling lava, it was instantly expanded 
 into steam, producing irresistible explosion; 
 whence it is reasonable to conclude, that the 
 primeval earthquakes were more widely ex- 
 tended, and of much greater force, than those 
 which occur in our days. Other vapours may 
 be produced by intense heat, possessing a 
 much greater elasticity, from substances that 
 evaporate, such as mercury, diamonds, &c. ; 
 the expansive force of these vapours would 
 be much greater than the steam of water, 
 even at rednot heat ; consequently they may 
 have had sufficient energy to raise islands, 
 continents, or even to nave detached the 
 moon from the earth ; if the moon, as has 
 been supposed by some philosophers, were 
 thrown out of the great cavity which now 
 contains the South Sea ; the immense quan-
 
 OF MYTHOLOGY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 177 
 
 duction of nature,* it is extremely easy 
 to recur to the origin of many existing 
 nations : we shall find them always in 
 the savage state ; that is to say, com- 
 posed of wandering hordes ; these were 
 collected together, at the voice of some 
 missionary or legislator, from whom 
 they received benefits, who gave them 
 Gods, opinions, and laws. These per- 
 sonages, of whom the people, newly 
 congregated, readily acknowledged the 
 superiority, fixed the national Gods, 
 leaving to each individual those which 
 he had formed to himself, according to 
 his own peculiar ideas, or else substi- 
 tuting others brought from those re- 
 gions from whence they themselves 
 had emigrated. 
 
 The better to imprint their lessons 
 on the minds of their new subjects, 
 these men became the guides, the 
 priests, the sovereigns, the masters, of 
 these infant societies ; they spoke to 
 
 tity of water flowing in from the original 
 ocean, and which then covered the earth, 
 would much contribute to leave the conti- 
 nents and islands, which might be raised at 
 the same time, above the surface of the water. 
 In later days we have accounts of huge 
 stones falling from the firmament, which may 
 have been thrown by explosion from some 
 distant earthquake, without having been im- 
 pelled with a force sufficient to cause them to 
 circulate round the earth, and thus produce 
 numerous small moons or satellites. 
 
 * It may be that the larger animals we now 
 behold were originally derived from the small- 
 est microscopic ones, who have increased in 
 bulk with the progression of time, or that, as 
 the Egyptian philosophers thought, mankind 
 were originally hermaphrodites, who, like the 
 aphis, produced the sexual distinction after 
 some generations. This was also the opinion 
 of Plato, and seems to have been that of 
 Moses, who was educated amongst the Egyp- 
 tians, as may be gathered from the 27th and 
 28th verses of the first chapter of Genesis : 
 " So God created man in his own image, in 
 the image of God created he him ; male and 
 female created he them. And God blessed 
 them, and God said unto them, be fruitful and 
 multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue 
 it : and have dominion over the fish of the 
 sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over eve- 
 ry living thing that moveth upon the earth :" 
 it is not therefore presuming too much to sup- 
 pose, as the Egyptians were a nation very 
 fond of explaining their opinions by hierogly- 
 phics, that that part which describes Eve as 
 taken out of Adam's rib, was an hieroglyphic 
 emblem, showing '.hat mankind were in the 
 primitive state of both sexes, united, who 
 were afterwards divided into males and 
 females. 
 
 No. VI. 23 
 
 the imagination of their auditors. 
 Poetry, by its images, its fictions, its 
 numbers, its rhyme, its harmony, con- 
 spired to please their fancy, and to 
 render permanent the impressions it 
 made: thus, the entire of nature, as 
 well as all its parts, was personified ; 
 at its voice, trees, stones, rocks, earth, 
 air, fire, water, took intelligence, held 
 conversation with man, and with them- 
 selves ; the elements were deified. 
 The sky, which, according to the then 
 philosophy, was an arched concave, 
 spreading over the earth, which was 
 supposed to be a level plain, was itself 
 made a God ; Time, under the name 
 of Saturn, was pictured as the son of 
 heaven ;f the igneous matter, the ethe- 
 real electric fluid, that invisible fire 
 which vivifies nature, that penetrates 
 all beings, that fetilizes the earth, 
 which is the great principle of motion, 
 the source of heat, was deified under 
 the name of Jupiter : his combination 
 with every being in nature was express- 
 ed by his metamorphoses by the fre- 
 quent adulteries imputed to him. He 
 was armed with thunder, to indicate 
 he produced meteors, to typify the elec- 
 tric fluid that is called lightning. He 
 married the winds, which wefe desig- 
 nated under the name of Juno, there- 
 fore called the Goddess of the Winds ; 
 their nuptials were celebrated with 
 
 t Saturn was represented as an inexorable 
 divinity naturally artful, who devoured his 
 own children who revenged the anger of his 
 mother upon his father, for which purpose 
 she armed him with a scythe, formed of met- 
 als drawn from her own bowels, with which 
 he struck Ccelus, in the act of uniting him- 
 self to Thea, and so mutilated him that he 
 was ever after incapacitated to increase the 
 number of his children : he was said to have 
 divided the throne with Janus, king of Italy, 
 whose reign seems to have been so mild, so 
 beneficent, that it was called the golden 
 ape; human victims were sacrificed on his 
 altars, until abolished by Hercules, who sub- 
 stituted small images of clay. Festivals in 
 honour of this God, called Saturnalia, were 
 instituted long antecedent to the foundation 
 of Rome : they were celebrated about the 
 middle of Dece.nber, either on the 16th, 17th, 
 or 18th ; they lasted in latter times several 
 days, originally but one. Universal liberty 
 prevailed at the celebration, slaves were per- 
 mitted to ridicule their masters to speak 
 freely on every subject no criminals were 
 executed war never declared; the priests 
 made their human offerings with their heads 
 i uncovered ; a circumstance peculiar to the 
 I Saturnalia, not adopted at other festivals.
 
 178 
 
 OF MYTHOLOGY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 great solemnity.* Thus, following the 
 same fictions, the sun, that beneficent 
 star which has such a marked influence 
 over the earth, became an Osiris, a 
 Belus, a Mithras, an Adonis, an Apollo. 
 Nature, rendered sorrowful by his peri- 
 odical absence, was an Isis, an Astarte, 
 a Venus, a Cybele.f 
 
 In short, every thing was personified : 
 the sea was under the empire of Nep- 
 tune 5 fire was adored by the Egyp- 
 tians under the name of Serapis ; by 
 the Persians, under that of Ormus or 
 Oromaze ; and by the Romans, under 
 that of Vesta and Vulcan. 
 
 Such was the origin of mythology : 
 it may be said to be the daughter of 
 natural philosophy, embellished by po- 
 etry, and only destined to describe na- 
 ture and its parts. If antiquity is con- 
 sulted, it will be perceived without 
 much trouble, that those famous sages, 
 those legislators, those priests, those 
 conquerors, who were the instructers 
 
 * All the Gods, the entire brute creation, 
 and the whole of mankind attended these 
 nuptials, except one young woman named 
 Chelone, who laughed at the ceremonies, for 
 which impiety she was changed by Mercury 
 into a tortoise, and condemned to perpetual 
 silence. He was the most powerful of all 
 the Gods, and considered as the king and 
 father both of Gods and men: his worship 
 was very extended, performed with greater 
 solemnity, than that of any other God. Upon 
 his altars smoked goats, sheep, and white 
 bulls, in which he is said to have particularly 
 delighted : the oak was rendered sacred to 
 him, because he taught mankind to live upon 
 acorns ; he had many oracles where his pre- 
 cepts were delivered : the most celebrated of 
 these were at Dodona and Ammon in Libya ; 
 He was supposed to be invisible to the in- 
 habitants of the earth ; the Lacedemonians 
 erected his statue with four heads, thereby 
 indicating that he listened readily to the so- 
 licitations of every quarter of the earth. 
 Minerva is represented as having no mother, 
 but to have come completely armed from his 
 brains, when his head was opened by Vul- 
 can ; by which it is meant to infer that wis- 
 dom is the result of this ethereal fluid. 
 
 t Astarte had a magnificent temple at Hie- 
 ropolis, served by three hundred priests, who 
 were always employed in offering sacrifices. 
 The priests of Cybele, called Corybantes, 
 also Galli, were not admitted to their sacred 
 functions without previous mutilation. In 
 the celebration of their festivals these priests 
 used all kinds of indecent expressions, beat 
 drums, cymbals, and behaved just like mad- 
 men : his worship extended all over Phrygia, 
 and was established in Greece under the 
 name of Eleusinian mysteries. 
 
 of infant nations, themselves adored 
 active nature, or the great whole con- 
 sidered relatively to its different opera- 
 tions or qualities ; that this was what 
 caused the ignorant savages whom 
 they had gathered together to adore.J 
 It was the great whole they deified ; it 
 was its various parts which they made 
 their inferior gods ; it was from the 
 necessity of her laws they made fate. 
 Allegory masked its mode of action : it 
 was at length parts of this great whole 
 that idolatry represented by statues 
 and symbols. 
 
 To complete the proofs of what has 
 been said ; to show distinctly that it 
 was the great whole, the universe, the 
 nature of things, which was the real 
 object of the worship of Pagan anti- 
 quity, we shall here give the hymn of 
 Orpheus addressed to the God Pan : 
 
 " O Pan ! I invoke thee, O powerful 
 God ! O universal nature ! the heavens, 
 the sea, the earth, who nourish all, and 
 the eternal fire, because these are thv 
 members, O all powerful Pan," &c. 
 Nothing can be more suitable to con- 
 firm these ideas, than the ingenious ex- 
 planation which is given of the fable of 
 Pan, as well as of the figure under 
 which he is represented. It is said. 
 
 t The Greeks called nature a divinity who 
 had a thousand names (MT^'OVO^*). All the 
 divinities of Paganism, were nothing more 
 than nature considered according to its differ- 
 ent functions, and under its different points 
 of view. The emblems with which they de- 
 corated these divinities again prove this truth. 
 These different modes of considering nature 
 have given birth to Polytheism and Idolatry. 
 See the critical remarks against Toland by 
 M. Benoist, page 258. 
 
 To convince ourselves of this truth, we 
 have only to open the ancient authors. "I 
 believe," says Varro, " that God is the soul 
 of the universe, which the Greeks have called 
 KO2MO2, and that the universe itself is 
 God." Cicero says, "cosqui dii appellantur 
 rerum natura esse." See de Natura Deorum, 
 lib. iii. cap. 24. The same Cicero says, that 
 in the mysteries of Samothracia, of Lemnos, 
 of Eleusis, it was nature much more than the 
 Gods they explained to the initiated. Rerum 
 magis natura cognoscitur quam deorum. Join 
 to these anthorities the Book of Wisdom, chap, 
 xiii. ver. 10, and xiv. 15 and 22. Pliny says, 
 in a very dogmatical style, " We must believe 
 that the world, or that which is contained 
 under the vast extent of the heavens, is the 
 DIVINITY itself, eternal, immense, without be- 
 ginning or end." Sec Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. 
 ii. cap. 1, init.
 
 OP MYTHOLOGY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 179 
 
 <( Pan, according to the signification of 
 his name, is the emblem by which the 
 ancients have designated the great as- 
 semblage of things : he represents the 
 universe ; and, in the mind of the 
 wisest philosophers of antiquity, he 
 passed for the greatest and most ancient 
 of the Gods. The features under which 
 he is delineated form the portrait of na- 
 ture, and of the savage state in which 
 she was found in the beginning. The 
 spotted skin of the leopard, which serves 
 him for a mantle, represented the hea- 
 vens filled with stars and constellations. 
 His person was compounded of parts, 
 some of which were suitable to a rea- 
 sonable animal, that is to say, to man ; 
 and others to the animal destitute of 
 reason, such as the goat. It is thus," 
 says he, "that the universe is com- 
 posed of an intelligence that governs 
 the whole, and of the prolific, fruitful el- 
 ements of fire, water, earth, air. Pan, 
 loved to drink and to follow the nymphs ; 
 this announces the occasion nature has 
 for humidity in all her productions, and 
 that this God, like nature, is strongly in- 
 clined to propagation. According to 
 the Egyptians, and the most ancient 
 Grecian philosophers, Pan had neither 
 father nor mother ; he came out of De- 
 mogorgon at the same moment with the 
 Destinies, his fatal sisters ; a fine 
 method of expressing that the universe 
 was the work of an unknown power, 
 and that it was formed after the inva- 
 riable relations, the eternal laws of ne- 
 cessity ; but his most significant sym- 
 bol, that most suitable to express the 
 harmony of the universe, is his myste- 
 rious pipe, composed of seven unequal 
 tubes, but calculated to produce the 
 nicest and most perfect concord. The 
 orbs which compose the seven planets 
 of our solar system, are of different di- 
 ameters ; being bodies of unequal mass, 
 they describe their revolutions round 
 the sun in various periods ; neverthe- 
 less it is from the order of their mo- 
 tion that results the harmony of the 
 spheres." &c.* 
 
 * Thispassage is taken from an English book 
 entitled, Letters concerning Mythology. We 
 an hardly doubt that the wisest among the 
 Pagans adored nature, which mythology, or 
 the Pagan theologv, designated under an in- 
 finity of names and different emblems. Apu- 
 teius, although he was a Platonist and accus- 
 tomed to the mysterious and unintelligible no- 
 
 Here then is the great macrocosm, 
 the mighty whole, the assemblage of 
 things, adored and deified by the phi- 
 losophers of antiquity, whilst the un- 
 informed stopped at the emblem under 
 which this nature was depicted, at the 
 symbols under which its various parts, 
 its numerous functions were personifi- 
 ed ; his narrow mind, his barbarous ig- 
 norance, never permitted him to mount 
 higher ; they alone were deemed wor- 
 thy of being initiated into the myste- 
 ries, who Jmew the realities masked 
 under these emblems. 
 
 Indeed, the first institutors of nations, 
 and their immediate successors in au- 
 thority, only spoke to the people by fa- 
 bles, allegories, enigmas, of which they 
 reserved to themselves the right of giv- 
 ing an explanation. This mysterious 
 tone they considered necessary, wheth- 
 er it were to mask their own ignorance, 
 or whether it were to preserve their pow- 
 er over the uninformed, who for the 
 most part only respect that which is 
 above their comprehension. Their ex- 
 plications were always dictated either 
 by interest, by a delirious imagination, 
 or by imposture ; thus from age to age, 
 they did no more than render nature 
 and its parts, which they had original- 
 ly depicted, more unknown, until they 
 completely lost sight of the primitive 
 ideas ; these were replaced by a mul- 
 titude of fictitious personages, under 
 whose features this nature had prima- 
 rily been represented to them. The 
 people adored these personages, with- 
 out penetrating into the true sense of 
 the emblematical fables recounted to 
 them. These ideal beings, with mate- 
 rial figures, in whom they believed 
 there resided a mysterious virtue, a di- 
 vine power, were the objects of their 
 worship, of their fears, of their hopes. 
 The wonderful, the incredible actions 
 
 tions of his master, calls nature " rerum natu- 
 ra parens, elementorum omnium Domina, 
 
 saeculorum progenies initialis Ma- 
 
 trem siderum, parentem temporum, orbisque 
 totius dominam." It is this nature that some 
 adored under the name of the mother of the 
 Gods, others under the names of Ceres, Ve- 
 nus, Minerva. &c. In short, the Pantheism 
 of the Pagans is clearly proved by these re- 
 markable words in the maxims of Medaura, 
 who in speaking of nature says, "ita fit ut ; 
 clum ejus quasi membra carptim, variis sup- 
 plicationibus prosequimur, totum colere pro- 
 fecto videamur."
 
 OF MYTHOLOGY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 ascribed to these fancied divinities, 
 were an inexhaustible fund of admira- 
 tion, which gave perpetual play to the 
 fancy ', which delighted not only the 
 people of those days, but even the chil- 
 dren of latter ages. Thus were trans- 
 mitted from age to age those marvellou 
 accounts, which, although necessary to 
 the existence of the ministers of the 
 Gods, did nothing more than confirm 
 the blindness of the ignorant : these 
 never supposed that it was nature, its 
 various operations, the passions of man 
 and his divers faculties, that lay buried 
 Under a heap of allegories ;* they had 
 no eyes but for these emblematical 
 persons, under which nature was mask- 
 ed : they attributed to their influence 
 the good, to their displeasure the evil, 
 which they experienced : they entered 
 into every kind of folly, into the most 
 delirious acts of madness, to render 
 them propitious to their views ; thus, 
 for want of being acquainted with the 
 reality of things,their worship frequently 
 degenerated into the most cruel extrav- 
 agance, into the most ridiculous folly. 
 Thus it is obvious, that every thing 
 proves nature and its various parts 
 to have every where been the first 
 divinities of man. Natural philoso- 
 phers studied them either superficially 
 or profoundly, explained some of their 
 properties ; detailed some of their 
 modes of action. Poets painted them 
 to the imagination of mortals, imbodied 
 them, and furnished them with reason- 
 ing faculties. The statuary executed 
 the ideas of the poets. The priests de- 
 corated these Gods with a thousand 
 marvellous qualities with the most 
 terrible passions with the most incon- 
 ceivable attributes. The people adored 
 them ; prostrated themselves before 
 these Gods, who were neither suscep- 
 tible of love or hatred, goodness, or mal- 
 
 * The passions and faculties of human na- 
 ture were used as emblems, because man was 
 ignorant of the true cause of the phenomena 
 he beheld. As strong passions seemed to hur- 
 ry man along, in despite of himself, they 
 either attributed these passions to a God, or 
 deified them; it was thus love became ad eity ; 
 that eloquence, poetry, industry, were trans- 
 formed into Gods under the names of Her- 
 mes, Mercury, Apollo; the stings of con- 
 science were called Furies. Christians have 
 also deified reason under the name of the eter- 
 nal word. 
 
 ice ; and they became persecuting, 
 .malevolent, cruel, unjust, in order to 
 render themselves acceptable to pow- 
 ers generally described to them under 
 the most odious features. 
 
 By dint of reasoning upon nature thus 
 decorated, or rather disfigured, subse- 
 quent speculators no longer recollect- 
 ed the source from whence their pre- 
 decessors had drawn their Gods, and 
 the fantastic ornaments with which 
 they had embellished them. Natural 
 philosophers and poets were transform- 
 ed by leisure into metaphysicians and 
 theologians ; tired with contemplating 
 what they could have understood, they 
 believed they had made an important 
 discovery by subtilly distinguishing na- 
 ture from herself from her own pecu- 
 liar energies from her faculty of ac- 
 tion. By degrees they made an in- 
 comprehensible being of this energy, 
 which as before they personified : this 
 they called the mover of nature, or 
 God. This abstract, metaphysical be- 
 ing, or rather, word, became the sub- 
 ject of their continual contemplation ;* 
 they looked upon it not only as a real 
 being, but also as the most important 
 of beings ; and by thus dreaming, na- 
 ture quite disappeared ; she was de- 
 spoiled of her rights ; she was consid- 
 ered as nothing more than an unwieldy 
 mass, destitute of power, devoid of en- 
 ergy, and as a heap of ignoble matter 
 purely passive, who, incapable of act- 
 ing by herself, was not competent to 
 any of the operations they beheld, 
 without the direct, the immediate agen- 
 cy of the moving power they had as- 
 sociated with her. Thus man ever 
 preferred an unknown power, to that of 
 which he was enabled to have some 
 knowledge if he had only deigned to 
 consult his experience ; but he present- 
 ly ceases to respect that which he un- 
 derstands, and to estimate those ob- 
 jects Avhich are familiar to him : he 
 figures to himself something marvellous 
 in every thing he does not comprehend ; 
 his mind, above all, labours to seize up- 
 on that which appears to escape his 
 consideration ; and, in default of expe- 
 rience, he no longer consults any thing 
 
 * The Greek word OEO2 comes from 
 ripi, pono or rather from 0EAOMAI, 
 
 specto, contemplor, to take a view of hidden 
 
 and secret things.
 
 OP MYTHOLOGY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 181 
 
 but his imagination, which feeds him 
 with chimeras. In consequence, those 
 Speculators who have subtilly distin- 
 guished nature from her own powers, 
 have successively laboured to clothe 
 the powers thus separated with a thou- 
 sand incomprehensible qualities : as 
 they did not see this being, which is on- 
 ly a mode, they made it a spirit an 
 intelligence an incorporeal being ; that 
 is to say, of a substance totally diffe- 
 rent from every thing of which we have 
 a knowledge. They never perceived 
 that all their inventions, that all the 
 words which they imagined, only serv- 
 ed to mask their real ignorance ; and 
 that all their pretended science was 
 limited to saying, in what manner na- 
 ture acted, by a thousand subterfuges 
 which they themselves found it impos- 
 sible to comprehend. Man always de- 
 ceives himself for want of studying na- 
 ture ; he leads himself astray, every 
 time he is disposed to go out of it ; he 
 is always quickly necessitated to return 
 or to substitute words which he does 
 not himself understand for things which 
 he would much better comprehend if 
 he was willing to look at them without 
 prejudice. 
 
 Can a theologian ingenuously be- 
 lieve himself more enlightened, for ha- 
 ving substituted the vague words, spi- 
 rit, incorporeal substance, Divinity, 
 &c. to the more intelligible terms na- 
 ture, matter, mobility, necessity ? How- 
 ever this may be, these obscure words 
 once imagined, it was necessary to at- 
 tach ideas to them ; in doing this, he 
 has not been able to draw them from any 
 other source than the beings of this de- 
 spised nature, which are ever the only 
 "beings of which he is enabled to have any 
 knowledge. Man, consequently, drew 
 them up in himself; his own mind serv- 
 ed for the model of the universal mind of 
 which indeed according to some it only 
 formed a portion ; his own mind was 
 the standard of the mind that regulated 
 nature ; his own passions, his own de- 
 sires, were the prototypes of those by 
 which he actuated this being ; his own 
 intelligence was that from which he 
 formed that of the supposed mover of 
 nature ; that which was suitable to him- 
 self, he called the order of nature ; this 
 pretended order was the scale by which 
 he measured the wisdom of this being ; 
 in short, those qualities which he calls 
 
 perfections in himself, were the arche- 
 types, in miniature, of the Divine per- 
 fections. It was thus, that in despite 
 of all their efforts, the theologians 
 were, and always will be true Anthro- 
 pomorphites. Indeed, it is very diffi- 
 cult, if not impossible to prevent man 
 from making himself the sole model of 
 his divinity.* Indeed, man sees in his 
 God nothing but a man. Let him 
 subtilize as he will, let him extend his 
 own powers as he may, let him swell his 
 own perfections to the utmost, he will 
 have done nothing more than make a 
 gigantic, exaggerated man, whom he 
 will render illusory by dint of heaping 
 together incompatible qualities. He 
 will never see in God, but a being of 
 the human species, in whom he will 
 strive to aggrandize the proportions, un- 
 til he has formed a being totally incon- 
 ceivable. It is according to these dis- 
 positions that he attributes intelligence, 
 wisdom, goodness, justice, science, 
 power, to the Divinity, because he is 
 himself intelligent; because he has the 
 idea of wisdom in some beings of his 
 own species ; because he loves to find 
 in them ideas favourable to himself: 
 because he esteems those who display 
 equity ; because he has a knowledge, 
 which he holds more extensive in some 
 individuals than himself; in short, be- 
 cause he enjoys certain faculties which 
 depend on his own organization. He 
 presently extends or exaggerates all 
 these qualities ; the sight of the phe- 
 nomena, of nature, which he feels he 
 is himself incapable of either produ- 
 cing or imitating, obliges him to make 
 this difference between his God and 
 himself; but he knows not at whai 
 point to stop ; he fears lest he should 
 deceive himself if he should see any 
 
 * Montaign says, "Man is not able to be 
 other than h^is, nor imagine but after his ca- 
 pacity ; let him take what pains he mav, he 
 will never have a knowledge of any soul but 
 his own." Xenophanes said, " If the ox or the 
 elephant understood either sculpture or paint- 
 ing, they would not fail to represent the Divin- 
 ity under their own peculiar figure ; that in 
 this, they would have as much reason as 
 Polyclitus or Phidias, who gave him the hu- 
 man form." It was said to a very celebrated 
 man that "God made man after his own im- 
 age ;" " Man has returned the compliment," 
 replied the philosopher ; and L'amotte le Vay- 
 er used to remark, that "theanth ropy was the 
 foundation of every system of Christianity. ,"
 
 182 
 
 OP MYTHOLOGY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 limits to the qualities he assigns ; the 
 word infinite, therefore, is the ab- 
 stract, the vague term which he uses 
 to characterize them. He says that 
 his power is infinite, which signifies 
 that when he beholds those stupen- 
 dous effects which nature produces, he 
 has no conception at what point his 
 power can rest ; that his goodness, his 
 wisdom, his knowledge are infinite : 
 this announces that he is ignorant how 
 far these perfections may be carried in 
 a being whose power so much surpass- 
 es his own. He says that his God is 
 eternal, that is, of infinite duration, be- 
 cause he is not capable of conceiving 
 he could have had a beginning or can 
 ever cease to be, and this he considers 
 a defect in those transitory beings of 
 whom he beholds the dissolution, whom 
 he sees are subjected to death. He 
 presumes the cause of those effects to 
 which he is a witness, is immutable, 
 permanent, not subjected to change 
 like all the evanescent beings whom he 
 knows are submitted to dissolution, to 
 destruction, to change of form. This 
 pretended mover of nature being always 
 invisible to man, his mode of action be- 
 ing impenetrable, he believes that, like 
 the concealed principle which animates 
 his own body, this God is the moving 
 power of the universe. Thus when by 
 dint of subtilizing, he has arrived at 
 believing the principle by which his 
 body is moved is a spiritual, immaterial 
 substance, he makes his God spiritual 
 or immaterial in like manner: he makes 
 it immense, although without extent; 
 immoveable, although capable of mov- 
 ing nature: immutable, although he 
 supposes him to be the author of all the 
 changes operated in the universe. 
 
 The idea of the unity of God, was a 
 consequence of the opinion that this 
 God was soul of the universe ; how- 
 ever it was only the tardy fruit of hu- 
 man meditation.* The sight of those 
 opposite, frequently contradictory ef- 
 fects, which man saw take place in the 
 
 * The idea of the unity of God cost Socra- 
 Tes his life. The Athenians treated as an 
 atheist a man who believed only in one God. 
 Plato did not dare to break entirely with the 
 doctrine of Polytheism ; he preserved Venus, 
 an all-powerful Jupiter, and a Pallas, who was 
 the Goddess of the country. The Christians 
 were looked upon as Atheists by Pagans, be- 
 cause they adored only one God. 
 
 world, had a tendency to persuade him 
 there must be a number of distinct, pow- 
 ers or causes independent of each 
 other. He was unable to conceive that 
 the various phenomena he beheld, 
 sprung from a single, from a unique 
 cause ; he therefore admitted many 
 causes or Gods, acting upon different 
 principles ; some of which he consid- 
 ered friendly, others as inimical to his 
 race. Such is the origin of that doc- 
 trine, so ancient, so universal, which 
 supposed two principles in nature, or 
 two powers of opposite interest, who 
 were perpetually at war with each 
 other ; by the assistance of this he ex- 
 plained that constant mixture of good 
 and evil, that blending of prosperity 
 with misfortune, in a word, those eter- 
 nal vicissitudes to which in this world 
 the human being is subjected. This is 
 the source of those combats which all 
 antiquity has supposed to exist between 
 good and wicked Gods, between an 
 Osiris and a Typbosus ; between an 
 Orosmadis and an Arimanis ; between 
 a Jupiter and the Titanes ; between a 
 Jehovah and a Satan. In these ren- 
 counters man for his own peculiar in- 
 terest always gave the palm of victory 
 to the beneficent Deity ; this, accor- 
 ding to all the traditions handed down, 
 ever remained in possession of the field 
 of battle ; it was evidently for the ben- 
 efit of mankind that the good God 
 should prevail over the wicked. 
 
 Even when man acknowledged only 
 one God, he always supposed the dif- 
 ferent departments of nature were con- 
 fided to powers subordinate to his su- 
 preme orders, under whom the sove- 
 reign of the Gods discharged his care 
 in the administration of the world. 
 These subaltern Gods were prodigious- 
 ly multiplied ; each man, each town, 
 each country, had their local, their tute- 
 lary Gods ; every event, whether fortu- 
 nate or unfortunate, had a divine cause, 
 and was the consequence of a sove- 
 reign decree ; each natural effect, every 
 operation of nature, each passion, de- 
 pended upon a Divinity, which theolo- 
 gical imagination, disposed to see Gods 
 every where, and always mistaking 
 nature, either embellished or disfigured. 
 Poetry tuned its harmonious lays on 
 these occasions, exaggerated the de- 
 tails, animated its pictures ; credulous 
 ignorance received the portraits with
 
 OF MYTHOLOGY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 163 
 
 eagerness, and heard the doctrines with 
 submission. 
 
 Such is the origin of Polytheism: 
 such are the foundations, such the titles 
 of the hierarchy, which man establish- 
 ed between himself and the Gods, be- 
 cause he felt he was incapable of im- 
 mediately addressing himself to the 
 incomprehensible being whom he had 
 acknowledged for the only sovereign 
 of nature, without even having any 
 distinct idea on the subject. Such is 
 the true genealogy of those inferior 
 Gods whom the uninformed place as a 
 proportional means between them- 
 selves and the first of all other causes. 
 In consequence, among the Greeks and 
 the Romans, we see the deities divided 
 into two classes : the one were called 
 great Gods,* who formed a kind of 
 aristocratic order distinguished from 
 the minor Gods, or from the multitude 
 of ethnic divinities. Nevertheless, the 
 first rank of these Pagan divinities, like 
 the latter, were submitted to Fate, that 
 is, to destiny, which obviously is no- 
 thing more than nature acting by im- 
 mutable, rigorous, and necessary laws ; 
 this destiny was looked upon as the 
 God of Gods; it is evident that this 
 was nothing more than necessity per- 
 sonified, and that therefore it was a 
 weakness in the heathens to fatigue 
 with their sacrifices, to solicit with 
 their prayers, those Divinities whom 
 they themselves believed were submit- 
 ted to the decrees of an inexorable des- 
 tiny, of which it was never possible 
 for them to alter the mandates. But 
 man ceases always to reason whenever 
 his theological notions are brought into 
 question. 
 
 What has been already said, serves 
 to show the common source of that 
 multitude of intermediate powers, sub- 
 ordinate to the Gods, but superior to 
 man, with which he filled the universe :f 
 
 * The Greeks called the great Gods QKI 
 Ki@ipoi Cabiri; the Romans called them 
 Dli majorum gentium or Dii consentes, be- 
 cause the whole world were in accord in dei- 
 fying the most striking and active parts of 
 nature, such as the sun, fire, the sea, time, 
 &c., whilst the other Gods were entirely local, 
 that is to say, were reverenced only in par- 
 ticular countries, or by individuals, as in 
 Rome, where every citizen had Gods for him- 
 self alone, whom he adored under the names 
 of Penates, Lares, &c. 
 
 t Among the Romans they were called Dii 
 
 they were venerated under the names 
 of nymphs, demi-gods, angels, demons, 
 good and evil genii, spirits, heroes, 
 saints, &c. These constitute different 
 classes of intermediate divinities, who 
 became either the foundation of their 
 hopes, the object of their fears, the 
 means of consolation, or the source of 
 dread to those very mortals who only 
 invented them when they found it im- 
 possible to form to themselves distinct, 
 perspicuous ideas of the incomprehen- 
 sible Being who governed the world in 
 chief, or when they despaired of being 
 able to hold communication with him 
 directly. 
 
 By dint of meditation and reflection 
 some, who gave the subject more con- 
 sideration than others, reduced the 
 whole to one all-powerful Divinity, 
 whose power and wisdom sufficed to 
 govern it. This God was looked upon 
 as a monarch jealous of nature. They 
 persuaded themselves that to give ri- 
 vals and associates to the monarch to 
 whom all homage was due would of- 
 fend him that he could not bear a 
 division of empire that infinite power 
 and unlimited wisdom had no occasion 
 for a division of power nor for any as- 
 sistance. Thus some would-be-thought- 
 profound-thinkers have admitted one 
 God, and in doinf so have flattered 
 themselves with having achieved a 
 most important discovery. And yet, 
 they must at once have been most sadly 
 perplexed by the contradictory actions 
 of this one God ; so much so that they 
 were obliged to heap on him the most 
 incompatible and extravagant qualities 
 to account for those contradictory ef- 
 fects which so palpably and clearly 
 gave the lie to some of the attributes 
 they assigned to him. In supposing a 
 God, the author of every thing, man is 
 obliged to attribute to him unlimited 
 goodness,wisdom, and power, agreeable 
 to the kindness, to the order he fancied 
 he saw in the universe, and according to 
 the wonderful effects he witnessed; 
 but, on the other hand, how could he 
 avoid attributing to this God malice, 
 improvidence, and caprice, seeing the 
 frequent disorders and numberless evils 
 
 vudtoximi intermediate Gods; they were 
 looked upon ae mediators, or intercessors ; as 
 powers whom it was necessary to reverence 
 in order either to obtain their favour, appease 
 their anger, or divert their malignant inten- 
 tions.
 
 184 
 
 OF MYTHOLOGY AN D THEOLOGY. 
 
 to which the human race is so often 
 liable ? How can man avoid taxing 
 him with improvidence, seeing that he 
 is continually employed in destroying 
 the work of his own hands ? How is 
 it possible not to suspect his impotence, 
 seeing the perpetual non-performance 
 of those projects of which he is sup- 
 posed to be the contriver'? 
 
 To solve these difficulties, man cre- 
 ated enemies to the Divinity, who al- 
 though subordinate to the supreme 
 God, were nevertheless competent to 
 disturb his empire, to frustrate his 
 views ; he had been made a king, and 
 adversaries, however impotent, were 
 found willing to dispute his diadem. 
 Such is the origin of the fable of the 
 Titanes, or of the rebellious angels, 
 whose presumption caused them to be 
 plunged into the abyss of misery who 
 were changed into demons, or into evil 
 genii: these had no other functions, 
 than to render abortive the projects of 
 the Almighty, and to -seduce, to raise 
 to rebellion, those who were his sub- 
 jects.* 
 
 In consequence of this ridiculous 
 fable the monarch of nature was rep- 
 resented as perpetually in a scuffle 
 with the enemies he had himself 
 created; notwithstanding his infinite 
 power, either he Would not or could 
 not totally subdue them ; he was in a 
 continual state of hostility, rewarding 
 those who obeyed his laws, and pun- 
 ishing those who had the misfortune 
 to enter into the conspiracies of the 
 enemies of his glory. As a conse- 
 quence of these ideas, borrowed from 
 the conduct of earthly monarchs who 
 are almost always in a state of war, 
 some men claimed to be the ministers 
 of God : they made him speak ; they 
 
 * The fable of the Titanes, or rebellious 
 angels, is extremely ancient and very gene- 
 rally diffused over the world ; it serves for the 
 foundation of the theology of the Brah- 
 mins of Hindostan, as well as for that of the 
 European priesthood. According to the Brah- 
 mins, all living bodies are animated by fallen 
 angels, who, under these forms, expiate their 
 rebellion. This fable, as well as that of 
 demons, makes the Divinity play a very ridicu- 
 lous part; in fact it supposes that God gives 
 existence to adversaries to keep himself em- 
 ployed, or in training, and to show his power. 
 Yet there is no display whatever of this pow- 
 er, since, according to theological notions, the 
 Devil has many more adherents than the 
 Divinity. 
 
 unveiled his concealed intentions, and 
 denounced the violation of his laws as 
 the most horrible crime : the ignorant 
 multitude received these without ex- 
 amination ; they did not perceive that 
 it was man and not a God who thus 
 spoke to them ; they did not reflect that 
 it was impossible for weak creatures 
 to act contrary to the will of a God 
 whom they supposed to be the creator 
 of all beings, and therefore who could 
 have no enemies in nature but those 
 he himself had created. It was pre- 
 tended that man, spite of his natural 
 dependance and the infinite power of 
 his God, was able to oflend him, was 
 capable of thwarting him, of declaring 
 war against him, of overthrowing his 
 designs, and of disturbing the order he 
 had established. This God, no "doubt, 
 to make a parade of his power, was 
 supposed to have created enemies 
 against himself, so that he might have 
 the pleasure of fighting them, although 
 he is not willing either to destroy them 
 or to change their bad dispositions. 
 In fine, it was believed that he had 
 granted to his rebellious enemies, as 
 well as to all mankind, the liberty of 
 violating his commands, of annihila- 
 ting his projects, of kindling his wrath, 
 and of arresting his goodness. Hence, 
 all the benefits of this life were con- 
 sidered as rewards, and its evils as 
 merited punishments. In fact, the sys- 
 tem of man's free will seems to have 
 been invented only to enable him to 
 sin against God, and to acquit this last 
 of the evil he brings upon man for 
 exercising the fatal liberty given him. 
 
 These ridiculous and contradictory 
 notions served nevertheless for the ba- 
 sis of all the superstitions of the world, 
 believing that they thereby accounted 
 for the origin of evil and the cause of 
 man's misery. And yet man could not 
 but see that he frequently suffered on 
 earth without having committed any 
 crime, without any known transgres- 
 sion to provoke the anger of his God ; 
 he perceived that even those who com- 
 plied in the most faithful manner with 
 his pretended orders were .often involv- 
 ed in the same ruin with the boldest 
 violator of his laws. In the habit of 
 bending to power, to tremble before his 
 terrestrial sovereign, to whom he al- 
 lowed the privilege of being iniquitous, 
 never disputing his titles, nor ever criti-
 
 OF MYTHOLOGY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 185 
 
 cising tne conduct of those who had 
 the power in their hands, man dar- 
 ed still less to examine into the con- 
 duct of his God, or to accuse him of 
 motiveless cruelty. Besides, the min- 
 isters, the celestial monarch invented 
 means of justifying him, and of ma- 
 king the cause of those evils, or of 
 those punishments which men experi- 
 ence fall upon themselves; in conse- 
 quence of the liberty which they pre- 
 tended was given to creatures, they 
 supposed that man had sin, that his 
 nature was perverted, that the whole 
 human race carried with it the pun- 
 ishment incurred by the faults of his 
 ancestors, which their implacable mon- 
 arch still avenged upon their innocent 
 posterity. Men found this vengeance 
 perfectly legitimate, because according 
 to the most disgraceful prejudices they 
 proportioned the punishments much 
 more to the power and dignity of the 
 offended, than to the magnitude or real- 
 ity of the offence. In consequence of 
 this principle they thought that a God 
 had an indubitable right to avenge, 
 without proportion and without end, 
 the outrages committed against his di- 
 vine majesty. In a word, the theolo- 
 gical mind tortured itself to find men 
 culpable, and to exculpate the Divinity 
 from the evils which nature made the 
 former necessarily experience. Man 
 invented a thousand fables to give a 
 reason for the mode in which evil en- 
 tered into this world ; and the ven- 
 geance of heaven always appeared to 
 have sufficient motives, because he be- 
 lieved that crimes committed against a 
 being infinitely great and powerful 
 ought to be infinitely punished. 
 
 Moreover, man saw that the earthly 
 powers, even when they committed the 
 most barefaced injustice, never suffer- 
 ed him to tax them with being unjust, 
 to entertain a doubt of their wisdom, 
 to murmur at their conduct. He was 
 not going then to accuse of injustice 
 the despot of the universe, to doubt his 
 rights, or to complain of his rigour : he 
 believed that God could commit every 
 thing against the feeble work of his j 
 hands, that he owed nothing to his ! 
 creatures, that he had a right to exer- ! 
 cise over them an absolute and unlim- 1 
 ited dominion. It is thus that the j 
 tyrants of the earth act ; and their ar- 1 
 bitrary conduct serves for the model of j 
 
 No. VI. 24 
 
 that which they accord to the Divinity : 
 it was upon their absurd and unreason- 
 able mode of governing, that they made 
 a peculiar jurisprudence for God. 
 Hence we see that the most wicked of 
 men have served as a model for God, and 
 that the most unjust governments were 
 made the model of his divine adminis- 
 tration. In despite of his cruelty and 
 his unreasonableness, man never ceases 
 to say, that he is most just and full of 
 wisdom. 
 
 Men, in all countries, have paid ado- 
 ration to fantastical, unjust, sanguin- 
 ary, implacable Gods, whose rights 
 they have never dared to examine. 
 These Gods were every where cruel, 
 dissolute, and partial ; they resembled 
 those unbridled tyrants who riot with 
 impunity in the misery of their sub- 
 jects, who are too weak, or too much 
 hoodwinked to resist them, or to with- 
 draw themselves from under that yoke 
 with which they are overwhelmed. It 
 is a God of this hideous character 
 which they make us adore, even at the 
 present day ; the God of the Chris- 
 tians, like those of the Greeks and 
 Romans, punishes us in this world, and 
 will punish us in another, for those 
 faults of which the nature he hai 11 
 given us has rendered us susceptibl j . 
 Like a monarch, inebriated with his a i- 
 thority, he makes a vain parade of his 
 power, and appears only to be occupied 
 with the puerile pleasure of showing 
 that he is master, and that he is not 
 subjected to any law. He punishes us 
 for being ignorant of his inconceivable 
 essence and his obscure will. He pun- 
 ishes us for the transgressions of our 
 fathers ; his despotic caprice decides 
 upon our eternal destiny ; it is accord- 
 ing to his fatal decrees, that we be- 
 come, in despite of ourselves, either 
 his friends or his enemies : he makes 
 us free only that he may have the bar- 
 barous pleasure of chastising us for 
 those necessary abuses which our pas- 
 sions or our errours cause us to make 
 of our liberty. In short, theology 
 shows us, in all ages, mortals punished 
 for inevitable and necessary faults, and 
 as the unfortunate playthings of a ty- 
 rannical and wicked God.* 
 
 * The Pagan theology never showed the 
 people in the persons of their Gods any thing 
 more than men who were dissolute, adulter- 
 ers, vindictive, and punishing with rigour thoes
 
 186 
 
 OF MYTHOLOGY AND THEOLOGY 1 . 
 
 It was upon these unreasonable no- 
 tions that the theologians throughout 
 the -whole earth, founded the worship 
 which man ought to render to the Di- 
 vinity, who, without being attached to 
 them, had the right of binding them to 
 himself: his supreme power dispensed 
 him from all duty towards his crea- 
 tures ; and they obstinately persisted 
 in looking upon themselves as culpable 
 every time they experienced calami- 
 ties. Do not let us then be at all as- 
 tonished if the religious man was -in 
 continual fears; the idea of God al- 
 ways recalled to him that of a pitiless 
 tyrant, who sported with the miseries 
 of his subjects and these, even without 
 knowing it, could, at each moment, 
 incur his displeasure ; yet they never 
 dared tax him with injustice, because 
 they believed that justice was not 
 made to regulate the actions of an all- 
 powerful monarch, whose elevated rank 
 placed him infinitely above the human 
 species, although they had imagined, 
 that he had formed the universe en- 
 tirely for man. 
 
 It is then for want df considering 
 good and evil as effects equally neces- 
 sary ; it is for want of attributing them 
 to their true cause, that men have crea- 
 ted to themselves fictitious causes, and 
 malicious divinities, respecting whom 
 nothing is able to undeceive them. 
 In considering nature they however 
 would have seen that physical evil is 
 a necessary consequence of the particu- 
 lar properties of some beings; they 
 would have acknowledged that plagues, 
 contagions, diseases, are due to phys- 
 
 necessary crimes which were predicted by the 
 oracles. The Judaical and Christian theology 
 shows us a partial God who chooses or re- 
 jects, who loves or hates, according to his ca- 
 price ; in short, a tyrant who plays with his 
 creatures; who punishes in mis world the 
 whole human species for the crimes of a sin- 
 
 le man ; who predestinates the greater num- 
 er of mortals to be his enemies, to the end 
 that he may punish them to all eternity, for 
 having received from him the liberty of de- 
 claring against him. All the religions of the 
 world have for basis the omnipotence of 
 God over men ; his despotism over men, and 
 his Divine injustice. From thence, among 
 the Christians, the doctrine of original sin ; 
 from thence, the theological notions upon 
 pardon, upon the necessity of a mediator ; in 
 short, hence that ocean of absurdities with 
 which Christian theology is filled. It ap- 
 pears, generally, that a reasonable God would 
 not be convenient to the interests of priests. 
 
 ical causes and particular circumstan- 
 ces to combinations which, although 
 extremely natural, are fatal to their 
 species ; and they would have sought 
 in nature herself the remedies suitable 
 to diminish or cause those under which 
 they suffer to cease. They would have 
 seen in like manner that moral evil was 
 only a necessary consequence of their 
 bad institutions ; that it was not to the 
 God of heaven, but to the injustice of 
 the princes of the earth to which those 
 wars, that poverty, those famines, those 
 reverses, those calamities, those vices, 
 and those crimes under which they 
 groan so frequently, were to be ascribed. 
 Thus to throw aside these evils they 
 should not have uselessly extended 
 their trembling hands towards phan- 
 toms incapable of relieving them, and 
 who were not the authors of their sor- 
 rows ; they should have sought in a 
 more rational administration, in more 
 equitable laws, in more reasonable in- 
 stitutions, the remedies for these mis- 
 fortunes which they falsely attributed 
 to the vengeance of a God, who is 
 painted to them under the character of 
 a tyrant, at the same time that they are 
 defended from entertaining a doubt of 
 his justice and his goodness. 
 
 Indeed priests never cease repeating 
 that their God is infinitely good ; that 
 he only wishes the good of his crea- 
 tures ; that he has made every thing 
 only for them: and in despite of these 
 assurances, so flattering, the idea of 
 his wickedness will necessarily be the 
 strongest ; it is much more likely to fix 
 the attention of mortals than that of 
 his goodness ; this gloomy idea is al- 
 ways the first that presents itself to the 
 human mind, whenever it is occupied 
 with the Divinity. The idea of evil 
 necessarily makes a much more lively 
 impression upon man than that of 
 good; in consequence, the beneficent 
 God Avill always be eclipsed by the 
 dreadful God. Thus, whether they 
 admit a plurality of Gods of opposite 
 interests, whether they acknowledge 
 only one monarch in the universe, the 
 sentiment of fear will necessarily pre- 
 vail over love ; they will only adore 
 the good God that they may prevent 
 him from exercising his caprice, his 
 phantasms, his malice ; it is always 
 inquietude and terrour that throws man 
 at his feetj it is his rigour and his
 
 OF MYTHOLOGY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 137 
 
 severity which they seek to disarm. In 
 short, although they every where as- 
 sure us that the Divinity is full of com- 
 passion, of clemency, and of goodness, 
 it is always a malicious genius, a ca- 
 pricious master, a formidable demon, to 
 whom every where they render servile 
 homage, and a worship dictated by fear. 
 
 These dispositions have nothing in 
 them that ought to surprise us ; we can 
 accord with sincerity our confidence 
 and our love only to those in whom we 
 find a permanent will to render us ser- 
 vice; as soon as we have reason to 
 suspect in them the will, the power, or 
 the right to injure us, their idea afflicts 
 us, we fear them, we mistrust them, 
 and we take precautions against them ; 
 we hate them from the bottom of our 
 hearts, even without daring to avow 
 our sentiments. If the Divinity must 
 be looked upon as the common source 
 of the good and evil which happens in 
 this world ; if he has the will some- 
 times to render men happy, and some- 
 times to plunge them in misery, or 
 punish them with rigour, men must ne- 
 cessarily dread his caprice or his sever- 
 ity, and be much more occupied with 
 these, which they see him resolved up- 
 on so frequently, than with his good- 
 ness. Thus the idea of their celestial 
 monarch must always make man un- 
 easy ; the severity of his judgments 
 must cause him to tremble much'often- 
 er than his goodness is able to console 
 or encourage him. 
 
 If we pay attention to this truth, we 
 shall feel why all the nations of the 
 earth have trembled before their Gods 
 and have rendered them the most fan- 
 tastical, irrational, mournful and cruel 
 
 worship ; they have served them as 
 they would despots but little in accord 
 with themselves, knowing no other 
 rule than their fantasies, sometimes 
 favourable, and more frequently preju- 
 dicial to their subjects; in short, like 
 inconstant masters, who are less ami- 
 able by their kindness, than dreadful 
 by their punishments, by their malice, 
 and by those rigours which they still 
 never dared to find unjust or excessive. 
 Here is the reason why we see the 
 adorers of a God, whom they unceas- 
 ingly show to mortals as the model 
 of goodness, of equity, and every per- 
 fection, deliver themselves up to the 
 most cruel extravagances against them- 
 selves, with a view of punishing them- 
 selves, and of preventing the celestial 
 vengeance, and at the same time com- 
 mit the most hideous crimes against 
 others, when they believe that by so 
 doing they can disarm the anger, ap- 
 pease the justice, and recall the clem- 
 ency of their God. All the religious 
 systems of men, their sacrifices, their 
 prayers, their customs and their cere- 
 monies have never had for object 
 any thing else than to avert the fury 
 of the Divinity, prevent his caprice, 
 and excite in him those sentiments of 
 goodness, from which they see him 
 deviate every instant. All the efforts, 
 all the subtilties of theology have 
 never had any other end than to recon- 
 cile in the sovereign of nature those 
 discordant ideas which it has itself 
 given birth to in the minds of mortals. 
 We might justly define this end the art 
 of composing chimeras, by combining 
 together qualities which it is impossi- 
 ble to reconcile with each other. 
 
 END OF VOLUME FIRST.
 
 THE 
 
 SYSTEM OF NATURE, 
 
 OR, 
 
 LAWS OF THE MORAL, AND PHYSICAL, WORLD: 
 
 BY 
 
 BARON D'HOLBACH, 
 
 AUTHOR OF GOOD SENSE. ETC. 
 
 A NEW AND IMPROVED EDITION, 
 
 WITH NOTES BY DIDEROT, 
 
 NOW TRANSLATED FOR THE FIRST TIME 
 
 H. D. ROBINSON. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 ENQUIRERS' FAMILY LIBRARY EDITION ) 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 PUBLISHED BY G. W. & A. J. MATSELL, 
 
 94 CHATHAM STREET. 
 
 1835.
 
 
 
 
 J V/ 
 

 
 OF MYTHOLOGY AND THEOLOGY. 
 
 THE SYSTEM OF NATURE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Of the confused and contradictory ideas of 
 Theology. 
 
 EVERY thing that has been said, 
 proves pretty clearly, that in despite of 
 all his efforts, man has never been able 
 to prevent himself from drawing toge- 
 ther from his own peculiar nature, the 
 qualities he has assigned to the being 
 who governs the universe. The con- 
 tradictions necessarily resulting from 
 the incompatible assemblage of these 
 human qualities, which cannot become 
 suitable to the same subject, seeing 
 that the existence of one destroys the 
 existence of the other, have been 
 shown : the theologians themselves 
 have felt the insurmountable difficul- 
 ties which their Divinities presented to 
 reason : they were so substantive, that 
 as they felt the impossibility of with- 
 drawing themselves out of the dilem- 
 ma, they endeavoured to prevent man 
 from reasoning, by throwing his mind 
 into confusion by continually aug- 
 menting the perplexity of those ideas, 
 already so discordant, which they offer- 
 ed him of their God. By this means 
 they enveloped him in mystery, covered 
 him with dense clouds, rendered him 
 inaccessible to mankind: thus they 
 themselves became the interpreters, the 
 masters of explaining, according either 
 to their fancy or their interest, the ways 
 of that enigmatical being they made 
 him adore. For this purpose they ex- 
 aggerated him more and more neither 
 time nor space, nor the entire of nature 
 could contain his immensity every 
 thing became an impenetrable mystery. 
 Although man has originally borrowed 
 from himself the traits, the colours, the 
 primitive lineaments of which he com- 
 posed his God ; although he has made 
 him a jealous powerful, vindictive 
 
 monarch, yet his theology, by force of 
 dreaming, entirely lost sight of human 
 nature ; and in order to render his Di- 
 vinities still more different from their 
 creatures, it assigned them, over and 
 above the usual qualities of man, pro- 
 perties so marvellous, so uncommon, 
 so far removed from every thing of 
 which his mind could form a concep- 
 tion, that he lost sight of them himself. 
 From thence he persuaded himself these 
 qualities were divine, because he could 
 no longer comprehend them ; he be- 
 lieved them worthy of God, because 
 no man could figure to himself any one 
 distinct idea of him. Thus theology 
 obtained the point of persuading man 
 he must believe that which he could 
 not conceive ; that he must receive with 
 submission improbable systems; that 
 he must adopt, with pious deference, 
 conjectures contrary to his reason ; 
 that this reason itself was the most 
 agreeable sacrifice he could make on 
 the altars of his fantastical master who 
 was unwilling he should use the gift 
 he had bestowed upon him. In short, 
 it had made mortals implicitly believe 
 that they were not formed to compre- 
 hend the thing of all others the most 
 important to themselves.* On the other 
 hand, man persuaded himself that the 
 gigantic, the truly incomprehensible at- 
 tributes which were assigned to his ce- 
 lestial monarch,placed between him and 
 his slaves a distance so immense, that 
 this proud master could not be by any 
 means offended with the comparison ; 
 that these distinctions rendered him 
 still greater; made him more powerful, 
 
 *Itis quite evident that every religion is 
 founded upon the absurd principle, that man 
 is obliged to accredit finally, that which he is 
 in the most complete impossibility of com- 
 prehending. According even to theological 
 notions, man, by his nature, must be in an 
 invincible ignorance relatively to God. 
 
 191 /
 
 192 
 
 CONFUSED AND CONTRADICTORY. 
 
 more marvellous, more inaccessible to 
 observation. Man always entertains 
 the idea, that what he is not in a con- 
 dition to conceive, is much more noble, 
 much more respectable, than that which 
 he has the capacity to comprehend : he 
 imagines that his God, like tyrants, 
 does not wish to be examined too 
 closely. 
 
 These prejudices in man for the mar- 
 vellous, appear to have been the source 
 that gave birth to those wonderful, un- 
 intelligible qualities with which theo- 
 logy clothed the sovereign of the world. 
 The invincible ignorance of the hu- 
 man mind, whose fears reduced him 
 to despair, engendered those obscure, 
 vague notions, with which he decorat- 
 ed his God. He believed he could never 
 displease him, provided he rendered 
 him incommensurable, impossible to be 
 compared with any thing of which he 
 had a knowledge ; either with that 
 which was most sublime, or that which 
 possessed the greatest magnitude. From 
 hence the multitude of negative attri- 
 butes with which ingenious dreamers 
 have successively embellished their 
 phantom God, to the end that they 
 might more surely form a being distin- 
 guished from all others, or which pos- 
 sessed nothing in common with that 
 which the human mind had the faculty 
 of being acquainted with. 
 
 The theological metaphysical attri- 
 butes, were in fact nothing but pure ne- 
 gations of the qualities found in man, 
 or in those beings of which he has a 
 knowledge ; by these attributes their 
 God was supposed exempted from eve- 
 ry thing which they considered weak- 
 ness or imperfection in him, or in the 
 beings by whom he is surrounded. To 
 say that God is infinite, as has been 
 shown, is only to affirm, that unlike 
 man, or the beings with whom he is 
 acquainted, he is not circumscribed by 
 the limits of space; this, however, is 
 what he can never in any manner com- 
 prehend, because he is himself finite.* 
 
 * Hobbes, in his Leviathan, says : "Whatso- 
 ever we imagine, is finite. Therefore there is 
 no idea, or conception of any thing we call 
 infinite. No man can have in his mind an 
 image of infinite magnitude, nor conceive in- 
 finite swiftness, infinite time, infinite force, or 
 infinite power. When we say any thing is 
 infinite, we signify only, that we are not able 
 to conceive the ends and bound of the thing 
 
 When it is said that God is eternal, it 
 signifies he has not had, like man or like 
 every thing that exists, a beginning, and 
 that he will never have an end : to say 
 he is immutable, is to say that unlike 
 himself or every thing which he sees, 
 God is not subject to change : to say he 
 is immaterial, is to advance, that their 
 substance or essence is of a nature not 
 conceivable by himself, but which must 
 from that very circumstance be totally 
 different from every thing of which he 
 has cognizance. 
 
 It is from the confused collection of 
 these negative qualities, that has re- 
 sulted the theological God ; the meta- 
 physical whole of which it is impos- 
 sible for man to form to himself any 
 correct idea. In this abstract being 
 every thing is infinity immensity 
 spirituality omniscience order 
 wisdom intelligence omnipotence. 
 In combining these vague terms, or 
 these modifications, the priests believ- 
 ed they formed something, they extend- 
 ed these qualities by thought, and they 
 imagined they made a God, whilst they 
 only composed a chimera. They im- 
 agined that these perfections or these 
 qualities must be suitable to this God, 
 because they were not suitable to any 
 thing of which they had a knowledge ; 
 they believed that an incomprehensible 
 being must have inconceivable quali- 
 ties. These were the materials of which 
 theology availed itself to compose the 
 inexplicable phantom before which they 
 commanded the human race to bend 
 the knee. 
 
 Nevertheless, a being so vague, so 
 impossible to be conceived, so incap- 
 able of definition, so far removed from 
 every thing of which man could have 
 any knowledge, was but little calcu- 
 lated to fix his restless views ; his 
 mind requires to be arrested by quali- 
 ties which he is capacitated to ascer- 
 tain of which he is in a condition to 
 form ajudgment. Thus after it had sub- 
 tilized this metaphysical God, after it 
 
 named, having no conception of the thing, 
 but of our own inability." Sherlock says : 
 "The word infinite is only a negation, which 
 signifies that which has neither end, nor limits, 
 nor extent, and, consequently, that which has 
 no positive and determinate nature, and is 
 therefore nothing ;" he adds, " that nothing 
 but custom has caused this word to be adopt- 
 ed, which without that, would appear deroid 
 of sense, and a contradiction."
 
 IDEAS OF THEOLOGY. 
 
 193 
 
 had rendered him so different in idea, 
 from every thing that acts upon the 
 senses, theology found itself under the 
 necessity of again assimilating him to 
 man, from whom it had so far removed 
 him : it therefore again made him hu- 
 man by the moral qualities which it 
 assigned him ; it felt that without this 
 it would not be able to persuade man- 
 kind there could possibly exist any re- 
 lation between him and the vague, 
 ethereal, fugitive, incommensurable be- 
 ing they are called upon to adore. 
 They perceived that this marvellous 
 God was only calculated to exercise 
 the imagination of some few thinkers, 
 whose minds were accustomed to la- 
 bour upon chimerical subjects, or to 
 take words for realities ; in short it 
 found, that for the greater number of the 
 material children of the earth it was 
 necessary to have a God more analo- 
 gous to themselves, more sensible, 
 more known to them. In consequence 
 the Divinity was reclothed with human 
 qualities ; theology never felt the in- 
 compatibility of these qualities with a 
 being it had made essentially different 
 from man, who consequently could 
 neither have his properties, nor be 
 modified like himself. It did not see 
 that a God who was immaterial, desti- 
 tute of corporeal organs, was neither 
 able to think nor to act as material be- 
 ings, whose peculiar organizations ren- 
 der them susceptible of the qualities, 
 the feelings, the will, the virtues, that 
 are found in them. The necessity it 
 felt to assimilate God to their worship- 
 pers, to make an affinity between them, 
 made it pass over without considera- 
 tion these palpable contradictions, and 
 thus theology obstinately continued to 
 unite those incompatible qualities, that 
 discrepance of character, which the 
 human mind attempted in vain either 
 to conceive or to reconcile: according 
 to it, a pure spirit was the mover of the 
 material world ; an immense being was 
 enabled to occupy space, without how- 
 ever excluding nature ; an immutable 
 deity was the cause of those continual 
 changes operated in the world : an om- 
 nipotent being did not prevent those 
 evils which were displeasing to him ; 
 
 There is not less discrepance, less 
 incompatibility, less discordance in the 
 human perfections, less contradiction 
 in the moral qualities attributed to them, 
 to the end that man might be enabled 
 to form to himself some idea of this 
 being. These were all said to be emi- 
 nently possessed by God, although they 
 every moment contradicted each other: 
 by this means they formed a kind of 
 patch-work character, a heterogenous 
 being, entirely inconceivable to man, 
 because nature had never constructed 
 any thing like him, whereby he was 
 enabled to form a judgment. Man 
 was assured that God was eminently 
 good that it was visible in all his 
 actions. Now goodness is a known 
 quality, recognisable in some beings of 
 the human species ; this is, above every 
 other, a property he is desirous to find 
 in all those upon whom he is in a state 
 of dependance; but he is unable to be- 
 stow the title of good on any among 
 his fellows, except their actions pro- 
 duce on him those effects which he ap- 
 proves that he finds in unison with 
 his existence in conformity with his 
 own peculiar modes of thinking. It 
 was evident, according to this reason- 
 ing, that God did not impress him with 
 this idea ; he was said to be equally 
 the author of his pleasures, as of his 
 pains, which were to be either secured 
 or averted by sacrifices or prayers : but 
 when man suffered by contagion, when 
 he was the victim of shipwreck, when 
 his country was desolated by war, 
 when he saw whole nations devoured 
 by rapacious earthquakes, when he was 
 a prey to the keenest sorrows, how 
 could he conceive the bounty of that 
 being? How could he perceive the 
 order he had introduced into the world, 
 while he groaned under such a mul- 
 titude of calamities? How was he 
 able to discern the beneficence of a 
 God whom he beheld sporting as it were 
 with his species ? How could he con- 
 ceive the consistency of that being who 
 destroyed that which he was assured 
 he had taken such pains to establish, 
 solely for his own peculiar happiness ? 
 What becomes of those final causes, 
 which, without any ground, they give as 
 
 VT U.0 >< 111. Vll * V tit UlJILJltGLOlllCl id Ail 111 j *' 11 IV 11. TV 11.11 \_Sll L (111 V ^J\JU11U. 11AVV H*~^ <**3 
 
 the source of order submitted to confu- I the most incontestable proof of the ex- 
 
 sion : in short, the wonderful properties 
 of this theological being every mo- 
 ment contradicted themselves. 
 No. VII. 25 
 
 istence of an omnipotent and wise God, 
 who,nevertheless,can preserve his work 
 only by destroying it, and who has not
 
 194 
 
 CONFUSED AND CONTRADICTORY 
 
 been able to give it all at once that de- 
 gree of perfection and consistency, of 
 which it was susceptible. God is said 
 to hare created the universe only for 
 man, and was willing that, under him, 
 he should be king of nature. Feeble 
 monarch ! of whom a grain of sand, 
 some atoms of bile, some misplaced 
 humours, destroy at once the existence 
 and the reign: yet thou pretendest that a 
 good God has made every thing for thee! 
 Thou desirest that the entire of nature 
 should be thy domain, and thou canst 
 not even defend thyself from the 
 slightest of her shocks ! Thou makest 
 to thyself a God for thyself alone ; 
 thou supposest that he watcheth for thy 
 preservation; thou supposest that he 
 unceasingly occupieth himself only for 
 thy peculiar happiness ; thou imagines! 
 every thing was made solely for thy 
 pleasure ; and, following up thy pre- 
 sumptuous ideas, thou hast the auda- 
 city to call him good ! seest thou not 
 that the kindness exhibited towards 
 thee, in common with other beings, is 
 contradicted ? Dost thou not see that 
 those beasts which thou supposest sub- 
 mitted to thine empire, frequently de- 
 vour thy fellow-creatures ; that fire con- 
 sumeththem; that the ocean swallow- 
 eth them up; that those elements of 
 which thou admirest the order, fre- 
 quently sweep them off the face of the 
 earth? Dost thou not see that this 
 power, which thou callest God, which 
 thou pretendest laboureth only for thee, 
 which thou supposest entirely occupied 
 with thy species, flattered by thy hom- 
 age, touched with thy prayers, cannot 
 be called good, since he acts necessa- 
 rily ? Indeed, according to thy own 
 ideas, dost thou not admit that thy God 
 is the universal cause of all, who must 
 think of maintaining the great whole, 
 from which thou hast so foolishly dis- 
 tinguished him. Is he not then accord- 
 ing to thyself, the God of nature of 
 the ocean of rivers of mountains 
 of the earth, in which thou occupiest 
 so very small a space of all those 
 other globes that thou seest roll in the 
 regions of space of those orbs that 
 revolve round the sun that enlighteneth 
 thee? Cease, then, obstinately to per- 
 sist in beholding nothing but thyself 
 in nature ; do not natter thyself that 
 the human race, which reneweth itself, 
 which disappeared like the leaves on 
 
 the trees, can absorb all the care, can 
 engross all the tenderness of the uni- 
 versal being, who, according to thyself, 
 ruleth the destiny of all things. 
 
 What is the human race compared 
 to the earth ? What is this earth com- 
 pared to the sun ? What is our sun 
 compared to those myriads of suns 
 which at immense distances occupy the 
 regions of space 1 not for the purpose 
 of diverting thy weak eyes ; not with 
 a view to excite thy stupid admiration, 
 as thou vainly imaginest ; since multi- 
 tudes of them are placed out of the 
 range of thy visual organs, but to oc- 
 cupy the place Avhich necessity hath 
 assigned them. Mortal, feeble and 
 vain ! restore thyself to thy proper 
 sphere ; acknowledge every where the 
 effect of necessity ; recognise in thy 
 benefits, behold in thy sorrows, the dif- 
 ferent modes of action of those various 
 beings endowed with such a variety 
 of properties of which nature is the 
 assemblage ; and do not any longer 
 suppose that its pretended mover can 
 possess such incompatible qualities as 
 would be the result of human views, 
 or of visionary ideas, which have no 
 existence but in thyself. 
 
 Notwithstanding experience, which 
 contradicts at each moment the benefi- 
 cent views which man supposes in 
 his God, theologians do not cease to 
 call him good : when he complains of 
 the disorders and calamities of which 
 he is so frequently the victim, they as- 
 sure him that these evils are only ap- 
 parent: they tell him, that if his limit- 
 ed mind were capable of fathoming the 
 depths of divine wisdom and the treas- 
 ures of his goodness, he would always 
 find the greatest benefits to result from 
 that which he calls evil. But in spite 
 of these frivolous answers, man will 
 never be able to find good but in those 
 objects which impel him in a manner 
 favourable to his actual mode of exist- 
 ence ; he shall always be obliged to 
 find confusion and evil in every thing 
 that painfully affects him, even curso- 
 rily : if God is the author of those two 
 modes of feeling, so very opposite to 
 each other, he must naturally conclude 
 that this being is sometimes good and 
 sometimes wicked ; at least, if he will 
 not allow either the one or the other, 
 it must be admitted that he acts neces- 
 sarily. A world where man esperi-
 
 IDEAS OF THEOLOGY. 
 
 195 
 
 ences so much evil cannot be submit- 
 ted to a God who is perfectly good ; 
 on the other hand, a world where he 
 experiences so many benefits, cannot 
 be governed by a wicked God. Thus 
 he is obliged to admit of two principles 
 equally powerful, who are in hostility 
 with each other; or rather, he must 
 agree that the same God is alternately 
 kind and unkind ; this after all is no- 
 thing more than avowing he cannot be 
 otherwise than he is ; in this case is it 
 not useless to sacrifice to him, to pray, 
 seeing it would be nothing but destiny 
 the necessity of things submitted to 
 invariable rules. 
 
 In order to justify this God from the 
 evils the human species experience, 
 the deist is reduced to the necessity 
 of calling them punishments inflicted 
 by a just God for the transgressions 
 of man. If so, man has the power to 
 make his God suffer. To offend pre- 
 supposes relations between the one 
 who offends and another who is offend- 
 ed ; but what relations can exist be- 
 tween the infinite being who has cre- 
 ated the world and feeble mortals? 
 To offend any one, is to diminish the 
 sum of his happiness ; it is to afflict 
 him, to deprive him of something, to 
 make him experience a painful sensa- 
 tion. How is it possible man can ope- 
 rate on the well-being of the omnipo- 
 tent sovereign of nature, whos t e happi- 
 ness is unalterable ? How can the 
 physical actions of a material sub- 
 stance have any influence over an im- 
 material substance, devoid of parts, 
 having no point of contact ? How can 
 a corporeal being make an incorporeal 
 being experience incommodious sensa- 
 tions ? On the other hand, justice, 
 according to the only ideas man can 
 ever form of it, supposes a permanent 
 disposition to render to each what is 
 due to him ; the theologian will not 
 admit that God owes any thing to man ; 
 he insists that the benefits he bestows 
 are all the gratuitous effects of his 
 own goodness ; that he has the right 
 to dispose of the work of his hands 
 according to his own pleasure ; to 
 plunge it if he please into the abyss 
 of misery. But it is easy to see, that 
 according to man's idea of justice, this 
 does not even contain the shadow of it ; 
 that it is, in fact, the mode of action 
 adopted by what he calls the most fright- 
 
 ful tyrants. How then can he be indu- 
 ced to call God just who acts after this 
 manner? Indeed, while he sees in- 
 nocence suffering, virtue in tears, crime 
 triumphant, vice recompensed, and at 
 the same time is told the being whom 
 theology has invented is the author, 
 he will never be able to acknowledge 
 them to have justice.* But, says the 
 deist, these evils are transient; they 
 will only last for a time: very well, 
 but then your God is unjust, at least 
 for a time. It is for their good that he 
 chastises his friends. But if he is good, 
 how can he consent to let them suffer 
 even for a time ? If he knows every 
 thing why reprove his favourites from 
 whom he has nothing to fear? If he 
 is really omnipotent, why not spare 
 them these transitory pains, and pro- 
 cure them at once a durable and per- 
 manent felicity ? If his power cannot 
 be shaken, why make himself uneasy 
 at the vain conspiracies they would 
 form against him ? 
 
 Where is the man filled with kind- 
 ness, endowed with humanity, who 
 does not desire Avith all his heart to 
 render his fellow-creatures happy ? If 
 God really had man's qualities aug- 
 mented, would he not by the sam^ rea- 
 soning, exercise his infinite pov u > 'o 
 render them all happy ? Nevertheless 
 we scarcely find any one who is perfect- 
 ly satisfied with his condition on earth : 
 for one mortal that enjoys, we behold 
 a thousand who suffer ; for one rich 
 man who lives in the midst of abun- 
 dance, there are thousands of poor who 
 want common necessaries : whole na- 
 tions groan in indigence, to satisfy the 
 passions of some avaricious princes, 
 of some few nobles, who are not there- 
 by rendered more contented who do 
 not acknowledge themselves more for- 
 tunate on that account. In short, un- 
 
 * Dies deficid si relim numerare quibus 
 bonis male erenerit ; nee "minus si commcmo- 
 rem 'quibus malis optime. 
 
 Cicer. de Nat. Deor. lib. iii. 
 
 If a virtuous king possessed the ring of 
 Gy^es, that is to say, had the faculty of ren- 
 dering himself invisible, would he not make 
 use of it to remedy abuses to reward the 
 good, to prevent the conspiracies of the wick- 
 ed, to make order and happiness reign through- 
 out his states ? God is an invisible and all- 
 powerful monarch, nevertheless his states are 
 the theatre of crime, of confusion : he reme- 
 dies nothing.
 
 196 
 
 CONFUSED AND CONTRADICTORY 
 
 der the dominion of an omnipotent 
 God, whose goodness is infinite, the 
 earth is drenched with the tears of the 
 miserable. What must be the infer- 
 ence from all this ? That God is either 
 negligent of, or incompetent to, his 
 happiness. But the deist will tell you 
 coolly, that the judgments of his God 
 are impenetrable ! How do we under- 
 stand this term? Not to be taught 
 not to be informed impervious not 
 to be pierced : in this case it would be 
 an unreasonable question to inquire by 
 what authority do you reason upon 
 them ? How do you become acquaint- 
 ed with these impenetrable mysteries 1 
 Upon what foundation do you attribute 
 virtues which you cannot penetrate? 
 What idea do you form to yourself of 
 a justice that never resembles that of 
 man? 
 
 To withdraw themselves from this, 
 deists will affirm that the justice of 
 their God is tempered with mercy, with 
 compassion, with goodness : these again 
 are human qualities : what, therefore, 
 shall we understand by them ? What 
 idea do we attach to mercy ? Is it not 
 a derogation from the severe rules of 
 an exact, a rigorous justice, which 
 causes a remission of some part of a 
 merited punishment? In a prince, 
 clemency is either a violation of jus- 
 tice, or the exemption from a too severe 
 law: but the laws of a God infinitely 
 good, equitable, and wise, can they 
 ever be too severe, and, if immutable, 
 can he alter them? Nevertheless, man 
 approves of clemency in a sovereign, 
 when its too great facility does not be- 
 come prejudicial to society ; he esteems 
 it, because it announces humanity, 
 mildness, a compassionate, noble soul; 
 qualities he prefers in his governors to 
 rigour, cruelty, inflexibility: besides, 
 human laws are defective ; they are 
 frequently too severe ; they are not 
 competent to foresee all the circum- 
 stances of every case: the punishments 
 they decree are not always commen- 
 surate with the offence: he therefore 
 does not always think them just ; but 
 he feels very well, he understands dis- 
 tinctly, that when the sovereign ex- 
 tends his mercy, he relaxes from his 
 justice that if mercy be merited, the 
 punishment ought not to take place 
 that then its exercise is no longer 
 clemency, but justice : thus he feels, 
 
 that in his fellow-creatures these two 
 qualities cannot exist at the same mo- 
 ment. How then is he to form his 
 judgment of a being who is represent- 
 ed to possess both in the extrernest 
 degree ? 
 
 They then say, well, but in the next 
 world this God will reward you for all 
 the evils you suffer in this : this, in- 
 deed, is something to look to, if it had 
 not been invented to shelter divine 
 justice, and to exculpate him from 
 those evils which he so frequently 
 causes his greatest favourites to expe- 
 rience in this world : it is there, deists 
 tell us, that the celestial monarch will 
 procure for his elect that unalterable 
 happiness, which he has refused them 
 on earth ; it is there he will indemnify 
 those whom he loves for that transitory 
 injustice, those afflicting trials, which 
 he makes them suffer here below. In 
 the meantime, is this invention calcu- 
 lated to give us those clear ideas suit- 
 able to justify providence? If God 
 owes nothing to his creatures, upon 
 what ground can they expect, in a fu- 
 ture life, a happiness more real, more 
 constant, than that which they at pre- 
 sent enjoy ? It will be founded, say 
 theologians, upon his promises contain- 
 ed in his revealed oracles. But are 
 they quite certain that these oracles 
 have emanated from him? On the 
 other hand, the system of another life 
 does not justify this God for the most 
 fleeting and transitory injustice; for 
 does not injustice, even when it is 
 transient, destroy that immutability 
 which they attribute to the Divinity ? 
 In short, is not that omnipotent being 
 whom they have made the author of 
 all things, himself the first cause or 
 accomplice of the offences which they 
 commit against him ? Is he not the 
 true author of evil, or of the sin which 
 he permits, whilst he is able to prevent 
 it ; and in this case can he, consistently 
 with justice, punish those whom he 
 himself renders culpable ? 
 
 We have already seen the multitude 
 of contradictions, the extravagant hy- 
 potheses, which the attributes theology 
 gives to its God, must necessarily pro 
 duce. A being clothed at one time 
 with so many discordant qualities, will 
 always be undefinable ; they only pre- 
 sent a train .of ideas which will de- 
 stroy each other, and he will in conse-
 
 IDEAS OF THEOLOGY. 
 
 197 
 
 quence remain a being of the imagina- 
 tion. This God has, say they, created 
 the heavens, the earth, and the crea- 
 tures who inhabit it, to manifest his own 
 peculiar glory : but a monarch who is 
 superior to all beings, who has neither 
 rivals nor equals in nature, who cannot 
 be compared to any of his creatures, 
 is he susceptible of the desire of glory ? 
 Can he fear to be debased and degrad- 
 ed in the eyes of his fellow-creatures ? 
 Has he occasion for the esteem, the 
 homage, or the admiration of men? 
 The love of glory is in us only the de-- 
 sire of giving our fellow-creatures a 
 high opinion of ourselves ; this passion 
 is laudable, when it stimulates us to 
 perform great and useful actions ; but 
 more frequently it is only a weakness 
 attached to our nature, it is only a de- 
 sire in us to be distinguished from 
 those beings with whom we compare 
 ourselves. The God of whom they 
 speak to us, ought to be exempt from 
 this passion ; according to theology he 
 has no fellow-creatures, he has no com- 
 petitors, he cannot be offended with 
 those ideas which we form, of him. 
 His power cannot suffer any diminu- 
 tion, nothing is able to disturb his eter- 
 nal felicity ; must we not conclude 
 from this that he cannot be either sus- 
 ceptible of desiring glory, or sensible 
 to the praises and esteem of men 1 If 
 this God is jealous of his prerogatives, 
 of his titles, of his rank, and of his 
 glory, wherefore does he suffer that so 
 many men should offend him? Why 
 does he permit so many others to have 
 such unfavourable opinions of him? 
 Why allows he others to have the 
 temerity to refuse him that incense 
 which is so flattering to his pride ? 
 How comes he to permit that a mortal 
 like me, should dare attack his rights, 
 his titles, and even his existence? It 
 is in order to punish thee, you will say, 
 for having made a bad use of his fa- 
 vours. But why does he permit me to 
 abuse his kindness ? Or why are not 
 the favours which he confers on me 
 sufficient to make me act agreeably to 
 his views ? It is because he has made 
 thee free. Why has he given me lib- 
 erty, of which he must have foreseen 
 that I should be inclined to make an 
 improper use? Is it then a present 
 worthy cf his goodness, to give me a 
 faculty that enables me to brave his 
 
 omnipotence, to detach from him his 
 adorers, and thus render myself eter- 
 nally miserable ? Would it not have 
 been much more advantageous for 
 me never to have been born, or at 
 least to have been placed in the rank 
 of brutes or stones, than to have been 
 in despite of myself placed amongst 
 intelligent beings, there to exercise the 
 fatal power of losing myself without 
 redemption, by offending or mistaking 
 the arbiter of my fate ? Had not God 
 much better have shown his omnipo- 
 tent goodness, and would he not have 
 laboured much more efficaciously to 
 his true glory, if he had obliged me to 
 render him homage, and thereby to 
 have merited an ineffable happiness? 
 
 The system, of the liberty of man, 
 which We have already destroyed, was 
 visibly imagined to wipe from the au- 
 thor of nature the reproach which they 
 must offer him in being the author, the 
 source, the first cause of the crimes of 
 his creatures. In consequence of this 
 fatal present given by a beneficent God, 
 men, according to the sinister ideas of 
 theology, will for the most part be 
 eternally punished for their faults in 
 this world. Farfetched and endless 
 torments are by the justice of a mer- 
 ciful and compassionate God, reserved 
 for fragile beings, for transitory offen- 
 ces, for false reasonings, for involun- 
 tary errours, for necessary passions, 
 which depend on the temperament 
 this God has given them ; circumstan- 
 ces in which he has has placed them, 
 or, if they will, the abuse of this pre- 
 tended liberty, which a provident God 
 ought never to have accorded to beings 
 capable of abusing it. Should we call 
 that father good, rational, just, clement, 
 or compassionate, who should arm 
 with a dangerous and sharp knife the 
 hands of a petulant child, with whose 
 imprudence he was acquainted, and 
 who should punish him all his life, for 
 having wounded himself with it? 
 Should we call that prince just, merci- 
 ful, and compassionate, who did not 
 proportion the punishment to the of- 
 fence, who should put no end to the 
 torments of that subject who in a state 
 of inebriety should have transiently 
 wounded his vanity, without however 
 causing him any real injustice above 
 all, after having himself taken pains 
 to intoxicate him? Should we look
 
 199 
 
 CONFUSED AND CONTRADICTORY 
 
 upon that monarch as all-powerful, 
 whose dominions should be in such a 
 state of anarchy, that, with the excep- 
 tion of a small number of faithful sub- 
 jects, all the others should have the 
 power every instant to despise his 
 laws, insult him, and frustrate his will ? 
 O, theologians ! confess that your God 
 is nothing but a heap of qualities, 
 which form a whole as perfectly in- 
 comprehensible to your mind as to 
 mine ; by dint of overburdening him 
 with incompatible qualities, ye have 
 made him truly a chimera, which all 
 your hypotheses cannot maintain in 
 the existence you are anxious to give 
 him. 
 
 They will, however, reply to these 
 difficulties, that goodness, wisdom, and 
 justice, are, in God, qualities so emi- 
 nent, or have such little similarity to 
 ours, that they have no relation with 
 these qualities when found in men. 
 But I shall answer, how shall I form 
 to myself ideas of these divine perfec- 
 tions, if they bear no resemblance to 
 those of the virtues which I find in 
 my fellow-creatures, or to the disposi- 
 tions which I feel in myself? If the 
 justice of God is not that of men ; if 
 it operates in that mode which men 
 call injustice, if his goodness, his clem- 
 ency, and his wisdom do not manifest 
 themselves by such signs, that we are 
 able to recognise them ; if all his divine 
 qualities are contrary to received ideas ; 
 if in theology all the human actions 
 are obscured or overthrown, how can 
 mortals like myself pretend to an- 
 nounce them, to have a knowledge of 
 them, or to explain them to others? 
 Can theology give to the mind the in- 
 effable boon of conceiving that which 
 no man is in a capacity to compre- 
 hend? Can it procure to its agents the 
 marvellous faculty of having precise 
 ideas of a God composed of so many 
 contradictory qualities? In short, is 
 the theologian himself a God ? 
 
 They silence us by saying, that God 
 himself has spoken, that he has made 
 himself known to men. But when, 
 where, and to whom has he spoken ? 
 Where are these divine oracles ? A 
 hundred voices raise themselves in the 
 same moment, a hundred hands shoAV 
 them to me in absurd and discordant 
 collections: I run them over, and 
 through the whole i find that the God 
 
 of wisdom has spoken an obscure, in- 
 sidious, and irrational language. I see 
 that the God of goodness has been 
 cruel and sanguinary; that the God of 
 justice has been unjust and partial, 
 has ordered iniquity ; that the God of 
 mercies destines the most hideous 
 punishments to the unhappy victims of 
 his anger. Besides, obstacles present 
 themselves when men attempt to verify 
 the pretended relations of a Divinity, 
 who, in two countries, has never literal- 
 ly holden the same language ; who has 
 spoken in so many places, at so many 
 times, and always so variously, that he 
 appears every where to have shown 
 himself only with the determined de- 
 sign of throwing the human mind into 
 the strangest perplexity. 
 
 Thus, the relations which they sup- 
 pose between men and their God can 
 only be founded on the moral qualities 
 of this being ; if these are not known 
 to men, they cannot serve them for mo- 
 dels. It is needful that these qualities 
 were natural in a known being in order 
 to be imitated ; how can I imitate a 
 God of whom the goodness and the 
 justice do not resemble mine in any 
 thing, or rather are directly contrary to 
 that which I call either just or good? 
 If God partakes in nothing of that 
 which forms us, how can we even dis- 
 tantly, propose to ourselves the imitat 
 ing him, the resembling him, the fol- 
 lowing a conduct necessary to please 
 him by conforming ourselves to him? 
 What can in effect,be the motives of that 
 worship, of that homage, and of that obe- 
 dience, which we are told to render to the 
 Supreme Being, if we do not establish 
 them upon his goodness, upon his vera- 
 city, upon his justice, in short, upon 
 qualities which we are able to under- 
 stand? How can Ave have clear ideas 
 of these qualities in God if they are no 
 longer of the same nature as our own? 
 
 They will no doubt tell us, that there 
 cannot be any proportion between the 
 creator and his work ; that the clay has 
 no right to demand of the potter who 
 has formed it, why have you fashion- 
 ed me thus ? But if there be no propor- 
 tion between the workman and his 
 work ; if there be no analogy between 
 them, what can be the relations which 
 will subsist between them? If God is 
 incorporated, how does he act upon bo- 
 dies, or how can corporeal beings be
 
 IDEAS OF THEOLOGY. 
 
 199 
 
 able to act upon him, offend him, dis- 
 turb his repose, excite in him emotions 
 of anger? If man is relatively to God 
 only an earthen vase, this vase owes 
 neither prayers nor thanks to the pot- 
 ter for the form which he has been 
 pleased to give it. If this potter irri- 
 tates himself against his vase for hav- 
 ing formed it badly, or for having ren- 
 dered it incapable of the uses to which 
 he had destined it, the potter, if he is 
 not an irrational being, ought to take 
 to himself the defects which he finds 
 in it ; he certainly has the power to 
 break it, and the vase cannot prevent 
 him ; it will neither have motives nor 
 means to soften his anger, but will be 
 obliged to submit to its destiny ; and 
 the potter would be completely depriv- 
 ed of reason if he were to punish his 
 vase, rather than, by forming it anew, 
 give it a figure more suitable to his de- 
 signs. 
 
 We see, that according to these no- 
 tions, men have no more relation with 
 God than stones. But if God owes 
 nothing to men, if he is not bound to 
 show them either justice or goodness, 
 men cannot possibly owe any thing to 
 him. We have no knowledge of any 
 relations between beings which are not 
 reciprocal ; the duties of men amongst 
 themselves are founded upon their mu- 
 tual wants ; if God has not occasion 
 for them, they cannot owe him any 
 thing, and men cannot possibly offend 
 him. In the meantime, the authority 
 of God can only be founded on the 
 good which he does to men, and the 
 duties of these towards God, can have 
 no other motives than the hope of that 
 happiness which they expect from him ; 
 if he does not owe them this happiness, 
 all their relations are annihilated, and 
 their duties no longer exist. Thus, in 
 whatever manner we view the theolo- 
 gical system, it destroys itself. Wil 
 theology never feel that the more it en- 
 deavours to exalt its God, to exagge- 
 rate his grandeur, the more incompre- 
 hensible it renders him to us? That 
 the farther it removes him from man 
 or the more it debases this man, the 
 more it weakens the relations which 
 they have supposed between this Goc 
 and him ; if the sovereign of nature i: 
 an infinite being and totally differen 
 from our species, and if man is only in 
 his eyes a worm or a speck of dirt, it is 
 
 lear there cannot be any moral rela- 
 tions between two beings so little ana- 
 logous to each other ; and again it is 
 still more evident that the vase which 
 he has formed is not capable of reason- 
 ing upon him. 
 
 It is, however, upon the relation sub- 
 sisting between man and his God that 
 all worship is founded, and all the reli- 
 gions of the world have a despotic 
 God for their basis ; but is not despot- 
 ism an unjust and unreasonable power? 
 Is it not equally to undermine his good- 
 ness, his justice, and his infinite wis- 
 dom, to attribute to the Divinity the ex- 
 ercise of such a power? Men in see- 
 ing the evils with which they are fre- 
 quently assailed in this world, without 
 being able to guess by what means they 
 have deserved the divine anger, will 
 always be tempted to believe that the 
 master of nature is a sultan, who owes 
 nothing to his subjects, who is not 
 obliged to render them any account of 
 his actions, who is not bound to con- 
 form himself to any law, and who is 
 not himself subjected to those rules 
 which he prescribes for others ; who 
 in consequence can be unjust, who has 
 the right to carry his vengeance beyond 
 all bounds ; in short, the theologians 
 pretend that God would have the right 
 of destroying the universe, and replung- 
 ing it into the chaos from whence his 
 wisdom has withdrawn it ; whilst the 
 same theologians, quote to us the order 
 and marvellous arrangement of this 
 world, as the most convincing proof of 
 his existence.* 
 
 In short, theology invests their God 
 with the Incommunicable privilege of 
 acting contrary to all the laws of nature 
 and of reason, whilst it is upon his rea- 
 son, his justice, his wisdom and his 
 fidelity in the fulfilling his pretended 
 engagements, that they are willing to 
 establish the Avorship which we owe 
 him, and the duties of morality. What 
 an ocean of contradictions ! A being 
 who can do every thing, and who owes 
 nothing to any one, who, in his eternal 
 decrees, can elect or reject, predesti- 
 nate to happiness or to misery, who 
 has the right of making men the play- 
 things of his caprice, and to afflict them 
 
 *"We conceive, at least," says Doctor Coa- 
 trill, "that God is able to overturn the universe, 
 and replunge it into chaos." See his Defence 
 of Religion, Natural and Revealed.
 
 200 
 
 CONFUSED AND CONTRADICTORY 
 
 without reason, who could go so far as ] 
 even to destroy and annihilate the uni- 1 
 verse, is he not a tyrant or a demon 1 \ 
 is there any thing more frightful than 
 the immediate consequences to be 
 drawn from these revolting ideas given 
 to us of their God, by those who tell 
 us to love him, to serve him, to imitate 
 him, and to obey his orders 1 Would 
 it not be a thousand times better to de- 
 pend upon blind matter, upon a nature 
 destitute of intelligence, upon chance, 
 or upon nothing, upon a God of stone 
 or of wood, than upon a God who is 
 laying snares for men, inviting them to 
 sin, and permitting them to commit 
 those crimes which he could prevent, 
 to the end that he may have the barba- 
 rous pleasure of punishing them with- 
 out measure, without utility to himself, 
 without correction to them, and with- 
 out their example serving to reclaim 
 others 1 A gloomy terrour must neces- 
 sarily result from the idea of such a be- 
 ing; his power will wrest from us 
 much servile homage ; we shall call 
 him good to flatter him or to disarm 
 his malice ; but, without overturning 
 the essence of things, such a God will 
 never be able to make himself beloved 
 by us, when we shall reflect that he 
 owes us nothing, that he has the right 
 of being unjust, that he has the power 
 to punish his creatures for making a 
 bad use of the liberty which he grants 
 them, or for not having had that grace 
 which he has been pleased to refuse 
 them. 
 
 Thus, in supposing that God is not 
 bound towards us by "any rules, theolo- 
 gians visibly sap the foundation of all 
 religion. A theology which assures us 
 that God has been able to create men 
 for the purpose of rendering them eter- 
 nally miserable, shows us nothing but 
 an evil and malicious genius, whose 
 malice is inconceivable, and infinitely 
 surpasses the cruelty of the most de- 
 praved beings of our species. Such is 
 nevertheless the God which they have 
 the confidence to propose for a model 
 to the human species ! Such is the 
 Divinity which is adored even by those 
 nations who boast of being the most 
 enlightened in this world ! 
 
 It is however upon the moral char- 
 acter of the Divinity, that is to say, 
 upon his goodness, his wisdom, his 
 equity, and his love of order, that they 
 
 pretend to establish our morals, or the 
 science of those duties which connect 
 us to the beings of our species. But 
 as his perfections and his goodness are 
 contradicted very frequently and give 
 place to weakness, to injustice, and to 
 cruelties, we are obliged to pronounce 
 him changeable, fickle, capricious, une- 
 qual in his conduct, and in contradic- 
 tion with himself, according to the va- 
 rious modes of action which they attri- 
 bute to him. Indeed, we sometimes 
 see him favourable to, and sometimes 
 disposed to injure the human species ; 
 sometimes a friend to reason and the 
 happiness of society ; sometimes he in- 
 terdicts the use of reason, he acts as 
 the enemy of all virtue, and he is flat- 
 tered with seeing society disturbed. 
 However, as we have seen mortals 
 crushed by fear, hardly ever daring to 
 avow that their God was unjust or 
 wicked, to persuade themselves that he 
 authorized them to be so, it was con- 
 cluded simply that every thing which 
 they did according to his pretended 
 order or with the view of pleasing him, 
 was always good, however prejudicial 
 it might otherwise appear in the eyes 
 of reason. They supposed him the 
 master of creating the just and the un- 
 just, of changing good into evil, and 
 evil into good, truth into falsehood, and 
 falsehood into truth: in short, they gave 
 him the right of changing the eternal 
 essence of things ; they made this God 
 superior to the laws of nature, of rea- 
 son, and virtue; they believed they 
 could never do wrong in following his 
 precepts, although the most absurd, the 
 most contrary to morals, the most oppo- 
 site to good sense, and the most preju- 
 dicial to the repose of society. With 
 such principles do not let us be sur- 
 prised at those horrours which religion 
 causes to be committed on the earth. 
 The most atrocious religion was the 
 most consistent.* 
 
 * The modern religion of Europe has visibly 
 caused more ravages and troubles than any 
 other known superstition ; it was in that re- 
 spect very consistent with its principles. They 
 may well preach tolerance and mildness in 
 the name of a despotic God, who alone has a 
 right to the homage of the earth, who is ex- 
 tremely jealous, who wills that they should 
 admit some doctrines, who punishes cruelly 
 for erroneous opinions, who demands zeal from 
 his adorers, such a God must make fanati- 
 cal persecutors of all consistent men. The
 
 IDEAS OF THEOLOGY. 
 
 201 
 
 In founding morals upon the immoral 
 character of a God, who changes his 
 conduct, man will never be able to as- 
 certain what conduct he ought to pur- 
 sue with regard to that which he owes 
 to God, or to others. Nothing then was 
 more dangerous than to persuade him 
 there existed a being superior to nature, 
 before whom reason must remain silent ; 
 to whom, to be happy hereafter, he 
 must sacrifice every thing here. His 
 pretended orders, and his example must 
 necessarily be much stronger than the 
 precepts of human morals ; the adorers 
 of this God, cannot then listen to na- 
 ture and good sense, but when by 
 chance they accord with the caprice of 
 their God, in whom they suppose the 
 power of annihilating the invariable 
 relation of beings, of changing reason 
 into folly, justice into injustice, and 
 even crime into virtue. By a conse- 
 quence of these ideas, the religious 
 man never examines the will and the 
 conduct of this celestial despot accord- 
 ing to ordinary rules ; every inspired 
 man that comes from him, and those 
 who shall pretend they are charged 
 with interpreting his oracles, will al- 
 ways assume the right of rendering 
 him irrational and criminal ; his first 
 duty will always be to obey his God 
 without murmuring. 
 
 Such are the fatal and necessary con- 
 sequences of the moral character which 
 they give to the Divinity, and of the 
 opinion which persuades mortals they 
 ought to pay a blind obedience to the 
 absolute sovereign whose arbitrary and 
 fluctuating will regulates all duties. 
 Those who first had the confidence to 
 tell men, that in matters of religion, it 
 was not permitted them to consult their 
 reason, nor the interests of society, 
 evidently proposed to themselves to 
 make them the sport of the instruments 
 of their own peculiar wickedness. It 
 
 theology of the present day is a subtile ven- 
 om, calculated to infect all by the importance 
 which attached to it. By dint of metaphy- 
 sics, modern theologians have become syste- 
 matically absurd and wicked: by once ad- 
 mitting the odious ideas which they gave of 
 the Divinity, it was impossible to make them 
 understand that they ought to be humane, 
 equitable, pacific, indulgent, or tolerant ; they 
 pretended and proved that these humane and 
 social virtues, were not seasonable in the cause 
 of religion, and would be treason and crimes 
 in the eyes of the celestial Monarch, to whom 
 every thing ought to be sacrificed. 
 No. VII.-26 
 
 is from this radical errour, then, that 
 have sprung all those extravagances, 
 which the different religions have in- 
 troduced upon the earth ; that sacred 
 fury which has deluged it in blood; 
 those inhuman persecutions which have 
 so frequently desolated nations ; in 
 short, all those horrid tragedies, of 
 which the name of the Most High have 
 the cause and the pretext. Whenever 
 they have been desirous to render men 
 unsociable, they have cried out that it 
 was the will of God they should be so. 
 Thus the theologians themselves have 
 taken pains to caluminate and to de- 
 fame the phantom which they have 
 erected upon the ruins of human rea- 
 son, of a nature well known, and a thou- 
 sand times preferable to a tyrannical 
 God, whom they render odious to every 
 honest man. These theologians are the 
 true destroyers of their own peculiar 
 idol, by the contradictory qualities 
 which they accumulate on him : it is 
 these theologians, as we shall yet prove 
 in the sequel, who render morals uncer- 
 tain and fluctuating, by founding them 
 upon a changeable and capricious God, 
 much more frequently unjust and cruel, 
 than good : it is they who overturn 
 and annihilate him, by commanding 
 crime, carnage, and barbarity, in the 
 name of the sovereign of the universe, 
 and who interdict us the use of reason, 
 which alone ought to regulate all our 
 actions and ideas. 
 
 However, admitting for a moment 
 that God possesses all the human vir 
 tues in an infinite degree of perfection, 
 we shall presently le obliged to ac- 
 knowledge that he cannot connect them 
 with those metaphysical, theological, 
 and negative attributes, of which we 
 have already spoken. If God is a 
 spirit, how can he act like man, who is 
 a corporeal being 1 A pure spirit sees 
 nothing ; it neither hears our prayers 
 nor our cries, it cannot be conceived to 
 have compassion for our miseries, be- 
 ing destitute of those organs by which 
 the sentiments of pity can be excited 
 in us. He is not immutable, if his dis- 
 position can change : he is not infinite, 
 if the totality of nature, without being 
 him, can exist conjointly with him ; he 
 is not omnipotent, if he permits, or if 
 he does not prevent disorder in the 
 world : he is not omnipresent, if he is 
 not in the man who sins, or if he leaves
 
 202 
 
 CONFUSED AND CONTRADICTORY 
 
 at the moment In which he commits 
 the sin. Thus, in whatever manner 
 we consider this God, the human quali- 
 ties which they assign him, necessarily 
 destroy each other; and these same 
 qualities cannot, in any possible man- 
 ner, combine themselves with the su- 
 pernatural attributes given him by 
 theology. 
 
 With respect to the pretended reve- 
 lation of the will of God, far from be- 
 ing a proof of his goodness, or of his 
 commiseration for men, it would only 
 be a proof of his malice. Indeed, all 
 revelation supposes the Divinity guilty 
 of leaving the human species, during a 
 considerable time, unacquainted with 
 truths the most important to their hap- 
 piness. This revelation, made to a 
 small number of chosen men, would 
 moreover show a partiality in this being, 
 an unjust predilection but little compa- 
 tible with the goodness of the common 
 Father of the human race. This reve- 
 lation destroys also the divine immu- 
 tability, since, by it, God would have 
 permitted at one time, that men should 
 be ignorant of his will, and at another 
 time, that they should be instructed in 
 it. This granted, all revelation is con- 
 trary to the notions which they give us 
 of the justice or of the goodness of a 
 God, who they tell us is immutable, 
 and who, without having occasion to 
 reveal himself, or to make himself 
 known to them by miracles, could easily 
 instruct and convince men, and inspire 
 them with those ideas, which he de- 
 sires ; in short, dispose of their minds 
 and of their hearts. What if we should 
 examine in detail all those pretended 
 revelations, which they assure us have 
 been made to mortals 1 We shall see 
 that this God only retails fables unwor- 
 thy of a wise being ; acts in them, in 
 a manner contrary to the natural no- 
 tions of equity ;' announces enigmas 
 and oracles impossible to be compre- 
 hended; paints himself under traits in- 
 compatible with his infinite perfections; 
 exacts puerilities which degrade him 
 in the eyes of reason ; deranges the 
 order which he has established in na- 
 ture, to convince creatures, whom he 
 will never cause to adopt those ideas, 
 those sentiments, and that conduct, 
 with which he would inspire them. In 
 short, we shall find, that God has never 
 manifested himself, but to announce 
 
 inexplicable mysteries, unintelligible 
 doctrines, ridiculous practices i to tlwow 
 the human mind into fear, distrust, per- 
 plexity, and above all, to furnish a 
 never-failing source of dispute to mor- 
 tals.* 
 
 We see, then, that the ideas which 
 theology gives us of the Divinity will 
 always be confused and incompatible, 
 and will necessarily disturb the repose 
 of human nature. These obscure no- 
 tions, these vague speculations, would 
 be of great indifference, if men did not 
 regard their reveries oa this unknown 
 being, upon whom they believe they 
 depend, as important, and if they did 
 not draw from them conclusions perni- 
 cious to themselves. As they never 
 will have a common and fixed standard, 
 whereby to form a judgment on this 
 being, to whom various and diversely 
 modified imaginations have given birth, 
 they will never be able either to-under- 
 stand each other, or to be in accord with 
 each other upon those ideas they shall 
 form to themselves of him. From 
 hence, that necessary diversity of reli- 
 gious opinions, which, in all ages, has 
 given rise to themost irrational disputes 
 which they always look upon as very 
 essential, and which has consequently 
 always interested the tranquillity of na- 
 tions. A man with a heated imagina- 
 tion, will not accommodate himself to 
 the God of a phlegmatic and tranquil 
 man ; and infirm, bilious, discontented 
 man, will never see this God in the 
 same point of view as he-who enjoys 
 a constitution more sound, whence com- 
 monly results gayety, contentment, and 
 peace. An equitable, kind, compas- 
 sionate, tender-hearted man, will not 
 delineate to himself the same portrait 
 of his God, as the man who is of a 
 
 * It is evident that all revelation, which is 
 not clear, or which teaches mysteries, cannot 
 be the work of a wise and intelligent being : 
 as soon as he speaks, we ought to presume^ 
 it is for the purpose of being understood by 
 those to whom he manifests himself. To 
 speak so as not to be understood, only shows 
 folly or want of good faith. ^It is, then, very 
 clear, that all things which the priesthood 
 have called mysteries, are inventions, made 
 to throw a thick veil over their own peculiar 
 contradictions, and their own peculiar ignor- 
 ance of the Divinity. But they think to 
 solve all difficulties by saying it is a mystery ; 
 taking care, however, that men should know 
 nothing of that pretended science, of which 
 they have made themselves the depositaries.
 
 IDEAS OP THEOLOGY. 
 
 t03 
 
 harsh, unjust, inflexible, wicked char- 
 acter. Each individual will modify his 
 God after his own peculiar manner of 
 existing, after his own mode of think- 
 ing, according to his particular mode 
 of feeling. A wise, honest, rational 
 man will never figure to himself that a 
 God can be unjust and cruel. 
 
 Nevertheless, as fear necessarily pre- 
 sided at the formation of those Gods 
 man set up for the object of his wor- 
 ship; as the ideas of the Divinity was 
 always associated with that of terrour ; 
 as the recollection of sufferings, which 
 he attributed to God, often made him 
 tremble ; frequently awakened in his 
 mind the most afflicting reminiscence ; 
 sometimes filled him with inquietude, 
 sometimes inflamed his imagination, 
 sometimes overwhelmed him with dis- 
 may. The experience of all ages proves, 
 that this vague name became the most 
 important of all considerations was 
 the affair which most seriously occu- 
 pied the human race: that it every 
 where spread consternation produced 
 the most frightful ravages, by the deli- 
 rious inebriation resulting from the 
 opinions with which it intoxicated the 
 mind. Indeed, it is extremely difficult 
 to prevent habitual fear, which of all 
 human passions is the most incommo- 
 dious, from becoming a dangerous lea- 
 ven, which, in the long run, will sour, 
 exasperate, and give malignancy to the 
 most moderate temperament. 
 
 If a misanthrope, in hatred of his 
 race, had formed the project of throw- 
 ing man into the greatest perplexity 
 if a tyrant, in the plenitude of his un- 
 ruly desire to punish, had sought out 
 the most efficacious means; could 
 either the one or the other have ima- 
 gined that which was so well calculat- 
 ed to gratify their revenge, as thus to 
 occupy him unceasingly with being not 
 only unknown to him, but which can 
 never be known, which, notwithstand- 
 ing, they should be obliged to contem- 
 plate as the centre of all their thoughts 
 as the only model of their conduct 
 as the end of all their actions as the 
 subject of all their research as a 
 thing of more importance to them than 
 life itself, upon which all their present 
 felicity, all their future happiness, must 
 necessarily depend 1 If man was sub- 
 jected to an absolute monarch,to a sultan 
 who should keep himself secluded from ' 
 
 his subjects ; who followed no rule but 
 his own desires ; who did not feel him- 
 self bound by any duty; who could 
 for ever punish the offences committed 
 against him ; whose fury it was easy 
 to provoke ; who was irritated even by 
 the ideas, the thoughts of his subjects ; 
 whose displeasure might be incurred 
 without even their own knowledge ; 
 the name of such a sovereign would 
 assuredly be sufficient to carry trouble, 
 to spread terrour, to diffuse consterna- 
 tion into the very souls of those who 
 should hear it pronounced ; his idea 
 would haunt them every where would 
 unceasingly afflict them would plunge 
 them into despair. What tortures would 
 not their mind endure to discover this 
 formidable being, to ascertain the secret 
 of pleasing him ! What labour would 
 not their imagination bestow, to disco- 
 ver what mode of conduct might be 
 able to disarm his anger ! What fears 
 would assail them, lest they might not 
 have justly hit upon the means of as- 
 suaging his wrath ! What disputes 
 would they not enter into upon the na- 
 ture, the qualities of a ruler, equally 
 unknown to them all ! What a variety 
 of means would not be adopted, to find 
 favour in his eyes ; to avert his chas- 
 tisement ! 
 
 Such is the history of the effects the 
 name of God has produced upon the 
 earth. Man has always been panic- 
 struck at it, because he never was able 
 to form any correct opinion, any fixed 
 ideas upon the subject ; because every 
 thing conspired either to give his ideas 
 a fallacious turn, or else to keep his 
 mind in the most profound ignorance; 
 when he was willing to set himself 
 right, when he was sedulous to exam- 
 ine the path which conducted to his 
 felicity, when he was desirous of pro- 
 bing opinions so consequential to his 
 peace, involving so much mystery, yet 
 combining both his hopes and his fears, 
 he was forbidden to employ the only 
 proper method his reason, guided by 
 his experience ; he was assured this 
 would be an offence the most indelible. 
 If he asked, wherefore his reason had 
 been given him, since he was not to 
 use it in matters of such high behest ? 
 he was answered, those were mysteries 
 of which none but the initiated could 
 be informed ; that it sufficed for him to 
 know, that the reason which he seemed
 
 204 
 
 CONFUSED AND CONTRADICTORY 
 
 so highly to prize, which he held in so 
 much esteem, was his most dangerous 
 enemy his most inveterate, most de- 
 termined foe. He is told that he must 
 believe in God, not question the mission 
 of the priest? ; in short, that he had 
 nothing to do with the laws he impos- 
 ed, but to obey them : when he then 
 required that these laws might at least 
 be made comprehensible to him ; that 
 he might be placed in a capacity to un- 
 derstand them; the old answer was 
 returned, that they were mysteries; 
 he must not inquire into them. Thus 
 he had nothing steady ; nothing per- 
 manent, whereby to guide his steps; 
 like a blind man left to himself in the 
 streets, he was obliged to grope his 
 way at the peril of his existence. This 
 will serve to show the urgent necessity 
 there is for truth to throw its radiant lus- 
 tre on systems big with so much import- 
 ance ; that are so calculated to corrobo- 
 rate the animosities, to confirm the bit- 
 terness of soul, between those whom 
 nature intended should always act as 
 brothers. 
 
 By the magical charms with which 
 this God was surrounded, the human 
 species has remained either as if it 
 was benumbed, in a state of stupid 
 apathy, or else it has become furious 
 with fanaticism : sometimes, despond- 
 ing with fear, man cringed like a slave 
 who bends under the scourge of an in- 
 exorable master, always ready to strike 
 him; he trembled under a yoke made 
 too ponderous for his strength : he lived 
 in continual dread of a vengeance he 
 was unceasingly striving to appease, 
 without ever knowing when he had 
 succeeded : as he was always bathed 
 in tears, continually enveloped in mis- 
 ery as he was never permitted to lose 
 sight of his fears as he was continu- 
 ally exhorted to nourish his alarm, he 
 could neither labour for his own happi- 
 ness nor contribute to that of others ; 
 nothing could exhilarate him : he be- 
 came the enemy of himself, the perse- 
 cutor of his fellow-creatures, because 
 his felicity here below was interdicted; 
 he passed his time in heaving the most 
 bitter sighs ; his reason being forbidden 
 him, he fell into either a state of in- 
 fancy or delirium, which submitted 
 him to authority ; he was destined to 
 this servitude from the hour he quitted 
 his mother's womb, until that in which 
 
 he was returned to his kindred dust ; 
 tyrannical opinion bound him fast in 
 her massive fetters ; a prey to the ter- 
 rours with which he was inspired, he 
 appeared to have come upon the earth 
 for no other purpose than to dream 
 with no other desire- than to groan 
 with no other motives than to sigh ; 
 his only view seemed to be to injure 
 himself; to deprive himself of every 
 rational pleasure ; to embitter his own 
 existence; to disturb the felicity of 
 others. Thus, abject, slothful, irra- 
 tional, he frequently became wicked, 
 under the idea of doing honour to his 
 God ; because they instilled into his 
 mind that it was his duty to avenge his 
 cause, to sustain his honour, to propa- 
 gate his worship. 
 
 Mortals were prostrate from race to 
 race, before vain idols to which fear 
 had given birth in the bosom of igno- 
 rance, during the calamities of the 
 earth ; they tremblingly adored phan- 
 toms which credulity had placed in the 
 recesses of their own brain, where they 
 found a sanctuary which time only 
 served to strengthen ; nothing could 
 undeceive them ; nothing was compe- 
 tent to make them feel, it was them- 
 selves they adored that they bent the 
 knee before their own work that they 
 terrified themselws with the extrava- 
 gant pictures they had themselves de- 
 lineated : they obstinately persisted in 
 prostrating themselves, in perplexing 
 themselves, in trembling ; they even 
 made a crime of endeavouring to dis- 
 sipate their fears ; they mistook the 
 production of their own folly ; their 
 conduct resembled that of children, 
 who having disfigured their own fea- 
 tures, become afraid of themselves 
 when a mirror reflects the extravagance 
 they have committed. These notions 
 so afflicting for themselves, so grievous 
 to others, have their epoch in the ca- 
 lamitous idea of a God; they will con- 
 tinue, perhaps augment, until their 
 mind, enlightened by discarded reason, 
 illumined by truth, shall attach no 
 more importance to this unintelligible 
 word ; until man, bursting the chains 
 of superstition, taking a rational view 
 of that which surrounds him, shall no 
 longer refuse to contemplate nature 
 under her true character ; shall no lon- 
 ger persist in refusing to acknowledge 
 she contains within herself the cause
 
 IDEAS OP THEOLOGY. 
 
 205 
 
 of that wonderful phenomena which 
 strikes on the dazzled optics of man : 
 until thoroughly persuaded of the weak- 
 ness of their claims to the homage of 
 mankind, he shall make one simulta- 
 neous, mighty effort, and overthrow the 
 altars of God and his priests. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Examination of the Proofs of the Existence 
 of the Divinity^ as given by Clarke. 
 
 THE unanimity of man in acknow- 
 ledging the Divinity, is commonly 
 looked upon as the strongest proof of 
 his existence. There is not, it is said, 
 any people on the earth who have not 
 some ideas, whether true or false, of 
 an all-powerful agent who governs the 
 world. The rudest savages, as well 
 as the most polished nations, are equal- 
 ly obliged to recur by thought to the 
 first cause of every thing that exists ; 
 thus it is affirmed, the cry of nature 
 herself ought to convince us of the 
 existence of a God, of which she has 
 taken pains to engrave the notion in 
 the minds of men : they therefore con- 
 clude, that the idea of God is innate. 
 But if this existence rests upon no bet- 
 ter foundations than the unanimity of 
 man on this subject, it is not placed 
 upon so solid a rock as those who make 
 this asseveration may imagine : the 
 fact is, man is not generally agreed up- 
 on this point; if he was, superstition 
 could have no existence ; the idea of 
 God cannot be innate, because, inde- 
 pendent of the proofs offered on every 
 side of the almost impossibility of in- 
 nate ideas, one simple fact will set 
 such an opinion for ever at rest, except 
 with those who are obstinately deter- 
 mined not to be convinced by even 
 their own arguments : if this idea was 
 innate, it must be every where the 
 same ; seeing that that which is ante- 
 cedent to man's being, cannot have 
 experienced the modifications of his 
 existence, which are posterior. Even 
 if it were waived, that the same idea 
 should be expected from all mankind, 
 but that only every nation should have 
 their ideas alike on this subject, expe- 
 rience will not warrant the assertion, 
 since nothing can be better established 
 than that the idea is not uniform even in 
 the same town ; now this would be an 
 
 insuperable quality in an innate idea. 
 It not unfrequently happens, that in the 
 endeavour to prove too much, that 
 which stood firm before the attempt is 
 weakened; thus a bad advocate fre- 
 quently injures a good cause, although 
 he may not be able to overturn the 
 rights on which it is rested. It would, 
 therefore, perhaps, come nearer to the 
 point if it was said, that the natural 
 curiosity of mankind has in all ages, 
 and in all nations, led him to seek after 
 the primary cause of the phenomena 
 he beholds ; that owing to the" varia- 
 tions of his climate, to the difference 
 of his organization, the greater or less 
 calamity he has experienced, the vari- 
 ety of his intellectual faculties, and the 
 circumstances under which he has been 
 placed, man has had the most opposite, 
 contradictory, extravagant notions of 
 this Divinity. 
 
 If disengaged from prejudice, we an- 
 alyze this proof, we shall see that the 
 universal consent of man, so diffused 
 over the earth, actually proves little 
 more than that he has been in all coun- 
 tries exposed to frightful revolutions, 
 experienced disasters, been sensible to 
 sorrows of which he has mistaken the 
 physical causes ; that those events to 
 which he has been either the victim or 
 the witness, have called forth his ad- 
 miration or excited his fear ; that for 
 want of being acquainted with the 
 powers of nature, for want of under- 
 standing her laws, for want of compre- 
 hending her infinite resources, for want 
 of knowing the effects she must neces- 
 sarily produce under given circum- 
 stances, he has believed these pheno- 
 mena were due to some secret agent 
 of which he has had vague ideas 
 to beings whom he has supposed con- 
 ducted themselves after his own man- 
 ner ; who were operated upon by simi- 
 lar motives with himself. 
 
 The consent then of man in acknow- 
 ledging a God, proves nothing, except 
 that in the bosom of ignorance he has 
 either admired the phenomena of na- 
 ture, or trembled under their influence ; 
 that his imagination was disturbed by 
 what he beheld or suffered ; that he 
 has sought in vain to relieve his per- 
 plexity, upon the unknown cause of the 
 phenomena he 'witnessed, which fre- 
 quently obliged him to quake with ter- 
 rour: the imagination of the human
 
 206 
 
 EXAMINATION OF THE PROOFS 
 
 race has laoourcd variously upon these 
 causes, which have almost always been 
 incomprehensible to him ; although 
 every thing confessed his ignorance, 
 his inability to define this cause, yet 
 he maintained that he was assured of 
 its existence ; when pressed, he spoke 
 of a spirit, (a word to which it was 
 impossible to attach any determinate 
 idea,) which taught nothing but the 
 sloth, which evidenced nothing but the 
 stupidity of those who pronounced it. 
 
 It ought, however, not to excite any 
 surprise that man is incapable of form- 
 ing any substantive ideas, save of those 
 things which act, or which have here- 
 tofore acted upon his senses ; it is very 
 evident that the only objects compe- 
 tent to move his organs are material 
 that none but physical beings can fur- 
 nish him with ideas a truth which 
 has been rendered sufficiently clear in 
 the commencement of this work, not 
 to need any further proof. It will suf- 
 fice therefore to say, that the idea of 
 God is not an innate, but an acquired 
 notion ; that it is the very nature of 
 this notion to vary from age to age ; 
 to differ in one country from another ; 
 to be viewed variously by individuals. 
 What do I say ? It is, in fact, an idea 
 hardly ever constant in the same mor- 
 tal. This diversity, this fluctuation, 
 this change, stamps it with the true 
 character of an acquired opinion. On 
 the other hand, the strongest proof that 
 can be adduced that these ideas are 
 founded in errour, is, that man by de- 
 grees has arrived at perfectioning all 
 the sciences which have any known 
 objects for their basis, whilst the sci- 
 ence of deism has not advanced ; it 
 is almost every where at the same 
 point ; men seem equally undecided 
 on this subject ; those who have most 
 occupied themselves with it, have ef- 
 fected but little; they seem, indeed, 
 rather to have rendered the primitive 
 ideas man formed to himself on this 
 head more obscure. 
 
 As soon as it is asked of man, what 
 is the God before whom he prostrates 
 himself, forthwith his sentiments are 
 divided. In order that his opinions 
 should be in accord, it would be requi- 
 site that uniform ideas, analogous sen- 
 sations, unvaried perceptions, should 
 every where have given birth to his 
 notions upon this subject: but this 
 
 would suppose organs perfectly simi- 
 lar, modified by sensations which have 
 a perfect affinity : this is what could 
 not happen : because man, essentially 
 different by his temperament, who is 
 found under circumstances completely 
 dissimilar, must necessarily have a 
 great diversity of ideas upon objects 
 which each individual contemplates so 
 variously. Agreed in some general 
 points, each made himself a God after 
 his own manner ; he feared him, he 
 served him, after his own mode. Thus 
 the God of one man, or of one nation, 
 was hardly ever that of another man, 
 or of another nation. The God of a 
 savage, unpolished people, is com- 
 monly some material object, upon 
 which the mind has exercised itself 
 but little ; this God appears very ridicu- 
 lous in the eyes of a more polished 
 community, whose minds have labour- 
 ed more intensely upon the subject. A 
 spiritual God, whose adorers despise 
 the worship paid by the savage to a 
 coarse, material object, is the subtile 
 production of the brain of thinkers, 
 who, lolling in the lap of polished so- 
 ciety quite at their leisure, have deeply 
 meditated, have long occupied them- 
 selves with the subject. The theolo- 
 gical God, although incomprehensible, 
 is the last effort of the human imagi- 
 nation ; it is to the God of the sarage, 
 what an inhabitant of the city of Sy- 
 baris, where effeminacy and luxury 
 reigned, where pomp and pageantry 
 had reached their climax, clothed with 
 a curiously embroidered purple habit 
 of silk, was to a man either quite na- 
 ked, or simply covered with the skin 
 of a beast, perhaps newly slain. It is 
 only in civilized societies, that leisure 
 affords the opportunity of dreaming 
 that ease procures the facility of reason- 
 ing; in these associations, idle specula- 
 tors meditate, dispute, form metaphys- 
 ics: the faculty of thought is almost void 
 in the savage, who is occupied either 
 with hunting, with fishing, or with the 
 means of procuring a very precarious 
 subsistence by dint of almost incessant 
 labour. The generality of men, even 
 among us, have not more elevated no- 
 tions of the Divinity, have not analyzed 
 him more than the savage. A spirit- 
 ual, immaterial God, is formed only 
 to occupy the leisure of some subtile 
 men, who have no occasion to labour
 
 OP THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 
 
 207 
 
 for a subsistence. Theology, although 
 a science so much vaunted, considered 
 so important to the interests of man, 
 is only useful to those who live at the 
 expense of others; or of those who 
 arrogate to themselves the privilege of 
 thinking for all those who labour. 
 This futile science becomes, in some 
 polished societies, who are not on that 
 account more enlightened, a branch of 
 commerce extremely advantageous to 
 its professors, but equally unprofitable 
 to the citizens ; above all when these 
 have the folly to take a very decided 
 interest in their unintelligible opin- 
 ions. 
 
 What an infinite distance between 
 an unformed stone, an animal, a star, 
 a statue, and the abstracted Deity, 
 which theology has clothed with attri- 
 butes under which it loses sight of 
 him itself! The savage without doubt 
 deceives himself in the object to which 
 he addresses his vows ; like a child he 
 is smitten with the first object that 
 strikes his sight that operates upon 
 him in a lively manner; like the in- 
 fant, his fears are alarmed by that from 
 which he conceives he has either re- 
 ceived an injury or suffered disgrace ; 
 still his ideas are fixed by a substan- 
 tive being, by an object which he can 
 examine by his senses. The Lapland- 
 er who adores a rock the negro who 
 prostrates himself before a monstrous 
 serpent, at least see the objects they 
 adore. The idolater falls upon his 
 knees before a statue, in which he be- 
 lieves there resides some concealed 
 virtue, some powerful quality, which 
 he judges may be either useful or pre- 
 judicial to himself; but that subtile 
 reasoner, called a theologian, who in 
 consequence of his unintelligible sci- 
 ence, believes he has a right to laugh 
 at the savage, to deride the Laplander, 
 to scoff at the negro, to ridicule the idol- 
 ater, does not perceive that he himself 
 is prostrate before a being of his own 
 imagination, of which it is impossible 
 he should form to himself any correct 
 idea, unless, like the savage, he re-en- 
 ters into visible nature, to clothe him 
 with qualities capable of being brought 
 within the range of his comprehen- 
 sion." 
 
 Thus the notions on the Divinity, 
 which obtain credit even at the present 
 day, are nothing more than a general 
 
 terrour diversely acquired, variously 
 modified in the mind of nations, which 
 do not tend to prove any thing, save 
 that they have received them from their 
 trembling, ignorant ancestors. These 
 Gods have been successively altered, 
 decorated, subtilized, by those thinkers, 
 those legislators, those priests, who 
 have meditated deeply upon them ; 
 who have prescribed systems of wor- 
 ship to the uninformed; who have 
 availed themselves of their existing 
 prejudices, to submit them to their 
 yoke ; who have obtained a dominion 
 over their minds by seizing on their 
 credulity by making them participate 
 in their errours 'by working on their 
 fears; these dispositions will always 
 be a necessary consequence of man's 
 ignorance, when steeped in the sorrows 
 of his heart. 
 
 If it be true, as asserted, that the 
 earth has never witnessed any nation 
 so unsociable, so savage, to be without 
 some form of religious worship who 
 did not adore some God but little will 
 result from it respecting its reality. 
 The word God, will rarely be found to 
 designate more than the unknown cause 
 of those effects which man has either 
 admired or dreaded. Thus, this notion 
 so generally diffused, upon which so 
 much stress is laid, will prove little 
 more than that man in all generations 
 has been ignorant of natural causes 
 that he has been incompetent, from 
 some cause or other, to account for 
 those phenomena which either excited 
 his surprise or roused his fears. If at 
 the present day a people cannot be 
 found destitute of some kind of wor- 
 ship, entirely without superstition, who 
 do not acknowledge a God, who have 
 not adopted a theology more or less 
 subtile, it is because the uninformed 
 ancestors of these people have all en- 
 dured misfortunes have been alarmed 
 by terrifying effects, which they have 
 attributed to unknown causes have 
 beheld strange sights, which they have 
 ascribed to powerful agents, whose 
 existence they could not fathom ; the 
 details of which, together with their 
 own bewildered notions, they have 
 handed down to their posterity who 
 have not given them any kind of ex- 
 amination. 
 
 Besides, the universality of an opin- 
 ion by no means proves its truth. Do
 
 209 
 
 EXAMINATION OF THE PROOFS 
 
 we not see a great number of ignorant 
 prejudices, a multitude of barbarous 
 errours, even at the present day, receive 
 the almost universal sanction of the 
 human race? Are not all the inhabi- 
 tants of the earth imbued with the. 
 idea of magic in the habit of acknow- 
 ledging occult powers given to divina- 
 tion believers in enchantment the 
 slaves to omens supporters of witch- 
 craftthoroughly persuaded of the ex- 
 istence of ghosts ? If some of the most 
 enlightened persons are cured of these 
 follies, they still find very zealous par- 
 tisans in the greater number of man- 
 kind, who accredit them with the firm- 
 est confidence. It would not, however, 
 be concluded by men of sound sense, 
 that therefore these chimeras actually 
 have existence, although sanctioned 
 with the credence of the multitude. 
 Before Copernicus, there was no one 
 who did not believe that the earth was 
 stationary, that the sun described his 
 annual revolution round it. Was, how- 
 ever, this universal consent of man, 
 which endured for so many thousand 
 years, less an errour on that account?* 
 Each man has his God : but do all 
 these Gods exist 1 In reply it will be 
 said each man has his ideas of the 
 sun; do all these suns exist? However 
 narrow may be the pass by which su- 
 perstition imagines it has thus guarded 
 its favourite hypothesis, nothing will 
 perhaps be more easy than the answer : 
 the existence of the sun is a fact verifi- 
 
 * Yet to have doubted the truth of such a 
 generally-diffused opinion, one that had re- 
 ceived the sanction of so many learned men 
 that was clothed with the sacred vestments 
 of so many ages of credulity that had been 
 adopted by Moses, acknowledged by Solo- 
 mon, accredited by the Persian magi that 
 Elijah had not refuted that obtained the fiat 
 of the most respectable universities, the most 
 enlightened legislators, the wisest kings, the 
 most eloquent ministers : in short, a principle 
 that embraced all the stability that could be 
 derived from the universal consent of all 
 ranks : to have doubted of this, would at one 
 period been held as the highest degree of pro- 
 fanation, as the most presumptuous scepti- 
 cism, as an impious blasphemy, that would 
 have threatened the very existence of that 
 unhappy country from whose unfortunate 
 bosom such a venomous, sacrilegious mortal 
 could have arisen. It is well, known what 
 opinion was entertained of 0alileo for main- 
 taining the existence of the antipodes. Pope 
 Gregory excommunicated as atheists all those 
 who gave it credit. 
 
 ed by the daily use of the senses ; all 
 the world see the sun ; no one hath 
 ever seen God ; nearly all mankind 
 has acknowledged the sun to be both 
 luminous and hot: however various 
 may be the opinions of man, upon this 
 luminary, no one has ever yet pretended 
 there was more than one attached to 
 our planetary system, or that the sun 
 is not luminous and hot ; but we find 
 many very rational men have said, 
 THERE is NO GOD. Those who think 
 this proposition hideous and irrational, 
 and who affirm that God exists, do 
 they not tell us at the same time that 
 they have never seen him, and there- 
 fore know nothing of him ? Theology 
 is a science, where every thing is built 
 upon laws inverted from those common 
 to the globe we inhabit. 
 
 If man, therefore, had the courage to 
 throw aside his prejudices, which every 
 thing conspires to render as durable as 
 himself if divested of fear he would 
 examine coolly if guided by reason 
 he would dispassionately view the na- 
 ture of things, the evidence adduced 
 in support of any given doctrine ; he 
 would, at least, be under the necessity 
 to acknowledge, that the idea of the 
 Divinity is not innate that it is not 
 anterior to his existence that it is the 
 production of time, acquired by com- 
 munication with his own species* 
 that, consequently, there was a period, 
 when it did not actually exist in him: 
 he would see clearly, that he holds it 
 by tradition from those who reared 
 him: that these themselves received it 
 from their ancestors : that thus tracing 
 it up, it will be found to have been de- 
 rived in the last resort, from ignorant 
 savages, who were our first fathers. 
 The history of the world will show 
 
 * When men shall be willing coolly to ex- 
 amine the proof of the existence of a God, 
 drawn from general consent, they will ac- 
 knowledge, that they can gather nothing 
 from it, except that all men have guessed that 
 there existed in nature unknown motive- 
 powers, unknown causes ; a truth of which no 
 one has ever doubted, seeing that it is impossi- 
 ble to suppose effects without causes. Thus 
 the only difference betwixt the ATHEISTS and 
 the THEOLOGIAN-S, or the WORSHIPPERS OF GOD, 
 is, that the first assign to all the phenomena 
 material, natural, sensible, and known causes ; 
 whereas, the last assign them spiritual, su- 
 pernatural, unintelligible, and unknown caus- 
 es. The God of the'theologians, is it in effect 
 any other thing than an occult power ?
 
 OP THE EXISTENCE OFGOD. 
 
 209 
 
 that crafty legislators, ambitious ty- 
 rants, blood-stained conquerors, have 
 availed themselves of the ignorance, 
 the fears, the credulity of his progeni- 
 tors, to turn to their own profit an idea 
 to which they rarely attached any other 
 substantive meaning than that of sub- 
 mitting them to the yoke of their own 
 domination. 
 
 Without doubt, there have been mor- 
 tals who have boasted they have seen 
 the Divinity ; but the first man who 
 dared to say this was a liar, whose ob- 
 ject was to take advantage of the sirr*- 
 plicity of some, or an enthusiast, who 
 promulgated for truths, the crazy reve- 
 ries of his own distempered imagina- 
 tion ? Nevertheless, is it not a truth, that 
 these doctrines of crafty men are at this 
 day the creed of millions, transmitted 
 to them by their ancestors, rendered 
 sacred by time, read to them in their 
 temples, and adorned with all the 
 ceremonies of religious worship ? In- 
 deed that man, would not experience 
 the most gentle treatment from the in- 
 furiated Christian, who should to his 
 face venture to dispute the divine mis- 
 sion of his Jesus. Thus the ancestors 
 of the Europeans have transmitted to 
 their posterity, those ideas of the Di- 
 vhiity which they manifestly received 
 from those who deceived them ; whose 
 impositions, modified from age to age, 
 subtilized by the priests, clothed with 
 the reverential awe inspired by fear, 
 have by degrees acquired that solidity, 
 received that corroboration, attained 
 that veteran stability, which is the na- 
 tural result of public sanction, backed 
 by theological parade. 
 
 The word God is, perhaps, among 
 the first that vibrate on the ear of man ; 
 it is reiterated to him incessantly ; he 
 is taught to lisp it with respect ; to lis- 
 ten to it with fear ; to bend the knee 
 when it is reverberated : by dint of re- 
 petition, by listening to the fables of 
 antiquity, by hearing it pronounced by 
 all ranks and persuasions, he seriously 
 believes all men bring the idea with 
 them into the world. He thus con- 
 founds a mechanical habit with in- 
 stinct; whilst it is for want of being 
 able to recall to himself the first cir- 
 cumstances under which his imagina- 
 tion was awakened by this name ; for 
 want of recollecting all the recitals 
 made to him during the course of his 
 
 No. VII. 27 
 
 infancy; for want of accurately defining 
 what was instilled into him by his edu- 
 cation ; in short, because his memory 
 d oes not furnish him with the succession 
 of causes that have engraven it on his 
 brain, that he believes this idea is real- 
 ly inherent to his being ; innate in all 
 his species.* 
 
 It is, however, uniformly by habit, 
 that man admires, that he fears a be- 
 ing, whose name he has attended to 
 from his earliest infancy. As soon as 
 he hears it uttered, he, without reflec- 
 tion, mechanically associates it with 
 those ideas with which his imagination 
 has been filled by the recitals of others ; 
 with those sensations which he has 
 been instructed to accompany it. Thus, 
 if for a season man would be ingenu- 
 ous with himself, he would concede 
 that the idea of a God, and of those 
 attributes with which he is clothed, 
 have their foundation, take their rise 
 in, and are the fruit of the opinions of 
 his fathers, traditionally infused into 
 him by education confirmed by habit 
 corroborated by example enforced 
 by authority. That it very rarely hap- 
 pens he examines these ideas ; that 
 they are for the most part adopted by 
 inexperience, propagated by tuition, 
 rendered sacred by time, inviolable 
 from respect to his progenitors, rever- 
 enced as forming a part of those insti- 
 tutions he has most learned to value. 
 He thinks he has always had them, 
 because he has" had them from his in- 
 fancy; he considers them indubitable, 
 because he is never permitted to ques- 
 tion them because he never has the 
 intrepidity to examine their basis. 
 
 If it had been the destiny of a Brah- 
 min, or a Mussulman, to have drawn 
 his first breath on the shores of Africa, 
 he would adore, with as much simpli- 
 city, with as much fervour, the serpent 
 reverenced by the negroes, as he does 
 
 * lambicus, who was a Pythagorean phi- 
 losopher not in the highest repute with the 
 learned world, although one of those vision- 
 ary priests in some estimation with theolo- 
 gians, (at least, if we may venture to judge by 
 the unlimited draughts they have made on 
 the hank of his doctrines) who was unques- 
 tionably a favourite with the emperor Julian, 
 says, that "anteriorly to all use of reason, 
 the notion of "the Gods is inspired by nature, 
 and that we have even a sort of feeling of 
 the Divinity, preferable to the knowledge of 
 him."
 
 210 
 
 EXAMINATION OP THE PROOFS 
 
 the God his own metaphysicians have 
 offered to his reverence. He would be 
 equally indignant if any one should 
 presumptuously dispute the divinity of 
 this reptile, which he would have learn- 
 ed to venerate from the moment he 
 quitted the womb of his mother, as the 
 most zealous, enthusiastic fakir, when 
 the marTellous wonders of his prophet 
 should be brought into question ; or as 
 the most subtile theologian when the 
 inquiry turned upon the incongruous 
 qualities with which he has decorated 
 his Gods. Nevertheless, if this ser- 
 pent God of the negro should be con- 
 tested, they could not at least dispute 
 his existence. Simple as may be the 
 mind of this dark son of nature, un- 
 common as may be the qualities with 
 which he has clothed his reptile, he 
 still may be evidenced by all who 
 choose to exercise their organs of sight. 
 It is by no means the same with the 
 immaterial, incorporeal, contradictory 
 God, or with the deified man, which 
 our modern thinkers have so subtilly 
 composed. By dint of dreaming, of 
 reasoning, and of subtilizing, they have 
 rendered his existence impossible to 
 whoever shall dare to examine it coolly. 
 We shall never be able to figure to our- 
 selves a being, who is only composed 
 of abstractions and of negative quali- 
 ties ; that is to say, who has no one of 
 those qualities, which the human mind 
 is susceptible of judging. Our theo- 
 logians do not know that which they 
 adore ; they have not one real idea of 
 the being with which they unceasingly 
 occupy themselves ; this being would 
 have been long since annihilated, if 
 those to whom they announced him 
 had dared to examine into his exist- 
 ence. 
 
 Indeed, at the very first step we find 
 ourselves arrested ; even the existence 
 of this most important and most rever- 
 ed being, is yet a problem for whoever 
 shall coolly weigh the proofs which 
 theology gives of it ; and although, be- 
 fore reasoning or disputing upon the na- 
 ture and the qualities of a being, it was 
 necessary to verify his existence, that 
 of the Divinity is very far from being 
 demonstrable to any man who shall 
 be willing to consult good sense. 
 What do I say? The theologians 
 themselves have scarcely ever been in 
 unison upon the proofs of which they 
 
 have availed themselves to establish 
 the divine existence. Since the hu- 
 man mind has occupied itself with its 
 God (and when has it not been occu- 
 pied with it?) it has not hitherto ar- 
 rived at demonstrating the existence 
 of this interesting object, in a manner 
 satisfactory to those themselves who 
 are anxious that we should be con- 
 vinced of it. From age to age, new 
 champions of the Divinity, profound 
 philosophers, and subtile theologians, 
 have sought new proofs of the exist- 
 ence of God, because they were, with- 
 out doubt, but little satisfied with 
 those of their predecessors. Those 
 thinkers who nattered themselves with 
 having demonstrated this great prob- 
 lem, were frequently accused of ATHE- 
 ISM, and of having betrayed the cause 
 of God, by the weakness of those ar- 
 guments with which they had support- 
 ed it.* Men of very greatgenius, have in- 
 deed successively miscarried in their de- 
 monstrations, or in the solutions which 
 they have given of it ; in believing they 
 had surmounted a difficulty, they have 
 continually given birth to a hundred 
 others. It is to no purpose that the great- 
 est metaphysicians have exhausted all 
 their efforts to prove that God existed, 
 to reconcile his incompatible attributes, 
 or to reply to the most simple objec- 
 tions ; they have not yet been able to 
 succeed. The difficulties which are 
 opposed to them, are sufficiently clear 
 to be understood by an infant ; whilst, 
 in the most learned nations, they will 
 be troubled to find twelve men capable 
 of understanding the demonstrations, 
 the solutions, and the replies of a Des- 
 cartes, of a lieibqftz, and of a Clarke, 
 when they endeavour to prove to us 
 the existence of the Divinity. Do not let 
 us be at all astonished; men never un- 
 derstand themselves when they speak 
 to us of God r how then should they be 
 
 * Descartes, Paschal, and Dr, Clarke him- 
 self, have been accused of ATHEISM by the 
 theologians of their time ;. this has not pre- 
 vented subsequent theologians from making, 
 use of their proofs, and giving them as ex- 
 tremely valid. See further on, the tenth 
 chapter. Not long since, a celebrated author, 
 under the name of Doctor BOWMAN, publish- 
 ed a work, in which he pretends, that all the 
 proofs of the existence of God hitherto offered, 
 are crazy and futile : he substitutes his owrt 
 in their place, full as little convincing aa the 
 others.
 
 OF THE EXISTENCE OF QOD. 
 
 211 
 
 able to understand each other, or agree 
 amongst themselves, when they reason 
 upon the nature and the qualities of a 
 being, created by various imaginations, 
 which each man is obliged to see di- 
 versely, and upon the account of whom 
 men will always be in an equal state of 
 ignorance, for want of having a com- 
 mon standard upon which to form their 
 judgments of him. 
 
 To convince ourselves of the little 
 solidity of those proofs which they 
 give us of the existence of the theolo- 
 gical God, and of the inutility of those 
 efforts which they have made to recon- 
 cile his discordant attributes, let us 
 hear what the celebrated Doctor Sam- 
 uel Clarke has said, who, in his trea- 
 tise concerning the being and attri- 
 butes of God, is supposed to have spo- 
 ken in the most convincing manner.* 
 
 * Although many people look upon the 
 work of Doctor Clarke, as the mast solid and 
 the most convincing, it is well to observe, that 
 many theologians of his time, and of his 
 country, have by no means judged of it in the 
 same manner, and have looked upon his 
 proofs as insufficient, and his method as dan- 
 gerous to his cause. Indeed, Doctor Clarke 
 Has pretended to prove the existence of God 
 a priori, this is what others deem impossible, 
 and look upon it, with reason, as begging the 
 question. This manner of proving it has been 
 rejected by the school-men, such as Albert 
 the Great, Thomas <f Aouinus, John Scot, and 
 by the greater part of the moderns, with the 
 exception of Suarez. They have pretended 
 that the existence of God was impossible to 
 be demonstrated a priori, seeing that there is 
 nothing anterior to the first of causes ; but 
 that this existence could only be proved a 
 posteriori ; that is to say, by its effects. In 
 consequence, the work of Doctor Clarke was 
 attacked rudely by a great number of theolo- 
 gians, who accused him of innovation, and 
 of deserting their cause, by employing a 
 method unusual, rejected, and but little suit- 
 able to prove any thing. Those who may 
 wish to know the reasons which have been 
 used against the demonstrations of Clarke, 
 will find them in an English work, entitled, 
 An Inquiry into the ideas of Space, Time, 
 Immensity, tf-e. by Edmund Law, printed at 
 Cambridge, 1734. If the author proves in it 
 with success, that the demonstrations a pri- 
 ori, of Doctor Clarke, are false, it will be easy 
 to convince ourselves by every thing which is 
 said in our work, that all the demonstrations 
 a posteriori, are not better founded. For the 
 rest, the great esteem in which they hold the 
 book of Clarke at the present day, proves that 
 the theologians are not in accord amongst 
 themselves, frequently changing their opin- 
 ions, and are not difficult upon the demon- 
 strations which they give of the existence of 
 a being which hitherto is by no means demon- 
 
 Those who have followed him, indeed, 
 have done no more than repeat his 
 ideas, or present his proofs under new 
 forms. After the examination which 
 we are going to make, we dare say it 
 will be found that his proofs are but lit- 
 tle conclusive, that his principles are 
 unfounded, and that his pretended so- 
 lutions are not suitable to resolve any 
 thing. In short, in the God of Doctor 
 Clarke, as well as in that of the great- 
 est theologians, they will only see a 
 chimera established upon gratuitous 
 suppositions, and formed by the confu- 
 sed assemblage of extravagant quali- 
 ties, which render his existence totally 
 impossible ; in a word, in this God 
 will only be found a vain phantom, 
 substituted to the energy of nature, 
 which has always been obstinately 
 mistaken. We are going to follow, 
 step by step, different propositions in 
 which this learned theologian deve- 
 lops the received opinions upon the 
 Divinity. Dr. Clarke sets out with 
 saying : 
 
 1st. " Something existed from all 
 eternity." 
 
 This proposition is evident has 
 no occasion for proofs. Matter has 
 existed from all eternity, its forms 
 alone are evanescent ; matter is the 
 great engine used by nature to produce 
 all her phenomena, or -rather it is na- 
 ture herself. We have some idea of 
 matter, sufficient to warrant the con- 
 clusion that this has always existed. 
 First, that. which exists, supposes ex- 
 istence essential to its being. That 
 which cannot annihilate itself, exists 
 necessarily ; it is impossible to con- 
 ceive that that which cannot cease to 
 exist, or that which cannot annihilate 
 itself, could ever have had a beginning. 
 If matter cannot be annihilated, it could 
 not commence to be. Thus we say to 
 Dr. Clarke, that it is matter, it is na- 
 ture, acting by her own peculiar en- 
 ergy, of which no particle is ever in an 
 absolute state of rest, which has al- 
 ways existed. The various material 
 bodies which this nature contains of- 
 ten change their form, their combina- 
 tion, their properties, their mode of ac- 
 tion ; but their principles or elements 
 
 strated. However, it is certain that the work 
 of Clarke, in despite of the contradictions 
 which he has experienced, enjoys the greatest 
 reputation.
 
 212 
 
 EXAMINATION OF THE PROOFS 
 
 are indestructible have never been 
 able to commence. What the doctor ac- 
 tually understands, when he makes the 
 assertion, that " an eternal duration is 
 now actually past," is not quite so 
 clear; yet he affirms, that ' : not to be- 
 lieve it would be a real and express 
 contradiction." 
 
 2d. " There has existed from eter- 
 nity some one " unchangeable and in- 
 dependent being." 
 
 We may fairly inquire what is this 
 being? Is it independent of its own 
 peculiar essence, or of those properties 
 which constitute it such as it is? We 
 shall further inquire, if this being, 
 whatever it may be, can make the other 
 beings which it produces, or which it 
 moves, act otherwise than they do, ac- 
 cording to the properties which it has 
 given them? And in this case we shall 
 ask, if this being, such as it may be 
 supposed to be, does not act necessari- 
 ly ; if it is not obliged to employ indis- 
 pensable means to fulfil its designs, to 
 arrive at the end which it either has, or 
 may be supposed to have in view ? 
 Then we shall say, that nature is 
 obliged to act after her essence ; that 
 every thing which takes place in her 
 is necessary ; and that if they suppose 
 it governed by a Deity, this God cannot 
 act otherwise than he does, and conse- 
 quently is himself subjected to necessity. 
 
 A man is said to be independent, 
 when he is determined in his actions 
 only by the general causes which are 
 accustomed to move him ; he is equally 
 said to be dependant on another, when 
 he cannot act but in consequence of 
 the determination which this last gives 
 him. A body is dependant on another 
 body when it owes to it its existence, 
 and its mode of action. A being ex- 
 isting from eternity cannot owe his 
 existence to any other being ; he can- 
 not then be dependant upon him, ex- 
 cept he owes his action to him ; but it is 
 evident that an eternal or self-existent 
 being contains in his own nature every 
 thing that is necessary for him to act : 
 then, matter being eternal, is necessa- 
 rily independent in the sense we have 
 explained ; of course, it has no occa- 
 sion for a mover upon which it ought 
 to depend. 
 
 This eternal being is also immu- 
 table, if by this attribute be understood 
 that he cannot change his nature ; but 
 
 if it be intended to infer by it that he 
 cannot change his mode of action or 
 existence, it is without doubt deceiving 
 themselves, since even in supposing an 
 immaterial being, they would be obli- 
 ged to acknowledge in him different 
 modes of being, different volitions, dif- 
 ferent ways of acting ; particularly if 
 he was not supposed totally deprived 
 of action, in which case he would be 
 perfectly useless. Indeed, it follows of 
 course that to change his mode of ac- 
 tion he must necessarily change his 
 manner of being. From hence it will 
 be obvious, that the theologians, in 
 making their God immutable, render 
 him immoveable ; consequently he can- 
 not act. An immutable being, could 
 evidently neither have successive voli- 
 tion, nor produce successive action ; if 
 this being has created matter, or given 
 birth to the universe, there must have 
 been a time in which he was willing 
 that this matter, this universe, should 
 exist ; and this time must have been 
 preceded by another time, in which he 
 was willing that it might not yet exist. 
 If Ood be the author of all things, as 
 well as of the motion and of the com- 
 binations of matter, he is unceasingly 
 occupied in producing and destroying; 
 in consequence, he cannot be called im- 
 mutable, touching his mode of existing. 
 The material world always maintains 
 itself by motion, and the continual 
 change of its parts; the sum of the beings 
 who compose it, or of the elements 
 which act in it, is invariably the same ; 
 in this sense the immutability of the 
 universe is much more easy of com- 
 prehension, much more demonstrable 
 than that of any other being to whom 
 they would attribute all the effects, all 
 the mutations which take place. Na- 
 ture is not more to be accused of mu- 
 tability, on account of the succession 
 of its forms, than the eternal being is 
 by the theologians, by the diversity of 
 his decrees.* 
 
 * Here we shall be able to perceive that, 
 supposing the laws by which nature acts to 
 be immutable, it does not require any of these 
 logical distinctions to account for the changes 
 that take place : the mutation which results, 
 is, on the contrary, a striking proof of the im- 
 mutability of the system which produces 
 them ; and completely brings nature under 
 the range of this second proposition as stated 
 by Dr. Clarke.
 
 OF THE EXISTENCE OP GOD. 
 
 213 
 
 3d. " That unchangeable and in- 
 dependent being, which has existed 
 from eternity without any eternal 
 cause of its existence, must be self- 
 existent, that is, necessarily existing." 
 
 This proposition is merely a repeti- 
 tion of the first ; we reply to it by in- 
 quiring, Why matter, which is inde- 
 structible, should not be self-existent ? 
 It is evident that a being who had no 
 beginning, must be self-existent ; if he 
 had existed by another, he would have 
 commenced to be; consequently he 
 would not be eternal. Those who make 
 matter coeternal with God, do no 
 more than multiply beings without ne- 
 cessity. 
 
 4th. " What the substance or essence 
 of that being which is self-existent, 
 or necessarily existing, is, we h'ave 
 no idea ; neither is it at all possible 
 for us to comprehend it." 
 
 Dr. Clarke would have spoken more 
 correctly if he had said his essence is 
 impossible. Nevertheless, we shall 
 readily concede that the essence of mat- 
 ter is incomprehensible, or at least, that 
 we conceive it very feebly by the man- 
 ner in which we are affected by it ; but 
 we must also concede that we are much 
 less able to conceive the Divinity, who 
 is impervious on any side. Thus it 
 must necessarily be concluded, that it 
 is folly to argue upon it, since it is by 
 matter alone we could have any know- 
 ledge of him ; that is to say, by which 
 we could assure ourselves of his exist- 
 ence by which we could at all guess 
 at his qualities. In short, we must con- 
 clude, that every thing related of the 
 Divinity, either proves him material, or 
 else proves the impossibility in which 
 the human mind will always find itself, 
 of conceiving any being different from 
 matter ; without extent, yet omnipre- 
 sent ; immaterial, yet acting upon mat- 
 ter ; spiritual, yet producing matter ; 
 immutable, yet putting every thing in 
 activity, &c. 
 
 Indeed it must be allowed that the 
 incomprehensibility of the Divinity 
 does not distinguish him from matter ; 
 this will not be more easy of compre- 
 hension when we shall associate it with 
 a being much less comprehensible than 
 itself; and of this last we have some 
 slender knowledge through some of its 
 parts. We do not certainly know the 
 essence of any being, if by that word 
 
 we are to understand that which con- 
 stitutes its peculiar nature. We only 
 know matter by the sensations, the per- 
 ceptions, the ideas which it furnishes; 
 it is according to these that we judge 
 it to be either favourable or unfavour- 
 able, following the particular disposi- 
 tion of our organs. But when a being 
 does not act upon any part of our or- 
 ganic structure, it does not exist for us ; 
 we cannot, without exhibiting folly, 
 without betraying our ignorance, with- 
 out falling into obscurity, either speak 
 of its nature, or assign its qualities ; 
 our senses are the only channel by 
 which we could have formed the slight- 
 est idea of it. The incomprehensibili- 
 ty of the Divinity ought to convince 
 man that it is folly to seek after it ; 
 but this, however, would not suit with 
 those priests who are willing to reason 
 upon him continually, to show the 
 depth of their learning to persuade 
 the uninformed they understand that 
 which is incomprehensible to all men ; 
 by which they expect to be able to sub- 
 mit him to their own views. Never- 
 theless, if the Divinity be incompre- 
 hensible, we must conclude that a 
 priest, does not comprehend him better 
 than other men ; and the wisest or the 
 surest way is, not to be guided by the 
 imagination of a theologian. 
 
 5th. " Though the substance, or es- 
 sence of the self-existent being, is in 
 itself absolutely incomprehensible to 
 us, yet many of the essential attri- 
 butes of his nature are strictly de- 
 monstrable, as well as his existence. 
 Thus, in the first place, the self-ex- 
 istent being must of necessity be eter- 
 nal." 
 
 This proposition differs in nothing 
 from the first, except Dr. Clarke does 
 here understand that as the self-exist- 
 ent being had no beginning, he can 
 have no end. However this may be, 
 we must ever inquire, Why should not 
 this be matter ? We shall further ob- 
 serve, that matter not being capable of 
 annihilation, exists necessarily, conse- 
 quently will never cease to exist ; that 
 the human mind has no means of con- 
 ceiving how matter should originate 
 from that which is not itself matter : 
 is it not obvious, that matter is neces- 
 sary; that there is nothing, except its 
 powers, its arrangement, its combina- 
 tions, which are contingent or evanes-
 
 214 
 
 EXAMINATION OF THE PROOFS 
 
 cent? The general motion is neces- 
 sary, but the given motion is not so ; 
 only during the season that the parti- 
 cular combinations subsist, of which 
 this motion is the consequence, or the 
 effect : we may be competent to change 
 the direction, to either accelerate or re- 
 tard, to suspend or arrest, a particular 
 motion, but the general motion can 
 never possibly be annihilated. Man, 
 in dying, ceases to live ; that is to say, 
 he no longer either walks, thinks or 
 acts in the mode which is peculiar to 
 human organization: but the matter 
 which composed his body, the matter 
 which formed his mind, does not cease 
 to move on that account: it simply be- 
 comes susceptible of another species 
 of motion. 
 
 6th. " The self-existent being must 
 of necessity be infinite and omnipre- 
 sent." 
 
 The word infinite presents only a 
 negative idea which excludes all 
 bounds : it is evident that a being who 
 exists necessarily, who is independent, 
 cannot be limited by any thing which 
 is out of himself ; he must consequent- 
 ly be his own limits : in this sense we 
 may say he is infinite. 
 
 Touching what is said of his omni- 
 presence, it is equally evident that if 
 there be nothing exterior to this being, 
 either there is no place in which he 
 must not be present, or that there will 
 be only himself and the vacuum. This 
 granted, I shall inquire if matter ex- 
 ists ; if it does not at least occupy a 
 portion of space? In this case, mat- 
 ter, or the universe, must exclude every 
 other being who is not matter, from that 
 place which the material beings occu- 
 py in space. In asking whether the 
 God of the theologians be by chance 
 the abstract being which they call the 
 vacuum or space, they will reply, no ! 
 They will further insist, that their God, 
 who is not matter, penetrates that which 
 is matter. But it must be obvious, that 
 to penetrate matter, it is necessary to 
 have some correspondence with matter, 
 consequently to have extent; now to 
 have extent, is to have one of the pro- 
 perties of matter. If the Divinity pene- 
 trates matter, then he is material ; by a 
 necessary deduction he is inseparable 
 from matter ; then if he is omnipresent, 
 he will be in every thing. This the the- 
 ologian will not allow : he will say it 
 
 is a mystery ; by which I shall under- 
 stand that he is himself ignorant how 
 to account for the existence of his God; 
 this will not be the case with making 
 nature act after immutable laws ; she 
 will of necessity be every where, in my 
 body, in my arm, in every other material 
 being,because matter composes them all. 
 
 7th. " The self-existent being must 
 of necessity be but one." 
 
 If there be nothing exterior to a being 
 who exists necessarily, it must follow 
 that he is unique. It will be ebvious 
 that this proposition is the same with 
 the preceding one ; at least, if they are 
 not willing to deny the existence of 
 the material world or to say with Spi- 
 nosa, that there is not, and that we can- 
 not conceive any other substance than 
 God. Prater Deum neque dari ne- 
 que concipi potest substantia, says this 
 celebrated athiest, in his fourteenth 
 proposition. 
 
 8th. " The self-existent and origi- 
 nal cause of all things, must be an in- 
 telligent being." 
 
 Here Dr. Clarke most unquestion- 
 ably assigns a human quality: intel- 
 ligence is a faculty appertaining to or- 
 ganized or animated beings, of which 
 we have no knowledge out of these be- 
 ings. To have intelligence, it is neces- 
 sary to think; to think, it is requisite 
 to have ideas ; to have ideas, supposes 
 senses ; when senses exist they are ma- 
 terial ; when they are material, they 
 cannot be a pure spirit, in the language 
 of the theologian. 
 
 The necessary being who compre- 
 hends, who contains, who produces ani- 
 mated beings, contains, includes, and 
 produces intelligence. But has the 
 great whole a peculiar intelligence, 
 which moves it, which makes it act, 
 which determines it in the mode that 
 intelligence moves and determines ani- 
 mated bodies ; or rather, is not this in- 
 telligence the consequence of immu- 
 table laws, a certain modification re- 
 sulting from certain combinations of 
 matter, which exists under one form of 
 these combinations, but is wanting un- 
 der another form? This is assuredly 
 what nothing is competent to prove. 
 Man having placed himself in the first 
 rank in the universe, has been desi- 
 rous to judge of every thing after what 
 he saw within himself, because he has 
 pretended that in order to be perfect it
 
 OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 
 
 215 
 
 was necessary to be like himself. Here 
 is the source of all his erroneous rea- 
 soning upon nature and his Gods. He 
 has therefore concluded that it would 
 be injurious to the Divinity not to in- 
 vest him with a quality which is found 
 estimable in man which he prizes 
 highly to which he attaches the idea 
 of perfection which he considers as 
 a manifest proof of superiority. He 
 sees his fellow-creature is offended 
 when he is thought to lack intelligence ; 
 he therefore judges it to be the same 
 with the Divinity. He denies this 
 quality to nature, because he considers 
 her a mass of ignoble matter, incapable 
 of self-action, although she contains 
 and produces intelligent beings. But 
 this is rather a personification of an 
 abstract quality, than an attribute of 
 the Deity, with whose perfections, with 
 whose mode of existence, he cannot 
 by any possible means become acquaint- 
 ed according to the fifth proposition of 
 Dr.Clarke himself. It is in the earth that 
 is engendered those living animals call- 
 ed Avorms ; yet we do not say the earth 
 is a living creature. The bread which 
 man eats, the wine that he drinks, are 
 not themselves thinking substances ; 
 yet they nourish, sustain, and cause 
 those beings to think, who are suscep- 
 tible of this modification of their ex- 
 istence. It is likewise in nature, that 
 is formed intelligent, feeling, thinking 
 beings ; yet it cannot be rationally said, 
 that nature feels, thinks, and is intel- 
 ligent after the manner of these be- 
 ings, who nevertheless spring out of 
 her bosom. 
 
 How, they will say to us, refuse to 
 the Creator, these qualities which we 
 discover in his creatures ! The work 
 \vould then be more perfect than the 
 workman ! God who hath made the 
 eye, shall he not see ? God, who hath 
 formed the ear, shall he not hear 1 But 
 if we adopt this mode of reasoning,ought 
 we not to attribute to God all the other 
 qualities that we shall meet with in his 
 creatures ? Should we not say, with 
 equal foundation, that the God who has 
 made matter, is himself matter ; that 
 the God who has fashioned the body, 
 must possess a body; that the God 
 who has made so many irrational be- 
 ings, is irrational himself; that the God 
 who has created man who sins, is liable 
 himself to sin? If, because the works 
 
 of God possess certain qualities, and are 
 susceptible of certain modifications, we 
 conclude that God possesses them also, 
 we shall be obliged by parity of reason- 
 ing to conclude that God is material, 
 has extent, has gravity, is wicked, &c. 
 
 To attribute wisdom, or an infinite 
 intelligence to God, that is to say, to 
 the universal mover of nature, there 
 should be neither folly, nor evil, nor 
 wickedness, nor confusion on the earth. 
 They will perhaps tell us, that, even 
 according to our own principles, evil 
 and disorder are necessary ; but our 
 principles do not admit of, a wise and 
 intelligent God, who should have the 
 power of preventing them. If, in ad- 
 mitting such a God, evil is not less ne- 
 cessary, what end can this God, so wise, 
 so powerful, and so intelligent, be able 
 to serve, seeing that he is himself sub- 
 jected to necessity ? From thence he 
 is no longer independent, his power 
 vanishes, he is obliged to admit a free 
 course to the essence of things ; he can- 
 not prevent causes from producing their 
 effects; he cannot oppose himself to 
 evil ; he cannot render man more hap- 
 py than he is ; he cannot, consequently, 
 be good ; he is perfectly useless ; he is 
 no more than the unconcerned witness 
 of that which must necessarily happen ; 
 he cannot do otherwise than will every 
 thing which takes place in the world. 
 Nevertheless, they tell us, in the suc- 
 ceeding proposition, that 
 
 9th. " The self-existent and origi- 
 nal cause of all things, is not a neces- 
 sary agent, but a being endowed with 
 liberty and choice." 
 
 Man is called free, when he finds 
 within himself motives which deter- 
 mine him to action, or when his will 
 finds no obstacle to the performance of 
 that to which his motives have deter- 
 mined him. God, or the necessary be- 
 ing, of which question is here made, 
 does he not find obstacles to the execu- 
 tion of his projects'? Is he willing that 
 evil should be committed, or can he not 
 prevent it ? In this case, he is not free, 
 and the will meets with continual ob- 
 stacles ; or else, we must say, he con- 
 sents to the commission of sin ; that 
 he is willing we should offend him ; 
 that he suffers men to restrain his 
 liberty, and derange his projects. How 
 will the theologians draw themselves 
 out of this perplexing intricacy ?
 
 216 
 
 EXAMINATION OF THE PROOFS 
 
 On the other hand, the God whom 
 they suppose cannot act, but in conse- 
 quence of the Jaws of his peculiar ex- 
 istence, we should be enabled then to 
 calla&eittg- endowed with liberty, as far 
 as his actions should not be determined 
 by any thing which should be exterior 
 to himself, but this would visibly be an 
 abuse of terms : indeed, we cannot say, 
 that a beinff w ho is not capable of act- 
 ing otherwise than he does, and who 
 can never cease to act, but in virtue of 
 the laws of his peculiar existence, is a 
 being possessed of liberty there is 
 evidently necessity in all his actions. 
 Ask a theologian, if God has power to 
 reward crime, and punish virtue ? Ask 
 him again, if God can love him, or if 
 he is a free agent when the action of a 
 man necessarily produces in him a new 
 will? A man is a being exterior to 
 God, and nevertheless they pretend, 
 that the conduct of this man has an 
 influence on this being endowed with 
 liberty, and necessarily determines his 
 will. In short, we demand if God can 
 avoid to will that which he willeth, 
 and not do that which he doeth 1 Is 
 not his will necessitated by intelligence, 
 wisdom and views which they suppose 
 him to have ? If God be thus connect- 
 ed, he is no more a free agent than 
 man: if every thing which he does 
 be necessary, he is nothing more than 
 destiny, fatality, the/atom of the an- 
 cients, and the moderns have not chang- 
 ed the Divinity, although they have 
 changed his name. 
 
 They will, perhaps, tell us, that God 
 is free, insomuch that he is not bound 
 by the laws of nature, or by those 
 which he imposes on all beings. Never- 
 theless, if it be true that he has made 
 these laws, if they are the effect of hi 
 infinite wisdom, of his supreme intel- 
 ligence, he is by his essence obliged to 
 follow them, or else it must be acknow- 
 ledged that it would be possible for 
 God to act irrationally. Theologians 
 fearing, without doubt, to restrain the 
 liberty of God, have supposed that he 
 was not subjected to any laws, as we 
 have before proved ; in consequence, 
 they have made him a despotic, fantas- 
 tical, and strange being, whose power 
 gives him the right to violate all the laws 
 which he has himself established. By 
 the pretended miracles which they have 
 attributed to him, he derogates from the 
 
 laws of nature ; by the conduct which 
 they have supposed him to hold, he 
 acts very frequently in a mode contra- 
 ry to his divine wisdom, and to the rea- 
 son which he has given to men, to re- 
 gulate their judgments. If God is a 
 free agent in this sense, all religion is 
 useless ; it can only found itself upon 
 those immutable rules which this God 
 has prescribed to himself, and upon 
 those engagements which he has enter- 
 ed into with the human species ? As 
 soon as religion does not suppose him 
 bound by his covenants, it destroys it- 
 self, it commits suicide. 
 
 10th. " The self-existent being, the 
 supreme cause of all things, must of 
 necessity have infinite power." 
 
 There is no power but in him, this 
 power then has no limits ; but if it is 
 God who enjoys this power, man ought 
 not to have the power of doing evil ; 
 without which he would be in a state 
 to act contrary to the divine power ; 
 there would be exteriorly to God a 
 power capable of counterbalancing his, 
 or of preventing it from producing those 
 effects which he proposes to himself; 
 the Divinity would be obliged to suffer 
 that evil which he could prevent. 
 
 On the other hand, if man is free to 
 sin, God is not himself a free agent, 
 his conduct is necessarily determined 
 by the actions of man. An equitable 
 monarch is not a free agent when he 
 believes himself obliged to act confor- 
 mably to the laws which he has sworn 
 to observe, or which he cannot violate 
 without wounding his justice. A mon- 
 arch is not powerful when the least of 
 his subjects has the power of insulting 
 him, of openly resisting him, or secret- 
 ly making all his projects miscarry. 
 Nevertheless, all the religions of the 
 world, show us God under the charac- 
 ter of an absolute sovereign, of whom 
 nothing is capable to constrain the will, 
 nor limit the power; whilst on the 
 other hand, they assure us that his sub- 
 jects have at each instant the power 
 and the liberty to disobey him and an- 
 nihilate his designs : from whence it is 
 evident that all the religions of the 
 world destroy with one hand what they 
 establish with the other : so that, ac- 
 cording to the ideas with which they 
 furnish us, their God is neither free, 
 powerful, nor happy. 
 
 llth. " The supreme cause and
 
 OP THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 
 
 217 
 
 author of things, must of necessity be 
 infinitely wise" 
 
 Wisdom and folly are qualities 
 founded on our peculiar judgment ; 
 now in this world, which God is sup- 
 posed to have created, to preserve, to 
 move, and to penetrate, there happens 
 a thousand things, which appear to us 
 as follies, and even the creatures for 
 whom we imagine the universe to have 
 been made, are frequently much more 
 foolish and irrational than prudent and 
 wise. The author of every thing which 
 exists, must be equally the author of 
 that which we call irrational, and of 
 that which we judge to be extremely 
 wise. On the other hand, to judge of 
 the intelligence and the wisdom of a 
 being, it were necessary, at least, to 
 foresee the end which he proposes to 
 himself. What is the aim of God ? It 
 is, they tell us, his own peculiar glory ; 
 but does this God attain this end, and 
 do not sinners refuse to glorify him ? 
 Besides, suppose God is sensible to 
 glory, is not this supposing him to have 
 our follies and our weaknesses? Is 
 not this saying he is haughty ? If they 
 tell us that the aim of the divine wis- 
 dom is to render men happy, I shall al- 
 ways ask, wherefore these men, in de- 
 spite of his views, so frequently ren- 
 der themselves miserable ? If they tell 
 me, the views of God are impene- 
 trable to us, I shall reply, in the first 
 place, that in this case it is at random 
 that they tell me the Divinity proposes 
 to himself the happiness of his crea- 
 tures, an object, which, in fact, is never 
 attained ; I shall, in the second place, 
 reply, that, ignorant of his real aim, it 
 is impossible for us to judge of his wis- 
 dom, and that to be willing to reason 
 upon it shows madness. 
 
 12th. " The supreme cause and au- 
 thor of all things, must of necessity 
 be a being of infinite goodness, justice, 
 and truth, and all other moral perfec- 
 tions ; such as become the supreme 
 governor and judge of the world." 
 
 The idea of perfection is an abstract, 
 metaphysical, negative idea, which has 
 no archetype, or model, exterior to our- 
 selves. A perfect being would be a be- 
 ing similar to ourselves, whom, by 
 thought, we should divest of all those 
 qualities which we find prejudicial to 
 us, and which, for that reason, we call 
 imperfections ; it is always relatively 
 
 No. VII. 28 
 
 to ourselves, and to our mode of feel- 
 ing and of thinking, and not in itself, 
 that a th'ing is perfect or imperfect ; it is 
 according to this, that a thing is more or 
 less useful or prejudicial, agreeable or 
 disagreeable. In this sense, how can we 
 attribute perfection to the self-existent 
 being 1 Is God perfectly good rela- 
 tively to men 1 But men are frequent- 
 ly wounded by his works, and are 
 obliged to complain of the evils, which 
 they suffer in this world. Is God per- 
 fect, relative to his works ? But do we 
 not frequently see the most complete 
 disorder, range itself on the side of 
 order? These works of the Divinity 
 so perfect, are they not changed, are 
 they not destroyed unceasingly ; do 
 they not oblige us to experience, in de- 
 spite of ourselves, those sorrows and 
 troubles which balance the pleasures 
 and the benefits which we receive from 
 nature? Do not all the religions of 
 the world suppose a God continually 
 occupied in remaking, repairing, undo- 
 ing, and rectifying his marvellous 
 works? They will not fail telling us, 
 that God cannot possibly communicate 
 to his works that perfection, which he 
 himself possesses. In this case, we 
 shall say, that the imperfections of this 
 world, being necessary for God him- 
 self, he never will be able to remedy 
 them, even in another world ; and we 
 shall conclude, that this God, cannot 
 be to us of any utility whatever. 
 
 The metaphysical or theological at- 
 tributes of the Divinity, make him an 
 abstract and inconceivable being as 
 soon as they distinguish him from na- 
 ture and from all the beings which she 
 contains : the moral qualities make him 
 a being of the human species although 
 by negative attributes it is endeavour- 
 ed to remove him to a distance from 
 man. The theological God is an in- 
 sulated being, who in truth cannot have 
 any relation with any of the beings of 
 which we have a knowledge. The 
 moral God is never more than a man 
 who is believed to be rendered perfect, 
 in removing from him by thought, the 
 imperfections of human nature. The 
 moral qualities of men are founded 
 upon the relations between them, and 
 upon their mutual wants. The theo- 
 logical God cannot certainly have mo- 
 ral qualities, or human perfactions ; he 
 has no occasion for men, he has no re-
 
 218 
 
 EXAMINATION OF THE PROOFS 
 
 lation with them, seeing that no rela- 
 tions can exist which are not recipro- 
 cal. A pure spirit cannot assuredly 
 have relations with material beings, at 
 least in parts ; an infinite being cannot 
 be susceptible of any relation with in- 
 finite beings ; an eternal being cannot 
 have relations with perishable and 
 transitory beings. The one being who 
 has neither species nor cause, who has 
 no fellow creatures, who does not live 
 in society, who has nothing in com- 
 mon with his creatures, if he really 
 existed, could not possess any of those 
 qualities, which we call perfections ; 
 he would be of an order so. different 
 from man, that we should not be able 
 to assign him either vices or virtaes. 
 It is unceasingly repeated to us, that 
 God owes us nothing ; that no beingis 
 comparable to him ; that our limited 
 understand ing cannot conceive his per- 
 fections ; that the human mind is not 
 formed to comprehend his essence : but 
 do they no*, even by this, destroy our 
 relation with this being, so dissimilar, 
 so disproportionate, so incomprehensi- 
 ble to us ? All relation supposes a 
 certain analogy ; all duties suppose a 
 resemblance, and reciprocal wants, to 
 render to any one the obligations we 
 owe him, it is necessary to have a 
 knowledge of him. 
 
 They will, without doubt, tell us, that 
 God has made himself known by re- 
 velation. But does not this revelation 
 suppose the existence of the God we dis- 
 pute 1 Does not this revelation itself 
 destroy the moral perfections, which 
 they attribute to him ? Does not all 
 revelation suppose in men, ignorance, 
 imperfection, and perversity, which a 
 beneficent, wise, omnipotent, and pro- 
 vident God, ought to have prevented ? 
 Does not all particular revelation sup- 
 pose in this God a preference, a predi- 
 lection, and an unjust partiality for 
 some of his creatures ; dispositions that 
 visibly contradict his infinite goodness 
 and justice ? Does not this revelation 
 announce in him aversion, hatred, or at 
 least indifference for the greater num- 
 ber of the inhabitants of the earth, or 
 even a fixed design of blinding them, 
 in order that they may lose themselves ? 
 In short, in all the known revelations, 
 is not the Divinity, instead of being re- 
 presented as wise, equitable, and filled 
 with tenderness for man, continually 
 
 depicted to us as a fantastical, iniqui- 
 tous, and a cruel being ; as one who is 
 willing to seduce his children ; as one 
 who is laying snares for them, or mak- 
 ing tfiem lay snares for themselves : 
 and as one who punishes them for hav- 
 ing fallen into them? The truth is, 
 the God of Doctor Clarke, and of the 
 Christians, cannot be looked upon as 
 a perfect being, at least, if in theology 
 they do not call those qualities perfec- 
 tions, which reason and good sense 
 call striking imperfections or odious dis- 
 positions. Nay more, there are not in 
 the human race individuals so wicked, 
 so vindictive, so unjust, so cruel, as' the 
 tyrant on whom the Christians prodi- 
 gally lavish their servile homage^' and 
 on whom their theologians heap those 
 perfections which the conduct they as- 
 cribe to him contradicts every moment. 
 The more we consider the theologi- 
 cal God, the more impossible and con- 
 tradictory will he appear ; theology 
 seems only to have formed him, imme- 
 diately to destroy him. What is this, 
 in fact, but a being of whom they can 
 affirm nothing that is not instantly con- 
 tradicted? What is this but a good 
 God who is unceasingly irritating him- 
 self; an omnipotent God who never 
 arrives at the end of his designs ; a 
 God infinitely happy, whose felicity is 
 perpetually disturbed : a God who loves 
 order, and who never maintains it ; a 
 just God who permjts his most innocent 
 subjects to be exposed to continual in- 
 justice ? What is this but a pure spirit 
 who creates and who moves matter ? 
 What is this but an immutable being 
 who is the cause of the motion and 
 those changes which are each moment 
 operating in nature ? What is this but 
 an infinite being who is, however, co- 
 existent with the universe ? What is 
 this but an omniscient being who be- 
 lieves himself obliged to make trial of 
 his creatures? What is this but an 
 omnipotent being who never can com- 
 municate to his works that perfection 
 which he would find in them ? What 
 is this but a being clothed with every 
 divine quality, and of whom the con- 
 duct is always human? What is this but 
 a being who is able to do every thing. 
 and who succeeds in nothing, who 
 never acts in a manner worthy of him- 
 self? Like man, he is wicked, unjust, 
 cruel, jealous, irascible, and vindictive ;
 
 OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 
 
 219 
 
 like man, he miscarries in all his pro- 
 jects ; and this with all the attributes 
 capable of guarantying him from the 
 defects of our species. If we would 
 but be ingenuous, we should confess, 
 that this being is nothing; and we shall 
 find the phantom imagined to explain 
 nature, is perpetually in contradiction 
 with this very nature, and that instead 
 of explaining any thing, it only serves 
 to throw every thing into perplexity 
 and confusion. 
 
 According to Clarke himself, " no- 
 thing is that of which every thing can 
 truly be denied, and nothing can tru- 
 ly be affirmed. So that the idea of no- 
 thing, if I may so speak, is absolute- 
 ly the negation of all ideas. The 
 idea, therefore, either of a Jlnite or 
 infinite nothing is a contradiction in 
 terms." Let them apply this principle 
 to what our author has said of the Di- 
 vinity, and they will find that he is by 
 his own confession, an infinite nothing, 
 since the idea of this Divinity istheaft- 
 solute negation of all ideas which 
 men are capable of forming to them- 
 selves. Spirituality is indeed a mere 
 negation of corporeity ; to say God is 
 spiritual, is it not affirming to us that 
 they do not know what he is ? They 
 tell us there are substances which we 
 can neither see nor touch, but which do 
 not exist the less on that account. 
 Very well, but then we can neither rea- 
 son upon them nor assign them quali- 
 ties. Can we have a better conception 
 of infinity which is a mere negation of 
 those limits which we find in all be- 
 ings 1 Can the human mind compre- 
 hend what is infinite, and in order to 
 form to itself a kind of a confused 
 idea is it not obliged to join limited 
 quantities to other quantities which 
 again it only conceives as limited ? 
 Omnipotence, eternity, omniscience, 
 and perfection, are they any thing else 
 but abstractions or mere negations of 
 the limitation of power, of duration, 
 and of science ? If it is pretended that 
 God is nothing of which man can have 
 a knowledge, can see, can feel ; if no- 
 thing can be said positively, it is at 
 least permitted us to doubt his exis- 
 tence ; if it is pretended that God is 
 what our theologians describe him, we 
 cannot help denying the existence or 
 the possibility of a being who is made 
 the subject of those qualities which the 
 
 human mind will never be able to con- 
 ceive or reconcile. 
 
 According to Clarke, "the self-exist- 
 ent being must be a most simple, un- 
 changeable, incorruptiblebeing; witli- 
 out parts, figure, motion, divisibility, 
 or any other such properties as we 
 find in matter. For all these things 
 do plainly and necessarily imply 
 finiteness in their very notion, and are 
 utterly inconsistent with complete in- 
 jinity." Indeed ! and is it possible to 
 form any true notion of such a being ? 
 The theologians themselves agree, that 
 men cannot have a complete notion of 
 God ; but that which they have here 
 presented us, is not only incomplete, 
 but it also destroys in God all those 
 qualities upon which our mind is capa- 
 ble of fixing any judgment. Doctor 
 Clarke is obliged to avow, that, " as to 
 the particular manner of his being 
 infinite, or everywhere present, in 
 opposition to the manner of created 
 things being present in such or such 
 infinite places ; this is as impossible 
 for our finite understandings to com- 
 prehend or explain, as it is for us to 
 form an adequate idea of infinity" 
 But what is this but a being which no 
 man can either explain or comprehend 1 
 It is a chimera, which, if it existed, 
 could not possibly interest man. 
 
 Plato, the great creator of chimeras, 
 says that " those who admit nothing 
 but what they can s?,e and feel, are 
 stupid and ignorant beings, who re- 
 fuse to admit the reality of the exist- 
 ence of invisible things." Our theo- 
 logians hold the same language to us : 
 our European religions, have visibly 
 been infected with the reveries of the 
 Platonists, which evidently are no more 
 than the result of obscure notions, and 
 of the unintelligible metaphysics of 
 the Egyptian Chaldean, and Assyrian 
 priests, among whom Plato drew up his 
 pretended philosophy. Indeed, if philo- 
 sophy consists in the knowledge of na- 
 ture, we shall be obliged to agree, that 
 the Platonic doctrines in nowise merit 
 this name, seeing that he has only 
 drawn the human mind from the con- 
 templation of visible nature, to throw 
 it into an intellectual world, where it 
 finds nothing but chimeras. Neverthe- 
 less, it is this fantastical philosophy, 
 which regulates all our opinions at pre- 
 sent. Our theologians, still guided by
 
 220 
 
 EXAMINATION OF THE PROOFS 
 
 the enthusiasm of Plato, discourse with 
 their followers only of spirits ; intel- 
 ligent, incorporeal substances ; invis- 
 ible powers; angels ; demons of mys- 
 terious virtues ; supernatural effects ; 
 divine inspiration ; innate ideas, &c., 
 &c.* To believe in them, our senses 
 are entirely useless ; experience is good 
 for nothing, imagination, enthusiasm, 
 fanaticism, and the workings of fear, 
 which our religions prejudices give 
 birth to in us, are celestial inspira- 
 tions, divine warnings, natural senti- 
 ments, which we ought to prefer to 
 reason, to judgment, and to good sense. 
 After having imbued us from our in- 
 fancy with these maxims, so proper to 
 hoodwink us, and to lead us astray, it 
 is very easy for them to make us admit 
 the greatest absurdities under the im- 
 posing name of mysteries, and to pre- 
 vent us from examining that which 
 they tell us to believe. Be this as it 
 may, we shall reply to Plato, and to 
 all those doctors, who, like him, im- 
 pose upon us the necessity of believing 
 that which we cannot comprehend, 
 that to believe a thing exists, it is at 
 least necessary to have some idea of 
 it ; that this idea can only come to us 
 by the medium of our senses; that 
 every thing which our senses do not 
 give us a knowledge of, is nothing to 
 us ; that if there is an absurdity in de- 
 nying the existence of that which we 
 
 * Whoever will take the trouble to read the 
 works of Plato and his disciples, such as 
 Proclus, Jamblicus, Plotinus, &c. will find in 
 them almost all the doctrines and metaphy- 
 sical subtilties of the Christian Theology. 
 Moreover, they will find the origin of the 
 tymbols, the rites, the sacraments, in short, of 
 the tlieurgy, employed in Christian worship, 
 who, as well in their religious ceremonies as 
 in their doctrines, have done no more than 
 follow, more or less faithfully, the road which 
 had been traced out for them by the priests 
 of paganism. Religious follies are not so va- 
 rious as they are imagined. 
 
 With respect to the ancientphilosophy, with 
 the exception of that of Democritus and Epi- 
 curus, it was, for the most part, a true Theo- 
 sophy, imagined by the Egyptian and Assyrian 
 priests : Pythagoras and Plato have been no 
 more than theologians, filled with enthusiasm, 
 and perhaps with knavery. At least, we find 
 in them a sacerdotal and mysterious mind, 
 which will always indicate, that they seek to 
 deceive, or that they are not willing men should 
 be enlightened. It is in nature, and not in theo- 
 logy, that we must draw up an intelligible and 
 true philosophy. 
 
 do not know, there is extravagance in 
 assigning to it unknown qualities, and 
 that there is stupidity in trembling be- 
 fore true phantoms, or in respecting vain 
 idols, clothed with incompatible quali- 
 ties, which our imaginations have com- 
 bined, without ever being able to con- 
 sult experience and reason. 
 
 This will serve as a reply to Doctor 
 Clarke, who says : " How weak then, 
 and foolish is it to raise objections 
 against the being- of God from the in- 
 comprehensibleness of his essence ! 
 and to represent it as a strange and in- 
 credible thing, that there should exist 
 any incorporeal substance, the es- 
 sence of which we are not able to 
 comprehend I" He had said, a little 
 higher : " There, is not so mean and 
 contemptible a plant "or animal that 
 does not confound the most enlarged 
 understanding upon earth : nay, even 
 the simplest and plainest of all in- 
 animate beings have their essence or 
 substance hidden from us in the deep- 
 est and most impenetrable obscurity. 
 How weak then, and foolish it is to 
 raise objections against the being of 
 God from the incomprehensibleness 
 of his essence /" 
 
 We shall reply to him, first, that the 
 idea of an immaterial substance or be- 
 ing, without extent, is only an absence 
 of ideas, a negation of extent, and that 
 when they tell us a being is not mat- 
 ter, they speak to us of that which is 
 not, and do not teach us that which 
 is; and that in saying a being cannot 
 act upon our senses, they teach* us that 
 we have no means of assuring oifr- 
 selves whether he exists or not. 
 
 Secondly, we shall confess, without 
 hesitation, that men of the greatest 
 genius, are not acquainted with the 
 essence of stones, plants, animals, nor 
 the secret springs which constitute 
 some and which make others vegetate 
 or act ; but that at least we see them, 
 that our senses at least have a know- 
 ledge of them in some respects ; that 
 we can perceive some of their effects, 
 according to which we judge them 
 well or ill ; whilst our senses cannot 
 compass, on any side, an immaterial 
 being, and, consequently, cannot fur- 
 nish us with any one idea of it ; such 
 a being is to us an occult quality, or 
 rather a being of the imagination : 
 if we are ignorant of the essence or of
 
 OP THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 
 
 221 
 
 the intimate combination of the most 
 material beings, we shall at least dis- 
 cover, with the help of experience, 
 some of their relations with ourselves : 
 we know their surface, their extent, 
 their form, their colour, their softness, 
 and their hardness, by the impressions 
 which they make on us: we are capa- 
 ble of distinguishing them, of compar- 
 ing them, of judging of them, of seeing 
 them, and of .flying from them, accord- 
 ing to the different modes in which we 
 are affected by them : we cannot have 
 the same knowledge of the immaterial 
 God, nor of those spirits, of whom 
 men, who cannot have more ideas of 
 them than other mortals, are unceas- 
 ingly talking to us. 
 
 Thirdly, we have a knowledge of 
 modifications in ourselves which we 
 call sentiments, thoughts, will, and 
 passions ; for want of being acquaint- 
 ed with our own peculiar essence, and 
 the energy of our particular organi- 
 zation, we attribute these effects to a 
 concealed cause, and one distinguished 
 from ourselves which we call a spiritual 
 being, because it appeared they acted 
 differently from our body : nevertheless, 
 reflection proves to us that material ef- 
 fects can only emanate from a material 
 cause. We only see even in the uni- 
 verse, physical and material effects, 
 which can only be produced by an an- 
 alogous cause, and which we shall at- 
 tribute, not to a spiritual cause of which 
 we are ignorant, but to nature itself, 
 which we may know in some respects 
 if we will deign to meditate with at- 
 tention. 
 
 If the incomprehensibility of God 
 is not a reason lor denying his exist- 
 ence, it is not one to establish that he is 
 immaterial, and we shall yet less com- 
 prehend him as spiritual than as ma- 
 terial, since materiality is a known 
 quality, and spirituality is an occult or 
 unknown quality, or rather a mode of 
 speaking of which we avail ourselves 
 only to throw a veil over our ignorance. 
 It would be bad reasoning in a man born 
 blind, if he denied the existence of 
 colours, although these colours can 
 have no relation with the senses in the 
 absence of sight, but merely with those 
 who have it in their power to see and 
 know them ; this blind man, however, 
 would appear perfectly ridiculous, if 
 he undertook to define "them. If there 
 
 were beings who had real ideas of 
 God and of a pure spirit, and our the- 
 ologians should thence undertake to 
 define them, they would be just as ri- 
 diculous as the blind man. 
 
 We are repeatedly told that our 
 senses only show us the external things, 
 that our limited senses are not able to 
 conceive a God ; we agree therein, but 
 these same senses do not even show 
 us the external of this Divinity that 
 our theologians would define to us, to 
 whom they ascribe attributes upon 
 Avhichthey unceasingly dispute, though 
 even to this time they are not come to 
 the proof of his existence. " I greatly 
 esteem," says Locke, " all those who 
 faithfully defend their opinion ; but 
 there are so few persons who after 
 the manner they do defend them, ap- 
 pear fully convinced of the opinionn 
 they profess, that I am tempted to 
 believe there are more sceptics in the 
 world than are generally imagined"* 
 
 Abbadie tells us, that ''the ques- 
 tion is, whether there be a God, and. 
 not what this God is." But how as- 
 sure ourselves of the existence of a 
 being concerning which we shall never 
 be able to have a knowledge 1 If they 
 do not tell us what this being is, how 
 shall we feel ourselves capacitated to 
 judge whether or not his existence be 
 possible? We have seen the ruinous 
 foundation upon which men have hith- 
 erto erected the phantom created by 
 their imagination ; we have examined 
 the proofs of which they avail them- 
 selves to establish his existence; we 
 have pointed out the numberless con- 
 tradictions which result from those 
 irreconcilable qualities with which they 
 pretend to decorate htm. What con- 
 clusion must we draw from all this, 
 except that he does not exist ? It is 
 true, they assure us, there are no con- 
 tradictions between the divine attri- 
 butes, but there is a disproportion be- 
 tween our understanding and the 
 nature of the Supreme being: This 
 granted, what standard is it necessary 
 man should possess to enable him to 
 judge of his God ? Are not they men, 
 who have imagined this being, and 
 who have clothed him with attributes 
 ascribed him by themselves? 'If it 
 
 * See his Familiar Letter*. HOBBKS says, 
 that if men found their interest in it, they 
 would doubt the truth of Euclid ' Element*.
 
 222 
 
 EXAMINATION OF THE PROOFS 
 
 needs an infinite mind to comprehend 
 the Divinity, can the theologians boast 
 of being themselves in a capacity to 
 conceive him? To what purpose then 
 do they speak of him to others ? Man 
 who will never be an infinite being, 
 will he be more capable of conceiving 
 his God in a future world ? than he is 
 in the one which he at this day inha- 
 bits? If hitherto we have no know- 
 ledge of God, we can never natter our- 
 selves with obtaining it hereafter, see- 
 ing that we shall never be Gods. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is pretended that it 
 is necessary to know this God ; but 
 how prove the necessity of having a 
 knowledge of that which is impossible 
 to be known ? We are then told, that 
 good sense and reason are sufficient to 
 convince us of the existence of a God. 
 But, on the other hand, am I not told 
 that reason is a treacherous guide in 
 religious matters ? Let them at least 
 show us the precise time when we 
 must abandon this reason, which shall 
 have conducted us to the knowledge 
 of God. Shall we consult it again, 
 when there shall be a question to ex- 
 amine whether what they relate of this 
 God is probable, if he can unite the 
 discordant qualities which they ascribe 
 to him, if he has spoken the language 
 which they have attributed to him ? 
 Our priests never will permit us to 
 consult reason upon these things ; they 
 will still pretend that we ought blindly 
 to believe that which they tell us, and 
 that the most certain way is to submit 
 ourselves to that which they have 
 thought proper to decide on the nature 
 of a being, concerning whom they 
 avow they are ignorant, and who is in 
 nowise within the reach of mortals. 
 Besides, our reason cannot conceive 
 infinity, therefore it cannot convince 
 us of the existence of a God ; and if 
 our priests have a more sublime reason 
 than that which is found in us, it will 
 be then on the words of our priests 
 that we shall believe in God ; we shall 
 never be ourselves perfectly convin- 
 ced : intimate conviction can only be the 
 effect of evidence and demonstration. 
 
 A thing is demonstrated to be im- 
 possible, not only as soon as we are 
 incapable of having true ideas of it, 
 but also Avhenever the ideas we can 
 form of it contradict themselves, de- 
 stroy themselves, and are repugnant to 
 
 one another. We can have no true ideas 
 of a spirit ; the ideas we are able to 
 form of it are contradictory, when we 
 say that a being, destitute of organs 
 and of extent, can feel, can think, can 
 have will or desires. The theological 
 God cannot act : it is repugnant to his 
 divine essence to have human qualities ; 
 and if we suppose these qualities infi- 
 nite, they will only be more unintelli- 
 gible, and more difficult or impossible 
 to be reconciled. 
 
 If God is to the human species what 
 colours are to the man born blind, this 
 God has no existence with relation to us ; 
 if it is said that he unites the qualities 
 which are assigned to him, this God is 
 impossible. If we are blind, let us 
 not reason either upon God or upon 
 his colours ; let us not ascribe to him 
 attributes ; let us not occupy ourselves 
 with him. The theologians are blind 
 men, who would explain to others, 
 who are also blind, the shades and the 
 colours of a portrait representing an 
 original which they have not even 
 stumbled upon in the dark.* Let us 
 not be told then that the original, the 
 portrait, and his colours do not exist 
 the less, because the blind man can- 
 not explain them to us nor form to 
 himself an idea of them, by the evi- 
 dence of those men who enjoy the 
 faculty of sight ; but where are those 
 quicksighted mortals who have seen 
 the Divinity, who have a better know- 
 ledge of him than ourselves, and who 
 have the right to convince us of his 
 existence ? 
 
 Doctor Clarke tells us, it is sufficient 
 that the attributes of God mayoe pos- 
 sible, and such as there is no demon- 
 
 * I find, in the work of Doctor Clarke, a 
 passage of Melchoir Canus, bishop of the Ca- 
 naries, which could be opposed to all the theo- 
 gians m the world, and all their arguments : 
 Puderet me dicere non me intelligere, si ipsi in- 
 telligerent qui tractarunt. Heraclitus said, if 
 it were demanded of a blind man what a sight 
 was, he would reply that it was blindness. 
 St. Paul announced his God to the Athenians 
 as being precisely the unknown God to whom 
 they had raised an altar. St. Denis, the areopa- 
 gite, says, it is when they acknowledge they 
 do not know God, that they know him the best. 
 Tune deum maxime cognoscimus, cum igno- 
 rare eum cognoscimus. It is upon this un- 
 known God that all theology is founded ! It 
 is upon this unknown God that they reason 
 unceasingly ! ! It is for the honour of this un- 
 known God, that they cut the throats of men ! ! !
 
 OP THE EXISTENCE OP GOD. 
 
 223 
 
 stration to the contrary. Strange me- 
 thod of reasoning ! Would theology 
 then be the only science in which it 
 was permitted to conclude, that a thing 
 is, as soon as it is possible to be ? After 
 having brought forward reveries with- 
 out foundation, and propositions which 
 nothing support, has he quitted them 
 to say that they are truths, because the 
 contrary cannot be demonstrated ?- 
 Nevertheless it is extremely possible 
 to demonstrate that the theological God 
 is impossible ; to prove it, it is suffi- 
 cient to make it seen, as we have not 
 ceased to do, that a being formed by the 
 monstrous combination of contrasts, 
 the most offensive to reason, cannot 
 exist. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is always insisted 
 upon, and we are told that it is not pos- 
 sible to conceive that intelligence or 
 thought can be properties and modifica- 
 tions of matter, of which, however, 
 Doctor Clarke avows we ignore the 
 energy and the essence, or of which 
 he has said that men of the greatest 
 genius have had but superficial or in- 
 complete ideas. But could it not be 
 asked of him if it is easier to conceive 
 that intelligence and thought may be 
 properties of spirit, of which we have 
 certainly far less ideas than we have 
 of matter? If we have only obscure 
 and imperfect ideas of the most sensi- 
 ble and gross bodies, should we be able 
 to have a more distinct knowledge of 
 an immaterial substance, or of a spirit- 
 ual God, who does not act upon any 
 one of our senses, and who if he did 
 act upon them, would cease from 
 thence to be immaterial ? 
 
 Doctor Clarke has no foundation for 
 telling us that " immaterial substan- 
 ces are not impossible ;" or that " a 
 substance immaterial is not a contra- 
 dictory notion. Now whoever asserts 
 that it is contradictory, must affirm 
 that whatever is not matter is no- 
 thing." Every thing that acts upon our 
 senses, is matter; a substance desti- 
 tute of extent or of the properties of 
 matter cannot make itself felt by us, 
 nor consequently give us perceptions 
 or ideas : constituted as we are, that 
 of which we have no ideas has no ex- 
 istence with relation to us. Thus, 
 there is no absurdity in maintaining 
 that all which is not matter is nothing ; 
 on the contrary, this is a truth so stri- 
 
 king, that there is nothing short of the 
 most inveterate prejudice or knavery 
 that can doubt or deny it. 
 
 Our learned adversary does not re- 
 move the difficulty in asking: "Are 
 our Jive senses, by an absolute neces- 
 sity in the nature of the thing, all and 
 the only possible ways of perception ? 
 And is it impossible and contradic- 
 tory there should be any being in the 
 universe endued with ways of percep- 
 tion different from those which are 
 the result of our present composition ? 
 Or, are these things, on the contrary, 
 purely arbitrary ; and the same pow- 
 er that gave us these may have given 
 others to other beings, and might, if 
 he had pleased, have given to us others 
 in this present state ?" I reply, first, 
 that before we presume what God can 
 or cannot do, it were necessary to have 
 proved his existence. I reply also, that 
 we have in fact but five senses ;* that by 
 their aid it is impossible for man to 
 conceive such a being as they suppose 
 the theological God to be ; that we are 
 absolutely ignorant what would be the 
 extent of our conception if we had 
 more senses. Thus to demand what 
 God could have done in such a case, 
 is also to suppose the thing in ques- 
 tion, seeing that we cannot have a 
 knowledge how far can go the power 
 of a being of which we have no idea. 
 We have no more knowledge of that 
 which angels, beings different from 
 ourselves, intelligences superior to us, 
 can feel and know. We are ignorant 
 of the mode in which plants vegetate ; 
 how should we know any thing of be- 
 ings of an order entirely distinguished 
 from our own ? At least we can rest 
 assured that if God is infinite, as it is 
 said he is, neither the angels nor any 
 subordinate intelligence can conceive 
 him. If man is an enigma to himself, 
 how should he be able to comprehend 
 that which is not himself? It is ne- 
 cessary then that we confine ourselves 
 
 * The theologians frequently speak to us 
 of an intimate sense, of a natural instinct, by 
 the aid of which we discover or feel the di- 
 vinity and the pretended truths of religion. 
 But if we only examine these things, we shall 
 find that this intimate sense and this instinct 
 are no more than the effects of habit, of en- 
 thusiasm, of inquietude, and of prejudice, 
 which, frequently in despite of all reason, lead 
 us back to prejudices which our mind, when 
 tranquil, cannot but reject.
 
 224 
 
 EXAMINATION OF THE PROOFS 
 
 to judge with the five senses we have. 
 A blind man has only the use of 
 four senses ; he has not the right of 
 denying that there does exist an extra 
 sense for others ; but he can say, with 
 truth and reason, that he has no idea 
 of the effects which would be produced 
 with the sense which he lacks. It is 
 with these five senses that we are re- 
 duced to judge of the Divinity which 
 no one amongst the theologians can 
 show us, or see better than ourselves. 
 Would not a blind man, surrounded 
 with other men devoid of sight, be au- 
 thorized to demand of them by what 
 right they spoke to him of a sense 
 which they themselves did not possess, 
 or of a being upon which their own 
 peculiar experience taught them no- 
 thing ?* 
 
 In short, we can again reply to Doc- 
 tor Clarke, that, according to his sys- 
 tem, the supposition is impossible, and 
 ought not to be made, seeing that God 
 having, according to himself, made 
 man, was willing, without doubt, that 
 he should have no more than five 
 senses, or that he was what he actually 
 is, because it was necessary that he 
 should be thus to conform to the wise 
 views and to the immutable designs 
 which theology gives him. 
 
 Doctor Clarke, as well as all other 
 theologians, found the existence of their 
 God upon the necessity of a power 
 that may have the ability to begin mo- 
 tion. But if matter has always exist- 
 ed, it has always had motion, which as 
 we have proved, is as essential to it as 
 its extent, and flows from its primitive 
 properties. There is, then, motion only 
 in matter, and mobility is a conse- 
 quence of its existence ; not that the 
 great whole can itself occupy other 
 parts of space than those which it ac- 
 tually occupies, but its parts can change, 
 and do change continually their re- 
 spective situations ; it is from thence 
 results the conservation and the life of 
 nature, which is always immutable in 
 its whole. But in supposing, as is 
 done every day, that matter is inert, 
 
 * In supposing, as the theologians dp, that 
 God imposes upon men the necessity of 
 knowing him, their pretension appears as irra- 
 tional as would be the idea of a landholder to 
 whom they should ascribe the whim that the 
 ants of his garden could know him and might 
 reason pertinently upon him. 
 
 that is to say, incapable of producing: 
 any thing by itself without the assist- 
 ance of a moving power which gives- 
 it motion, can we ever conceive that 
 material nature receives its motion 
 from a power that has nothing mate- 
 rial ? Can man really figure to him- 
 self that a substance, which has no 
 one of the properties of matter, can 
 create matter, draw it from its own 
 peculiar source, arrange it, penetrate it, 
 direct its motion, and guide its course? 
 
 Motion, then, is coeternal with mat- 
 ter. From all eternity the particles of the 
 universe have acted one upon the other 
 in virtue of their energies, of their pe- 
 culiar essences, of their primitive ele- 
 ments, and of their various combina- 
 tions. These particles must have com- 
 bined in consequence of their analogy 
 or relations, attracted and repelled each, 
 other, have acted and reacted, gravi- 
 tated one upou the other, been united 
 and dissolved, received their forms, and 
 been changed by their continual collis- 
 ions. In a material world, the acting- 
 power must be material ; in a whole, 
 of which the parts are essentially in 
 motion, there is no occasion for an act- 
 ing power distinguished from itself; 
 the whole must be in perpetual motion 
 by its own peculiar energy. The gen- 
 eral motion, as we have elsewhere prov- 
 ed, has its birth from the particular 
 motions which beings communicate to 
 each other without interruption. 
 
 We see, then, that theology, in sup- 
 posing a God who gives motion to na- 
 ture, and who was distinguished from 
 it, has done no more than multiply be- 
 ings, or rather has only personified the 
 principle of mobility inherent in mat- 
 ter : in giving to this principle human 
 qualities, it has only lent its intelli- 
 gence, thought perfections which can 
 in nowise be suitable to it. Every 
 thing which Doctor Clarke, and all the 
 modern theologians, tell us' of their 
 God, becomes, in some respects, suffi- 
 ciently intelligible as soon as we apply 
 it to nature and to matter ; it is eter- 
 nal, that is to say, it cannot have had 
 a commencement, and it will never 
 have an end; it is infinite, that is 
 to say, we have no conception of its 
 limits, &c. But human qualities, al- 
 ways borrowed from ourselves, cannot 
 be suitable to it, seeing that these quali- 
 ties are modes of being, or modes which
 
 OF THE EXISTENCE OP GOD. 
 
 225 
 
 only belong to particular beings, and 
 not to the whole which contains them. 
 
 Thus, to resume the answers which 
 have been given to Doctor Clarke, we 
 shall say, first, we can conceive that 
 matter has existed from all eternity, 
 seeing that we cannot conceive it to 
 have had a beginning. Secondly, that 
 matter is independent, seeing there is 
 nothing exterior to it ; that it is immu- 
 table, seeing it cannot change its na- 
 ture, although it is unceasingly chang- 
 ing its form or combination. Thirdly, 
 that matter is self-existent ; since, not 
 being able to conceive that it can be 
 annihilated, we cannot conceive it can 
 possibly have commenced to exist. 
 Fourthly, that we do not know the es- 
 sence or true nature of matter, although 
 we have a knowledge of some of its 
 properties and qualities according to 
 the mode in which it acts upon us ; 
 this is what we cannot say of God. 
 Fifthly, that matter, not having had a 
 beginning, will never have an end, 
 although its combinations and its 
 forms have a commencement and an 
 end. Sixthly, that if all which exists, 
 or every thing that our mind can con- 
 ceive, is matter, this matter is infinite ; 
 that is to say, cannot be limited by any 
 thing ; that it is omnipresent, if there 
 is no place exterior to itself ; indeed, 
 if there was a place exterior to it, this 
 would be a vacuum, and then God 
 would be the vacuum. Seventhly, that 
 nature is only one, although its ele- 
 ments or its parts may be varied to in- 
 finity, and indued with properties ex- 
 tremely different. Eighthly, that mat- 
 ter, arranged, modified, and combined, 
 in a certain mode, produces in some 
 beings, that which we call intelligence ; 
 it is one of its modes of being, but it 
 is not one of its essential properties. 
 Ninthly, that matter is not a free agent, 
 since it cannot act otherwise than it 
 does in virtue of the laws of its nature, 
 or of its existence, and consequently, 
 that heavy bodies must necessarily 
 fall, light bodies must rise, fire must 
 burn ; man must feel good and evil, 
 according to the nature of the beings 
 of which he experiences the action. 
 Tenthly, that the power or the energy 
 of matter has no other bounds than 
 those which are prescribed by its own 
 nature. Eleventhly, that wisdom, jus- 
 tice, goodness, &c. are qualities pecu- 
 
 No. VIII. 29 
 
 liar to matter combined and modified 
 as it is found in some beings of the 
 human species, and that the idea of 
 perfection is an abstract, negative, 
 metaphysical idea, or a mode of con- 
 sidering objects which supposes no- 
 thing real to be exterior to ourselves. 
 In fine, twelfthly, that matter is the 
 principle of motion, which it contains 
 within itself, since matter only is capa- 
 ble of giving and receiving motion : 
 this is what cannot be conceived of an 
 immaterial and simple being, destitute 
 of partsj| who, devoid of extent, of 
 mass, of weight, cannot either move 
 himself, or move other bodies much 
 less, create, produce, and preserve them. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Examination of the Proofs of the Existence 
 of God given by Descartes, Malebranche, 
 Newton, <f-c. 
 
 GOD is incessantly spoken of, and 
 yet no one has hitherto arrived at de- 
 monstrating his existence ; the most 
 sublime geniuses have been obliged to 
 run aground against this rock; the 
 most enlightened men have done no 
 more than stammer upon a matter 
 which every one concurred in consider- 
 ing the most important ; as if it could 
 be necessary to occupy ourselves with 
 objects inaccessible to our senses, and 
 of which our mind cannot take any 
 hold! 
 
 To the end that we may convince 
 ourselves of the little solidity which 
 the greatest men have given to those 
 proofs by which they have successively 
 imagined to establish the existence of 
 God, let us briefly examine what the 
 most celebrated philosophers have said ; 
 and let us begin with Descartes, the re- 
 storer of modern philosophy. This 
 great man himself tells us : " All the 
 strength of argument which I have 
 hitherto used to prove the existence of 
 God. consists in this, that I acknow- 
 ledge it would not be possible my na- 
 ture was such as it is, that is to say, that 
 I should have in me the idea of a God, 
 if God did not truly exist ; this same 
 God, I say, of whom the idea is in me, 
 that is to say, who possesses all those 
 high perfections of which our mind can 
 have some slight idea, without, how-
 
 226 
 
 EXAMINATION OF THE PROOFS 
 
 ever, being able to comprehend them." 
 See Meditation III., upon the Exist- 
 ence of God, p. 71-2. 
 
 He had said, a little before, page 69 : 
 " We must necessarily conclude from 
 this alone, that because I exist and 
 have the idea of a most perfect being, 
 that is to say, of God, the existence of 
 God is most evidently demonstrated." 
 
 First, we reply to Descartes, that we 
 have no right to conclude that the 
 thing exists because we have an idea 
 of it ; our imagination presents to us 
 the idea of a sphynx or of a Hippogriff, 
 without having the right from that cir- 
 cumstance to conclude that these things 
 really exist. 
 
 Secondly, we say to Descartes, that it 
 is not possible he should have a posi- 
 tive and true idea of God, of whom, as 
 well as the theologians, he would 
 prove the existence. It is impossible 
 for men, for material beings, to form 
 to themselves a real and true idea of a 
 spirit ; of a substance destitute of ex- 
 tent; of an incorporeal being, acting 
 upon nature, which is corporeal and 
 material ; a truth which we have al- 
 ready sufficiently proved. 
 
 Thirdly, we shall say to him, that it 
 is impossible man should have any 
 positive and real idea of perfection, of 
 infinity, of immensity, and of the other 
 attributes which theology assigns to 
 the Divinity. We shall then make the 
 same reply to Descartes, which we 
 have already made in the preceding 
 chapter to the twelfth proposition of 
 Doctor Clarke. 
 
 Thus nothing is less conclusive than 
 the proofs upon which Descartes rests 
 the existence of God. He makes of 
 this God thought and intelligence ; but 
 how conceive intelligence or thought, 
 without a subject to which these quali- 
 ties may adhere? Descartes pretends 
 that we cannot conceive God, but " as 
 a power which applies itself succes- 
 sively to the parts of the universe." 
 He again says, that " God cannot be 
 said to have extent but as we say of 
 fire contained in a piece of iron, 
 which has not, properly speaking, 
 any other extension than that of the 
 iron itself." But, according to these 
 notions, we have the right to tax him 
 with announcing in a very clear man- 
 ner, that there is no other God than 
 nature ; this is a pure Spinosism. In 
 
 fact, we know that it is from the prin- 
 ciples of Descartes that Spinosa drew 
 up his system, which flows from them 
 necessarily. 
 
 We might, then, with great reason, 
 accuse Descartes of atheism, seeing 
 that he destroys in a very effectual 
 manner the feeble proofs which he 
 gives of the existence of a God. We 
 have then foundation for saying to him 
 that his system overturns the idea of 
 the creation. Indeed, before God had 
 created matter, he could not co-exist 
 nor be co-extended with it ; and in this 
 case according to Descartes, there was 
 no God ; seeing that by taking from 
 the modifications their subject, these 
 modifications must themselves disap- 
 pear. If God, according to the Carte- 
 sians, is nothing but nature, they are 
 quite Spinosians ; if God is the mo- 
 tive-power of this nature, if God no 
 longer exists by himself, he exists no 
 longer than the subject to which he 
 is inherent subsists ; that is to say,, 
 nature, of which he is the motive- 
 power. Thus, God no longer exists 
 by himself, he will only exist as long 
 as the nature which he moves ; with- 
 out matter, or without a subject to 
 move, to conserve, to produce, what 
 will become of the motive-power of 
 the universe ? If God is this motive- 
 power, what will become of him with- 
 out a world, in which he can make use 
 of his action?* 
 
 We see, then, that Descartes, far 
 from establishing on a solid foundation 
 the existence of a God, totally destroys 
 him. The same thing will happen 
 necessarily to all those who shall rea- 
 son upon him; they finish always by 
 confuting him, and by contradicting 
 themselves. We shall find the same 
 want of just inference, and the same 
 contradictions, in the principles of the 
 celebrated father Malebranche, which, 
 if considered with the slightest atten- 
 tion, appear to conduct us directly to- 
 Spinosism ; indeed, what can be more 
 conformable to the language of Spino- 
 sa, than to say, that " the universe is 
 only an emanation from God ; that 
 we see every thing in God ; that every 
 thing which we see is only God ; that 
 
 * See The Impious Man Convinced, or a 
 Dissertation against Spinosa, page 115, andi 
 sequel. Amsterdam, 1685.
 
 OF THE EXISTENCE OP GOD. 
 
 227 
 
 God alone does every thing that is 
 done; tliat all the action, and every 
 operation which takes place in all 
 nature, is himself; in a word, that 
 God is every being, and the only 
 being ?" 
 
 Is not this formally saying that na- 
 ture is God? Besides, at the same 
 time that Malebranche assures us we 
 see every thing in God, he pretends, 
 that " it is not yet clearly demonstra- 
 ted that matter and bodies have exist- 
 ence, and that faith alone teaches us 
 these mysteries, of which, without it, 
 we should not have any knowledge 
 whatever." In reply, it may be rea- 
 sonably asked of him, how the exist- 
 ence of God, who has created matter, 
 can be demonstrated^ if the existence 
 of this matter itself is yet a problem? 
 
 Malebranche himself acknowledges 
 that we can have no precise demon- 
 stration of the existence of any other 
 being than of that which is necessary ; 
 he adds, that " if it be closely examin- 
 ed, it will be seen that it is not even 
 possible to know, with certitude, if 
 God be or be not truly the creator of 
 a material and sensible world." Af- 
 ter these notions, it is evident, that 
 according to Father Malebranche, men 
 have only their faith to guaranty the 
 existence of God; but faith itself sup- 
 poses this existence ; if it be not cer- 
 tain that God exists, how shall we be 
 persuaded that we must believe that 
 which it is reported he says ? 
 
 On the other hand, these notions of 
 Malebranche evidently overturn all the- 
 ological doctrines. How can the lib- 
 erty of man be reconciled with the 
 idea of a God who is the motive-power 
 of all nature ; who immediately moves 
 matter and bodies ; without whose con- 
 sent nothing is done in the universe ; 
 who predetermines the creatures to eve- 
 ry thing which they do? How can they, 
 with this belief, pretend that human 
 souls have the faculty of forming 
 thoughts, wills ; of moving and of modi- 
 fying themselves ? If it be supposed, 
 with the theologians, that the conser- 
 vation of his creatures is a continued 
 creation, is it not God who, in preser- 
 ving them, enables them to commit 
 evil? It is evident, that, according to 
 the system of Malebranche, God does 
 every thing, and that his creatures are 
 no more than passive instruments in 
 
 his hands ; their sins, as well as their 
 virtues, appertain to him ; men can 
 neither have merit nor demerit ; this 
 is what annihilates all religion. It is 
 thus that theology is perpetually occu- 
 pied with destroying itself.* 
 
 Let us now see if the immortal 
 Newton will give us ideas more true, 
 and proofs more certain, of the exist- 
 ence of God. This man, whose ex- 
 tensive genius, has unravelled nature 
 and its laws has bewildered himself 
 as soon as he lost sight of them; a 
 slave to the prejudices of his infancy, 
 he has not had the courage to hold the 
 flambeau of his enlightened under- 
 standing up to the chimera which they 
 have gratuitously associated with na- 
 ture ; he has not allowed that its own 
 peculiar powers were sufficient for it 
 to produce all those phenomena which 
 he has himself so happily explained. 
 In short, the sublime Newton is no 
 more than an infant, when he quits 
 physics and demonstration, to lose 
 himself in the imaginary regions of 
 theology. Here is the manner in which 
 he speaks of the Divinity :f 
 
 "This God," says he, "governs all, 
 not as the soul of the world, but as the 
 lord and sovereign of all things. It is 
 in consequence of his sovereignty that 
 he is called the Lord God, IWrox-parup, 
 the universal emperor. Indeed, the 
 word God is relative and relates to 
 slaves ; the deity is the dominion or 
 the sovereignty of God, not over his 
 own body, as those who look upon God 
 as the soul of the world think, but over 
 slaves." 
 
 We see from thence that Newton, 
 as well as all the theologians, makes 
 of his God a pure spirit, who presides 
 over the universe ; a monarch, a lord 
 paramount, a despot, that is to say, a 
 powerful man ; a prince, whose gov- 
 ernment takes for a model that which 
 the kings of the earth sometimes exer- 
 cise over their subjects, transformed 
 into slaves, whom ordinarily they make 
 to feel, in a very grievous manner, the 
 weight of their authority. Thus the 
 God of Newton is a despot, that is to 
 say, a man, who has the privilege of 
 
 * See Tlie Impious Man Convinced, p. 
 143 and 214. 
 
 t See Principia Mathematica, page 528, 
 and sequel. London edition, 1726.
 
 223 
 
 EXAMINATION OF THE PROOFS 
 
 being good when it pleases him, unjust 
 and perverse when his fancy so deter- 
 mines him. But, according to the ideas 
 of Newton, the world has not existed 
 from all eternity, the slaves of God 
 have been formed in the course of 
 time, therefore, we must conclude from 
 it that before the creation of the world, 
 the God of Newton was a sovereign 
 without subjects and without estates. 
 Let us see if this great philosopher is 
 more in accord with himself, in the 
 subsequent ideas which he gives us of 
 his deified despot. 
 
 "The supreme God," he says, "is 
 an eternal, infinite, and absolutely per- 
 fect being, but however perfect a being 
 he may be, if he has no sovereignty, 
 he is not the supreme God : the word 
 GOD signifies "lord, but every lord is not 
 God ; it is the sovereignty of the spir- 
 itual being which constitutes God ; it 
 is the true sovereignty which consti- 
 tutes the true God ; it is the supreme 
 sovereignty which constitutes the su- 
 preme God; it is a false sovereignty 
 which constitutes a false God. From 
 true sovereignty, it follows, that the 
 true God is living, intelligent and pow- 
 erful ; and from his other perfections, 
 it follows, that he is supremely or 
 sovereignly perfect. He is eternal, in- 
 finite, omniscient ; that is to say, that 
 he exists from all eternity, and will 
 never have an end : durat ab ccterno, 
 ab infinite in infinitum ; he governs 
 all and he knows every thing that is 
 done, or that can be done. He is nei- 
 ther eternity nor infinity, but he is eter- 
 nal and infinite ; he is not space nor 
 duration, but he exists and is present 
 (adest)"* 
 
 In all this unintelligible rigmarole, 
 we see nothing but incredible efforts to 
 reconcile the theological attributes or 
 the abstract qualities with the human 
 qualities given to the deified monarch ; 
 we see in it negative qualities, which 
 are no longer suitable to man, given, 
 however, to the sovereign of nature, 
 whom they have supposed a king. 
 However it may be, here is always the 
 supreme God who has occasion for 
 subjects to establish his sovereignty ; 
 thus God needs men for the exercise 
 
 * The word adest, which Newton makes 
 use of in the text, appears to be placed there 
 to avoid saying that God is contained in 
 pace. 
 
 of his 'empire, without which he would 
 not be a king. When there was no-- 
 thing, of what was God lord ? How- 
 ever this may be, this lord, this spirit- 
 ual king, does he not exercise his spir- 
 itual empire in vain upon beings who 
 frequently do not that which he wills 
 they should do, who are continually 
 struggling against him, who spread 
 disorder in his states ? This spiritual 
 monarch is the master of the minds, 
 of the souls, of the wills, and of the 
 passions, of his subjects, to whom he 
 has left the freedom of revolting against 
 him. This infinite monarch, who fills 
 every thing with his immensity, and 
 who governs all, does he govern the 
 man Avho sins, does he direct his ac- 
 tions, is he in him when he offends his 
 God? The Devil, the false God, the 
 evil principle, has he not a more exten- 
 sive empire than the true God, whose 
 projects, according to the theologians, 
 h.e is unceasingly overturning 1 The 
 true sovereign, is it not he whose pow- 
 er in a state influences the greater 
 number of his subjects? If God is 
 omnipresent, is he not the sad witness 
 and the accomplice of those outrages 
 which are every where offered to his 
 divine majesty? If he fills all, has 
 he not extent, does he not correspond 
 with various points of space, and from 
 thence does he not cease to be spirit- 
 ual ? 
 
 "God is one," continues Newton, 
 " and he is the same for ever and every 
 where, not only by his virtue alone, or 
 his energy, but also by his substance." 
 
 But how can a being Avho acts, who 
 produces all those changes which be- 
 ings undergo, always be the same ? 
 What is understood by the A'irtue or 
 energy of God ? These vague words, 
 do they present any clear idea to our 
 mind? What is understood by the 
 divine substance? If this substance 
 is spiritual and devoid of extent, how 
 can there exist in it any parts ? How 
 can it put matter in motion? How 
 can it be conceived ? 
 
 Nevertheless, Newton tells us, that 
 " all things are contained in him, and 
 are moved in him, but without recipro- 
 cal action (sed sine mutua passione). 
 God experiences nothing by the motion 
 of bodies ; these experience no oppo- 
 sition whatever by his omnipresence." 
 
 It here appears, that Newton gives
 
 OF THE EXISTENCE OP GOD. 
 
 229 
 
 fo the Divinity characters which are 
 suitable only to vacuum and to no- 
 thing. Without that, we cannot con- 
 ceive that it is possible not to have a 
 reciprocal action or relation between 
 those substances which are penetrated, 
 which are encompassed on all sides. 
 It appears evident that here the author 
 does not understand himself. 
 
 "It is an incontestable truth that 
 God exists necessarily, and the same 
 necessity obliges him to exist always 
 and every where : from whence it fol- 
 lows that he is in every thing similar 
 to itself; he is all eyes, all ears, all 
 brain, all arms, all feeling, all intelli- 
 gence, and all action ; but in a mode 
 by no means human, by no means cor- 
 poreal, and which is totally unknown 
 to us. In the same manner ,as a blind 
 man has no idea of- eejours, it is thus 
 we have no idea of the mode in which 
 God feels and understands." 
 
 The necessary existence of the Di- 
 vinity, is precisely the thing in ques- 
 tion ; it is this existence which it is 
 necessary to have verified by proofs 
 as clear, and demonstration as strong, 
 as gravitation and attraction. If the 
 thing had been possible, the genius of 
 Newton would, without doubt, have 
 compassed it. But, oh man ! so great 
 and so powerful, when you were a 
 geometrician ; so little and so weak, 
 when you became a theologian ; that 
 is to say, when you reasoned upon that 
 which can neither be calculated nor 
 submitted to experience ; how could 
 you think of speaking to us of a being 
 who is, by your own confession, to you 
 just what a picture is to a blind man ? 
 Wherefore quit nature, to seek in ima- 
 ginary spaces, those causes, those pow- 
 ers, and that energy, which nature 
 would have shown you in itself, if you 
 had been willing to consult her with 
 your ordinary sagacity ? But the great 
 Newton has no longer any courage ; he 
 voluntarily blinds himself, when the 
 question is a prejudice which habit has 
 made him look upon as sacred. Let us 
 continue, however, to examine how 
 far the genius of man is capable of 
 leading itself astray, when once he 
 abandons experience and reason, and 
 suffers himself to be guided by his 
 imagination. 
 
 " God," continues the father of mod- 
 ern philosophy, " is totally destitute of 
 
 body and of corporeal figure ; here is 
 the reason why he cannot be either 
 seen or touched, or understood ; and 
 ought not to be adored under any cor- 
 poreal form." 
 
 But what ideas can be formed of a 
 being who is nothing of that of which 
 we have a knowledge ? What are the 
 relations which can be supposed to 
 exist between us and him? To what 
 end adore him? Indeed if you do 
 adore him, you will be obliged, in 
 despite of yourself, to make him a be- 
 ing similar to man ; sensible, like him, 
 to homage, to presents, and to flattery 5 
 in short, you will make him a king, 
 who, like those of the earth, exacts 
 the respect of all who are subjected to 
 them. Indeed, he adds : 
 
 " We have ideas of his attributes, 
 but we do not know that it is any one 
 substance ; we only see the figures and 
 the colours of bodies, we only hear 
 sounds, we only touch the exterior sur- 
 faces, we only smell odours, we only 
 taste flavours ; no one of our senses, 
 no one of our reflections, can show us 
 the intimate nature of substances ; we 
 have still less ideas of God." 
 
 If we have an idea of the attributes 
 of God, it is only because we give 
 him those belonging to ourselves, 
 which we never do more than aggran- 
 dize or exaggerate to that height as to 
 make them mistaken for those quali- 
 ties we knew at first. If, in all those 
 substances which strike our senses, we 
 only know the effects which they pro- 
 duce on us, and after which we assign 
 them qualities, at least these qualities 
 are something, and give birth to dis- 
 tinct and clear ideas in us. That su- 
 perficial knowledge, or whatever it 
 may be, which our senses furnish us, 
 is the only one we can possibly have ; 
 constituted as we are, we find ourselves 
 obliged to be contented with it, and 
 we see that it is sufficient for our 
 wants : but we have not even the most 
 superficial idea of a God distinguished 
 from matter, or from all known sub- 
 stances ; nevertheless, we are reason- 
 ing upon him unceasingly ! 
 
 ' We only have a knowledge of God 
 by his attributes, by his properties, and 
 by the excellent and wise arrangement 
 which he has given to all things, and 
 their final causes ; and we admire 
 him in consequence of his perfections."
 
 230 
 
 EXAMINATION OF THE PROOFS 
 
 I repeat, that we have no knowledge 
 of God, but by those of his attributes 
 which we borrow from ourselves ; but 
 it is evident they cannot become suitable 
 to the universal being, who can have 
 neither the same nature nor the same 
 properties as particular beings, such 
 as ourselves. It is after ourselves, that 
 we assign to God, intelligence, wisdom 
 and perfection, in abstracting from him 
 that which we call defects in our- 
 selves. As to the order or the arrange- 
 ment of the universe, of which we 
 make a God the author, we find it ex- 
 cellent and wise, when it is favour- 
 able to us, or when the causes which 
 are coexistent with ourselves do not 
 disturb our own peculiar existence ; 
 otherwise, we complain of the confu- 
 sion, and ihejinal causes vanish. We 
 attribute to an immutable God, mo- 
 tives. -equally borrowed from our own 
 peculiar mode of action, for deranging 
 the beautiful order which we admire in 
 the universe. Thus it is always in 
 ourselves, that is in our peculiar mode 
 of feeling, that we draw up the ideas 
 of order, the attributes of wisdom, of 
 excellence, and of perfection, which 
 we give to God ; whilst all the good 
 and all the evil which happen in the 
 world, are the necessary consequences 
 of the essences of things, and of the 
 general laws of matter, in short, of the 
 gravity, of the attraction, and of the 
 repulsion, and of the laws of motion, 
 which Newton himself has so well 
 developed, but which he dared- not 
 apply, as there was a question concern- 
 ing the phantom to which prejudice 
 ascribes the honour of all those effects, 
 of which nature is itself the true 
 cause. 
 
 " We revere and we adore God on 
 account of his sovereignty: we wor- 
 ship him like his slaves ; a God destitute 
 of sovereignty, of providence, and of 
 final causes, would be no more than 
 nature and destiny." 
 
 It is true, we adore God like igno- 
 rant slaves, who tremble under a mas- 
 ter whom they know not ; we foolishly 
 pray to him, although he is represented 
 to us as immutable ; although, in truth, 
 this God is nothing more than nature 
 acting by necessary laws necessarily 
 personified, or destiny, to which the 
 name of God is given. 
 
 Nevertheless, Newton tells us, " from 
 
 a physical and blind necessity, which 
 should preside every where, and he 
 always the same, there could not 
 emanate any variety in beings ; the 
 diversity which we see, could only 
 have their origin in the ideas and the 
 will of a being which exists necessa- 
 rily." 
 
 Wherefore should this diversity not 
 happen from natural causes, from mat- 
 ter acting by itself, and of which the 
 motion attracts and combines various, 
 and yet analogous elements : or sepa- 
 rates beings, by the aid of those substan- 
 ces which are not found suitable to 
 unite ? Is not bread the result of the 
 combination of flower, yest, and wa- 
 ter. As for the blind necessity, as is 
 elsewhere said, it is that of which we 
 ignore the energy, or of which, being 
 blind ourselves, we have no knowledge 
 of the mode of action. Philosophers 
 explain all phenomena by the proper- 
 ties of matter; and though they feel 
 the want of being acquainted with the 
 natural causes, they do not less believe 
 them deducible from their properties 
 or their causes. The philosophers, 
 then, in this, are atheists ! otherwise, 
 they would reply, that it is God who is 
 the author of all these phenomena. 
 
 " It is allegorically said, that God 
 sees, hears, speaks, smilesj lives, hates, 
 desires, gives, receives, rejoices, or be- 
 comes angry, fights, makes and fash- 
 ions, &c. For all that is said of God, 
 is borrowed from the conduct of men, 
 by a kind of imperfect analogy." 
 
 Men have not been able to do other- 
 wise, for want of being acquainted 
 with nature and her ways ; they have 
 imagined a peculiar energy, to which 
 they have given the name of God, and 
 they have made him act according to 
 the same principles, as they are them- 
 selves made to act upon, or according 
 to which they would act, if they were 
 the masters : it is from this theanthropy 
 that have flowed all those absurd and 
 frequently dangerous ideas, upon which 
 are founded all the religions of the 
 world, who all adore in their God a 
 powerful and wicked man. We shall 
 see by the sequel, the fatal effects 
 which have resulted to the human spe- 
 cies, from those ideas which they have 
 formed to themselves of the Divinity, 
 whom they have never considered but 
 as an absolute sovereign, a despot, and
 
 OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 
 
 231 
 
 a tyrant. As for the present, let us 
 continue to examine the proofs which 
 are given to us by the deists of the exist- 
 ence of their God, whom they imagine 
 they see every where. 
 
 Indeed, it is unceasingly repeated to 
 us, that the regulated motion, the in- 
 variable order, which we see reign in 
 the universe, those benefits which are 
 heaped upon men, announce a wisdom, 
 an intelligence, a goodness, which we 
 cannot refuse acknowledging in the 
 cause which produces such marvellous 
 effects. We shall reply, that the regu- 
 lated motion which we witness in the 
 universe, is the necessary consequence 
 of the laws of matter ; it cannot cease 
 to act in the manner it does, so long 
 as the same causes act in it ; these mo- 
 tions cease to be regulated, order gives 
 place to disorder, as soon as new 
 causes disturb or suspend the action of 
 the first. Order, as we have elsewhere 
 shown, is only the effect which results 
 to us from a series of motion ; there 
 cannot be any real disorder relative to 
 the great whole, where every thing that 
 takes place is necessary and deter- 
 mined by laws that nothing can change. 
 The order of nature may be contradict- 
 ed or destroyed, relatively to us, but 
 never is it contradicted relatively to 
 itself, since it cannot act otherwise 
 than it does. If, after the regulated 
 and well-ordered motion which we 
 see, we attribute intelligence, wisdom, 
 and goodness, to the unknown or sup- 
 posed cause of these effects, we are 
 obliged in a similar manner to attribute 
 to him extravagance and malice, every 
 time that these motions become con- 
 fused, that is to say, cease to be regu- 
 lated relatively to us, or that we are 
 ourselves disturbed by them, in our 
 mode of existence. 
 
 It is pretended that animals furnish 
 us with a convincing proof of a pow- 
 erful cause of their existence ; it is 
 said, that the admirable harmony of 
 their parts, which we see lend each 
 other mutual assistance, to the end of 
 fulfilling their functions and maintain- 
 ing them together, announce to us a 
 workman, who unites wisdom to pow- 
 er.* 
 
 * We have already remarked, elsewhere, 
 that many authors, with a view of proving 
 the existence of a divine intelligence, have 
 copied whole tracts of anatomy and botany, 
 
 We cannot doubf the power of na- 
 ture ; she produces all the animals we 
 see, by the aid of the combination of 
 matter which is a continual action; 
 the harmony that subsists between the 
 parts of these same animals, is a con- 
 sequence of the necessary laws of their 
 nature and of their combination; as 
 soon as this accord ceases, the animal 
 is necessarily destroyed. What be- 
 comes then of the wisdom, of the in- 
 telligence, or the goodness of that pre- 
 tended cause to whom they ascribe the 
 honour of this so much boasted har- 
 mony ? These animals, so marvellous, 
 which are said to be the work of an 
 immutable God, are they not continu- 
 ally changing ; and do they not always 
 finish by decaying? Where is the 
 wisdom, the goodness, the foresight, 
 and the immutability, of a workman, 
 who appears only to be occupied with 
 deranging and breaking the springs of 
 those machines, which are announced 
 to us as the chefs cP&uvres of his 
 power and of his ability. If this God 
 cannot do otherwise, he is neither free 
 nor omnipotent. If he changes his will, 
 he is not immutable. If he permits 
 
 which prove nothing, except that there exists 
 in nature elements suitable to unite, to ar- 
 range themselves, to co-order themselves, in a 
 mode to form wholes, or combinations sus- 
 ceptible of producing particular effects. Thus 
 these writings, loaded with erudition, only 
 make known that there exists in nature beings 
 diversely organized, formed in a certain man- 
 ner, suitable to certain uses, who would no 
 longer exist under the form they at present 
 have, if their particles ceased to act as they 
 do, that is to say, to be disposed in such a 
 manner, as to lend each other mutual suc- 
 cours. To be surprised that the brain, the 
 heart, the eyes, the arteries, and veins, of an 
 animal act as we see them, that the roots of a 
 plant attract juices, or that a tree produces 
 fruit, is to be surprised that an animal, a 
 plant, or a tree exists. These beings would 
 not exist, or would no longer be that which 
 we know they are, if they ceased to act as 
 they do ; this is what happens when they die. 
 If their formation, their combination, their 
 modes of action and of conserving them- 
 selves some time in life, was a proof that 
 these beings are the effects of an intelligent 
 cause ; their destruction, their dissolution, the 
 total cessation of their mode of acting, their 
 death, ought to prove, in the same manner, 
 that these beings are the effects of a cause 
 destitute of intelligence, and of permanent 
 views. If we are told that his views are un- 
 known to us; we shall ask, by what right 
 then they can ascribe them to this cause, or 
 how it can be reasoned upon ?
 
 EXAMINATION OP THE PROOFS 
 
 232 
 
 those machines, which he has render- 
 ed sensible, to experience pain, he 
 wants goodness. If he has not been 
 able to render his works more solid, it 
 is that he wants the ability. In seeing 
 that animals, as well as all the other 
 works of the Divinity, decay, we can- 
 not prevent ourselves from concluding 
 therefrom, either that every thing na- 
 ture does is necessary, and is only a 
 consequence of its laws, or that the 
 workman who made it is destitute of 
 plan, of power, of stability, of ability, 
 of goodness. 
 
 Man, who looks upon himself as the 
 chef-cPauvre of the Divinity, furnishes 
 more than every other production, a 
 proof of the incapacity or of the malice 
 of his pretended author : in this sensi- 
 ble, intelligent, and thinking being, 
 who believes himself the constant ob- 
 ject of the divine predilection, and 
 who forms his God after his own pecu- 
 liar model, we only see a more incon- 
 stant, more brittle machine, which is 
 more subject to derange itself, by its 
 great complication, than the grosser 
 beings. Beasts, destitute of our know- 
 ledge, plants, which vegetate, stones, 
 devoid of feeling, are, in many re- 
 spects, beings more favoured than man ; 
 they are, at least, exempted from the 
 sorrows of the mind ; from the torments 
 of thought ; from that devouring cha- 
 grin, of which he is so frequently the 
 prey. Who is he that would not be 
 an animal or a stone, every time he 
 recalls to his imagination the irrepar- 
 able loss of a beloved object ? Would 
 it not be better to be an inanimate 
 mass, than a restless, superstitious be- 
 ing, who does nothing but tremble 
 here below under the yoke of his God, 
 and who again foresees infinite tor- 
 ments in a future life ? Beings, desti- 
 tute of feeling, of life, of memory, and 
 of thought, are not afflicted by the idea 
 of the past, of the present, or of the 
 future ; they do not believe themselves 
 in danger of becoming eternally un- 
 happy from having reasoned badly, 
 like many of those favoured beings 
 who pretend it is for them alone that 
 the architect of the world has con- 
 structed the universe.* 
 
 * Cicero says: "Inter hominem etbelluam 
 hoc maxime interest, quod hoec ad id solum 
 quod adest, quod que praesens est, se accom- 
 modat, paululum admodum sentiens praeteri- 
 
 Let us not be told that we cannot 
 have the idea of a work without hav- 
 ing also that of a workman distinguish- 
 ed from his work. Nature is not a 
 work; she has always been self-exist- 
 ent ; it is in her bosom that every thing 
 is operated ; she is an immense elabo- 
 ratory, provided with materials, and 
 who makes the instruments of which 
 she avails herself to act : all her works 
 are the effect of her own energy, and 
 of those agents or causes which she 
 makes, which she contains, which she 
 puts in action. Eternal, uncreated, 
 indestructible elements, always in mo- 
 tion, in combining themselves various- 
 ly, give birth to all the beings and to 
 all the phenomena which our eyes be- 
 hold ; to all the effects, good or bad, 
 which we feel ; to the order or the con- 
 fusion which we never distinguish but 
 by the different modes in which we 
 are affected] in short, to all those 
 wonderful phenomena upon which we 
 meditate and reason. For that pur- 
 pose, these elements have occasion 
 only for their properties, whether par- 
 ticular or united, and the motion which 
 is essential to them, without its being 
 necessary to recur to an unknown 
 workman to arrange, fashion, combine, 
 conserve, and dissolve them. 
 
 But, supposing, for an instant, that it 
 were impossible to conceive the uni- 
 verse without a workman, who has 
 formed it, and who watches over his 
 work, where shall we place this work- 
 man ? shall it be within or without the 
 universe 1 is he matter or motion ; or 
 rather, is he only space, nothing, or 
 the vacuum ? In all these cases, either 
 he would be nothing, or he would be 
 contained in nature, and submitted to 
 her laws. If he be in nature, I can 
 only see matter in motion, and I must 
 conclude from it that the agent who 
 
 turn et futiirum." Thus, what it has been 
 wished to make pass as a prerogative of man, 
 is only a real disadvantage. Seneca has said : 
 " Nos et venturo torquemur et prasterito, timo- 
 ris enim torrnentum memoria reducit, provi- 
 dentia anticipat ; nemo tantum praesentibus 
 miser est." Could we not demand of every 
 honest man, who tells us that a good God 
 created the universe for the happiness of our 
 sensible species, would you yourself have cre- 
 ated a world which contains so many wretches ? 
 would it not have been better to have abstain- 
 ed from creating so great a number of sensi- 
 ble beings, than to have called them into life 
 for the purpose of making them suffer ?
 
 OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 
 
 233 
 
 moves it is corporeal and material, and 
 that, consequently, he is subject to dis- 
 solution. If this agent be exterior to 
 nature, I have then no longer any idea 
 of the place which he occupies, neither 
 can I conceive an immaterial being, 
 nor the mode in which a spirit without 
 extent, can act upon the matter from 
 which it is separated. Those unknown 
 spaces which the imagination has pla- 
 ced beyond the visible world, have no 
 existence relatively to a being who 
 sees with difficulty down to his feet; 
 the ideal power which inhabits them 
 cannot be painted to my mind, but 
 when my imagination shall combine 
 at random the fantastical colours which 
 it is always obliged to draw from the 
 world where I am ; in this case, I shall 
 do no more than reproduce in idea that 
 which my senses shall have really per- 
 ceived, and this God, which I strive to 
 distinguish from nature, or to place out 
 of its bosom, will always return into 
 it necessarily and in despite of me.* 
 
 It will be insisted that if a statue or 
 a watch were shown to a savage, who 
 had never before seen either, he would 
 not be able to prevent himself from ac- 
 knowledging that these things were 
 the works of some intelligent agent, 
 of more ability, and more industrious 
 than himself: it will be concluded 
 from thence, that we are in like man- 
 ner obliged to acknowledge that the 
 machine of the universe, that man, that 
 the various phenomena of nature, are 
 the works of an agent, whose intelli- 
 gence and power far surpasses our 
 own. 
 
 I reply, in the first place, that we can- 
 not doubt that nature is extremely pow- 
 erful and very industrious ; we admire 
 her activity, every time that we are 
 surprised by those extensive, various, 
 and complicated effects which we find 
 in those of her work, which we take 
 the trouble to meditate upon ; never- 
 theless, she is neither more nor less in- 
 
 * Hobbcs says : " The world is corporeal ; it 
 has the dimensions of size, that is to say, 
 length, breadth, and depth. Each portion of 
 a body, is a body, and has these same dimen- 
 sions : consequently, each part of the uni- 
 verse is a body, and that which is not a body, 
 is no part of the universe ; but as the universe 
 is every thing, that which does not make a 
 part of it, is nothing, and can be no part." 
 See Hobbcs' Leviathan, chap. 46. 
 
 No. VIII. 30 
 
 dustrious in one of her works than in 
 another. We no more understand how 
 she has been capable of producing a 
 stone or a metal, than a head organized 
 like that of Newton. We call that 
 man industrious, who can do things, 
 which we ourselves cannot do; na- 
 ture can do every thing, and as soon, 
 as a thing exists, it is a proof that she 
 has been capable of making it. Thus 
 it is never more than relatively to our- 
 selves that we judge nature to be in- 
 dustrious ; we compare her then to our- 
 selves ; and as we enjoy a quality 
 which we- call intelligence, by the as- 
 sistance of which we produce works, 
 or by which we show our industry, we 
 conclude from it, that those works of 
 nature, which astonish us the most, do 
 not belong to her, but are to be ascrib- 
 ed to an intelligent workman like our- 
 selves, but in whom we proportion the 
 intelligence to the astonishment which 
 his works produce in us, that is to say, 
 to our own peculiar weakness and igno- 
 rance. 
 
 In the second place, the savage to 
 whom a statue or a watch shall be 
 brought, will or will not have ideas of 
 human industry : if he has ideas of it, 
 he will feel that this watch or this 
 statue, may be the work of a being of 
 his own species, enjoying those facul- 
 ties which he himself lacks. If the 
 savage has no idea of human industry 
 and of the resources of art, in seeing 
 the spontaneous motion of a watch, he 
 will believe that it is an animal, which 
 cannot be the work of man. Multi- 
 plied experience, confirms the mode of 
 thinking which I ascribe to this sav- 
 age.* Thus in the same manner as a 
 great many men, who believe them- 
 selves much more acute than he, this 
 savage will attribute the strange effects 
 he sees, to a Genius, to a Spirit, to a 
 God ; that is to say, to an unknown 
 power, to whom he will assign capa- 
 3ilities of which he believes the beings 
 of his own species to be absolutely 
 destitute; by this he will prove BO-* 
 
 * The Americans took the Spaniards for 
 ods, because they made use of gunpowder, 
 rode on horseback, and had vessels which 
 sailed quite alone. The inhabitants of the 
 sland of Tenian, having no knowledge of fire 
 >efore the arrival of the Europeans, took it, 
 he first time they saw it, for a,n animal which 
 devoured wood.
 
 234 
 
 EXAMINATION OF THE PROOFS 
 
 thing, except that he is ignorant of 
 what man is capable of producing. It 
 is thus that a raw, unpolished people 
 raise their eyes to heaven, every time 
 they witness some unusual phenome- 
 non. It is thus that the people call 
 'miraculous, supernatural, divine, all 
 those strange effects of the natural 
 causes of which they are ignorant; 
 and as for the greater part, they do not 
 know the cause of any thing; every 
 thing is a miracle to them, or at least 
 they imagine that God is the cause of 
 all the good and of all the evil which 
 they experience. In short, it is thus 
 that theologians solve all difficulties in 
 attributing to God every thing of which 
 they are ignorant, or of which they are 
 not willing men should understand the 
 true causes. 
 
 In the third place, the savage, in open- 
 ing the watch and examining its parts, 
 will feel, perhaps, that these parts an- 
 nounce a work which can only be 
 the result of human labour. He will 
 see that they differ from the immediate 
 productions of nature, whom he has not 
 seen produce wheels made of a polish- 
 ed metal. He will again see that these 
 parts, separated from each other, no lon- 
 ger act as they did when they were to- 
 gether; after these observations, the 
 savage will attribute the watch to the 
 ingenuity of man, that is to say, to a 
 being like himself, of whom he has 
 ideas, but whom he judges capable of 
 doing things which he does not himself 
 know how to do ; in short, he will as- 
 cribe the honour of this work to a be- 
 ing known in some respects, provided 
 with some faculties superior to his own, 
 but he will be far from thinking that a 
 material work can be the effect of an im- 
 material cause, or of an agent destitute 
 of organs and of extent, of whom it is 
 impossible to conceive the action upon 
 material beings : whilst, for want of be- 
 ing acquainted with the power of na- 
 ture, we ascribe the honour of her work 
 to a being of whom we have much less 
 knowledge than of her, and to which, 
 without knowing it, we attribute those 
 amongst her labours which we compre- 
 hend the least. In seeing the world, 
 we acknowledge a material cause ol 
 those phenomena which take place in 
 it ; and this cause is nature, of whom 
 the energy is shown to those who study 
 her. 
 
 Let us not be told, that, according to 
 this hypothesis, we attribute every 
 thing to a blind cause, to the fortuitous 
 concurrence of atoms ; to chance. We 
 only call those blind causes, of which 
 we know not the combination, the pow- 
 er, and the laws. We call fortuitous, 
 those effects of which we are ignorant 
 of the causes, and which our ignorance 
 and inexperience prevent us from fore- 
 seeing. We attribute to chance, all 
 those effects of which we do not see 
 the necessary connexion with their 
 causes. Nature is not a blind cause ; 
 she does not act by chance ; nothing 
 that she does would ever be fortuitous 
 to him who should know her mode of 
 acting, her resources, and her course. 
 Every thing which she produces is ne- 
 cessary, and is never more than a con- 
 sequence of her fixed and constant laws; 
 every thing in her is connected by 
 invisible bands, and all those effects 
 which we see flow necessarily from 
 their causes, whether we know them 
 or not. It is very possible there should 
 be ignorance on our part, but the words 
 God, Spirit, Intelligence, will not re- 
 medy this ignorance : they will do no 
 more than redouble it by preventing us 
 from seeking the natural causes of those 
 effects which our visual faculties make 
 us acquainted with. 
 
 This may serve for an answer to the 
 eternal objection which is made to the 
 partisans of nature, who are unceasing- 
 ly accused of attributing every thing 
 to chance. Chance is a word devoid 
 of sense, or at least it indicates only 
 the ignorance of those who employ it. 
 Nevertheless we are told, and it is reit- 
 erated continually, that a regular work 
 cannot be ascribed to the combinations- 
 of chance. Never, we are informed,, 
 will it be possible to arrive at the for- 
 mation of a poem, such as the Iliad, by 
 means of letters thrown or combined 
 together at random. We agree to it 
 without hesitation ; but, ingeniously, 
 are those letters thrown with the hand 
 like dice, which compose a poem ? It 
 would avail as much to say that we 
 could pronounce a discourse with the 
 feet. It is nature who combines, after 
 certain and necessary laws, a head or- 
 ganized in a manner to make a poem ; 
 it is nature who gives man a brain suit- 
 able to give birth to such a work ; it 
 is nature who, by the temperament, the
 
 OP THEEXISTENCE OP GOD. 
 
 235 
 
 imagination, the passions, which she 
 gives to man, capacitates him to pro- 
 duce a chef-cPceuvre : it is his brain, 
 modified in a certain manner, decora- 
 ted with ideas or images, made fruitful 
 by circumstances, which can become 
 the only matrix in which a poem can 
 be conceived and developed. A head 
 organized like that of Homer, furnished 
 with the same vigour and the same im- 
 agination, enriched with the same 
 knowledge, placed in the same circum- 
 stances, will produce necessarily, and 
 not by chance, the poem of the Iliad ; 
 at least if it be not denied that causes 
 similar in every thing, must produce 
 effects perfectly identical.* 
 
 It is, then, puerility, or knavery, to 
 * talk of composing, by a throw of the 
 hand, or by mingling letters together 
 by chance, that which can only be done 
 with the assistance of a brain organiz- 
 ed and modified in a certain manner. 
 The human seed does not develop it- 
 self by chance, it cannot be conceived 
 or formed but in the womb of a woman. 
 A confused heap of characters or of fig- 
 ures, is only an assemblage of signs, 
 destined to paint ideas ; but in order 
 that these ideas may be painted, it is 
 previously necessary that they may 
 have been received, comhined, nourish- 
 ed, developed, and connected, in the 
 head of a poet, where circumstances 
 make them fructify and ripen, on ac- 
 count of the fecundity, of the heat, and 
 
 * Should we not be astonished if there were 
 in a dice-box a hundred thousand dice, to see 
 a hundred thousand sixes follow in succession? 
 Yes, without doubt, it will be said ; but if these 
 dico were all cogged or loaded, we should 
 cease to be surprised. Well then, the parti- 
 cles of matter may be compared to cogged 
 dice, that is to say, always producing certain 
 deter-Tiined effects ; these particles being es- 
 sentially varied in themselves, and in their 
 combination, they are cogged in an infinity of 
 different modes. The head of Homer, or the 
 head of Virgil, was no more than the assem- 
 blage of particles, or if they choose, of dice, 
 cogged by nature ; that is to say, of beings 
 combined and wrought in a manner to pro- 
 duce the Iliad or the ^Eneid. As much may 
 be said of all the other productions, whether 
 they be those of intelligence, or of the handi- 
 work of men. Indeed, what are men, except 
 dice cogged, or machines which nature has 
 rendered capable of producing works of a cer- 
 tain kind ? A man of genius produces a good 
 work, in the same manner as a tree of good 
 species, placed in good ground, and cultivated 
 with care, produces excellent fruit. 
 
 I of the energy of the soil where these 
 ' intellectual seeds have been thrown. 
 Ideas, in combining, extending, con- 
 necting, and associating themselves, 
 form a whole, like all the bodies of na- 
 ture : this whole pleases us, when it 
 gives birth to agreeable ideas in our 
 mind; when they offer us pictures 
 which move us in a lively manner ; it 
 is thus that the poem of Homer, engen- 
 dered in his head, has the power of 
 pleasing heads analogous and capable 
 of feeling its beauties. 
 
 We see, then, that nothing is made 
 by chance. All the works of nature 
 grow out of certain uniform and inva- 
 riable laws, whether our mind can with 
 facility follow the chain of the succes- 
 sive causes which she puts in action, 
 or whether, in her more complicated 
 works, we may find ourselves in the 
 impossibility of distinguishing the dif- 
 ferent springs which she causes to act.j 
 It is not more difficult for nature to pro- 
 duce a great poet, capable of composing 
 
 t It is not often that the most sedulous at- 
 tention, the most patient investigation, afford 
 us the information we are seeking after ; some- 
 times, however, the unwearied industry of the 
 philosopher is rewarded by throwing into 
 light the most mysterious operations of Na- 
 ture. Thus the keen penetration of a New- 
 ton, aided by uncommon diligence, developed 
 the starry system, which, for so many thou- 
 sand years, had eluded the research of all the 
 astronomers by whom he was preceded. Thus 
 the sagacity of a Harvey giving vigour to his 
 application, brought out of the obscurity in 
 which for almost countless centuries it had 
 been buried, the true course pursued by the 
 sanguinary fluid, when circulating through 
 the veins and arteries of man, giving activity 
 to his machine, diffusing life through his sys- 
 tem, arid enabling him to perform those ac- 
 tions which so frequently strike an astonished 
 world with wonder and regret. Thus Galileo, 
 by a quickness of perception, a depth of rea- 
 soning peculiar to himself, held up to an ad- 
 miring world, the actual form and situation of 
 the planet we inhabit, which, until then, had 
 escaped the observation of the most profound 
 geniuses the most subtile metaphysicians-- 
 and which, when first promulgated, was con- 
 sidered so contradictory to all the then receiv- 
 ed opinions, (besides giving the lie to the stp- 
 rv of Joshua stopping the sun, as recorded in 
 the Holy tfible !) that he was ranked as an 
 impious blasphemer, to hold communion with 
 whom would infallibly secure to the commu- 
 ners a place in the regions of everlasting tor- 
 ment : indeed, Pope Gregory, who then filled 
 the papal chair, excommunicated all those 
 who had the temerity to accredit so abomina- 
 ble a doctrine !
 
 236 
 
 OP PANTHEISM, OR OP THE 
 
 an admirable work, than to produce a 
 glittering metal or a stone, which gra- 
 vitates towards a centre. The mode 
 which she takes to produce these dif- 
 ferent beings, is equally unknown to us, 
 when we have not meditated upon it. 
 Man is born by the necessary concur- 
 rence of some elements ; he increases 
 and is strengthened in the same man- 
 ner as a plant or a stone, which is, as 
 well as he, increased and augmented 
 by those substances which come and 
 join themselves thereto: this man, feels, 
 thinks, acts, and receives ideas, that is 
 to say, is, by his peculiar organization, 
 susceptible of modifications, of which 
 the plant and the stone are totally in- 
 capable: in consequence, the man of 
 genius produces works, and the plant 
 fruits, which please and surprise us, by 
 reason of those sensations which they 
 operate in us ; or on account of the rar- 
 ity, the magnitude, and the variety of 
 the effects which they occasion us to 
 experience. That which we find most 
 admirable in the productions of nature, 
 and in those of animals or men, is ne- 
 ver more than a natural effect of the 
 parts of matter, diversely arranged and 
 combined ; from whence result in them 
 organs, brains, temperaments, tastes, 
 properties, and different talents. 
 
 Nature, then, makes nothing but what 
 is necessary ; it is not by fortuitous 
 combinations, and by chance throws, 
 that she produces the beings we see ; 
 all her throws are sure, all the causes 
 which she employs have, infallibly, 
 their effects. When she produces ex- 
 traordinary, marvellous and rare beings, 
 it is, that, in the order of things, the ne- 
 cessary circumstances, or the concur- 
 rence of the productive causes of these 
 beings, happen but seldom. As soon 
 as these beings exist, they are to be as- 
 cribed to nature, to whom every thing 
 is equally easy, and to whom every 
 thing is equally possible, when she as- 
 sembles the instruments or the causes 
 necessary to act. Thus, let us never 
 limit the powers of nature. The throws 
 and the combinations which she make 
 during eternity, can easily produce all 
 beings ; her eternal course must neces- 
 sarily bring and bring again the most 
 astonishing circumstances, and the 
 most rare, for those beings who are only 
 for a moment enabled to consider them 
 
 without ever having either the time Of 
 the means of searching into the bottom 
 of causes. Infinite throws during eter- 
 nity, with the elements, and combina- 
 tions infinitely varied, suffice to pro- 
 duce every thing of which we have a 
 knowledge, and many other things 
 which we shall never know. 
 
 Thus, we cannot too often repeat to 
 the Deicolists, or supporters of the be- 
 ing of a God, who commonly ascribe 
 to their adversaries ridiculous opinions, 
 in order to obtain an easy and transito- 
 ry triumph in the prejudiced eyes of 
 those who dare examine nothing deep- 
 ly, that chance is nothing but a word, 
 as well as the word God, imagined to 
 cover the ignorance in which men are 
 of the causes acting in a nature whose 
 course is frequently inexplicable. It 
 is not chance that has produced the 
 universe, it is of itself that which it is ; 
 it exists necessarily and from all eter- 
 nity. However concealed may be the 
 ways of nature, her existence is indu- 
 bitable ; and her mode of acting is, at 
 least, much more known to us than 
 that of the inconceivable being, which, 
 it has been pretended, is associated 
 with her ; which has been distinguish- 
 ed from her ; which has been supposed 
 necessary and self-existent, although, 
 hitherto, it has neither been possible to 
 demonstrate his existence, to define 
 him, to say any thing reasonable of 
 him, nor to form upon his account any 
 thing more than conjectures, which re- 
 flection has destroyed as soon as th;y 
 have been brought forth. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Of Pantheism, or of the Natural Ideas of the 
 Divinity. 
 
 WE see, by that which has preceded, 
 that all the proofs upon which theolo- 
 gy pretends to found the existence of 
 it's God, have their origin in the false 
 principle that matter is not self-exist- 
 ent, and is, by its nature, in an impos- 
 sibility of moving itself; and, conse- 
 quently, is incapable of producing those 
 phenomena which attract our wonder- 
 ing eyes in the wide expanse of the uni- 
 verse. After these suppositions, so 
 gratuitous and so false, as we have al-
 
 NATURAL IDEAS OP THE DIVINITY. 
 
 237 
 
 shown elsewhere,* it has been 
 believed that matter did not always ex- 
 ist, but that it was indebted for its ex- 
 istence and for its motion to a cause 
 distinguished from itself; to an un- 
 known agent, to whom it was subordi- 
 nate. As men find in themselves a 
 quality which they call intelligence, 
 which presides over all their actions, 
 and by the aid of which they arrive at 
 the end they propose to themselves, 
 they have attributed intelligence to 
 this invisible agent ; but they have ex- 
 tended, magnified, and exaggerated this 
 quality in him. because they have made 
 him the author of effects of which they 
 believed themselves incapable, or which 
 they did not suppose natural causes had 
 sufficient energy to produce* 
 
 As this<agent could never be perceiv- 
 ed, nor his mode of action conceived, 
 he Avas made a spirit, a word which de- 
 signates that we are ignorant what he 
 is, or that he acts like the breath of 
 which we cannot trace the action. 
 Thus, in assigning him spirituality, 
 we did no more than give to God an 
 occult quality, which was judged suit- 
 able to a being always concealed, and 
 always acting in a mode imperceptible 
 to the senses. It appears, however, 
 that, originally, by the word spirit it 
 was meant to designate a matter more 
 subtile than that which coarsely struck 
 the organs ; capable of penetrating this 
 matter, of communicating to it motion 
 and life, of producing in it those com- 
 binations and those modifications which 
 our visual organs discover. Such was, 
 as we have seen, that Jupiter, who was 
 originally designed to represent in the 
 theology of the ancients the ethereal 
 matter which penetrates, gives activity, 
 and vivifies all the bodies of which na- 
 ture is the assemblage. 
 
 Indeed it would be deceiving our- 
 selves to believe that the idea of God's 
 spirituality, such as we find it at the pre- 
 sent day, presented itself in the early 
 stages of the human mind. This im- 
 materiality, which excludes all anal- 
 ogy and all resemblance with any thing 
 we are in a capacity to have a know- 
 
 *See first part, chapter second, where we 
 have shown mat motion is essential to matter. 
 This chapter is only a summary of the first 
 five chapters of the first part, which it is in- 
 tended to recall to the reader; he will pass to 
 the next if these ideas are remembered. 
 
 ledge of, was, as we have already ob- 
 served, the slow and tardy fruit of men's 
 imagination, who, obliged to meditate, 
 without any assistance drawn from ex- 
 perience, upon the concealed mover of 
 nature, have, by degrees, arrived at 
 forming this ideal phantom ; this being, 
 so fugitive, that we have been made to 
 adore it without being able to designate 
 its nature, otherwise than by a word to 
 which it is impossible we should attach 
 any true idea.* Thus by dint of rea- 
 soning and subtilizing, the word God 
 no longer presents any one image; 
 when they spoke of it, it was impossi- 
 ble to understand them, seeing that 
 each painted it in his own manner, and 
 in the portrait which he made of it, con- 
 sulted only his own peculiar tempera- 
 ment, his own peculiar imagination, and 
 his own peculiar reveries ; if they were 
 in unison in some points, it was to as- 
 sign him inconceivable qualities, which 
 they believed were suitable to the in- 
 comprehensible being to which they 
 had given birth ; and from the incom- 
 patible heap of these qualities resulted 
 only a whole, perfectly impossible to 
 have existence. In short, the master 
 of the universe, the omnipotent mover 
 of nature, that being which is announ- 
 ced as of the most importance to be 
 
 *See what has been said upon this in the 
 seventh chapter of the first part. Although 
 the first doctors of the Christian Church may, 
 for the greater part, have drawn from the Pla- 
 tonic philosophy their obscure notions of spi- 
 rituality, of incorporeal, and immaterial sub- 
 stances, of intellectual powers, tf-e. we have 
 only to open their works, to convince ourselves 
 that they had not that idea of God which the 
 theologians of the present day give us. Ttr- 
 tullian, as we have elsewhere said, considered 
 God as corporeal. Seraphis said, crying, that 
 Ihcy had deprived him of his God, in making 
 him adopt the opinion of spirituality, which 
 was not, however, so much subtilized 'then as 
 it has been since. Many, fathers of the Ch nrck 
 have given a human form to God, and have 
 treated as heretics those who made him a 
 spirit. The Jupiter of the pagan theology is 
 looked upon as the youngest child of Saturn 
 or of Time: the spiritual God of the Chris- 
 tians is a much more recent production of 
 time ; it is only by dint of subtilizing that this 
 God, the conqueror of all those Gods who 
 preceded him, has been formed by degrees. 
 Spirituality is become the last refuge of the- 
 ology, which has arrived at making a God 
 more than aerial in the hope, no doubt, that 
 such a God would be inaccessible ; indeed, he 
 is so, for to attack him is to combat a mere 
 chimera.
 
 238 
 
 OF PANTHEISM, OR OP THE 
 
 known, was by theological reveries, re- 
 duced to be no more than a vague word 
 destitute of sense; or, rather a vain 
 sound, to which each attaches his own 
 peculiar ideas. Such is the God who 
 has been substituted to matter, to na- 
 ture ; such is the idol to which men 
 are not permitted to refuse paying their 
 homage. 
 
 There have been, however, men of 
 sufficient courage to resist this torrent 
 of opinion and delirium. They be- 
 lieved that the object which w r as an- 
 nounced as the most important for mor- 
 tals, as the only centre of their actions 
 and their thoughts, demanded an at- 
 tentive examination. They apprehen- 
 ded that if experience, judgment, or 
 reason, could be of any utility, it must 
 be, without doubt, to consider the sub- 
 lime monarch who governed nature, 
 and who regulated the destiny of all 
 those beings which it contains. They 
 quickly saw they could not subscribe to 
 the general opinion of the uninformed, 
 who examine nothing ; and much less 
 with their guides, who, deceivers or 
 deceived, forbade others to examine it, 
 or perhaps, were themselves incapable 
 of making such an examination. Thus, 
 some thinkers had the temerity to shake 
 off the yoke which had been imposed 
 upon them in their infancy ; disgusted 
 with the obscure, contradictory, and 
 nonsensical notions which they had 
 been made, by habit, to attach mechan- 
 ically to the vague name of a God 
 impossible to be defined ; supported 
 by reason against the terrours with 
 which this formidable chimera was en- 
 vironed ; revolting at the hideous paint- 
 ings under which it was pretended to 
 represent him, they had the intrepidity 
 to tear the veil of delusion and impos- 
 turo ; they considered, with a calm eye, 
 this pretended power, become the con- 
 tinual object of the hopes, the fears, 
 the reveries, and the quarrels of blind 
 mortals. The spectre quickly disap- 
 peared before them ; the tranquillity of 
 their mind permitted them to see every 
 where, only a nature acting after inva- 
 riable laws, of whom the world is the 
 theatre ; of whom men, as well as all 
 other beings, are the works and the in- 
 struments, obliged to accomplish the 
 eternal decrees of necessity. 
 
 Whatever efforts we make to pene- 
 trate into the secrets of nature, we ne- 
 
 ver find in them, as we have many times 
 repeated, more than matter, various in 
 itself, and diversely modified by the as- 
 sistance of motion. Its whole, as well 
 as all its parts, show us only necessary 
 causes and effects, which flow the one 
 from the other, and of which, by the 
 aid of experience, our mind is more or 
 less capable of discovering the connex- 
 ion. In virtue of these specific pro- 
 perties, all the beings we see gravitate, 
 attract and repel each other ; are born, 
 and dissolved, receive and communi- 
 cate motion, qualities, modifications, 
 which maintain them, for a time, in a 
 given existence, or which make them 
 pass into a new mode of existence. It 
 is to these continual vicissitudes that 
 are to be ascribed all the phenomena, 
 great or small, ordinary or extraordi- 
 nary, known or unknown, simple or 
 complicated, which we see operated in 
 the world. It is by these changes that 
 we have a knowledge of nature ; she 
 is only mysterious to those who con- 
 sider her through the veil of prejudice, 
 her course being always simple to those 
 who look at her Avithout prepossession. 
 
 To attribute the effects our eyes Avit- 
 ness to nature, to matter variously com- 
 bined, to the motion which is inherent 
 in it, is to give them a general and 
 known cause ; to penetrate deeper, is 
 to plunge ourselves in imaginary re- 
 gions, where Ave only find an abyss of 
 incertitudes and obscurities. Let us 
 not seek, then, a moving principle out 
 of nature of Avhich the essence always 
 Avas to exist and to move itself; Avhich 
 cannot be conceived to be without pro- 
 perties, consequently, Avithout motion ; 
 of which all the parts are in action, re- 
 action, and continual efforts ; Avhere a 
 single molecule cannot be found that 
 is in absolute repose, and Avhich does 
 not necessarily occupy the place as 
 signed to it by necessary laws. What 
 occasion is there to seek out of matter 
 a motive-poAver to give it play, since 
 its motion floAVs necessarily from its 
 existence, its extent, its forms, its gra- 
 vity, &c., and since nature in inaction 
 would no longer be nature 1 
 
 If it be demanded hoAV Ave can figure 
 to ourselves, that matter, by its own 
 peculiar energy, can produce all the ef- 
 fects Ave witness? I shall reply, that if 
 by matter it is obstinately determined 
 to understand nothing but a dead and
 
 NATURAL IDEAS OF THE DIVINITY. 
 
 239 
 
 inert mass, destitute of every property, 
 without action, and incapable of mo- 
 ving itself, we shall no longer have a 
 single idea of matter. As soon as it 
 exists, it must have properties and 
 qualities ; as soon as it has properties, 
 without which it could not exist, it must 
 act by virtue of those properties, since 
 it is only by its action that we can have 
 a knowledge of its existence and its 
 properties. It is evident, that if by mat- 
 ter be understood that which it is not, 
 or if its existence be denied, those phe- 
 nomena which strike our visual organs, 
 cannot be attributed to it. But if by 
 nature be understood that which she 
 truly is, a heap of existing matter, fur- 
 nished with properties, we shall be 
 obliged to acknowledge that nature 
 must move herself, and by her diver- 
 sified motion be capable, without for- 
 eign aid, of producing the effects which 
 we behold ; we shall find that nothing 
 can be made from nothing; that no- 
 thing is made by chance ; that the 
 mode of acting of every particle of 
 matter is necessarily determined by its 
 own peculiar essence, or by its individ- 
 ual properties. 
 
 We have elsewhere said, that that 
 which cannot be annihilated or destroy- 
 ed cannot have commenced to have ex- 
 istence. That which cannot have had 
 a beginning, exists necessarily, or con- 
 tains within itself the sufficient cause 
 of its own peculiar existence. It is, 
 then, useless to seek out of nature or 
 of a self-existent cause, which is known 
 to us at least in some respects, another 
 cause whose existence is totally un- 
 known. We know some general pro- 
 perties in matter, we discover some of 
 its qualities ; wherefore seek for its 
 existence in an unintelligible cause, 
 which we cannot know by any one pro- 
 perty ? Wherefore recur to the incon- 
 ceivable and chimerical operation 
 which has been designated by the word 
 creation ?* Can we conceive that an 
 
 * Some theologians have frankly confessed 
 that the theory of the creation was founded 
 on an hypothesis supported by very little pro- 
 bability, and which had been invented some 
 centuries after Jesus Christ. An author, who 
 endeavoured to refute Spinosa, assumes that 
 Tertullian was the first who advanced this 
 opinion against another Christian philosopher 
 who maintained the eternity of matter. See 
 " The Impious Man Convinced," end of the 
 advertisement. Even the author of this work 
 
 immaterial being has been able to draw 
 matter from his own peculiar source ? 
 If creation is an eduction from no- 
 thing' must we not conclude from it 
 that God, who has drawn it from his 
 own peculiar source, has drawn it from 
 nothing, and is himself nothing ? Do 
 those who are continually talking to us 
 of this act of the divine omnipotence, 
 by which an infinite mass of matter 
 has been, all at once, substituted to no- 
 thing, well understand what they tell 
 us 1 Is here a man on earth, who con- 
 ceives that a being devoid of extent, 
 can exist, become the cause of the ex- 
 istence of beings, who have extent ; act 
 upon matter, draw it from his own pe- 
 culiar essence, and set it in motion 1 
 In truth, the more we consider theolo- 
 gy, and its ridiculous romances, the 
 more we must be convinced that it has 
 done no more than invent words, de- 
 void of sense, and substituted sounds 
 to intelligible realities. 
 
 For want of consulting experience, 
 of studying nature and the material 
 world, we have thrown ourselves into 
 an intellectual world, which we have * 
 peopled with chimeras. We have not 
 stooped to consider matter, nor to fol- 
 low it through its different periods and 
 changes. We have either ridiculously 
 or knavishly confounded dissolution, 
 decomposition, the separation of the 
 elementary particles of which bodies 
 are composed, with their radical de- 
 struction ; we have been unwilling to 
 see that the elements were indestructi- 
 ble, although their forms were fleeting 
 and depended upon transitory combi- 
 nations. We have not distinguished 
 the change of figure, of position, of tex- 
 ture, to which matter is liable from its 
 annihilation, which is totally impossi- 
 ble ; we have falsely concluded that 
 matter was not a necessary being, that 
 it had commenced to exist, that it owed 
 its existence to an unknown being, 
 more necessary than itself; and this 
 ideal being has become the creator, the 
 motive-power, the preserver of the 
 whole of nature. Thus a vain name 
 only has been substituted for matter, 
 which furnishes us with true ideas of 
 nature, of which, at each moment we 
 experience the action and the power ? 
 
 admits that it is impossible to combat Spinosa 
 without admitiing the eternal coexistence of 
 matter with God.
 
 240 
 
 OF PANTHEISM, OR OF THE 
 
 and of which we should have a much 
 better knowledge if our abstract opin- 
 ions did not continually place a band- 
 age before our eyes. 
 
 Indeed, the most simple notions of 
 philosophy show us, that although bo- 
 dies change and disappear, nothing is, 
 however, lost in nature ; the various 
 produce of the decomposition of a body 
 serves for elements, for materials, and 
 for basis to the formation, to the accre- 
 tion, to the maintenance of other bodies. 
 The whole of nature subsists and is 
 conserved only by the circulation, the 
 transmigration, the exchange, and the 
 perpetual displacing of insensible par- 
 ticles and atoms, or of the sensible com- 
 binations of matter. It is by this pa- 
 lingenesia, or regeneration, that the 
 great whole subsists, who, like the Sa- 
 turn of the ancients, is perpetually oc- 
 cupied with devouring his own chil- 
 dren. But it may be said, in some re- 
 spects, that the metaphysical God. who 
 has usurped his throne, has deprived 
 him of the faculty of procreating and of 
 acting, ever since he has been put in 
 his place. 
 
 Let us acknowledge then, that mat- 
 ter is self-existent, that it acts by its 
 own peculiar energy, and that it will 
 never be annihilated. Let us say, that 
 matter is eternal, and that nature has 
 been, is, and ever will be occupied with 
 producing, with destroying, with do- 
 ing, and undoing ; with following laws 
 resulting from its necessary existence. 
 For every thing that she does, she needs 
 only to combine elements and matter, 
 essentially diverse, which attract and 
 repel each other,dash against each other 
 or unite themselves, remove from or ap- 
 proximate each other, hold themselves 
 together or separate themselves. It is 
 thus, that she brings forth plants, ani- 
 mals, men ; organized, sensible and 
 thinking beings, as well as those desti- 
 tute of feeling and of thought. All 
 these beings act only for the term of 
 their respective duration, according to 
 invariable laws, determined by their 
 properties, by their configuration, their 
 masses, their weight, &c. Here is the 
 true origin of every fhing which pre- 
 sents itself to our view, showing the 
 mode in which nature, by its own pe- 
 culiar power, is in a state to produce 
 all those effects, of which our eyes wit- 
 ness, as well as all the bodies which 
 
 act diversely upon the organs with 
 which we are furnished, and of which 
 we judge only according to the manner 
 in which these organs are affected. We 
 say they are good, when they are con- 
 genial to us, or contribute to maintain 
 harmony in ourselves ; we say they are 
 bad, when they disturb this harmony ; 
 and we ascribe, in consequence, aa aim, 
 ideas, designs, to the being, whom we 
 make the motive-power of a nature 
 which we see destitute of projects and 
 intelligence. 
 
 Nature is effectually destitute of 
 them ; she has no intelligence or end ; 
 she acts necessarily, because she exists 
 necessarily. Her laws are immutable 
 and founded upon the essence of things. 
 It is the essence of the seed of the 
 male, composed of the primitive ele- 
 ments, which serve for the basis of an 
 organized being, to unite itself with 
 that of the female, to fructify it, ta pro- 
 duce, by its combination with it, a new 
 organized being, who, feeble in his ori- 
 gin, for want of a sufficient quantity of 
 particles of matter, suitable to give him 
 consistence, strengthens himself by 
 degrees, by the daily and continual ad- 
 dition of particles, analogous and ap- 
 propriate to his being; thus he lives-, 
 he thinks, he is nourished, and he en- 
 genders, in his turn, organized beings 
 similar to himself. By a consequence 
 of permanent and physical laws, gene- 
 ration does not take place, except when 
 the circumstances necessary to pro- 
 duce it find themselves united. Thus, 
 this procreation is not operated by 
 chance ; the animal does not produce 
 but with an animal of his own species, 
 because this is the only one analogous 
 to himself, or who unites the qualities 
 suitable to the producing a being simir 
 lar to himself; without this, he would 
 not produce any thing, he would only 
 produce a being, denominated mon- 
 strous, because it would be dissimilar to 
 himself. It is of the essence of the grain 
 of plants, to be fructified by the seed of 
 the stamina of the flower, to develop 
 themselves in consequence in the bow- 
 els of the earth, to grow with the assist- 
 ance of water, to attract for that purpose 
 analogous particles, to form by degrees 
 a plant, a shrub, a tree susceptible of the 
 life, the action, the motion, suitable to 
 vegetables. It is of the essence of 
 particles of earth, attenuated, divided,
 
 NATURAL IDEAS OF THE DIVINITY, 
 
 241 
 
 elaborated by water and by heat, to 
 unite themselves, in the bosom of 
 mountains, with those which are an- 
 alogous to them, and to form by their 
 aggregation, according as they are more 
 or less similar or analogous, bodies, 
 more or less solid and pure, which we 
 denominate crystals, stones, metals, 
 minerals. It is the essence of the ex- 
 halations, raised by the heat of the at- 
 mosphere, to combine, to collect them- 
 selves, to dash against each other, and, 
 by their combination or their collision, 
 to produce meteors and thunder. It is 
 the essence of some inflammable mat- 
 ter to collect itself, to ferment, to heat 
 itself in the caverns of the earth, to 
 produce those terrible explosions and 
 those earthquakes which destroy moun- 
 tains, plains, and the "habitations of 
 alarmed nations ; these complain to an 
 unknown being, of the evils which na- 
 ture makes them experience as neces- 
 sarily as those benefits which fill them 
 with joy. In short, it is the essence of 
 certain climates, to produce men so or- 
 ganized and modified, that they be- 
 come either extremely useful, or very 
 prejudicial to their species, in the same 
 manner as it is the property of certain 
 portions of soil to bring forth agreeable 
 fruits, or dangerous poisons. 
 
 In all this, nature has no end ; she 
 exists necessarily, her modes of acting 
 are fixed by certain laws, which flow 
 themselves from the constituent pro- 
 perties of the various beings Avhich 
 she contains, and those circumstances 
 which the continual motion she is in 
 must necessarily bring about. It is 
 ourselves who have a necessary aim, 
 which is our own conservation ; it is 
 by this that we regulate all the ideas 
 we form to ourselves of the causes 
 which act upon us, and by which we 
 judge of them. Animated and living 
 ourselves, we, like the savages, ascribe 
 a soul and life to every thing that acts 
 upon us: thinking and intelligent our- 
 selves, we ascribe to every thing intel- 
 ligence and thought ; but as we see 
 matter incapable of so modifying it- 
 self, we suppose it to be moved by an- 
 other agent or cause, which we always 
 make similar to ourselves. Necessa- 
 rily attracted by that which is advan- 
 tageous to us, and repelled by that 
 which is prejudicial, we cease to reflect 
 that our modes of feeling are due to 
 
 No., VIII. 31 
 
 our peculiar organization, modified by 
 physical causes, which, in our igno- 
 rance we mistake for instruments em- 
 ployed by a being to whom we ascribe 
 our ideas, our views, our passions, our 
 mode of thinking and of acting. 
 
 If it be asked of us, after this, what 
 is the end of nature? Ave shall reply, 
 that it is to act, to exist, to conserve 
 her whole. If it be asked of us, where- 
 fore she exists? we shall reply, that 
 she exists necessarily, and that all her 
 operations, her motions, and her works, 
 are necessary consequences of her ne- 
 cessary existence. There exists some- 
 thing that is necessary, this is nature 
 or the universe, and this nature acts 
 necessarily as she does. If it be wish- 
 ed to substitute the Avord God to that 
 of nature, it may be demanded with 
 equal reason, Avherefore this God ex- 
 ists, as well as it can be asked, Avhat is 
 the end of the existence of nature. 
 Thus, the word God will not instruct 
 us as to the end of his existence. But 
 in speaking of nature or of the mate- 
 rial universe, we shall have fixed and 
 determinate ideas of the cause of which 
 we speak; whilst in speaking of a the- 
 ological God, we shall never know 
 what he can be, or Avhether he exists, 
 nor the qualities which AVC can with 
 justice assign him. If Ave give him 
 attributes, it will always be ourselves 
 Avho must conjecture them, and it will 
 be for ourselves alone that the universe 
 will be formed : ideas which we have 
 already sufficiently refuted. To unde- 
 ceive ourselves, it is sufficient to open 
 our eyes, and see that we undergo, in. 
 our mode, a destiny, of Avhich Ave par- 
 take in common with all the beings of 
 Avhich nature is the assemblage ; like 
 us, they are subjected to necessity, 
 which is no more than the sum total 
 of those laAVs which nature is obliged 
 to follow. 
 
 Thus every thing proves to us, that 
 nature or matter exists necessarily, and 
 cannot swerve from those laws Avhich 
 its existence imposes on it. If it can- 
 not be annihilated, it cannot have com- 
 menced to be. The theologians them- 
 selves agree that it were necessary to 
 have an act of the divine omnipotence, 
 or that which they call a miracle, to 
 annihilate a being; but a necessary 
 being, cannot perform a miracle ; he 
 cannot derogate from the necessary
 
 242 
 
 OF PANTHEISM, OR OP THE 
 
 laws of his existence ; we must con- 
 clude, then, that if God is the neces- 
 sary being, every thing that he does, 
 is a consequence of the necessity of 
 his existence, and that he can never 
 derogate from its laws. On the other 
 hand, we are told, that the creation is 
 a miracle, but this creation would be 
 impossible to a necessary being, who 
 could not act freely in any one of his 
 actions. Besides, a miracle is to us 
 only a rare effect, the natural cause of 
 which we ignore ; thus, when we are 
 told that God works a miracle, we are 
 taught nothing, save that an unknown 
 cause has produced, in an unknown 
 manner, an effect that we did not ex- 
 pect, or which appears strange to us. 
 This granted, the intervention of a 
 God, far from removing the ignorance 
 in which we find ourselves respecting 
 the power and the effects of nature, 
 serves only to augment it. The crea- 
 tion of matter, and the cause to whom 
 is ascribed the honour of this creation, 
 are to us, things as incomprehensible, 
 or as impossible, as is its annihila- 
 tion. 
 
 Let us then conclude, that the word 
 God, as well as the word create, not 
 presenting to the mind any true idea, 
 ought to be banished the language 01 
 all those who are desirous to speak so 
 as to be understood. These are ab- 
 stract words, invented by ignorance ; 
 they are only calculated to satisfy men 
 destitute of experience, too idle, or too 
 timid to study nature and its ways; to 
 content those enthusiasts, whose curi- 
 ous imagination pleases itself with 
 springing beyond the visible world, to 
 run after chimeras. In short, these 
 words are useful to those only, whose 
 sole profession is to feed the ears of 
 the uninformed with pompous words, 
 which are not understood by them- 
 selves, and upon the sense and mean- 
 ing of which they are never in har- 
 mony with each other. 
 
 Man is a material being ; he cannot 
 have any ideas whatever but of that 
 which is material like himself; that is 
 to say, of that which can act upon his 
 organs, or of that which, at least, has 
 qualities analogous to his own. In de- 
 spite of himself, he always assigns 
 material properties to his God, which 
 the impossibility of compassing has 
 made him suppose to be spiritual, and 
 
 distinguished from nature or the mate- 
 rial world. Indeed, either he must be 
 content not to understand himself, or 
 he must have material ideas of a God, 
 who is supposed to be the creator, the 
 mover, the conserver of matter; the 
 human mind may torture itself as long 
 as it will, it will never comprehend 
 that material effects can emanate from 
 an immaterial cause, or that this cause 
 can have any relation with material 
 beings. Here is, as we have seen, the 
 reason why men believe themselves 
 obliged to give to God those moral 
 qualities, which they have themselves ; 
 they forget that this being, who is 
 purely spiritual, cannot, from thence, 
 have either their organization, or their 
 ideas, or their modes of thinking and 
 acting, and that, consequently, he can- 
 not possess that which they call intel- 
 ligence, wisdom, goodness, anger, jus- 
 tice, &c. Thus, in truth, the moral 
 qualities which have been attributed to 
 the Divinity, suppose him material, 
 and the most abstract theological no- 
 tions are founded upon a true and un- 
 deniable anthropomorphism.* 
 
 The theologians, in despite of all their 
 subtilties, cannot do otherwise ; like 
 all the beings of the human species, 
 they have a knowledge of matter alone, 
 and have no real idea of a pure spirit. 
 When they speak of intelligence, of 
 wisdom, and of design in the Divinity, 
 they are always those of men which 
 they ascribe to him, and which they 
 obstinately persist in giving to a being, 
 of whom the essence they ascribe to 
 him, does not render him susceptible. 
 How shall we suppose a being, who 
 has occasion for nothing, who is suffi- 
 cient for himself, whose projects must 
 be executed as soon as they are form- 
 ed, to have wills, passions, and de- 
 sires ? How shall we attribute anger 
 to a being who has neither blood nor 
 bile ? How an omnipotent being, whose 
 wisdom and the beautiful order which 
 he has himself established in the uni- 
 verse we admire, can permit that this 
 beautiful order should be continually 
 disturbed, either by the elements in 
 discord, or by the crimes of human 
 creatures ? In short, a God, such as 
 
 * Anthropomorphism is supposing God to 
 have a bodily shape : a sect of this persua- 
 sion appeared in Egypt in 359 of the Chris- 
 tian era.
 
 NATURAL IDEAS OP THE DIVINITY, 
 
 243 
 
 he has been depicted to us, cannot 
 have any of the human qualities, which 
 always depend on our peculiar organ- 
 ization, on our wants, on our institu- 
 tions, and which are always relative 
 to the society in which we live. The 
 theologians vainly strive to aggrandize, 
 to exaggerate in idea, to carry to per- 
 fection, by dint of abstractions, the 
 moral qualities which they assign to 
 their God ; in vain they tell us that 
 they are in him of a different nature 
 from what they are in his creatures ; 
 that they are perfect, infinite, su- 
 preme, eminent ; in holding this lan- 
 guage, they no longer understand 
 themselves ; they have no one idea of 
 the qualities of which they are speak- 
 ing to us, seeing that a man cannot 
 conceive them but inasmuch as they 
 bear an analogy to the same qualities 
 in himself. 
 
 It is thus, that by subtilizing, mor- 
 tals have not one fixed idea of the God 
 to whom they have given birth. But 
 little contented with a physical God, 
 with an active nature, with matter ca- 
 pable of producing every thing, they 
 must despoil it of the energy which it 
 possesses in virtue of its essence, in 
 order to invest it in a pure spirit, which 
 they are obliged to remake a material 
 being, as soon as they are inclined to 
 form an idea of it themselves, or make 
 it understood by others. In assembling 
 the parts of man, which they do no 
 more than enlarge and spin out to in- 
 finity, they believe they form a God. 
 It is upon the model of the human 
 soul, that they form the soul of nature, 
 or the secret agent from which she re- 
 ceives impulse. After having made 
 man double, they make nature double, 
 and they suppose that this nature is 
 vivified by an intelligence. In the im- 
 possibility of knowing this pretended 
 agent, as well as that which they have 
 gratuitously distinguished from their 
 own body, they have called it spiritual, 
 that is to say, of an unknown sub- 
 stance ; from this, of which they have 
 no ideas whatever, they have conclud- 
 ed that the spiritual substance was 
 much more noble than matter, and that 
 its prodigious subtility, which they 
 have called simplicity, and which is 
 only an effect of their metaphysical 
 abstractions, secured it from decompo- 
 sition, from dissolution, and from all 
 
 the revolutions to which material bo- 
 dies are evidently exposed. 
 
 It is thus, that men always prefer the 
 marvellous to the simple ; that which 
 they do not understand, to that which 
 they can understand ; they despise 
 those objects which are familiar to 
 them, and estimate those alone which 
 they are not capable of appreciating: 
 from that of which they have only had 
 vague ideas, they have concluded that 
 it contains something important, super- 
 natural, and divine. In short, they 
 need mystery to move their imagina- 
 tion, to exercise their mind, to feed 
 their curiosity, which is never more in 
 labour than when it is occupied with 
 enigmas impossible to be guessed at, 
 and which they judge, from thence, 
 extremely worthy of their researches.* 
 This, without doubt, is the reason why 
 they look upon matter, which they 
 have under their eyes, which they see 
 act and change its forms, as a con 
 temptible thing, as a contingent being, 
 which does not exist necessarily and 
 by itself. This is the reason why they 
 imagine a spirit, which they will never 
 be able to conceive, and which, for this 
 reason, they declare to be superior to 
 matter, existing necessarily by him- 
 self, anterior to nature ; its creator, its 
 mover, its preserver, and its master. 
 The human mind found food in this 
 mystical being ; it was occupied by it 
 unceasingly ; the imagination embel- 
 
 *A great many nations have adored the 
 sun ; the sensible effects of this star, which 
 appears to infuse life into all nature, must 
 naturally have induced men to worship it. 
 Yet, whole people have abandoned this God 
 so visible, to adopt an abstract and metaphys- 
 ical God. If the reason of this phenomenon 
 should be asked, we shall reply, that the God 
 who is most concealed, most mysterious, and 
 most unknown, must always, for that very 
 reason, be more pleasing to the imagination 
 of the uninformed, than the God whom they 
 see daily. An unintelligible and mysterious 
 tone is essentially necessary to the ministers 
 of all religions : a clear, intelligible religion, 
 without mystery, would appeafless divine to 
 the generality of men, and would be less use- 
 ful' to the sacerdotal order, whose interest it 
 is that the people should comprehend nothing 
 of that which they believe to be the most im- 
 portant to them. This, without doubt, is the 
 secret of the clergy. The priest must have 
 an unintelligible God, whom he makes to 
 speak and act in an unintelligible manner, 
 reserving to himself the right of explaining 
 his orders after his own manner.
 
 244 
 
 OF PANTHEISM, OR OF THE 
 
 lished it in its own manner ; ignorance 
 fed itself with, the fables which had 
 been recounted of it ; habit identified 
 this phantom with the existence of 
 man, it became necessary to him ; man 
 believed he fell into a vacuum when it 
 was tried to detach him from it, to lead 
 him back to a nature which he had 
 long ago learnt to despise, or to consid- 
 er only as an impotent mass of matter, 
 inert, dead, and without energy ; or as a 
 contemptible assemblage of combina- 
 tions and of forms subject to perish. 
 
 In distinguishing nature from its 
 mover, men have fallen into the same 
 absurdity as when they have distin- 
 guished their soul from their body, life 
 from the living being, the faculty of 
 thought from the thinking being. De- 
 ceived on their own peculiar nature, 
 and upon the energy of their organs, 
 men have in like manner been deceiv- 
 ed upon the organization of the uni- 
 verse ; they have distinguished nature 
 from herself; the life of nature from 
 living nature ; the action of this na- 
 ture from acting nature. It was this 
 soul of the world, this energy of na- 
 ture, this active principle which men 
 personified, then separated by abstrac- 
 tion, sometimes decorated with imagi- 
 nary attributes, sometimes with quali- 
 ties borrowed from their own peculiar 
 essences. Such were the aerial mate- 
 rials of which men availed themselves 
 to compose their God ; their own soul 
 was the model ; deceived upon the na- 
 ture of this, they never had any true 
 ideas of the Divinity, who was only a 
 copy exaggerated or disfigured to that 
 degree, as to mistake the prototype 
 upon which it had been originally 
 formed. 
 
 If, because man has been distin- 
 guished from himself, it has been im- 
 possible ever to form any true ideas of 
 him, it is also for having distinguished 
 nature from herself that nature and her 
 ways were always mistaken. Men 
 have ceased to study nature, to recur 
 by thought to her pretended cause, to 
 her concealed motive-power, to the 
 sovereign which has been given her. 
 This motive-power has been made an 
 inconceivable being, to whom every 
 thing that takes place in the universe 
 has been attributed ; his conduct has 
 appeared mysterious and marvellous 
 because he was a continual contradic- 
 
 tion ; it has been supposed that hig 
 wisdom and his intelligence were the 
 sources of order; that his goodness 
 was the spring of every benefit ; that 
 his rigid justice or his arbitrary power, 
 was the supernatural cause of the 
 confusion and the evils with which we 
 are afflicted. In consequence, instead 
 of applying himself to nature, to dis- 
 cover the means of obtaining her fa- 
 vours, or of throwing aside his mis- 
 fortunes ; in the room of consulting 
 experience; in lieu of labouring use- 
 fully to his happiness, man was only 
 occupied with addressing himself to 
 the fictitious cause which he had gra- 
 tuitously associated with nature ; he 
 rendered his homage to the sovereign 
 which he had given to this nature ; he 
 expected every thing from him and no 
 longer relied either upon himself or 
 upon the assistance of a nature be- 
 come impotent and contemptible in his 
 eyes. 
 
 Nothing could be more prejudicial to 
 the human species than this extrava- 
 gant theory, which, as we shall pre- 
 sently prove, has become the source of 
 all his evils. Solely occupied with 
 the imaginary monarch which they 
 had elevated to the throne of nature, 
 mortals no longer consulted any thing ; 
 they neglected experience, they de- 
 spised themselves, they mistook their 
 own powers, they laboured not to their 
 own well-being; they became slaves, 
 trembling under the caprices of an 
 ideal tyrant, from whom they expected 
 every good, or from whom they feared 
 those evils which afflicted them. 
 Their life was employed in rendering 
 servile homage to an idol, of whom 
 they believed themselves eternally in- 
 terested in meriting the goodness, in 
 disarming the justice, in calming the 
 wrath ; they were only happy when 
 consulting reason, taking experience 
 for their guide, and making an abstrac- 
 tion of their romantic ideas, they took 
 courage, gave play to their industry, 
 and applied themselves to nature, who 
 alone can furnish the means of satis- 
 fying their wants and their desires, and 
 of throwing aside or diminishing those 
 evils which they are obliged to expe- 
 rience. 
 
 Let us, then, reconduct bewildered 
 mortals to the altar of nature; let us 
 destroy those chimeras which their
 
 NATURAL IDEAS OF THE DIVINITY. 
 
 245 
 
 ignorant and disordered imagination 
 believed it was bound to elevate to her 
 throne. Let us say to them, that there 
 is nothing either above or beyond na- 
 ture ; let us teach them that nature is 
 capable of producing, without any for- 
 eign aid, all those phenomena which 
 they admire, all the benefits which 
 they desire, as well as all the evils 
 which they apprehend. Let us inform 
 them, that experience will conduct 
 them to a knowledge of this nature ; 
 that she takes a pleasure in unveiling 
 herself to those who study her ; that she 
 discovers her secrets to those who by 
 their labour dare wrest them from, her, 
 and that she always rewards elevation 
 of soul, courage, and industry. Let 
 us tell them, that reason alone can 
 render them happy ; that that reason 
 is nothing more than the science of 
 nature applied to the conduct of men 
 in society ; let us instruct them that 
 those phantoms with which their minds 
 have been so long and so vainly occu- 
 pied, can neither procure them the hap- 
 piness which they demand with loud 
 cries, nor avert from their heads those 
 inevitable evils to which nature has 
 subjected them, and which reason 
 ought to teach them to support, when 
 they cannot avoid them by natural 
 means. Let us teach them that every 
 thing is necessary ; that their benefits 
 and their sorrows are the effects of 
 a nature, who in all her works follows 
 laws which nothing can make her re- 
 voke. In short,'let us unceasingly re- 
 seat to them, that it is in rendering their 
 fellow-creatures happy, that they will 
 themselves arrive at a felicity which 
 they will expect in vain from heav- 
 en, when the earth refuses it to them. 
 Nature is the cause of every thing ; 
 she is self-existent ; she will always 
 exist ; she is her own cause ; her mo- 
 tion is a necessary consequence of her 
 necessary existence ; without motion, 
 we could have no conception of na- 
 ture ; under this collective name we 
 designate the assemblage of matter 
 acting in virtue of its own peculiar en- 
 ergies. This granted, for what pur- 
 pose should we interpose a being more 
 incomprehensible than herself to ex- 
 plain her modes of action, marvellous, 
 ao doubt, to every one, but much more 
 so to those who have not studied her ? 
 Will men be more advanced or more 
 
 instructed when they shall be told that 
 a being which they are not formed to 
 comprehend, is the author of those vis- 
 ible effects, the natural causes of which 
 they cannot unravel? In short, will 
 the unaccountable being which they 
 call God, enable them to have a better 
 knowledge of nature which is acting 
 perpetually upon them?* 
 
 Indeed, if we were desirous to at- 
 tach some sense to the word God, of 
 which mortals form such false and such 
 obscure ideas, we should find that it can 
 designate only active nature, or the 
 sum total or the unknown powers 
 which animate the universe, and which 
 oblige beings to act in virtue of their 
 own peculiar energies, and, conse- 
 quently, according to necessary and 
 immutable laws. But, in this case, the 
 word God will only be synonymous to 
 destiny, fatality, necessity ; it is how- 
 ever to this abstract idea, personified 
 and deified, that they attribute spirit' 
 uality, another abstract idea, of which 
 we cannot form any conception. It is 
 to this abstraction that is assigned in- 
 telligence, wisdom, goodness, and jus- 
 tice, of which such a being cannot be 
 the subject. It is with this metaphys- 
 ical idea, as it is pretended, that the 
 beings of the human species have di- 
 rect relation. It is to this idea, person- 
 ified, deified, humanized, spiritualized, 
 decorated with the most incompatible 
 qualities, to which are attributed will, 
 passions, desires, &c. It is this per- 
 sonified idea which is made to speak 
 in the different revelations which are 
 announced in every country as emana- 
 ting from heaven ! 
 
 Every thing proves to us, then, that 
 it is not out of nature we ought to seek 
 the Divinity. When we shall be dispos- 
 ed to have an idea of him, let us say 
 that nature is God; let us say that na- 
 ture contains every thing we can have 
 a knowledge of, since it is the assem- 
 blage of all the beings capable of act- 
 ing upon us, and which can, conse- 
 quently, be interesting to us. Let us 
 say, that it is this nature which does 
 every thing ; that that which she does 
 not do, is impossible to be done ; that 
 that which is said to exist out of her 
 
 * Let us say, with Cicero : Magna stultitia 
 est earum rcrum deosfacere effcctores, causa-i 
 rerum non quacrere. Cic. de divinitat. lib. ii.
 
 246 
 
 OF DEISM, OPTIMISM. AND FINAL CAUSES. 
 
 does not exist, and cannot have exist- 
 ence ; seeing that there can be nothing 
 beyond the great whole. In short, let 
 us say, that those invisible powers, 
 which the imagination has made the 
 movers of the universe, either are no 
 -more than the powers of acting nature, 
 or are nothing. 
 
 If we have only an incomplete know- 
 ledge of nature and her ways, if we 
 have only superficial and imperfect 
 ideas of matter, why should we flatter 
 ourselves with knowing or having any 
 certain ideas of a being much more fu- 
 gitive and more difficult to compass in 
 thought than the elements,than the con- 
 stituent principles of bodies, than their 
 primitive properties, than their modes 
 of acting and existing ? If we cannot 
 recur to the first cause, let us content 
 ourselves with second causes, and those 
 effects which experience shows us ; let 
 us gather true and known facts ; they 
 will suffice to make us judge of that 
 which we know not ; let us confine 
 ourselves to the feeble glimmerings of 
 truth with which our senses furnish us, 
 since we have no means whereby to ac- 
 quire greater. 
 
 Do not let us take for real sciences 
 those which have no other basis than 
 our imagination ; they can only be vi- 
 sionary. Let us cling to nature which 
 we see, which we feel, which acts up- 
 on us, of which, at least, we know the 
 general laws. If we are ignorant of 
 the secret principles which she employs 
 in her complicated works, we are at 
 least certain that she acts in a perma- 
 nent, uniform, analogous and necessary 
 manner. Let us then observe this na- 
 ture ; let us never quit the routine which 
 ' prescribes for us ; if we do, we shall 
 infallibly be punished with numberless 
 errours, which will darken our mind, 
 estrange us from reason the necessa- 
 ry consequence of which will be count- 
 less sorrows, which we may otherwise 
 avoid. Let us not adore, let us not 
 flatter after the manner of men, a na- 
 ture who is deaf, and who acts neces- 
 sarily, and of which nothing can de- 
 range the course. Do not let us im- 
 plore a whole which can only main- 
 tain itself by the discord of elements, 
 from whence the universal harmony 
 and the stability of the whole has its 
 birth. Let us consider that we are 
 sensible parts of a whole destitute of 
 
 'eeling, in which all the forms and the 
 combinations are destroyed after they 
 are born, and have subsisted for a long- 
 er or shorter time. Let us look upon 
 nature as an immense laboratory which 
 ontains every thing necessary for her 
 to act and to produce all those works 
 which are displayed to our sight. Let 
 us acknowledge her power to be inhe- 
 rent in her essence. Do not let us at- 
 tribute her works to an imaginary cause 
 which has no other existence than in 
 our brain. Let us rather forever ban- 
 ish from our mind a phantom calcula- 
 ted to disturb it, and to prevent our 
 pursuing the simple, natural, and cer- 
 tain means which can conduct us to 
 happiness. Let us, then, restore this 
 nature, so long mistaken, to her legiti- 
 mate rights : let us listen to her voice, 
 of which reason is the faithful interpre- 
 ter ; let us silence that enthusiasm and 
 imposture which, unfortunately, have 
 drawn us aside from the only worship 
 suitable to intelligent beings. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Of Theism or Deism ; of the System of Op- 
 timism; and of Final Causes. 
 
 VERY few men have the courage to 
 examine the God which every one is 
 in agreement to acknowledge ; there is 
 scarcely any one who dares to doubt 
 his existence although it has never been 
 proved ; each receives in infancy, with- 
 out any examination, the vague name 
 of God, which his fathers transmit him, 
 Avhich they consign to his brain with 
 those obscure ideas which they them- 
 selves have attached to it, and which 
 every thing conspires to render habitual 
 in him : nevertheless, each modifies it 
 in his own manner ; indeed, as we have 
 frequently observed, the unsteady no- 
 tions of an imaginary being cannot be 
 the same in all the individuals of the 
 human species ; each man has his mode 
 of considering him : each man makes 
 to himself a God in particular, after his 
 own peculiar temperament, his natural 
 dispositions, his imagination, more or 
 less exalted, his individual circumstan- 
 ces, the prejudices he has received, and 
 the mode in which he is affected at 
 different times. The contented and 
 healthy man does not see his God with 
 the same eyes as the man who is cha-
 
 OF DEISM, OPTIMISM, AND FINAL CAUSES. 
 
 247 
 
 grinecl and sick ; the man who has a 
 heated blood, an ardent imagination, or 
 is subject to bile, does not see him un- 
 der the same traits as he who enjoys a 
 more peaceable soul, who has a cooler 
 imagination, who is of a more phleg- 
 matic character. This is not all : even 
 the same man does not see him in the 
 same manner in the different periods of 
 his life ; his God undergoes all the va- 
 riations of his own machine, all the 
 revolutions of his own temperament, 
 those continual vicissitudes which his 
 being experiences. The idea of the 
 Divinity, whose existence is looked up- 
 on as so demonstrable, this idea which 
 is pretended to be innate or infused in 
 all men, this idea, of which we are as- 
 sured that the whole of nature is earn- 
 est in furnishing us with proofs, is per- 
 petually fluctuating in the mind of eac*h 
 individual, and varies, at each moment, 
 in all the beings of the human species ; 
 there are not two who admit precisely 
 the same God, there is not a single one 
 who, in different circumstances, does 
 not see him variously. 
 
 Do not, then, let us be surprised at 
 the weakness of those proofs which are 
 furnished of the existence of a being 
 Avhich men will never see but within 
 themselves. Do not let us be aston- 
 ished at seeing them so little in har- 
 mony with each other upon the various 
 systems which they set up relatively 
 to him, upon the worship which they 
 render to him ; their disputes on his 
 account, the want of just inference in 
 their opinions, the little consistency 
 and connexion in their systems, the 
 contradictions in which they are un- 
 ceasingly falling when they would 
 speak of him, the incertitude in which 
 their mind finds itself every time it is 
 occupied with this being so arbitrary, 
 ought not to appear strange to us ; they 
 must necessarily dispute when they 
 reason upon an object seen diversely 
 under various circumstances, and upon 
 which there is not a single man that 
 can be constantly in accord with him- 
 self. 
 
 All men are agreed upon those ob- 
 jects which they are enabled to submit 
 to the test of experience ; we do not 
 hear any disputes upon the principles 
 of geometry ; those truths which are 
 evident and demonstrated, never vary 
 in our mind ; we never doubt that the 
 
 part is less than the whole, that two 
 and two make four, that benevolence is 
 an amiable quality, that equity is ne- 
 cessary to man in society. But we 
 find nothing but disputes, but incerti- 
 tude, but variations, upon all those sys- 
 tems which have the Divinity for their 
 object ; we see no harmony in the prin- 
 ciples of theology ; the existence of 
 God, which is announced to us every 
 where as an evident and demonstrated 
 truth, is only so for those who have not 
 examined the proofs upon which it is 
 founded. These proofs frequently ap- 
 pear false or feeble to those themselves 
 who, otherwise, do not by any means 
 doubt of his existence ; the inductions 
 or the corollaries Avhich are drawn 
 from this pretended truth, said to be so 
 clear, are not the same in two nations 
 or even in two individuals ; the think- 
 ers of all ages and of all countries un- 
 ceasingly quarrel amongst themselves 
 upon religion, upon their theological hy- 
 pothesis, upon the fundamental truths 
 which serve for the basis of them, upon 
 the attributes and the qualities of a God 
 with whom they vainly occupy them- 
 selves, and the idea of whom varies 
 continually in their own brain. 
 
 These disputes and these perpetual 
 variations ought at least to convince us, 
 that the ideas, of the Divinity have nei- 
 ther the evidence nor the certitude 
 which are attributed to them, and that 
 it may be permitted to doubt the reality 
 of a being which men see so diversely, 
 and upon which they are never in ac- 
 cord, and of which the image so often 
 varies with themselves. In despite of 
 all the efforts and the subtilties of its 
 most ardent defenders, the existence of 
 a God is not even probable, and if it 
 should be, can all the probabilities of 
 the world acquire the force of a demon- 
 stration 1 Is it not astonishing, that the 
 existence of the being the most impor- 
 tant to believe and to know has not 
 even probability in its favour, whilst 
 truths much less important, are clearly 
 demonstrated to us ? Should it not be 
 concluded from this that no man is fully 
 assured of the existence of a being 
 which he sees so subject to vary within 
 himself, and which for two days in suc- 
 cession does not present itself under 
 the same traits to his mind ? There is 
 nothing short of evidence that can fully 
 convince us. A truth is not evident to
 
 248 
 
 OF DEISM, OPTIMISM, AND FINAL CAUSES. 
 
 us, but when constant experience and 
 reiterated reflections always show it 
 to us under the same point of view. 
 From the. constant relation which is 
 made by well-constituted senses, re- 
 sults that evidence and that certitude 
 which can alone produce full convic- 
 tion. What becomes, then, of the cer- 
 titude of the existence of the Divini- 
 ty ? Can his discordant qualities have 
 existence in the same subject ? And 
 has a being, who is nothing but aheap 
 of contradictions, probability in his fa- 
 vour ? Can those who admit it, be con- 
 vinced of it themselves? And, in this 
 case, ought they not to permit that we 
 should doubt those pretended truths, 
 which they announce as demonstrated 
 and as evident, whilst they themselves 
 feel that they are wavering in their 
 own heads? The existence of this 
 God and of the divine attributes cannot 
 be things demonstrated for any man 
 on earth ; his non-existence and the 
 impossibility of the incompatible qual- 
 ities which theology assigns him will 
 be evidently demonstrated to whoever 
 shall be disposed to feel that it is im- 
 possible the same subject can unite 
 those qualities which reciprocally de- 
 stroy each other, and which all the ef- 
 forts of the human mind will never be 
 able to conciliate.* 
 
 * CICERO has said, Plura discrepantia vera 
 esse non possunt. From whence we see, 
 that no reasoning, no revelation, no miracle 
 can render that false which experience has 
 demonstrated to us as evident ; that there is 
 nothing short of a confusion, an overturning of 
 the brains, that can cause contradictions to 
 be admitted. According to the celebrated 
 Wolfe, in his Ontology, 99 : Possibile est 
 quod nullum in se repugnantium habet, quod 
 contradictione caret. After this definition the 
 existence of God must appear impossible, see- 
 ing that there is a contradiction in saying 
 that a spirit without extent can exist in ex- 
 tension, or move matter which has extent. 
 Saint Thomas, says that ens est quod non 
 repugnat esse. This granted, a God, such as 
 he is denned to be, is only a being of the im- 
 agination, since he can have existence no 
 where. According to Bilfinger, de deo. ani- 
 ma et mundo, % 5, Essentia est primus re- 
 rum conccptus constitutive vel quidditativus, 
 cujus ope cretera, quae de re aliqua dicentur, 
 demonstrari possunt. In this case, could it 
 not be demanded of him, if any one has an 
 idea of the divine essence 1 Which is the un- 
 derstanding that constitutes God that which 
 he is, and whence flows the demonstration of 
 every thing which is said of him ? Ask a the- 
 
 However it may be with these qual- 
 ities, whether irreconcilable, or totally 
 incomprehensible, which the theologi- 
 ans assign to a being already inconceiv- 
 able by himself, whom they make the 
 author or the architect of the world,what 
 can result, to the human species in sup- 
 posing him to have intelligence and 
 views ? Can a universal intelligence, 
 whose care ought to be extended to 
 every thing that exists, have relations 
 more direct and more intimate with 
 man, who only forms an insensible por- 
 tion of the great whole ? Is it, then, 
 to make joyful the insects and the ants 
 of his garden, that the Monarch of the 
 universe has constructed and embellish- 
 ed his habitation ? Should we be bet- 
 ter capacitated to have a knowledge of 
 his projects, to divine his plan, to mea- 
 sure his wisdom with our feeble eyes, 
 and could we better judge of his works 
 from our own narrow views ? The ef- 
 fects, good or bad, favourable or preju- 
 dicial to ourselves, which we may ima- 
 gine to emanate from his omnipotence 
 and from his providence, will they be 
 less the necessary effects of his wis- 
 dom, of his justice, of his eternal de- 
 crees ? In this case, can we suppose 
 that a God so wise, so just, so intelli- 
 gent, will change his plan for us ? 
 Overcome by our prayers and our ser- 
 vile homage, will he, to please us, re- 
 form his immutable decrees ? Will he 
 take away from beings their essences 
 and their properties ? Will he abrogate, 
 by miracles, the eternal laws of a na- 
 ture, in which his wisdom and his 
 goodness are admired ? Will he cause 
 that in our favour, fire shall cease to 
 burn when we shall approach it too 
 nearly ? Will he so order it, that fever, 
 that the gout shall cease to torment us 
 when we shall have amassed those hu- 
 mours of which these infirmities are 
 the necessary consequence ? Will he 
 prevent an edifice that tumbles in ruins 
 from crushing us by its fall, when we 
 shall pass beside it ? Will our vain cries 
 and the most fervent supplications, pre- 
 vent our country from being unhappy, 
 
 ologian if God can commit crime 1 He will 
 tell you no, seeing that crime is repugnant to 
 justice, which is nis essence. But tnis theo- 
 logian does not see thnt, in supposing God a 
 spirit, it is full as repugnant to his essence to 
 have created or to move matter, as to commit 
 a crime repugnant to his justice.
 
 OP DEISM, OPTIMISM, AND FINAL CAUSES. 
 
 249 
 
 when it shall be devastated by an am- 
 bitious conqueror, or governed by ty- 
 rants who oppress it ? 
 
 If this infinite intelligence is always 
 obliged to give a free course to those 
 events which his wisdom has prepared ; 
 if nothing happens in this world but 
 after his impenetrable designs, we have 
 nothing to ask of him ; Ave should be 
 madmen to oppose ourselves to them ; 
 we should offer an insult to his pru- 
 dence if we were desirous to regu- 
 late them. Man must not flatter him- 
 self with being wiser than his God, 
 with being capable of engaging him to 
 change his will ; with having the pow- 
 er to determine him to take other means 
 than those which he has chosen to ac- 
 complish his decrees ; an intelligent 
 God can only have taken those meas- 
 ures which are the most just, and those 
 means which are the most certain, to 
 arrive at his end ; if he were capable of 
 changing them, he neither could be 
 called wise, immutable, nor provident. 
 If God did suspend, for an instant, those 
 laws which he himself fixed, if he 
 could change any thing in his plan, it 
 is because he could not have foreseen 
 the motives of this suspension, or of 
 this change ; if he had not made these 
 motives enter into his plan, it is that he 
 had not foreseen them ; if he has fore- 
 seen them, without making them enter 
 into his plan, it is that he has not been 
 able. Thus, in whatever manner these 
 things are contemplated, the prayers 
 which men address to the Divinity, and 
 the different worships which they ren- 
 der him, always suppose they believe 
 they have to deal with a being whose 
 wisdom and providence are small, and 
 capable of change, or who, in despite of 
 his omnipotence, cannot do that which 
 he is willing, or that which would be 
 expedient for men, for whom, neverthe- 
 less, it is pretended that he has created 
 the world. 
 
 It is, however, upon these notions, so 
 badly directed, that are founded all the 
 religions of the earth. We every where 
 see man on his knees before a wise 
 God, of whom he strives to regulate 
 the conduct, to avert the decrees, to re- 
 form the plans ; every where man is 
 occupied with gaining him to his in- 
 terests, by meannesses and presents ; 
 in overcoming his justice by dint of 
 prayers, by practices, by ceremonies, 
 
 No. VIII. 32 
 
 and by expiations, which he believes 
 will make him change his resolutions ; 
 every where man supposes that he can 
 offend his creator, and disturb his eter- 
 nal felicity ; every where man is pros- 
 trate before an omnipotent God, who 
 finds himself in the impossibility of 
 rendering his creatures such as they 
 ought to be, to accomplish his divine 
 views, and fulfil his wisdom! 
 
 We see, then, that all the religions 
 of the world are only founded upon 
 those manifest contradictions into 
 which men will fall every time they 
 mistake nature, and attribute the good 
 or the evil which they experience at her 
 hands, to an intelligent cause, distin- 
 guished from herself, of which they 
 will never be able to form to them- 
 selves any certain ideas. Man will 
 always be reduced, as we have so fre- 
 quently repeated, to the necessity of 
 making a man of his God ; but man is 
 a changeable being, whose intelligence 
 is limited, whose passions vary, who, 
 placed in diverse circumstances, ap- 
 pears to be frequently in contradiction 
 with himself: thus, although man be- 
 lieves he does honour to his God, in 
 giving him his own peculiar qualities, 
 he does no more than lend him his in- 
 constancy, his weakness, and his vices. 
 The theologians, or the fabricators of 
 the divinity, may distinguish, subtilize, 
 and exaggerate his pretended perfec- 
 tions ; render them as unintelligible as 
 they please, it will ever be, that a be- 
 ing who is irritated and is appeased 
 by prayers, is not immutable ; that a 
 being who is offended, is neither omni- 
 potent nor perfectly happy ; that a be- 
 ing who does not prevent the evil he 
 can restrain, consents to evil : that a 
 being who gives liberty to sin, has re- 
 solved, in his eternal decrees, that sin 
 should be committed ; that a being 
 who punishes those faults which he 
 has permitted to be done, is sovereign- 
 ly unjust and irrational ; that an infi- 
 nite being who contains qualities infi- 
 nitely contradictory, is an impossible 
 being, and is only a chimera. 
 
 Let us then be no longer told, that 
 the existence of God is at least a prob- 
 lem. A God, such as the theologians 
 depict him, is totally impossible; all 
 the qualities which can be assigned to 
 him, all the perfections with which 
 they shall embellish him, will still be
 
 260 
 
 OF DEISM, OPTIMISM, AND FINAL CAUSES. 
 
 found every moment in contradiction. 
 As for the abstract and negative quali- 
 ties with which they may invest him, 
 they will always be unintelligible, and 
 will only prore the inutility of the ef- 
 forts of the human mind, when it 
 wishes to define beings which have no 
 existence. As soon as men believe them- 
 selves greatly interested in knowing a 
 thing, they labour to form to themselves 
 an idea of it; if they find great obstacles, 
 or even an impossibility of enlighten- 
 ing their ignorance, then the small 
 success that attends their researches, 
 disposes them to credulity ; hence crafty 
 knaves or enthusiasts profit of this cre- 
 dulity to make their inventions or their 
 reveries (which they deliver out as per- 
 manent truths, of which it is not permit- 
 ted to doubt) pass current. It is thus 
 that ignorance, despair, idleness, the 
 want of reflecting habits, place the hu- 
 man species in a state of dependence 
 on those who are charged with the care 
 of building up those systems upon 
 those objects of which he has no one 
 idea. As soon as there is a question 
 of the Divinity and of religion, that is 
 to say, of objects of which it is impos- 
 sible to tomprehend any thing, men 
 reason in a very strange mode, or are 
 the dupes of very deceitful reasonings. 
 As soon as men see themselves in a 
 total impossibility of understanding 
 what is said, they imagine that those 
 who speak to them are better acquaint- 
 ed with the things of which they dis- 
 course than themselves ; these do not 
 fail to repeat to them that the most 
 certain way is to agree with that 
 which they tell them, to allow them- 
 selves to be guided by them, and to 
 shut their eyes : they menace them with 
 the anger of the irritated phantom, if 
 they refuse to believe what they tell 
 them; and this argument, although 
 it only supposes the thing in question, 
 closes the mouth of poor mortals, who, 
 convinced by this victorious reasoning, 
 fear to perceive the palpable contradic- 
 tions of the doctrines announced to 
 them blindly agree with their guides, 
 not doubting that they have much 
 clearer ideas of those marvellous ob- 
 jects with which they unceasingly 
 entertain them, and on which their 
 profession obliges them to meditate. 
 The uninformed believes his priests 
 have more senses than himself, he 
 
 takes them for divine men, or demi- 
 gods. He sees in that which he adores 
 only what the priests tell him, and 
 from every thing which they say of 
 him, it results, to every man who 
 thinks, that God is only a being of the 
 imagination, a phantom clothed with 
 those qualities which the priests have 
 judged suitable to give him, to redouble 
 the ignorance, the incertitude, and the 
 fear of mortals. It is thus the author- 
 ity of the priests decide, without ap- 
 peal, on the thing, which is useful only 
 to the priesthood. 
 
 When we shall be disposed to recur 
 to the origin of things, we shall always 
 find that it is ignorance and fear which 
 have created Gods ; that it is ima- 
 gination, enthusiasm, and imposture, 
 which have embellished or disfigured 
 them ; that it is weakness that adores 
 them, that it is credulity which nour- 
 ishes them, that it is habit which re- 
 spects them, that it is tyranny who 
 sustains them, to the end that tyrants 
 may profit by the blindness of men. 
 
 We are unceasingly told of the ad- 
 vantages that result to men, from the 
 belief of a God. We shall presently 
 examine if these advantages be as real 
 as they are said to be ; in the mean 
 time, let us ascertain whether the opin- 
 ion of the existence of a God be art 
 errour or a truth ? If it is an errour, it 
 cannot be useful to the human species ; 
 if it is a truth, it ought to be suseep- 
 tible of proofs so clear as to be com- 
 passed by all men, to whom this truth 
 is supposed to be necessary and advan- 
 tageous. On the other hand, the utility 
 of an opinion does not render it more 
 certain on that account. This suffices 
 to reply to Doctor Clarke, who asks, 
 if it is not a tiling very desirable, and 
 which any wise man would wish to- 
 be true, for the great benefit and hap- 
 piness of men, that there were a God, 
 an intelligent and wise, a just and 
 good being, to govern the -world ? 
 We shall say to him, first, that the- 
 supposed author of a nature in which 
 we are obliged to see, at each instant, 
 confusion by the side of order, wicked- 
 ness by the side of goodness, folly by 
 the side of wisdom, justice by the side 
 of injustice, can no more be qualified 
 to fce good, wise, intelligent, and just, 
 than to be wicked, irrational, and per- 
 verse ; at least, as far as the two priu-
 
 OF DEISM, OPTIMISM, AND FINAL CAUSES. 
 
 2S1 
 
 ttptes in nature are equal in power, of 
 which the one unceasingly destroys 
 the works of the other. We shall say, 
 secondly, that the benefit which can 
 result from a supposition, neither ren- 
 ders it either more certain, or more 
 probable. Indeed, where should we 
 be, if, because a thing would be useful, 
 we went so far as to conclude from it 
 that it really existed? We shall say, 
 thirdly, that every thing which has 
 been related until the present moment, 
 proves, that it is repugnant to all com- 
 mon notions, and impossible to be be- 
 lieved, that there should be a being as- 
 sociated with nature. We shall fur- 
 ther say, that it is impossible to believe 
 very sincerely the existence of a being 
 of which we have not any real idea, 
 and to which we cannot attach any 
 that does not instantly destroy it. Can 
 we believe the existence of a being of 
 which we can affirm nothing, who is 
 only a heap of negations of every thing 
 of which we have a knowledge ? In 
 short, is it possible firmly to believe the 
 existence of a being upon which the 
 human mind cannot fix any judgment 
 which is not found to be instantly 
 contradicted ? 
 
 But the happy enthusiast, when the 
 soul is sensible of its enjoyments, and 
 when the softened imagination has oc- 
 casion to paint to itself a seducing 
 object to which it can render thanks 
 for its pretended kindness, will ask, 
 " Wherefore deprive me of a God 
 whom I see under the character of a 
 sovereign, filled with wisdom and 
 goodness 'I What comfort do I not 
 find in figuring to myself a powerful, 
 intelligent, and good monarch, of whom 
 I am the favourite, who occupies him- 
 self with my well-being, who unceas- 
 ingly watches over my safety, who 
 administers to my wants, who consents 
 that under him I command the whole 
 of nature 1 I believe I behold him un- 
 ceasingly diffusing his benefits on man ; 
 I see his Providence labouring for him 
 without relaxation ; he covers the earth 
 with verdure, and loads the trees with 
 delicious fruits to gratify his palate ; 
 he fills the forest with animals suitable 
 to nourish him ; he suspends over his 
 head planets and stars, to enlighten 
 him during the day, to guide his un- 
 certain steps during the night ; he ex- 
 tends around him the azure firmament ; 
 
 to rejoice his eyes, he decorates the 
 meadows with flowers ; he washes his 
 residence with fountains, with rivulets, 
 and with rivers. Ah ! suffer me to 
 thank the author of so many benefits. 
 Do not deprive me of my charming 
 phantom ; I shall not find my illusions 
 so sweet in a severe and rigid neces- 
 sity, in a blind and inanimate matter, 
 in a nature destitute of intelligence 
 and feeling." 
 
 " Wherefore," the unfortunate will 
 say, from whom his destiny has rigor- 
 ously withheld those benefits which 
 have been lavished on so many others, 
 " Wherefore ravish from me an errour 
 that is dear to me ? Wherefore annihi- 
 late to me a God, whose consoling 
 idea dries up the source of my tears, 
 and serves to calm my sorrows ? 
 Wherefore deprive me of an object, 
 which I represent to myself as a com- 
 passionate and tender father, who re- 
 proves me in this world, but into whose 
 arms I throw myself with confidence, 
 when the whole of nature appears to 
 have abandoned me ? Supposing even 
 that this God is no more than a chimera, 
 the unhappy have occasion for him, to 
 guaranty them from a frightful despair: 
 is it not inhuman and cruel to be desi- 
 rous to plunge them into a vacuum, by 
 seeking to undeceive them ? Is it not 
 a useful errour, preferable to those 
 truths which deprive the mind of every 
 consolation, and which do not hold 
 forth any relief from its sorrows ?" 
 
 No ! I shall reply to these enthusi- 
 asts, truth can never render you un- 
 happy ; it is this which really consoles 
 us ; it is a concealed treasure, which, 
 much superior to those phantoms in- 
 vented by fear, can cheer the heart and 
 give it courage to support the burdens 
 of life ; it elevates the mind, it renders 
 it active, it furnishes it with means to 
 resist the attacks of fate, and to com- 
 bat, Avilh success, bad fortune. I shall 
 then ask them upon what they found 
 this goodness, which they loolishly 
 attribute to their God ? But this God, 
 I shall say to them, is he then benevo- 
 lent to all men 1 For one mortal who 
 enjoys abundance and the favours of 
 fortune, are there not millions who 
 languish in want and misery ? Those 
 who take for model the order on which 
 they suppose this God the author, are 
 they then the most happy in thia
 
 252 
 
 OF DEISM, OPTIMISM, AND FINAL CAUSES. 
 
 world 7 The goodness of this being, 
 to some favourite individual, does it 
 never contradict itself? Even those 
 consolations which the imagination 
 seeks in his bosom, do they not an- 
 nounce misfortunes brought on by his 
 decrees, and of which he is the au- 
 thor? Is not the earth covered with 
 unfortunates, who appear to come upon 
 it only to suffer, to groan, and to die ? 
 Does this divine providence give itself 
 up to sleep during those contagions, 
 those plagues, those wars, those disor- 
 ders, those moral and physical revolu- 
 tions, of which the human race is con- 
 tinually victim ? This earth, of which 
 the fecundity is looked upon as a bene- 
 fit from heaven, is it not in a thousand 
 places dry, barren, and inexorable ? 
 Does it not produce poisons, by the 
 side of the most delicious fruits? 
 Those rivers and those seas, which are 
 believed to be made to water our abode, 
 and to facilitate our commerce, do they 
 not frequently inundate our fields, over- 
 turn our dwellings, and carry away 
 men and their flocks ?* In short, this 
 God, who presides over the universe, 
 and who watches unceasingly for the 
 preservation of his creatures, does he 
 not almost always deliver them up to 
 the chains of many inhuman sove- 
 reigns, who make sport of the misery 
 of their unhappy subjects, whilst these 
 unfortunates vainly address themselves 
 to heaven, that their multiplied calami- 
 ties may cease, which are visibly due 
 to an irrational administration and not 
 to the wrath of Heaven ? 
 
 *Nevertheless, on the whole, there is no such 
 a thing as real evil. Insects find a safe re- 
 treat in the ruins of the palace which crushes 
 man in its fall ; man by his death furnishes 
 food for myriads of contemptible insects, 
 whilst animals are destroyed by thousands 
 that he may increase his bulk, and linger out 
 for a season a feverish existence. The nalcy- 
 on, delighted with the tempest, voluntarily 
 mingles with the storm --rides contentedly 
 upon the surge ; rejoiced by the fearful howl- 
 ings of the northern blast, plays with happy 
 buoyancy upon the foaming billows, that 
 have ruthlessly dashed in pieces the vessel of 
 the unfortunate mariner, who, plunged into 
 an abyss of misery, with tremulous emotion 
 clings to the wreck views with horrific de- 
 spair the premature destruction of his indulg- 
 ed hopes sighs deeply at the thoughts of 
 home with aching heart thinks of the cher- 
 ished friends his streaming eyes will never 
 more behold in agony dwells upon the faith- 
 ful affection of an adored companion, who 
 
 The unhappy man, who seeks con^ 
 solation in the arms of his God, ought 
 at least to remember that it is this same 
 God, who being the master of all, dis- 
 tributes the good and the evil : if na- 
 ture is believed to be subjected to his 
 supreme orders, this God is as frequent- 
 ly unjust, filled with malice, with im- 
 prudence, with irrationality, as with 
 goodness, wisdom, and equity. If the 
 devotee, less prejudiced and more con- 
 sistent, would reason a little, he would 
 suspect that his God was a capricious 
 God, who frequently made him suffer ; 
 he would not seek to console himself 
 in the arms of his executioner, whom 
 he has the folly to mistake for a friend 
 or for his father. 
 
 Do we not, indeed, see in nature a 
 constant mixture of good and evil ? To 
 obstinately see only the good, is as ir- 
 rational as only to perceive the evil. 
 We see the ca)m succeed to the storm, 
 sickness to health, and peace to war. 
 The earth produces in every country 
 plants necessary to the nourishment of 
 man, and plants suitable to his destruc- 
 tion. Each individual of the human 
 species is a necessary compound of 
 good and bad qualities ; all nations 
 present us with the variegated specta- 
 cle of vices and virtue ; that which re- 
 joices one individual, plunges many 
 others into mourning and sadness ; 
 there happens no event that has not 
 advantages for some, and disadvanta- 
 ges for others. Nature, considered in 
 its whole, shows us beings alternately 
 subjected to pleasure and grief, born to 
 die, and exposed to those continual vi- 
 cissitudes from which no one of them is 
 exempt. The most superficial glance 
 of the eye will suffice, then to unde- 
 
 will never again repose her drooping head up- 
 on his manly bosom grows wild with the 
 appalling remembrance of beloved children 
 his weaned arms will never more encircle with 
 parental fondness ; then sinks for ever the 
 unhappy victim of circumstances that fill 
 with glee the fluttering bird, who sees him 
 yield to the overwhelming force of the infuri- 
 ate waves. The conqueror displays his mili- 
 tary skill, fights a sanguinary battle, puts his 
 enemy to the rout, lays waste his country, 
 slaughters thousands of his fellows, plunges 
 whole districts into tears, fills the land with 
 the moans of the fatherless, the wailings of 
 the widow, in order that the crows may nave 
 a banquet that ferocious beasts may glutton 
 ously gorge themselves with human gore- 
 that worms may riot in luxury !
 
 OP DEISM, OPTIMISM, AND FINAL CAUSES. 
 
 253 
 
 ceive us as to the idea that man is the 
 final cause of the creation, the con- 
 stant object of the labours of nature, or 
 of its author, to whom they can at- 
 tribute, according to the visible state ol 
 things, and the continual revolutions 
 of the human race, neither goodness nor 
 malice ; neither justice nor injustice ; 
 neither intelligence norirrationality. In 
 short, in considering nature without 
 prejudice, we shall find that all beings 
 in the universe are equally favoured, and 
 that every thing which exists, under- 
 goes the necessary laws from which no 
 being can be exempted. 
 
 Thus, when there is a question con- 
 cerning an agent we see act so vari- 
 ously as nature, or as its pretended mo- 
 ver, it is impossible to assign him qual- 
 ities according to his works, which are 
 sometimes advantageous and some- 
 times prejudicial to the human species ; 
 or at least, each man will be obliged to 
 judge of him after the peculiar mode in 
 which he is himself affected ; there will 
 be no fixed point or standard in the 
 judgments which men shall form of 
 him ; our mode of judging will always 
 be founded upon our mode of seeing 
 and of feeling, and our mode of feeling 
 will depend on our temperament, on 
 our organization, on our particular cir- 
 cumstances, which cannot be the same 
 in all the individuals of our species. 
 These different modes of being affected, 
 then, will always furnish the colours of 
 the portraits which men may paint to 
 themselves of the Divinity ; consequent- 
 ly these ideas cannot be either fixed or 
 certain ; the inductions which they 
 may draw from them, can never be 
 either constant or uniform ; each will 
 always judge after himself, and will 
 never see any thing but himself, or his 
 own peculiar situation, in his God. 
 
 This granted, men who are content- 
 ed, who have a sensible soul, a lively 
 imagination, will paint the Divinity 
 under the most charming traits ; they 
 will believe they see in the whole of 
 nature, which Avill unceasingly cause 
 them agreeable sensations, nothing but 
 proofs of benevolence and goodness ; in 
 their poetical ecstacy, they will imagine 
 they perceive every where the impres- 
 sion of a perfect intelligence, of an in- 
 finite wisdom, of a providence tenderly 
 occupied with the well-being of man ; 
 self-love joining itself to these exalted 
 
 qualities, will put the finishing hand to 
 their persuasion that the universe is 
 made solely for the human race ; they 
 will strive, in imagination, to kiss with 
 transport the hand from whom they be- 
 lieve they receive so many benefits; 
 touched with these favours, gratified 
 with the perfume of these roses, of 
 which they do not see the thorns, or 
 which their ecstatic delirium prevents 
 them from feeling, they will think they 
 can never sufficiently acknowledge the 
 necessary effects, which they look up- 
 on as indubitable proofs of the divine 
 predilection for man. Inebriated with 
 these prejudices, enthusiasts will not 
 perceive those sorrows and that confu- 
 sion of which the universe is the the- 
 atre ; or, if they cannot prevent them- 
 selves from seeing them, they will be 
 persuaded that, in the views of a benev- 
 olent providence, these calamities are 
 necessary to conduct man to a higher 
 state of felicity ; the reliance which they 
 have placed in the Divinity, upon whom 
 they imagine they depend, induces 
 them to believe that man only suffers 
 for his good, and that this being, who 
 is fruitful in resources, will know how 
 to make him reap advantage from the 
 evils he experiences in this world. 
 Their mind, thus pre-occupied, from 
 thence sees nothing that does not ex- 
 cite their admiration, their gratitude, 
 and their confidence ; even those ef- 
 fects which are the most natural and 
 the most necessary, appear to them to be 
 miracles of benevolence and goodness ; 
 obstinately persisting in seeing wis- 
 dom and intelligence every where, they 
 shut their eyes to the disorders which 
 could contradict those amiable qualities 
 they attribute to the being with whom 
 their hearts are engrossed; the most 
 cruel calamities, the most afflicting 
 events to the human race, cease to ap- 
 pear to them disorders, and only furnish 
 them with new proofs of the divine 
 Derfections: they persuade themselves 
 :hat what appears to them defective or 
 imperfect, is only so in appearance ; 
 and they admire the wisdom and the 
 Bounty of their God, even in those ef- 
 'ects which are the most terrible, and 
 the most suitable to discourage them. 
 It is, without doubt, to this stupid 
 ntoxication, to this strange infatuation, 
 to which is to be ascribed the system 
 of optimising which enthusiasts, fur-
 
 254 
 
 OP DEISM, OPTIMISM, AND FINAL CAUSES. 
 
 fclshed with a romantic imagination, 
 appear to have renounced the evidence 
 of their senses, and thus they find, that, 
 even for man, every thing is good in a 
 nature where the good is found con- 
 stantly accompanied with evil, and 
 where minds less prejudiced, and ima- 
 ginations less poetical, would judge 
 that every thing is only that which it 
 can be ; that the good and the evil are 
 equally necessary ; that they emanate 
 from the nature of things, and not from 
 a fictitious hand, which, if it really ex- 
 isted, or did every thing that we see, 
 could be called wicked with as much 
 reason as he is inaptly" said to be filled 
 with goodness. Besides, to be ena- 
 bled to justify providence for the evils, 
 the vices, and the disorders which we 
 see in the whole which is supposed to 
 be the work of his hands, we should 
 know the aim of the whole. Now, the 
 whole cannot have an aim, because, if 
 it had an aim, a tendency, an end, it 
 would no longer be the whole. 
 
 We shall be told, that the disorders 
 and the evils which we see in this 
 world, are only relative and apparent, 
 and prove nothing against divine wis- 
 dom and goodness. But can it not be 
 replied, that the so much boasted bene- 
 fits, and he marvellous order, upon 
 which the wisdom and goodness of 
 God are founded, are, in a like manner, 
 only relative and apparent ? It is uni- 
 formly our mode of feeling, and of co- 
 existing with those causes by which 
 we are encompassed, which constitutes 
 the order of nature with relation to our- 
 selves, and which authorizes us to as- 
 cribe wisdom or goodness to its author ; 
 ought not our modes of feeling and of 
 existing authorize us to call that dis- 
 order which injures us, and to ascribe 
 imprudence or malice to the being 
 whom we shall suppose to put nature 
 in motion ? In short, that which we see I 
 in the world conspires to prove that 
 every thing is necessary; that nothing 
 is done by chance ; that all the events, 
 good or bad, whether for us, whether 
 for beings of a different order, are 
 brought about by causes, acting after 
 certain and determinate laws ; and that 
 nothing can authorize us to ascribe any 
 one of our human qualities either to na- 
 ture, or to the motive-power that has 
 been given to her. 
 
 With respect to those who pretend 
 
 that the supreme wisdom will know 
 how to draw the greatest benefits for 
 us, even out of the bosom of those evils 
 which he permits us to experience in' 
 this world, we shall ask them if they 
 are themselves the confidants of the 
 Divinity ; or upon what they found 
 their flattering hopes? They will tell 
 us, without doubt, that they judge ot 
 the conduct of God by analogy ; and 
 that, by the actual proofs of his wis- 
 dom and goodness, they have a just 
 right to conclude in favour of his future 
 bounty and wisdom. We shall reply 
 to them, that they admit, according to 
 these gratuitous suppositions, that the 
 goodness and the wisdom of their God 
 contradict themselves so frequently in 
 this world, that nothing can assure them 
 that his conduct will ever cease to be 
 the same \vith respect to those men 
 who experience here below sometimes 
 his kindness and sometimes his disfa- 
 vour. If, in despite of his omnipotent 
 goodness, God has not been either able 
 or willing to render his beloved crea- 
 tures completely happy in this world, 
 what reason is there to believe that he 
 either will be able or willing to do it in 
 another? 
 
 Thus, this language only founds it- 
 self upon ruinous hypotheses which 
 have for basis only a prejudiced ima- 
 gination ; it only shows that men, once 
 persuaded, without motives and with- 
 out cause, of the goodness of their God, 
 cannot figure to themselves that he will 
 consent to render his creatures con- 
 stantly unhappy. But on the other hand, 
 what real and known good do we see 
 result to the human species from those 
 sterilities, from those famines, from, 
 those contagions, from those sanguinary 
 combats, which cause so many millions 
 of men to perish, and which unceas- 
 ingly depopulate and desolate the world 
 Avhich we inhabit ? Is there any one 
 capable to ascertain the advantages 
 which result from all those evils which 
 besiege us on all sides? Do we not 
 see daily, beings consecrated to mis- 
 fortune from the moment they quit the 
 womb of their mother, until that in 
 which they descend into the silent 
 grave, who, with great difficulty, found 
 time to respire, and lived the constant 
 sport of affliction, of grief, and of rever- 
 ses of fortune? How, or when, will 
 this God, so bountiful, draw good from
 
 OP DEISM, OPTIMISM, AND FINAL CAUSES. 
 
 255 
 
 the evils which he causes mankind to 
 suffer? 
 
 The most enthusiastic optimists, the 
 theists, themselves, the partisans of na- 
 tural religion, (which is any thing but 
 natural or founded upon reason,) are, 
 as well as the most credulous and super- 
 stitious, obliged to recur to the system 
 of another life, to exculpate the Divinity 
 from those evils which he decrees to be 
 suffered in this by those themselves 
 whom they suppose to be most agreea- 
 ble in his eyes. Thus, in setting forth 
 the idea that God is good and filled 
 Avith equity, we cannot dispense with 
 admitting a long scries of hypotheses 
 which, as well as the existence of this 
 God, have only imagination for a basis, 
 and of which we have already shown 
 the futility. It is necessary to recur 
 to the doctrine, so little probable, of a 
 future life, and of the immortality of 
 the soul, to justify the Divinity ; we are 
 obliged to say, that for want of having 
 been able or willing to render man hap- 
 py in this world, he will procure him 
 an unalterable happiness when he shall 
 no longer exist, or when he shall no 
 longer have those organs by the aid 
 of which he is enabled to enjoy it at 
 present. 
 
 And after all, these marvellous hypo- 
 theses are insufficient to justify the Di- 
 vinity for his wickedness or for his 
 transitory injustice. If God has been 
 unjust and cruel for an instant, God has 
 derogated, at least for that moment, 
 from his divine perfections ; then he is 
 not immutable ; his goodness and jus- 
 tice are then subject to contradict them- 
 selves for a time ; and, in this case, 
 who can guaranty that the qualities 
 Avhich we confide in, will not contra- 
 dict themselves even in a future life 
 invented to exculpate God for those 
 digressions which he permits in this 
 world ? What is this but a God who 
 is perpetually obliged to depart from 
 his principles, and who finds himself 
 unable to render those whom he loves 
 happy, without unjustly doing them 
 evil, at least during their abode here 
 below 1 Thus, to justify the Divinity 
 it will be necessary to recur to other 
 hypotheses ; we must suppose that 
 man can offend his God, disturb the 
 order of the universe, be injurious to 
 the felicity of a being sovereignly hap- 
 py, and derange the designs of the om- 
 
 nipotent being. To reconcile many 
 things, we must recur to the system of 
 the liberty of man.* At length, we 
 shall find ourselves obliged to admit, 
 one after another, the most improbable, 
 the most contradictory, and the most 
 false ideas, as soon as we admit that 
 the universe is governed by an intelli- 
 gence filled with wisdom, with justice, 
 and with goodness; this principle alone, 
 if we are consistent, is sufficient to lead 
 us insensibly into the grossest absurd- 
 ities. 
 
 This granted, all those who speak of 
 the divine goodness, wisdom, and in- 
 telligence, which are shown in the 
 works of nature ; who offer these same 
 works as incontestable proofs of the ex- 
 istence of a God, or of a perfect agent, 
 are men prejudiced or blinded by their 
 own imagination, who see only a cor- 
 ner of the picture of the universe, with- 
 out embracing the whole. Intoxicated 
 with the phantom which their mind has 
 formed to itself, they resemble those 
 lovers who do not perceive any defect 
 in the objects of their affection ; they 
 conceal, dissimulate, and justify their 
 vices and deformities, and frequently 
 end with mistaking them for perfec- 
 tions. 
 
 We see, then, that the proofs of the 
 existence of a sovereign intelligence, 
 drawn from the order, from the beauty, 
 from the harmony of the universe, are 
 quite ideal, and have no reality but for 
 those who are organized and modified in 
 a certain mode, or whose cheerful ima- 
 gination is constructed to give birth to 
 agreeable chimeras which they embel- 
 lish according to their fancy. These 
 illusions, however, must be frequently 
 dissipated even in themselves whenev- 
 er their machine becomes deranged ; 
 the spectacle of nature, Avhich, under 
 certain circumstances, has appeared to 
 them so delightful and so seducing, 
 must then give place to disorder and 
 confusion. A man of a melancholy 
 temperament, soured by misfortunes or 
 infirmities, cannot view nature and its 
 author under the same perspective as 
 the healthy man of a sprightly humour, 
 
 Is there any thing more inconclusive than 
 the ideas of some Theists who deny the lib- 
 erty of man, and who, notwithstanding, ob- 
 stinately persist in speaking of an avenging 
 and lemunerating God 1 How can a just Goa 
 xmish necessary actions ?
 
 256 
 
 OF DEISM, OPTIMISM, AND FINAL CAUSES. 
 
 and contented with every thing. De- 
 prived of happiness, the peevish man 
 can only find disorder, deformity, and 
 subjects to afflict himself with ; he on- 
 ly contemplates the universe as the the- 
 atre of the malice or the vengeance of 
 an angry tyrant ; he cannot sincerely 
 love this malicious being, he hates 
 him at the bottom of his heart, even 
 when rendering him the most servile 
 homage: trembling, he adores a hate- 
 ful monarch, of whom the idea produ- 
 ces only sentiments of mistrust, of fear, 
 of pusillanimity ; in short, he becomes 
 superstitious, credulous, and very often 
 cruel after the example of the master 
 whom he believes himself obliged to 
 serve and to imitate. 
 
 In consequence of these ideas, which 
 have their birth in an unhappy temper- 
 ament and a peevish humour, the su- 
 perstitious are continually infected 
 Avith terrours, with mistrusts, with 
 alarms. Nature cannot have charms 
 for them ; they do not participate in her 
 cheerful scenes, they only look upon 
 this world, so marvellous and so good 
 to the contented enthusiast, as a valley 
 of tears, in which a vindictive and 
 jealous God has placed them only to 
 expiate crimes committed cither by 
 themselves or their fathers ; they con- 
 sider themselves to be here the victims 
 and the sport of his despotism, to un- 
 dergo continual trials, to the end that 
 they may arrive for ever at a new ex- 
 istence, in which they shall be happy 
 or miserable, according to the conduct 
 which they shall have held towards 
 the fantastical God who holds their des- 
 tiny in his hands. 
 
 These are the dismal ideas which 
 have given birth to all the worships, to 
 all the most foolish and the most cruel 
 superstitions, to all the irrational prac- 
 tices, all the absurd systems, all the ex- 
 travagant notions and opinions, all the 
 doctrines, the ceremonies, the rites, in 
 short, to all the religions on the earth ;* 
 
 * History abounds with details of the most 
 atrocious cruelties under the imposing name 
 of" God swill" " God's judgments:" nothing 
 has been considered either too fantastical or 
 too flagitious by the votaries of superstition. 
 Parents have immolated their children ; lovers 
 have sacrificed the objects of their affection ; 
 friends have destroyed each other ; the most 
 bloody disputes have been fomented ; the 
 most interminable animosities have been en- 
 gendered, to gratify the whim of implacable 
 
 they have been, and always will be, an 
 eternal source of alarm, of discord, and 
 of delirium, for those dreamers who 
 are nourished with bile, or intoxicated 
 with divine fury, whose atrabilious hu- 
 mour disposes to wickedness, whose 
 wandering imagination disposes to fa- 
 naticism, whose ignorance prepares 
 them for credulity, and who blindly 
 submit to their priests : these, for their 
 own interests, avail themselves fre- 
 quently of their fierce and austere God 
 to excite them to crimes, and to induce 
 them to ravish from others that repose 
 of which they are themselves deprived. 
 
 It is, then, in the diversity of tem- 
 peraments and passions that we must 
 seek the difference we find between 
 the God of the theist, the optimist, the 
 happy enthusiast, and that of the devo- 
 tee, the superstitious, the zealot, whose 
 intoxication so frequently renders him 
 unsociable and cruel. They are all 
 equally irrational; they are the dupes 
 of their imagination ; the one, in the 
 transport of their love, see God only on 
 the favourable side; the others never 
 see him but on the unfavourable* side. 
 Every time we set forth a false suppo- 
 sition, all the reasonings we make on 
 it are only a long series of errours ; ev- 
 ery time we renounce the evidence of 
 our senses, of experience, of nature, 
 and of reason, it is impossible to calcu- 
 late the bounds at which the imagina- 
 tion will stop. It is true the ideas of 
 the happy enthusiast will be less dan- 
 gerous to himself and to others, than 
 those of the superstitious atrabilious 
 man, whose temperament shall render 
 him both cowardly and cruel; never- 
 theless the Gods of the one and the 
 other are not the less chimerical ; that 
 of the first is the produce of agreeable 
 dreams, that of the second is the fruit 
 of a peevish transport of the brain. 
 
 There will never be more than a 
 step between theism and superstition. 
 The smallest revolution in the machine, 
 a slight infirmity, an unforseen afflic- 
 tion, suffices to change the course of 
 the humours, to vitiate the tempera- 
 ment, to overturn the system of opin- 
 ions of the theist, or of the happy devo- 
 tee ; as soon as the portrait of his God is 
 found disfigured, the beautiful order 
 
 priests, who, by crafty inventions, have ob- 
 tained an influence over the people.
 
 OP DEISM, OPTIMISM, AND FINAL CAUSES. 
 
 257 
 
 of nature will be overthrown relative- 
 ly to him, and melancholy will, by 
 degrees, plunge him into superstition, 
 into pusillanimity, and into all those ir- 
 regularities which produce fanaticism 
 and credulity. 
 
 The Divinity, existing but in the im- 
 agination of men, must necessarily take 
 its complexion from their character, he 
 will have their passions ; he will con- 
 stantly follow the revolutions of their 
 machine, he will be lively or sad, 
 favourable or prejudicial, friendly or 
 inimical, sociable or fierce, humane or 
 cruel, according as he who carries him 
 in his brain shall be himself disposed. 
 A mortal, plunged from a state of hap- 
 piness into misery, from health into 
 sickness, from joy into affliction, can- 
 not, in these vicissitudes, preserve the 
 same God. What is this but a God 
 who depends at each instant upon the 
 variations which natural causes make 
 the organs of man undergo ? A strange 
 God, indeed ! of whom the floating 
 idea depends on the greater or less por- 
 tion of heat and fluidity of our blood ! 
 
 No doubt that a God constantly 
 good, filled with wisdom, embellished 
 with qualities amiable and favourable 
 to man, would be a more seductive chi- 
 mera than the God of the fanatic and 
 of the superstitious ; but he is not less 
 for that reason a chimera, that will be- 
 come dangerous when the speculators, 
 who shall be occupied with it, shall 
 change their circumstances or their 
 temperament ; these, looking upon him 
 as the author of all things, will see 
 their God change, or will at least be 
 obliged to consider him as a being full 
 of contradictions, upon which there is 
 no depending with certainty ; from 
 thence incertitude and fear will possess 
 their mind ; and this God, whom at 
 first they fancied so charming, will be- 
 come a subject of terrour to them, likely 
 to plunge them in the most gloomy 
 superstition, from which, at first sight, 
 they appeared to be at an infinite dis- 
 tance. 
 
 Thus theism, or the pretended natu- 
 ral religion, cannot have certain prin- 
 ciples, and those who profess it are ne- 
 cessarily subject to vary in their opin- 
 ions of the Divinity, and in their con- 
 duct which flows from them. Their 
 system, originally founded upon a wise 
 and intelligent God, whose goodness 
 
 No. IX. 33 
 
 can never contradict itself, as soon as 
 circumstances change, must presently 
 be converted into fanaticism, and into 
 superstition. This system, succes- 
 sively meditated by enthusiasts of dif- 
 ferent characters, must experience con- 
 tinual variations, and very quickly de- 
 part from its pretended primitive sim- 
 plicity. The greater part of those phi- 
 losophers have been disposed to substi- 
 tute theism to superstition, but they 
 have not felt that theism was formed 
 to corrupt itself and to degenerate. In- 
 deed, striking examples prove this fatal 
 truth ; theism is every where corrupt- 
 ed ; it has by degrees formed those su- 
 perstitions, those extravagant and pre- 
 judicial sects, with which the human 
 species is infected. As soon as man 
 consents to acknowledge invisible pow- 
 ers out of nature, upon which his restless 
 mind will never be able invariably to 
 fix its ideas, and which his imagina- 
 tion alone will be capable of painting 
 to him ; whenever he shall not dare to 
 consult his reason relatively to these 
 imaginary powers, it must necessarily 
 be, that this first false step leads him 
 astray, and that his conduct, as well as 
 his opinions, becomes, in the long run, 
 perfectly absurd.* 
 
 We call theists or deists, among 
 
 * The religion of Abraham appears to have 
 originally been a theism imagined to reform 
 the superstition of the Chaldeans ; the the- 
 ism of Abraham was corrupted by Moses, 
 who availed himself of it to form the Judaical 
 superstition. Socrates was a theist, who, 
 like Abraham, believed in divine inspirations; 
 his disciple, Plato, embellished the theism of 
 his master with the mystical colours which 
 he borrowed from the Egyptian and Chaldean 
 priests, and which he modified himself in his 
 poetical brain. The disciples of Plato such as 
 Proclus, Jamblichus, Plolmus, Porphyrus, &c. 
 were true fanatics, plunged in the grossest su- 
 perstition. In short, the first doctors of 
 Christianity were Platonists, who combined 
 the Judaical superstition, reformed by the 
 Apostles or by Jesus, with Platonism. Many 
 people have looked upon Jesus as a true the- 
 ist, whose religion has been by degrees cor- 
 rupted. Indeed, in the books which contain 
 the law which is attributed to him, there is no 
 mention either of worship, or of priests, or of 
 sacrifices, or of offerings, or of the greater 
 part of the doctrines of actual Christianity, 
 which has become the most prejudicial of all 
 the superstitions of the earth. Mahomet, in 
 combating the polytheism of his country, was 
 only desirous of bringing back the Arabs to 
 the primitive theism of Abraham and of his 
 son Ishmael, and yet Mahometism is divided
 
 OF DEISM, OPTIMISM, AND FINAL CAUSES. 
 
 ourselves, those who, undeceived in a 
 great number of grosser errours with 
 which the uninformed and supersti- 
 tious are successively filled, simply 
 hold to the vague notion of the Divini- 
 ty which they consider as an unknown 
 agent, endued with intelligence, wis- 
 dom, power, and goodness ; in short, 
 full of infinite perfections. According 
 to them, this being is distinguished 
 from nature ; they found his existence 
 upon the order and the beauty which 
 reigns in the universe. Prepossessed 
 in favour of his benevolent providence, 
 they obstinately persist in not seeing 
 the evils of which this universal agent 
 must be the reputed cause whenever he 
 does not avail himself of his power to 
 prevent them. Infatuated by these 
 ideas, of which we have shown the 
 slender foundation, it is not surprising 
 there should be but little harmony in 
 their systems, and in the consequences 
 which they draw from them. Indeed, 
 some suppose, that this imaginary be- 
 ing, retired into the profundity of his es- 
 sence, after having brought matter out 
 of nothing, abandoned it for ever to the 
 motion which he had once given to it. 
 They have occasion for God only to 
 give birth to nature ; this done, every 
 thing that takes place in it is only a 
 necessary consequence of the impulse 
 which was given to it in the origin of 
 things ; he was willing that the world 
 should exist ; but too great to enter into 
 the detail of its administration, he deli- 
 vered all the events to second or natu- 
 ral causes ; he lives in a state of per- 
 fect indifference as to his creatures, who 
 have no relation whatever with him, 
 and who can in no wise disturb his 
 unalterable happiness. From whence 
 we see the least superstitious of the 
 deists make of their God a being use- 
 less to men ; but they have occasion 
 for a word to designate the first cause 
 or the unknown power to which, for 
 want of being acquainted with the en- 
 ergy of nature, they believe they ought 
 to attribute its primitive formation, or, 
 if they will, the arrangement of matter 
 which is coeternal with God. 
 
 Other theists, furnished with a more 
 lively imagination, suppose more par- 
 
 intq seventy-two sects. All this proves that 
 theism is always more or less mingled with 
 fanaticism, which" sooner or later finishes by 
 producing ravages and misery. 
 
 ticular relations between the universal 
 agent and the human species ; each of 
 them, according to the fecundity of his 
 genius, extends or diminishes these 
 relations, supposes duties from man 
 towards his Creator, believes that, to 
 please him, he must imitate his pre- 
 tended goodness, and, like him, do good 
 to his creatures. Some imagine to 
 themselves that this God, being just, 
 reserves rewards for those who do good, 
 and chastisements for those who com- 
 mit evil to their fellow-creatures. From 
 whence we see that these humanize 
 their Divinity a little more than the 
 others, in making him like unto a sove- 
 reign, who punishes or recompenses 
 his subjects, according to their fidelity 
 in fulfilling their duties, and the laws 
 which he imposes on them : they can- 
 not, like the pure deists, content them- 
 selves with an immoveable and indif- 
 ferent God ; they need one who ap- 
 proaches nearer to themselves ; or who, 
 at least, can serve them to explain some 
 of those enigmas which this world pre- 
 sents. As each of these speculators, 
 which we denominate theists to distin- 
 guish them from the first, makes a sepa- 
 rate system of religion for himself, they 
 are in nowise in accord in their worship, 
 nor in their opinions ; there are found be- 
 tween them shades frequently impercep- 
 tible, which, from simple deism, con- 
 ducts some amonpr them to superstition 
 in short, but little in harmony with them- 
 selves, theydonot know upon what to fix.* 
 
 * It is easy to perceive that the writings of 
 the thei-sts and of the deists are commonly as 
 much filled with paralogisms, or fallacious 
 syllogisms, and with contradictions, as those 
 of the theologians; their systems are fre- 
 quently in the last degree inconsequent. One 
 says that every thing is necessary, denies the 
 spirituality and the immortality of the soul, 
 refusing to believe the liberty of man. Could- 
 we not ask them, in this case, of what service 
 can be their God ? They have occasion for a 
 word, which custom has rendered necessary 
 to them. There are very few men in the world 
 who dare be consistent : but let us invite all 
 the deicolists, or supporters of the existence of 
 a God, under whatever denomination they 
 may be designated, to inquire of themselves, 
 if it be possible for them to attach any fixed, 
 permanent, and invariable idea, always com- 
 patible with the nature of things, to the being 
 whom they designate under the name of God, 
 and they will see, that, as soon as they dis- 
 tinguish him from nature, they will no longer 
 understand any thing about him. The re- 
 pugnance which the greater part of men show
 
 OF DEISM, OPTIMISM, AND FINAL CAUSES. 
 
 259 
 
 We must not be astonished ; if the 
 God of the deist is useless, that of the 
 theist is necessarily full of contradic- 
 tions : both of them admit a being, who 
 is nothing but a mere fiction. Do they 
 make him material? he returns from 
 thence into nature. Do they make him 
 spiritual ? they have no longer any real 
 ideas of him. Do they give him moral 
 attributes ? they immediately make a 
 man of him, of whom they only extend 
 the perfections, but of whom the quali- 
 ties are in contradiction every moment, 
 as soon as they suppose him the author 
 of all things. Thus, whenever one of 
 the human species experiences mis- 
 fortunes, you will see him deny provi- 
 dence, laugh at final causes, obliged to 
 acknowledge either that God is impo- 
 tent, or that he acts in a mode contra- 
 dictory to his goodness. Yet, those 
 who suppose a just God, are they not 
 obliged to suppose duties and regula- 
 tions, emanating from this being, whom 
 they cannot offend if they do not know 
 his will? Thus the theist, one after 
 another, to explain the conduct of his 
 God, finds himself in continual embar- 
 rassment, from which he knows not how 
 to withdraw himself; but, in admitting 
 all the theological reveries, without 
 even excepting those absurd fables 
 which were imagined to render an ac- 
 count of the strange economy of this 
 being, so good, so wise, so full of equity ; 
 it will be necessary, from supposition 
 to supposition, to recur to the sin of 
 Adam, or to the fall of the rebel angels, 
 or to the crime of Prometheus, and the 
 box of Pandora, to find in what man- 
 ner evil has crept into a world sub- 
 jected to a benevolent intelligence. It 
 will be necessary to suppose the free 
 agency of man ; it will be necessary to 
 acknowledge, that the creature can of- 
 fend his God, provoke his anger, move 
 his passions, and calm them afterwards 
 by superstitious ceremonies and expia- 
 tions. If, they suppose nature to be 
 subject to a concealed agent, endued 
 with occult qualities, acting in a mys- 
 
 for atheism,, perfectly resembles the horrour 
 of a vacuum,: they nave occasion to believe 
 something, the mind cannot remain in sus- 
 pense ; above all, when they persuade them- 
 selves that the thing interests them in a very 
 lively manner ; and then, rather than believe 
 nothing, they will believe every thing that 
 shall be desired, and will imagine that the 
 most certain mode is to take a part. 
 
 terious manner, wherefore should it not 
 be supposed that ceremonies, motions 
 of the body, words, rites, temples, and 
 statues can equally contain secret vir- 
 tues, suitable to reconcile them to the 
 mysterious being whom they adore 1 
 Wherefore should they not give faith 
 to the concealed powers of magic, of 
 theurgy, of enchantments, of charms, 
 and of talismans ? Wherefore not be- 
 lieve in inspirations, in dreams, in 
 visions, in omens, and in soothsayers ? 
 Who knows if the motive power of the 
 universe, to manifest itself to men, has 
 not been able to employ impenetrable 
 ways, and has not had recourse to me- 
 tamorphoses, to incarnations, and to 
 tran substantiations ? Do not, all these 
 reveries flow from the absurd notions 
 which men have formed to themselves 
 of the Divinity ? All these things, and 
 the virtues which are attached to them, 
 are they more incredible and less pos- 
 sible than the ideas of theism, which 
 suppose that an inconceivable, invisi- 
 ble, and immaterial God has been able 
 to create and can move matter ; that a 
 God destitute of organs, can have in- 
 telligence, think like men, and have 
 moral qualities ; that a wise and intel- 
 ligent God can consent to disorder ; 
 that an immutable and just God can 
 permit that innocence should be op- 
 pressed for a time 1 When a God so 
 contradictory, or so much opposed to 
 the dictates of good sense, is admitted, 
 there is no longer any thing to make 
 reason revolt at. As soon as they sup- 
 pose such a God, they can believe any 
 thing ; it is impossible to point out 
 where they ought to arrest the progress 
 of their imagination. If they presume 
 relations between man and this incre- 
 dible being, they must rear him altars, 
 make him sacrifices, address him with 
 continual prayers, and offer him pre- 
 sents. If nothing can be conceived of 
 this being, is it not the most certain 
 way to refer to his ministers, who by 
 situation must have meditated upon 
 him, to make him known to others 1 
 In short, there is no revelation, no mys- 
 tery, no practice that it may not be 
 necessary to admit upon the word of 
 the priests, who, in each country, are 
 in the habit of teaching to men that 
 which they ought to think of the Gods, 
 and of suggesting to them the means 
 of pleasing them.
 
 200 
 
 OF DEISM, OPTIMISM, AND FINAL CAUSES. 
 
 We see, then, that the deists or 
 theists, have no real ground to sepa- 
 rate themselves from the superstitious, 
 and that it is impossible to fix the line 
 of demarcation, which separates them 
 from the most credulous men, or from 
 those who reason the least upon relir 
 gion. Indeed, it is difficult to decide 
 with precision the true dose of folly 
 which may be permitted them. If the 
 deists refuse to follow the superstitious 
 in every step their credulity leads them, 
 they are more inconsistent than these 
 last, who, after having admitted upon 
 hearsay, an absurd, contradictory, and 
 fantastical Divinity, also adopt upon 
 report, the ridiculous and strange means 
 which are furnished them to render him 
 favourable to them. The first set forth 
 a false supposition, of which they re- 
 ject the necessary consequences ; the 
 others admit both the principle and the 
 conclusion.* The God, who exists 
 
 * A very profound philosopher has re- 
 marked, and with reason, that deism must be 
 subject to as many heresies and schisms as 
 religion. The deists have principles in com- 
 mon with the superstitious, and these have 
 frequently the advantage in their disputes 
 against mem. If there exists a God, that is 
 to say, a being of whom we have no idea, and 
 who, nevertheless, has relations with us, 
 wherefore should we not worship him 1 But 
 what rule shall we follow in the worship we 
 ought to render him 1 The most certain way 
 win be to adopt the worstap of our fathers 
 and of our priests. It will not depend upon 
 us to seek another ; this worship, is it absurd ? 
 It will not be permitted us to examine it. 
 Thus, however absurd it may prove, the most 
 certain way will be to conform to it : and we 
 may plead as an excuse, that an unknown 
 cause can act in a mode inconceivable to us : 
 that the views of God are an impenetrable 
 abyss ; that it is very expedient blindly to 
 leave them to our guides : that we shall act 
 wisely in looking upon them us infallible, &c. 
 Whence we see that a consequent theism, can 
 conduct us, step by step, to the most abject 
 credulity, to superstition, and even to the most 
 dangerous fanaticism. Is fanaticism, then, 
 any other thing than an irrational passion for a 
 being, who has no existence but in the imagi- 
 nation? Theism is, with relation to super- 
 stition, that which reform or Protestantism 
 has been to the Roman Catholic religion. 
 The reformers, shocked at some absurd mys- 
 teries, have not contested others which were 
 no less revolting. As soon as the theological 
 God is admitted, there is nothing more in re- 
 ligion which may not be adopted. On the 
 other hand, if, notwithstanding the reform, 
 the Protestants have frequently been intole- 
 rant, it is to be feared that the theists may be 
 the same ; it ia difficult not to be angry in 
 
 only in imagination, demands an ima- 
 ginary worship ; all theology is a mere 
 fiction ; there are no degrees in false- 
 hood, no more than in truth. If God 
 exists, every thing which his ministers 
 say of him must be believed ; all the 
 reveries of superstition have in them 
 nothing more incredible than the in- 
 compatible Divinity, which serves for 
 their foundation ; these reveries them- 
 selves, are only corollaries drawn with 
 more or less subtlety, inductions which 
 enthusiasts or dreamers have deduced 
 from his impenetrable essence, from 
 his unintelligible nature, and from his 
 contradictory qualities. Wherefore, 
 then, stop on the road ? Is there, in 
 any one religion in the world, a miracle 
 more impossible to be believed than 
 that of the creation, or the eduction 
 from nothing 1 Is there a mystery more 
 difficult to be comprehended than a 
 God impossible to be conceived, and 
 whom, however, it is necessary to ad- 
 mit ? Is there any thing more contra- 
 dictory, than an intelligent and omni- 
 potent workman, who only produces to 
 destroy 1 Is there any thing of greater 
 
 favour of an object which we believe of the 
 utmost importance. God is to be feared only 
 because his interests disturb society. In the 
 meantime, it cannot be denied that pure 
 theism, or that which is called natural reli- 
 gion, is preferable to superstition, the same 
 as the reform has banished many abuses from 
 those countries which have embraced it. There 
 is nothing short of an unlimited and inviolable 
 liberty of thought, that can permanently as- 
 sure peace to the mind. The opinions of men 
 are only dangerous when they are restrained, 
 or when it is imagined necessary to make 
 others think in the same manner as we our- 
 selves think. No opinions, not even those 
 of superstition, would be dangerous, if the 
 superstitious did not think themselves obliged 
 to persecute them, and had not the power to 
 do so ; it is this prejudice, which, for the ben- 
 efit of mankind, it is essential to annihilate, 
 and if the thing be impossible, the object which 
 philosophy may reasonably propose to itself, 
 will be to make the depositaries of power feel 
 that they never ought to permit their subjects 
 to commit evil for their religious opinions. In 
 this case, wars would be almost unheard of 
 amongst men, and instead of beholding the 
 melancholy spectacle of man cutting the 
 throat of his fellow man, because he will not 
 see his God with his own peculiar eyes, we 
 shall see him labouring essentially to his own 
 happiness, by promoting that of his neigh- 
 bour ; cultivating the fields and bringing forth 
 the productions of nature, instead of puzzling 
 his brain with theological disputes, which can 
 never be of the smallest advantage to any one 
 except the priests.
 
 OF DEISM, OPTIMISM, AND FINAL CAUSES. 
 
 261 
 
 inutility than to associate with nature 
 an agent, who cannot explain any one 
 of the phenomena of nature 1 
 
 Let us conclude, then, that the man 
 who is the most credulously supersti- 
 tious, reasons in a manner more con- 
 clusive, or, at least, more consistent, 
 than those, who, after having admitted 
 a God, of whom they have no idea, 
 stop all at once, and refuse to admit 
 those systems of conduct which are 
 the immediate and necessary result of 
 a radical and primitive errour. As 
 soon as they subscribe to a principle 
 opposed to reason, by what right do 
 they dispute its consequences, however 
 absurd they may find them ? 
 
 The human mind, we cannot too 
 often repeat for the happiness of men, 
 may torment itself as much as it will ; 
 whenever it quits visible nature, it leads 
 itself astray, and is presently obliged 
 to return. If a man mistakes nature 
 and her energy, he has occasion for a 
 God to move her : he- will no longer 
 have any ideas of her, and he is in- 
 stantly obliged to form a God, of whom 
 he is himself the model ; he believes 
 he makes a God, in giving him his 
 own qualities, which he believes he 
 renders more worthy the sovereign 
 of the world, by exaggerating them, 
 whilst, by dint of abstractions, of ne- 
 gations, of exaggerations, he annihi- 
 lates them, or renders them totally un- 
 intelligible. When he does no longer 
 understand himself, and loses himself 
 in his own fictions, he imagines he has 
 made a God, whilst he has only made 
 an imaginary being. A God clothed 
 with mortal qualities has always man 
 for a model ; a God clothed with the 
 attributes of theology, has a model no 
 where, and does not exist relatively to 
 us: from the ridiculous and extrava- 
 gant combination of two beings so di- 
 verse, there can only result a pure 
 chimera, with which our mind can 
 have no relation, and with which it is of 
 the greatest inutility to occupy our- 
 selves. 
 
 Indeed, what could we expect from 
 a God such as he is supposed to be 1 
 What could we ask of him 1 If he is 
 spiritual, how can he move matter, and 
 arm it against us 1 If it be he Avho 
 establishes the laws of nature ; if it be 
 he who gives to beings their essence 
 and their properties; if every thing 
 
 that takes place is a proof and the work 
 of his infinite providence, of his pro- 
 found wisdom, to what end address 
 prayers to him ? Shall we pray to him 
 to alter, in our favour, the invariable 
 course of things ? Could he, even if 
 he would, annihilate his immutable de- 
 crees, or retrace his steps? Shall we 
 demand, that, to please us, he shall 
 make the beings act in a mode opposite 
 to the essence which he has given 
 them ? Can he prevent that a body, 
 hard by its nature, such as a stone, 
 shall not wound, in falling, a brittle 
 body, such as the human frame, whose 
 essence is to feel? Thus, let us not 
 demand miracles of this God, what- 
 ever he may be ; in despite of the om- 
 nipotence which he is supposed to 
 have, his immutability would oppose 
 itself to the exercise of his power ; his 
 goodness would oppose itself to the 
 exercise of his rigid justice ; his intel- 
 ligence would oppose itself to those 
 changes that he might be disposed to 
 make in his plan. Whence we see, 
 that theology itself, by dint of discord- 
 ant attributes, makes of its God an im- 
 moveable being, useless to man, to 
 whom miracles are totally impossible. 
 We shall perhaps be told, that the 
 infinite science of the Creator of all 
 things knows in the beings which he 
 has formed resources concealed to im- 
 becile mortals; and that without chan- 
 ging any thing, either in the laws of 
 nature or in the essence of things, he is 
 able to produce effects which surpass 
 our feeble understanding, without, how- 
 ever, these effects being contrary to the 
 order which he has himself established. 
 I reply, that every thing which is con- 
 formable to the nature of beings, can 
 neither be called supernatural nor mi- 
 raculous. Many things are, without 
 doubt, above our conception, but every 
 thing that takes place in the world, is 
 natural, and can be much more simply 
 attributed to nature, than to an agent 
 of whom we have no idea. In the 
 second place, that by the word miracle, 
 an effect is meant, of which, for want 
 of knowing nature, she is believed to 
 be incapable. In the third place, that 
 by miracle, the theologians of all 
 countries pretend to indicate, not an 
 extraordinary operation of nature, but 
 an effect directly opposite to her laws 
 of this nature ; to which, however, we
 
 262 
 
 OP DEISM, OPTIMISM, AND FINAL CAUSES. 
 
 are assured that God has prescribed 
 his laws.* On the other hand, if God, 
 in those of his works which surprise 
 us, or which we do not comprehend, 
 does no more than give play to springs 
 unknown to men, there is nothing in 
 nature that, in this sense, may not be 
 looked upon as a miracle, seeing that 
 the cause which makes a stone fall, is 
 as unknown to us, as that which makes 
 our globe turn. In short, if God, when 
 he performs a miracle, only avails him- 
 self of the knowledge which he has of 
 nature, to surprise us, he simply acts 
 like some men more cunning than 
 others, or more instructed than the un- 
 informed, who astonish them with their 
 tricks and their marvellous secrets, by 
 taking advantage of their ignorance, or 
 of their incapacity. To explain the 
 phenomena of nature by miracles, is 
 to say, that we are ignorant of the true 
 causes of these phenomena : to attrib- 
 ute them to a God, is to confess that 
 we do not know the resources of na- 
 ture, and that we need a word to de- 
 signate them ; it is to believe in magic. 
 To attribute to an intelligent, immuta- 
 ble, provident, and wise being, those 
 miracles by which he derogates from 
 his laws, is to annihilate in him these 
 qualities.! An omnipotent God would 
 
 * A miracle, says BUDD.EUS, is an operation 
 by which the laws of nature, upon which 
 depend the order and the preservation of the 
 universe, are suspended. See Treatise on 
 Atheism, p. 140. 
 
 t The last refuge of the deist and theologian, 
 when driven off all other ground, is the pos- 
 sibility of every thing he asserts, couched in 
 the dogma, " that nothing is impossible with 
 God." They mark this asseveration with a 
 degree of self-complacency, with an air of 
 triumph, that would almost persuade one they 
 could not be mistaken ; most assuredly with 
 him who dips no further than the surface, 
 they carry complete conviction. But if we 
 examine a little the nature of this proposition, 
 we will find that it is untenable. In the first 
 place, the possibility of a thing, by no means 
 proves its absolute existence : a thing may be 
 extremely possible, and yet not be. Secondly, 
 if this was once an admitted argument, there 
 would be, in fact, an end of all morality. The 
 Bishop of Chester, Dr. John Wilkins, says : 
 " Would not such men be generally accounted 
 out of their wits, who could please themselves 
 by entertaining actual hopes of any thing, 
 merely upon account of the possibility of it, or 
 torment themselves with actual fears of all 
 such evils as are possible 1 Is there any thing 
 imaginable more wild and extravagant than 
 this would beT' Thirdly, the impossibility 
 
 not have occasion for miracles to go- 
 vern the world, nor to convince his 
 creatures, whose minds and hearts 
 would be in his own hands. All the 
 miracles announced by all the religions 
 of the world, as proofs of the interest 
 which the Most High takes in them, 
 prove nothing but the inconstancy of 
 this being, and the impossibility in 
 which he finds himself to persuade men 
 of that which he would inculcate. 
 
 In short, and as a last resource, it 
 will be demanded, whether it would not 
 be better to depend on a good, wise, 
 intelligent being, than on a blind na- 
 ture, in which we do not find any qua- 
 lity that is consoling to us, or on a fatal 
 necessity always inexorable to our 
 cries ? I reply, first, that our interest 
 does not decide the reality of things, 
 and that if even it should be more ad- 
 vantageous to us to have to do with a 
 being as favourable as God is pointed 
 out to us, this would not prove the ex- 
 istence of this being. Secondly, that 
 this being, so good and so wise, is, on 
 the other hand, represented to us as an 
 irrational tyrant, and that it would be 
 more advantageous for man to depend 
 on a blind nature, than on a being 
 whose good qualities are contradicted 
 every instant by the same theology 
 which has invented them. Thirdly, 
 that nature, duly studied, furnishes us 
 with every thing necessary to render 
 us as happy as our essence admits. 
 When, by the assistance of experience, 
 we shall consult nature, or cultivate 
 our reason, she will discover to us 
 our duties, that is to say, the indis- 
 pensable means to which her eternal 
 and necessary laws have attached our 
 preservation, our own happiness, and 
 that of society. It is in nature that 
 we shall find wherewith to satisfy our 
 physical wants ; it is in nature we 
 shall find those duties defined, without 
 which we cannot live happy in our 
 sphere. Out of nature, we only find 
 
 would reasonably appear to be on the other 
 side ; so far from nothing being impossible, 
 every thing that is erroneous, would seem to 
 be so ; for, if a God existed, he could not pos- 
 sibly either love vice, cherish crime, be pleased 
 with depravity, or commit wrong. This de- 
 cidedly turns the argument against them, and 
 leaves them no other alternative but to retire 
 from behind the shield with which they have 
 imagined they rendered themselves invulner- 
 able.
 
 MEN'S NOTIONS ON THE DIVINITY, &c. 
 
 263 
 
 prejudicial chimeras which render us 
 doubtful as to what we owe to our- 
 selves and to the other heings with 
 whom we are associated. 
 
 Nature is not, then, a stepmother to 
 us ; we do not depend upon an inexo- 
 rable destiny. Let us rely on nature 
 alone ; she will procure us a multitude 
 of benefits, when we shall pay her the 
 attention she deserves: she will furnish 
 us wherewithal to alleviate our phys- 
 ical and moral evils, when we shall be 
 disposed to consult her: she does not 
 punish us or show us rigour, except 
 when we despise her to prostitute our 
 incense to the idols which our imagin- 
 ation has elevated to the throne that 
 belongs to her. It is by incertitude, 
 discord, blindness, and delirium, that 
 she visibly chastises all those who put 
 a monster-God in the place which she 
 ought to occupy. 
 
 In supposing, even for an instant, 
 this nature to be inert, inanimate, blind, 
 or, if they will, in making chance the 
 God of the universe, would it not be 
 better to depend absolutely upon no- 
 thing than upon a God necessary to be 
 known, and of whom we cannot form 
 any one idea, or if we shall form one, 
 to whom we are obliged to attach no- 
 tions the most contradictory, the most 
 disagreeable, the most revolting, and 
 most prejudicial to the repose of human 
 beings 1 Were it not better to depend 
 on destiny or on fatality, than on an 
 intelligence so irrational as to punish 
 his creatures for the little intelligence 
 and understanding which he has been 
 pleased to give them ? Were it not 
 better to throw ourselves into the arms 
 of a blind nature, destitute of wisdom 
 and of views, than to tremble all our 
 life under the scourge of an omnipo- 
 tent intelligence, who has combined 
 his sublime plans in such a manner that 
 feeble mortals should have the liberty 
 of counteracting and destroying them, 
 and thus becoming the constant vic- 
 tims of his implacable wrath.* 
 
 * Lord Shaftesbury, although a very zeal- 
 ous theist, says, with reason, that "many 
 honest people would have a more tranquil 
 mind if they were assured that they had only 
 a blind destiny for their guide : they tremble 
 more in thinking that there is a God, than if 
 they believed that he did not exist." See his 
 Letter on Enthusiasm; see also Chapter 
 
 XIII. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Examination of the Advantages which result 
 to men from their Notions on the Divinity, 
 or of their Influence upon Morals, upon Pol- 
 itics, upon the Sciences, upon the Happiness 
 of Nations and Individuals. 
 
 WE have hitherto seen the slender 
 foundation of those ideas which men 
 form to themselves of the Divinity ; 
 the little solidity there is in the proofs 
 by which they suppose his existence : 
 the want of harmony in the opinions 
 they have formed of this being, equally 
 impossible to be known to the inhab- 
 itants of the earth : we have shown 
 the incompatibility of those attributes 
 which theology assigns to him: we 
 have proved that this being, whose 
 name alone has the power of inspiring 
 fear, is nothing but the shapeless fruit 
 of ignorance, of an alarmed imagina- 
 tion, of enthusiasm, of melancholy : we 
 have shown that the notions which 
 men have formed of him. only date their 
 origin from the prejudices of their infan \ 
 cy, transmitted by education, strength- 
 ened by habit, nourished by fear, main- 
 tained and perpetuated by authority. 
 In short, every thing must have con- 
 vinced us, that the idea of God, so gen- 
 erally diffused over the earth, is no 
 more than a universal errour of the 
 human species. It remains now to ex- 
 amine if this errour be useful. 
 
 No errour can be advantageous to the 
 human species ; it is ever founded up- 
 on his ignorance, or the blindness of 
 his mind. The more importance men 
 shall attach to their prejudices, the 
 more is the fatal consequences of their 
 errours. Thus, Bacon had great reason 
 for saying that the worst of all things, 
 is deified errour. Indeed, the incon- 
 veniences which result from our reli- 
 gious errours have been, and always 
 will be, the most terrible and the most 
 extensive. The more we respect these 
 errours, the more play they give to our 
 passions, the more they disturb our 
 mind, the more irrational they render 
 us, the greater influence they have on 
 the whole conduct of our lives. There 
 is but little likelihood that he who re- 
 nounces his reason in the thing which 
 he considers as the most essential to his 
 happiness, will listen to it on any oth- 
 er occasion. 
 
 If we reflect a little, we shall find 
 the most convincing proof of this sad
 
 264 
 
 EXAMINATION OF ADVANTAGES RESULTING 
 
 truth ; we shall see in those fatal no- 
 tions which men have cherished of the 
 Divinity, the true source of those pre- 
 judices and of those sorrows of every 
 kind to which they are the victims. 
 Nevertheless, as we have elsewhere 
 said, utility ought to be the only rule 
 and the uniform standard of those judg- 
 ments which are formed on the opin- 
 ions, the institutions, the systems, and 
 the actions of intelligent beings ; it is 
 according to the happiness which these 
 things procure for us, that we ought to 
 attach to them our esteem ; whenever 
 they are useless, we ought to despise 
 them ; as soon as they become perni- 
 cious, we ought to reject them: and rea- 
 son prescribes that we should detest 
 them in proportion to the magnitude of 
 the evils they cause. 
 
 From these principles, founded on 
 our nature, and which will appear in- 
 contestable to every reasonable being, 
 let us coolly examine the effects Avhich 
 the notions of the Divinity have produ- 
 ced on the earth. We have already 
 shown, in more than one part of this 
 work, that morals, which have only for 
 object that man should preserve him- 
 self and live in society, had nothing in 
 common with those imaginary systems 
 which he can form to himself upon a 
 power distinguished from nature ; we 
 have proved, that it sufficed to meditate 
 on the essence of a sensible, intelligent, 
 and rational being, to find motives to 
 moderate his passions, to resist his vi- 
 cious propensities, to make him fly 
 criminal habits, to render himself use- 
 ful and dear to those beings for whom 
 he has a continual occasion. These 
 motives are, without doubt, more true, 
 more real, more powerful, than those 
 which it is believed ought to be bor- 
 rowed from an imaginary being, calcu- 
 lated to be seen diversely by all those 
 who shall meditate upon him. We 
 have demonstrated, that education, in 
 making us, at an early period, contract 
 good habits, favourable dispositions, 
 strengthened by the laws, by a respect 
 for public opinion, by ideas of decency, 
 by the desire of meriting the esteem of 
 others, by the fear of losing our own 
 esteem, would be sufficient to accustom 
 us to a laudable conduct, and to divert 
 us even from those secret crimes for 
 which we are obliged to punish our- 
 selves by fear, shame, and remorse. 
 
 Experience proves that the success of 
 a first secret crime disposes us to com- 
 mit a second, and this a third ; that the 
 first action is the commencement of a 
 habit ; that there is much less distance 
 from the first crime to the hundredth, 
 than from innocence to criminality ; 
 that a man who permits himself to com- 
 mit a series of bad actions, in the as- 
 surance of impunity, deceives himself, 
 seeing that he is always obliged to pun- 
 ish himself, and that, moreover, he can- 
 not know where he shall stop. We 
 have shown, that those punishments 
 which, for its own preservation, socie- 
 ty has the right to inflict on all those 
 who disturb it, are, for those men who 
 are insensible to the charms of virtue, 
 or the advantages which result from 
 the practice of it, more real, more effi- 
 cacious, and more immediate obstacles, 
 than the pretended wrath or the distant 
 punishments of an invisible power, of 
 whom the idea is effaced every time 
 that impunity in this world is believed 
 to be certain. In short, it is easy to 
 feel that politics, founded upon the na- 
 ture of man and of society, armed with 
 equitable laws, vigilant with regard to 
 the morals of men, faithful in reward- 
 ing virtue and punishing crime, would 
 be more suitable to render morality re- 
 spectable and sacred than the chimeri- 
 cal authority of that God who is ador- 
 ed by all the world, and who never re- 
 strains any but those who are already 
 sufficiently restrained by a moderate 
 temperament, and by virtuous princi- 
 ples. 
 
 On the other hand, we have proved 
 that nothing was more absurd and more 
 dangerous than attributing human qual- 
 ities to the Divinity, which, in fact, are 
 found in continual contradiction with 
 themselves; a goodness, a wisdom, 
 and an equity, which we see every in- 
 stant counterbalanced or denied by 
 wickedness, by confusion, by an un- 
 just despotism, which all the theologi- 
 ans of the world have at all times at- 
 tributed to this same Divinity. It is 
 then very easy to conclude from it that 
 God, who is shown to us under such 
 different aspects, cannot be the model 
 of man's conduct, and that his moral 
 character cannot serve for an example 
 to beings living together in society, 
 who are only reputed virtuous when 
 their conduct does not deviate from
 
 PROM MEN'S NOTIONS ON THE DIVINITY, &c. 
 
 265 
 
 that benevolence and justice which 
 they owe to their fellow-creatures. 
 A God superiour to every thing, who 
 owes nothing to his subjects, who 
 has occasion for no one, cannot be the 
 model of creatures who are full of 
 wants, and consequently must have 
 duties. 
 
 Plato has said, that virtue consisted 
 in resembling God. But where shall 
 we find this God whom man ought to 
 resemble 1 Is it in nature '? Alas ! he 
 who is supposed to be the mover of it, 
 diffuses indifferently over the human 
 race great evils and great benefits ; he 
 is frequently unjust to the purest souls ; 
 he accords the greatest favours to the 
 most perverse mortals ; and if, as we 
 are assured, he must show himself one 
 day more equitable, we shall be obliged 
 to wait for that time to regulate our 
 conduct upon his own. 
 
 Shall it be in the revealed religions, 
 that we shall draw up our ideas of vir- 
 tue ? Alas ! do they not all appear to 
 be in accord in announcing a despotic, 
 jealous, vindictive, and selfish God, 
 who knows no law, who follows his 
 caprice in every thing, who loves or 
 who hates, who chooses or reproves, 
 according to his whim ; who acts irra- 
 tionally, who delights in carnage, ra- 
 pine, and crime ; who plays with his 
 feeble subjects, who overloads them 
 with puerile laws, who lays continual 
 snares for them, who rigorously pro- 
 hibits them from consulting their rea- 
 son? What would become of morality, 
 if men proposed to themselves such 
 Gods for models. 
 
 It is, however, some Divinity of this 
 temper which all nations adore. Thus, 
 we see it is in consequence of these 
 principles, that religion, in all coun- 
 tries, far from being favourable to mo- 
 rality, shakes it and annihilates it. It 
 divides men in the room of uniting 
 them ; in the place of loving each oth- 
 er, and lending mutual succours one to 
 the other, they dispute with each other, 
 they despise each other, they hate each 
 other, they persecute each other, and 
 they frequently cut each others' throats 
 for opinions equally irrational: the 
 slightest difference in their religious 
 notions, renders them from that mo- ] 
 ment enemies, separates their interests, ! 
 and sets them into continual quarrels. , 
 For theological conjectures, nations be- ] 
 
 No. IX. 34. 
 
 come opposed to other nations ; the 
 sovereign arms himself against his sub- 
 jects ; citizens wage war against their 
 fellow-citizens ; fathers detest their 
 children, these plunge the sword into 
 the bosom of their parents ; husbands 
 and wives are disunited ; relations for- 
 get each other ; all the social bonds are 
 broken ; society rends itself in pieces 
 by its own hands, whilst, in the midst 
 of this'horrid confusion, each pretends 
 that he conforms to the views of the 
 God whom he serves, and does not re- 
 proach himself with any one of those 
 crimes which he commits in the sup- 
 port of his cause. 
 
 We again find the same spirit of 
 whim and madness in the rites, the 
 ceremonies, and the practices, which 
 all the worships in the world appear to 
 have placed so much above the social 
 or natural virtues. Here mothers de- 
 liver up their children to feed their God ; 
 there subjects assemble themselves in 
 the ceremony of consoling their God 
 for those pretended outrages which 
 they have committed against him, by 
 immolating to him human victims. In 
 another cquntry, to appease the wrath 
 of his God, a frantic madman tears 
 himself and condemns himself for life 
 to rigorous tortures. The Jehovah of 
 the Jews is a suspicious tyrant, who 
 breathes nothing but blood, murder, 
 and carnage, and who demands that 
 they should nourish him with the va- 
 pours of animals. The Jupiter of the 
 Pagans is a lascivious monster. The 
 Moloch of the Phoenicians is a canni- 
 bal ; the pure mind of the Christians 
 resolved, in order to appease his fury, 
 to crucify his own son ; the savage 
 God of the Mexicans cannot be satisfi- 
 ed without thousands of mortals which 
 are immolated to his sanguinary appe- 
 tite. 
 
 Such are the models which the Di- 
 vinity presents to men in all the super- 
 stitions of the world. Is it then sur- 
 prising that his name has become the 
 signal of terrour, madness, cruelty, and 
 inhumanity for all nations, and serves 
 as a continual pretext for the' most 
 shameful and impudent violation of 
 the duties of morality ? It is the fright- 
 ful character that men every where 
 give of their God, that banishes good- 
 ness for ever from their hearts, morali- 
 ty from their conduct, felicity and rea-
 
 266 
 
 EXAMINATION OP ADVANTAGES RESULTING 
 
 son from their habitations ; it is every 
 where a God who is disturbed by the 
 mode in which unhappy mortals think, 
 that arms them with poniards one 
 against the other, that makes them sti- 
 fle the cries of nature, that renders 
 them barbarous to themselves and atro- 
 cious to their fellow creatures ; in short, 
 they become irrational and furious ev- 
 ery time that they wish to imitate the 
 God whom they adore, to merit his love, 
 and to serve him with zeal. 
 
 It is not, then, in heaven that we 
 ought to seek either for models of vir- 
 tue, or the rules of conduct necessary 
 to live in society. Man needs human 
 morality, founded upon his own nature, 
 upon invariable experience, upon rea- 
 son : the morality of the Gods will al- 
 ways be prejudicial to the earth ; cruel 
 Gods cannot be well served but by 
 subjects who resemble them. What 
 becomes, then, of those great advanta- 
 ges which have been imagined resulted 
 from the notions which are unceasingly 
 given us of the Divinity 1 We see that 
 all nations acknowledge a God who is 
 sovereignly wicked; and to conform 
 themselves to his views, the.y trample 
 under feet the most evident duties of 
 humanity ; they appear to act as if it 
 were only by crimes and madness that 
 they hoped to draw down upon them- 
 selves the favours of the sovereign in- 
 telligence, of whose goodness they 
 boast so much. As soon as there is a 
 question of religion, that is to say, of a 
 chimera, whose obscurity has made 
 them place him above either reason or 
 virtue, men make it a duty with them- 
 selves to give loose to all their passions ; 
 they mistake the clearest precepts 
 of morality, as soon as their priests 
 give them to understand that the Di- 
 vinity commands them to commit 
 crimes, or that it is by transgressions 
 that they will be able to obtain pardon 
 for their faults. 
 
 Indeed, it is not in those revered 
 men, diffused over the whole earth, to 
 announce to men the oracles of Hea- 
 ven, that we shall find real virtues. 
 Those enlightened men, who call them- 
 selves the ministers of the Most High, 
 frequently preach nothing but hatred, 
 discord, and fur^ r , in his name : the Di- 
 vinity, far from having a useful influ- 
 ence over their own morals, commonly 
 does no more than render them more 
 
 ambitious, more covetous, more har- 
 dened, more obstinate, and more proud. 
 We see them unceasingly occupied in 
 giving birth to animosities, by their un- 
 intelligible quarrels. We see them 
 wrestling against the sovereign author- 
 ity, which they pretend is subject to 
 their's. We see them arm the chiefs 
 of a nation against their legitimate ma- 
 gistrates. We see them distribute to the 
 credulous people weapons to massacre 
 each other with in those futile disputes, 
 which the sacerdotal vanity makes to 
 pass for matters of importance. Those 
 men, so persuaded of the existence of 
 a God, and who menace the people 
 with his eternal vengeance, do they 
 avail themselves of these marvellous 
 notions to moderate their pride, their 
 cupidity, their vindictive and turbulent 
 humour? In those countries, where 
 their empire is established in the most 
 solid manner, and where they enjoy 
 impunity, are they the enemies of that 
 debauchery, that intemperance, and 
 those excesses, which a severe God in- 
 terdicts to his adorers ? On the contra- 
 ry, do we not see them from thence 
 emboldened in crime, intrepid in ini- 
 quity, giving a free scope to their irre- 
 gularities, to their vengeance, to their 
 hatred, and suspicious cruelties ? In 
 short, it may be advanced without fear, 
 that those who, in every part of the 
 earth, announce a terrible God, and 
 make men tremble under his yoke ; that 
 those men, who unceasingly meditate 
 upon him, and who undertake to prove 
 his existence to others, who decorate 
 him with pompous attributes, who de- 
 clare themselves his interpreters, who 
 make all the duties of morality to de- 
 pend upon him, are those whom this 
 God contributes the least to render vir- 
 tuous, humane, indulgent, and sociable. 
 In considering their conduct, we should 
 be tempted to believe that they are 
 perfectly undeceived with respect to 
 the idol whom they serve, and that no 
 one is less the dupe of those menaces 
 which they pronounce in his name, 
 than themselves. In the hands of the 
 priests of all countries, the Divinity re- 
 sembles the head of Medusa, which, 
 without injuring him who showed it, 
 petrified all the others. The priests 
 are generally the most crafty of men, 
 the best among them are truly wicked. 
 Does the idea of an avenging and
 
 PROM MEN'S NOTIONS ON THE DIVINITY, &c. 
 
 267 
 
 remunerating God impose more upon 
 those princes, on those Gods of the 
 earth, who found their power and the 
 titles of their grandeur upon the Di- 
 vinity himself; who avail themselves 
 of his terrific name to intimidate, and 
 make those people hold them in rever- 
 ence who are so frequently rendered 
 unhappy by their caprice ? Alas ! the 
 theological and supernatural ideas, 
 adopted by the pride of sovereigns, 
 have done no more than corrupt poli- 
 tics, and have changed them into tyr- 
 anny. The ministers of the Most 
 High, always tyrants themselves, or 
 the cherishers of tyrants, are they not 
 unceasingly crying to monarchs, that 
 they are the images of the Deity ? Do 
 they not tell the credulous people, that 
 Heaven wills that they should groan 
 under the most cruel and the most mul- 
 tifarious injustice ; that to suffer is 
 their inheritance ; that their princes, 
 like the Supreme Being, have the indu- 
 bitable right to dispose of the goods, the 
 persons, the liberty, and the lives of 
 their subjects'? Do not those chiefs of 
 nations, thus poisoned in the name of 
 the Divinfty, imagine that every thing 
 is permitted them ? Competitors, rep- 
 resentatives, and rivals of the celestial 
 power, do they not exercise, after his 
 example, the most arbitrary despotism? 
 Do they not think, in the intoxication 
 into which sacerdotal flattery has plun- 
 ged them, that, like God, they are not 
 accountable to men for their actions, 
 that they owe nothing to the rest of 
 mortals, that they are bound by no 
 bonds to their miserable subjects ? 
 
 Then it is evident, that it is to theo- 
 logical notions, and to the loose flat- 
 tery of the ministers of the Divinity, 
 that are to be ascribed the despotism, 
 the tyranny, the corruption, and the 
 licentiousness of princes, and the blind- 
 ness of the people, to whom, in the 
 name of Heaven, they interdict the love 
 of liberty, to labour to their own hap- 
 
 Einess, to oppose themselves to vio- 
 jnce, to exercise their natural rights. 
 These intoxicated princes, even in 
 adoring an avenging God, and in obli- 
 ging others to adore him, never cease 
 a moment to outrage him by their irre- 
 gularities and their crimes. Indeed, 
 what morality is this, but that of men 
 who offer themselves as living images 
 and representatives of the Divinity ? 
 
 Are they, then, atheists, those monarchs 
 who, habitually unjust, wrest, without 
 remorse, the bread from the hands of a 
 famished people, to administer to the 
 luxury of their insatiable courtiers/and 
 the vile instruments of their iniquities? 
 Are they atheists, those ambitious con- 
 querors, who, but little contented with 
 oppressing their own subjects,carry des- 
 olation, misfortune, and death, among 
 the subjects of others? What do we 
 see in those potentates, who reign by 
 divine right over nations, except am- 
 bitious mortals, whom nothing can 
 arrest, with hearts perfectly insensible 
 to the sorrows of the human species? 
 souls without energy, and without vir- 
 tue, who neglect the most evident du- 
 ties, with which they do not even deign 
 to become acquainted ? powerful men, 
 who insolently place themselves above 
 the rules of natural equity ?* knaves 
 who make sport of honesty ? In the 
 alliances which those deified sovereigns 
 form between themselves, do we tind 
 even the shadow of sincerity? In those 
 princes, when even they are subjected, 
 in the most abject manner, to supersti- 
 tion, do we meet with the smallest real 
 virtue ? We only see in them robbers, 
 too haughty to be humane, too great to 
 be just, who make for themselves alone 
 a code of perfidies, violence, and trea- 
 son ; we only see in them wicked be- 
 ings, ready to overreach, surprise, and 
 injure each other ; we only find in them 
 furies, always at war, for the most futile 
 interests, empoverishing their people, 
 and wresting from each other the bloody 
 remnants of nations ; it might be said, 
 that they dispute who shall make the 
 greatest number of miserable beings 
 
 * The Emperor Charles the Fifth used to 
 say, that, being a warrior, it was impossible 
 for him to have either conscience or religion : 
 his general, the Marquis de Pescaire, said, that 
 nothing teas more difficult, than to serve at 
 one and the same time the God Mars and 
 Jesus Christ. Generally speaking, nothing 
 is more contrary to the spirit of Christianity 
 than the profession of arms ; and yet the 
 Christian princes have most numerous armies, 
 and are perpetually at war. Moreover, the 
 clergy would be extremely sorry that the 
 maxims of the evangelists, or the Christian 
 meekness should be rigidly followed, which 
 in nowise accords with their interests. This 
 clergy have occasion for soldiers to give so- 
 lidity to iheir doctrines and their rights. This 
 proves to what a degree religion is calculated 
 to impose on the passions of men.
 
 EXAMINATION OF ADVANTAGES RESULTING 
 
 on the earth ! At length, Avearied with 
 their own fury, or forced by the hand 
 of necessity to make peace, they attest 
 the most insidious treaties in the name 
 of God, ready to violate their most 
 solemn oaths, as soon as the smallest 
 interest shall require it.* 
 
 This is the manner in which the idea 
 of God imposes on those who call them- 
 selves his images, who pretend they 
 have no account to render but to him 
 alone ! Amongst these representatives 
 of the Divinity, it is with difficulty we 
 find, during thousands of years, one 
 who has equity, sensibility, .or the most 
 ordinary talents and virtues. The 
 people, brutalized by superstition, suf- 
 fer infants who are made giddy \vith 
 flattery, to govern them with an iron 
 sceptre ; these madmen, transformed 
 into Gods, are the masters of the law ; 
 they decide for society, whose tongue 
 is tied ; they have the power to create 
 both the just and the unjust ; they 
 exempt themselves from those rules 
 which their caprice imposes on others ; 
 they neither know relations nor duties ; 
 they have never learned to fear, to 
 blush, or to feel remorse : their licen- 
 tiousness has no limits, because it is 
 assured of remaining unpunished ; in 
 consequence, they disdain public opin- 
 ion, decency, and the judgments of 
 men whom they are enabled to over- 
 whelm by the weight of their enormous 
 power. We see them commonly given 
 up to vice and debauchery, because the 
 listlessness and the disgust which fol- 
 low the surfeit of satiated passions, 
 oblige them to recur to .strange plea- 
 sures and costly follies, to awaken acti- 
 vity in their benumbed souls. In short, 
 accustomed only to fear God, they al- 
 ways conduct themselves as if they 
 had nothing to fear. 
 
 History, in all countries, shows us 
 only a multitude of vicious and mis- 
 chievous potentates ; nevertheless, it 
 shows us but few who have been athe- 
 ists. The annals of nations, on the 
 contrary, offer to our view a great num- 
 ber of superstitious princes, who passed 
 their lives plunged in luxury and effem- 
 inacy, strangers to every virtue, uni- 
 formly good to their hungry courtiers, 
 
 Nihil est quod credere de se 
 Non possit, cum laudatur del ccqua po- 
 . Juvenal Sat., 4. v. 79. 
 
 and insensible of the sorrows of their 
 .subjects ; governed by mistresses and 
 unworthy favourites ; leagued with 
 priests against the public happiness ; 
 in short, persecutors, who, to please 
 their God, or expiate their shameful 
 irregularities, joined to all their other 
 crimes, that of tyrannising over the 
 thought, and of murdering citizens for 
 their opinions. Superstition in princes 
 is allied with the most horrid crimes ; 
 almost all of them have religion, very 
 few of them have a knowledge of true 
 morality, or practise any useful virtue. 
 Religious notions only serve to render 
 them more blind and more wicked ; 
 they believe themselves assured of the 
 favour of Heaven; they think that their 
 Gods are appeased, if, for a little, they 
 show themselves attached to futile cus- 
 toms, and to the ridiculous duties 
 which superstition imposes on them. 
 Nero, the cruel Nero, his hands yet 
 stained with the blood of his own 
 mother, was desirous to be initiated into 
 the mysteries of Eleusis. The odious 
 Constantine found, in the Christian 
 priests, accomplices disposed to expiate 
 his crimes. That infamous Philip, 
 whose cruel ambition caused him to 
 be called the Demon of the South, 
 whilst he assassinated his wife and 
 his son, piously caused the throats of 
 the Batavians to be cut for religious 
 opinions. It is thus that superstitious 
 blindness persuades sovereigns that 
 they can expiate crimes by crimes of 
 still greater magnitude. 
 
 Let us conclude, then, from the con- 
 duct of so many princes, so very reli- 
 gious, but so little imbued with virtue, 
 that the notions of the Divinity, far 
 from being useful to them, only served 
 to corrupt them, and to render them 
 more wicked than nature had made 
 them. Let us conclude, that the idea 
 of an avenging God can never impose 
 restraint on a deified tyrant, sufficiently 
 powerful or sufficiently insensible not 
 to fear the reproaches or the hatred of 
 men ; sufficiently hardened not to have 
 compassion for the sorrow of the hu- 
 man species, from whom they believe 
 themselves distinguished : neither heav- 
 en nor earth has any remedy for a 
 being perverted to this degree ; there 
 is no curb capable of restraining his 
 passions to which religion itself con- 
 tinually gives loose, and whom it ren-
 
 PROM MEN'S NOTIONS ON THE DIVINITY, &c. 
 
 269 
 
 ders more rash and inconsiderate. 
 Every time that they flatter themselves 
 with easily expiating their crimes, they 
 deliver themselves up with greater fa- 
 cility to crime. The most dissolute 
 men are frequently extremely attached 
 to religion ; it furnishes them with 
 means of compensating by forms that 
 of which they are deficient in morals: 
 it is much easier to believe or to adopt 
 doctrines, and to conform themselves 
 to ceremonies, than to renounce their 
 habits or to resist their passions. 
 
 Under chiefs, depraved even by re- 
 ligion, nations continued necessarily 
 to be corrupted. The great conformed 
 themselves to the vices of their mas- 
 ters ; the example of these distinguished 
 men, whom the uninformed believe to 
 be happy, was followed by the people ; 
 courts became sinks, whence issued 
 continually the contagion of vice. The 
 law, capricious and arbitrary, alone 
 delineated honesty; jurisprudence was 
 iniquitous and partial ; justice had her 
 handage over her eyes only to the poor ; 
 the true ideas of equity were effaced 
 from all minds ; education, neglected, 
 served only to produce ignorant and 
 irrational beings ; devotees, always 
 ready to injure themselves ; religion, 
 sustained by tyranny, took place of 
 every thing ; it rendered those people 
 Wind and tractable whom the govern- 
 ment proposed to despoil.* 
 
 Thus nations, destitute of a rational 
 administration of equitable laws, of 
 useful instruction, of a reasonable edu- 
 cation, and always continued by the 
 monarch and the priest in ignorance 
 and in chains, have become religious 
 and corrupted. The nature of man, 
 the true interests of society, the real 
 advantage of the sovereign and of the 
 people once mistaken, the morality of 
 nature, founded upon the essence of 
 man living in society, was equally un- 
 known. It was forgotten that man has 
 wants, that society was only formed to 
 facilitate the means of satisfying them, 
 that government ought to have for ob- 
 
 * Maehiavelli, in Chap. 11-13 of his Politi- 
 cal Discourses upon Titus Livius, endeavours 
 to show the utility of superstition to the Ro- 
 man republic ; but, unfortunately, the ex- 
 amples by which he supports it, proves, that 
 none but the senate profited by the blindness 
 of the people, and availed themselves of it to 
 keep them under their yoke. 
 
 ject the happiness and maintenance of 
 this society ; that it ought, consequent- 
 ly, to make use of motives suitable to 
 have a favourable influence over sensi- 
 ble beings. It was not seen that re- 
 compenses and punishments form the 
 powerful springs of which public au- 
 thority could efficaciously avail itself 
 to determine the citizens to blend their 
 interests, and to labour to their own 
 felicity, by labouring to that of the 
 body of which they are members. 
 The social virtues were unknown ; the 
 love of country became a chimera; men 
 associated, had only an interest in 
 injuring each other, and had no other 
 care than that of meriting the favour 
 of the sovereign, who believed himself 
 interested in injuring the whole. 
 
 This is the mode in which the hu- 
 man heart has become perverted ; here 
 is the true source of moral evil, and of 
 that hereditary, epidemical, and inve- 
 terate depravity, which we see reign 
 over the whole earth. It is for the 
 purpose of remedying so many evils, 
 that recourse has been had to religion, 
 which has itself produced them ; it has 
 been imagined that the menaces of 
 Heaven would restrain those passions 
 which every thing conspired to rouse 
 in all hearts ; men foolishly persuaded 
 themselves that an ideal and metaphy- 
 sical barrier, that terrible fables, that 
 distant phantoms, would suffice to re- 
 strain their natural desires and impe- 
 tuous propensities ; they believed that 
 invisible powers would be more effica- 
 cious than all the visible powers, which 
 evidently invite mortals to commit 
 evil. They believed they had gained 
 every thing in occupying their minds 
 with dark and gloomy chimeras, with 
 vague terrours, and with an avenging 
 Divinity ; and politics foolishly per- 
 suaded itself that it was for its own 
 interests the people should blindly sub- 
 mit to the ministers of the Divinity. 
 
 What resulted from this ? Nations 
 had only a sacerdotal and theological 
 morality, accommodated to the views 
 and to the variable interests of priests, 
 who substituted opinions and reveries 
 to truth, customs to virtue, a pious 
 blindness to reason, fanaticism to so- 
 ciability. By a necessary consequence 
 of that confidence which the people 
 gave to ministers of the Divinity, two 
 distinct authorities were established in
 
 270 
 
 EXAMINATION OP ADVANTAGES RESULTING 
 
 each state, who were continually at 
 variance and at war Avith each other ; 
 the priest fought the sovereign with the 
 formidable weapon of opinion ; it gen- 
 erally proved sufficiently powerful to 
 shake thrones.* The sovereign was 
 never at rest, but when abjectly de- 
 voted to his priests, and tractably re- 
 ceived their lessons, and lent his as- 
 sistance to their phrensy. These 
 priests, always restless, ambitious, and 
 intolerant, excited the sovereign to 
 ravage his own states, they encouraged 
 him to tyranny, they reconciled him 
 with Heaven when he feared to have 
 outraged it. Thus, when two rival 
 powers united themselves, morality 
 gained nothing by the junction; the 
 people were neither more happy, nor 
 more virtuous ; their morals, their well- 
 being, their liberty were overwhelmed 
 by the united forces of the God of hea- 
 ven, and the God of the earth. Princes, 
 always interested in the maintenance 
 of theological opinions, so flattering to 
 their vanity, and so favourable to their 
 usurped power, for the most part made 
 a common cause with their priests ; 
 they believed that that religious system 
 which they themselves adopted must 
 be the most convenient and useful to 
 the interests of their subjects ; and, 
 consequently, those who refused to 
 adopt it, were treated by them as ene- 
 mies. The most religious sovereign 
 became, either politically, or through 
 piety, the executioner of one part of his 
 subjects : he believed it to be a sacred 
 duty to tyrannise over thought, to over- 
 whelm and to crush the enemies of his 
 priests, whom he always believed to 
 be the enemies of his own authority. 
 In cutting their throats, he imagined 
 he did that which at once discharged 
 his duty to Heaven, and what he owed 
 to his own security. He did not per- 
 ceive, that by immolating victims to 
 
 * It is well to observe, that the priests, who 
 are perpetually crying out to the people to 
 submit themselves to their sovereigns, be- 
 cause their authority is derived from Heaven, 
 because they are the images of the Divinity, 
 change their language whenever the sovereign 
 does not blindly submit to them. The clergy 
 upholds despotism only that it may direct Tts 
 blows against its enemies, but it overthrows 
 it whenever it finds it contrary to its interests. 
 The ministers of the invisible powers only 
 preach up obedience to the visible powers 
 when these are humbly devoted to them. 
 
 his priests, he strengthened the ene- 
 mies of his power, the rivals of Ins 
 greatness, the least subjected of his 
 subjects. 
 
 Indeed, owing to the false notions 
 with which the minds of sovereigns 
 and the superstitious people have been 
 so long prepossessed, we find that every 
 thing in society concurs to gratify the 
 pride, the avidity, and the vengeance 
 of the sacerdotal order. Every where 
 we see that the most restless, the most 
 dangerous, and the most useless men, 
 are those who are recompensed the 
 most amply. We see those who are 
 born enemies to the sovereign power, 
 honoured and cherished by it ; the most 
 rebellious subjects looked upon as the 
 pillars of the throne, the corrupters of 
 youth rendered the exclusive masters 
 of education ; the least laborious of the 
 citizens, richly paid for their idleness, 
 for their futile speculations, for their 
 fatal discord, for their inefficacious 
 prayers, for their expiations, so dan- 
 gerous to morals, and so suitable to 
 encourage crime. 
 
 For thousands of years, nations and 
 sovereigns have been emulously des- 
 poiling themselves to enrich the min- 
 isters of the Gods, to enable them to 
 wallow in abundance, loading them 
 with honours, decorating them with 
 titles, privileges, and immunities, thus 
 making them bad citizens. What fruits 
 did the people and kings gather from 
 their imprudent kindness, and from 
 their prodigality? Have princes be- 
 come more powerful ; have nations 
 become,more happy, more flourishing, 
 and more rational ? No! without doubt; 
 the sovereign lost the greater portion 
 of his authority ; he was the slave of 
 his priests, or he was obliged to be 
 continually wrestling against them ; 
 and the greater part of the riches of 
 society Avas employed to support in 
 idleness, luxury, and splendour, the 
 most useless and the most dangerous 
 of its members. 
 
 Did the morals of the people im- 
 prove under these'guides who were so 
 liberally paid? Alas! the superstitious 
 never knew them ; religion had taken 
 place of every thing else in them ; its 
 ministers, satisfied with maintaining 
 the doctrines and the customs useful 
 to their own interests, only invented 
 fictitious crimes, multiplied painful or
 
 FROM MEN'S NOTIONS ON THE DIVINITY, &c. 
 
 271 
 
 ridiculous customs, to the end that they 
 might turn even the transgressions of 
 their slaves to their own profit. Every 
 Avhere they exercised a monopoly of 
 expiations ; they made a traffic of the 
 pretended pardons from above, they 
 established a book of rates for crimes ; 
 the most serious were always those 
 which the sacerdotal order judged the 
 most injurious to his views. Impiety, 
 heresy, sacrilege, blasphemy, &c., 
 vague words, and devoid of sense, 
 which have evidently no other object 
 than chimeras, interesting only the 
 priests, alarmed their minds much more 
 than real crimes, and truly interesting 
 to society. Thus, the ideas of the 
 people were totally overturned ; ima- 
 ginary crimes frightened them much 
 more than real crimes. A man whose 
 opinions and abstract systems did not 
 harmonize with those of the priests, 
 was much more abhorred than an as- 
 sassin, than a tyrant, than an oppressor, 
 than a robber, than a seducer, or than 
 a corrupter. The greatest of all wick- 
 edness, was the despising of that which 
 the priests were desirous should be 
 looked upon as sacred.* The civil 
 laws concurred also to this confusion 
 of ideas; they punished in the most 
 atrocious manner those unknown crimes 
 which the imagination had exaggerated ; 
 heretics, blasphemers, and infidels, 
 were burnt ; no punishment was de- 
 creed against the corrupters of inno- 
 cence, adulterers, knaves, and calum- 
 niators. 
 
 Under such instructors, what could 
 become of youth ? It was shamefully 
 sacrificed to superstition. Man from 
 his infancy was poisoned by them with 
 unintelligible notions ; they fed him 
 with mysteries and fables ; they drench- 
 ed him with a doctrine in which he 
 was obliged to acquiesce, without being 
 able to comprehend it ; they disturbed 
 his mind with vain phantoms ; they 
 cramped 'his genius with sacred trifles, 
 with puerile duties, and with mechan- 
 ical devotions.f They made him lose 
 
 * The celebrated Gordon says, that the 
 most abominable of heresies is, to believe 
 there is any other God than the clergy. 
 
 t Superstition has fascinated the human 
 mind to such a degree, and made such mere 
 machines of men, that there are a great many 
 countries, in which the people do not under- 
 stand the language of which they make use 
 to speak to their God. We see women who 
 
 his most precious time in customs 
 and ceremonies : they filled his head 
 with sophisms and with errours ; they 
 intoxicated him with fanaticism ; they 
 prepossessed him for ever against rea- 
 son and truth ; the energy of his mind 
 was placed under continual shackles ; 
 he could never soar, he could never 
 render himself useful to his associates ; 
 the importance which they attached to 
 the divine science, or rather the syste- 
 matic ignorance which served for the 
 basis of religion, rendered it impossible 
 for the most fertile soil to produce any 
 thing but thorns. 
 
 Does a religious and sacerdotal edu- 
 cation form citizens, fathers of families, 
 husbands, just masters, faithful ser- 
 vants, humble subjects, pacific asso- 
 ciates ? No ! it either makes peevish 
 and morose devotees, incommodious to 
 themselves and to others, or men with- 
 out principles, who quickly sink in ob- 
 livion the terrours with which they 
 have been imbued, and who never 
 knew the laws of morality. Religion 
 was placed above every thing ; the 
 fanatic was told, that it were better to 
 obey God than man ; inconsequence, 
 he believed that he must revolt against 
 his prince, detach himself from his 
 wife, detest his child, estrange himself 
 from his friend, cut the throats of his 
 fellow-citizens, every time that they 
 questioned the interests of Heaven. 
 In short, religious education, when it 
 had its effect, only served to corrupt 
 juvenile hearts, to fascinate youthful 
 minds, to degrade young minds, to 
 make man mistake that which he owed 
 to himself, to society, and to the beings 
 which surrounded him. 
 
 What advantages might not nations 
 have reaped, if they would have em- 
 ployed, on useful objects, those riches 
 which ignorance has so shamefully 
 lavished on the ministers of impos- 
 ture ! What progress might not genius 
 have made, if it had enjoyed those re- 
 compenses, granted during so many 
 ages, to those who are at all times op- 
 posed to its elevation ! To what a de- 
 have no other occupation all their lives, than 
 singing Latin, without understanding a word 
 of the language. The people who compre- 
 hend no part of their worship, assist at it very 
 punctually, under an idea that it is sufficient 
 to show themselves to their God, who takes 
 it kind of them that they should come and 
 weary themselves in his temples.
 
 272 
 
 EXAMINATION OF ADVANTAGES RESULTING 
 
 gree might not the useful sciences, the 
 arts, morality, politics, and truth, have 
 been perfected, if they had had the same 
 succours as falsehood, delirium, enthu- 
 siasm, and inutility ! 
 
 It is, then, evident, that the theolo- 
 gical notions were and will be perpetu- 
 ally contrary to sound politics and to 
 sound morality; they change sove- 
 reigns into mischievous, restless, and 
 jealous Divinities ; they make of sub- 
 jects envious and wicked slaves, who, 
 by the assistance of some futile cere- 
 monies, or by their exterior acquies- 
 cence to some unintelligible opinions, 
 imagine themselves amply compensa- 
 ted for the evil which they commit 
 against each other. Those who have 
 never dared to examine into the exist- 
 ence of a God, who rewards and pun- 
 ishes ; those who persuade themselves 
 that their duties are founded upon the 
 divine will ; those who pretend that this 
 God desires that men should live in 
 peace, cherishing each other, lending 
 each mutual assistance, and abstaining 
 from evil, and that they should do good 
 to each other, presently lost sight of 
 these steril speculations, as soon as 
 present interests, passions, habits, or 
 importunate whimsj hurry them away. 
 Where shall we find the equity, the 
 union, the peace and concord, which 
 these sublime notions, supported by 
 superstition and divine authority, prom- 
 ise to those societies under whose 
 eyes they are unceasingly placing 
 them ? Under the influence of corrupt 
 courts and priests, who are either im- 
 postors or fanatics, who are never in 
 harmony with each other, I only see vi- 
 cious men, degraded by ignorance, en- 
 slaved by criminal habits, swayed by 
 transient interests, or by shameful 
 pleasures, who do not even think of 
 their God. In despite of his theologi- 
 cal ideas, the courtier continues to 
 weave his dark plots: he labours to 
 gratify his ambition, his avidity,his ha- 
 tred, his vengeance, and all those pas- 
 sions inherent to the perversity of his 
 being : maugre that hell, of which the 
 idea alone makes her tremble, the cor- 
 rupt woman persists in her intrigues, 
 her impostures, and her adulteries. 
 The greater part of men, dissipated, 
 dissolute, and without morals, who fill 
 cities and courts, would recoil with 
 horrour, if the smallest doubt was ex- 
 
 hibited to them of the existence of that 
 God Avhom they outrage. What good 
 results from the practice of this opinion, 
 so universal and so barren, which nev- 
 er has any other kind of influence on 
 the conduct, than to serve as a pretext 
 to the most dangerous passions ? On 
 quitting that temple, in which they have 
 been sacrificing, delivering out the di- 
 vine oracles, and terrifying crime in 
 the name of Heaven, does not the re- 
 ligious despot, who would scruple to 
 omit the pretended duties which super- 
 stition imposes on him, return to his 
 vices, his injustice, his political crimes, 
 his transgressions against society ? 
 Does not the minister return to his vex- 
 ations, the courtier to his intrigues, the 
 woman of gallantry to her prostitution, 
 the publican to his extortions, the mer- 
 chant to his frauds and tricks 1 
 
 Will it be pretended that those as- 
 sassins, those robbers, those unfortu- 
 nates, whom the injustice or the negli- 
 gence of government multiply, and 
 1'rom whom laws, frequently cruel, bar- 
 barously wrest their life ; will they pre- 
 tend, I say, that these malefactors, who 
 every day fill our gibbets and our scaf- 
 folds, are incredulous or atheists ? No I 
 unquestionably these miserable beings, 
 these outcasts of society, believe in 
 God; his name has been repeated to 
 them in their infancy ; they have been 
 told of the punishments destined for 
 crimes ; they have been habituated in 
 early life to tremble at his judgments ; 
 nevertheless they have outraged socie- 
 ty ; their passions, stronger than their 
 fears, not having been capable of re- 
 straint by the visible motives, have not 
 for much stronger reasons been restrain- 
 ed by invisible motives; a concealed 
 God, and his distant punishments, nev- 
 er will be able to hinder those excess- 
 es, which present and assured torments 
 are incapable of preventing. 
 
 In short, do we not, every moment, 
 see men persuaded that their God views 
 them, hears them, encompasses them, 
 and yet who do not stop on that account 
 when they have the desire of gratifying 
 their passions, and of committing the 
 most dishonest actions? The same man 
 who would fear the inspection of an- 
 other man, whose presence would pre- 
 vent him from committing a bad action, 
 delivering himself up to some scanda- 
 lous vice, permits himself to do every
 
 FROM MEN'S NOTIONS ON THE DIVINITY. 
 
 m 
 
 thing, when he believes he is seen only 
 by his God. What purpose, then, does 
 the conviction of the existence of this 
 God, of his omniscience, of his ubi- 
 quity or his presence in all parts, an- 
 swer, since it imposes much less on the 
 conduct of man, than the idea of being 
 seen by the least of his fellow-men ? 
 He, who would not dare to commit a 
 fault, even in the presence of an infant, 
 will make no scruple of boldly commit- 
 ting it, when he shall have only his 
 God for witness. These indubitable 
 facts may serve for a reply to those 
 who shall tell us, that the fear of God 
 is more suitable to restrain the ac- 
 tions of men, than the idea of having 
 nothing to fear from him. When men 
 believe they have only their God to 
 fear, they commonly stop at nothing. 
 
 Those persons, who do not suspect 
 the most trivial of religious notions, and 
 of their efficacy, very rarely employ 
 them when they are disposed to influ- 
 ence the conduct of those who are sub- 
 ordinate to them, and to reconduct 
 them into the paths of reason. In the 
 advice which a father gives to his vi- 
 cious or criminal son, he rather repre- 
 sents to him the present and temporal 
 inconveniences to which his conduct 
 exposes him, than the danger he en- 
 counters in offending an avenging God : 
 he makes him foresee the natural con- 
 sequences of his irregularities, his 
 health deranged by his debaucheries, 
 the loss of his reputation, the ruin of 
 his fortune by play, the punishments 
 of society, &c. Thus the deicolist him- 
 self, in the most important occasions of 
 life, reckons much more upon the force 
 of natural motives, than upon the su- 
 pernatural motives furnished by reli- 
 gion: the same man who vilifies the 
 motives which an atheist can have to 
 do good, and abstain from evil, makes 
 use of them on this occasion, because 
 he feels the full force of them. 
 
 Almost all men believe in an aven- 
 ging and remunerating God ; neverthe- 
 less, in all countries, we find that the 
 number of the wicked exceed by much 
 that of honest men. If we trace the 
 true cause of so general a corruption, 
 we shall find it in the theological no- 
 tions themselves and not in those im- 
 aginary sources which the different re- 
 ligions of the world have, in vented, in 
 
 No. IX. 35 
 
 order to account for human depravity. 
 Men are corrupt, because they are al- 
 most every where badly governed ; they 
 are unworthily governed, because reli- 
 gion has deified the sovereigns ; these 
 perverted, and assured of impunity, 
 have necessarily rendered their people 
 miserable and wicked. Submitted to 
 irrational masters, the people have ne- 
 ver been guided by reason. Blinded 
 by priests, who are impostors, their 
 reason became useless ; tyrants and 
 priests have combined their efforts with 
 success, to prevent nations from becom- 
 ing enlightened, from seeking after 
 truth, from meliorating their condition, 
 from rendering their morals more hon- 
 est, and from obtaining liberty. 
 
 It is only by enlightening men, by 
 demonstrating truth to them, that we 
 can promise ourselves to render them 
 better and happier. It is by making 
 known to sovereigns and to subjects 
 their true relations, and their true in- 
 terests, that politics will be perfected, 
 and that it will be felt that the art of 
 governing mortals is not the art of 
 blinding them, of deceiving them, or of 
 tyrannising over them. Let us, then, 
 consult reason ; let us call in experi- 
 ence to our aid ; let us interrogate na- 
 ture, and we shall find what is necessa- 
 ry to be done in order to labour effica- 
 ciously to the happiness of the human 
 species. We shall see that errour is 
 the true source of the evils of our spe- 
 cies ; that it is in cheering our hearts, 
 in dissipating those vain phantoms, of 
 which the idea makes us tremble, in 
 laying the axe to the root of supersti- 
 tion, that we can peaceably seek after 
 truth, and find in nature the torch that 
 can guide us to felicity. Let us, then, 
 study nature ; let us observe its immu- 
 table laws ; let us search into the es- 
 sence of man; let us cure him of his 
 prejudices, and by these means we 
 shall conduct him, by an easy and gen- 
 tle declivity, to virtue, without which 
 he will feel that he cannot be perma- 
 nently happy in the world which he 
 inhabits. 
 
 Let us, then, undeceive mortals with 
 regard to those Gods who every where 
 make nothing but unfortunates. Let 
 us substitute visible nature to those un- 
 known powers who have in all times 
 only been worshipped by trembling
 
 274 
 
 COMPARISON BETWEEN THEOLOGICAL 
 
 slaves, or by delirious enthusiasts. 
 Let us tell them that, in order to be hap- 
 py, they must cease Jo fear. 
 
 The ideas of the Divinity, which, as 
 we have seen, are of such inutility, and 
 so contrary to sound morality, do not 
 procure more striking advantages to 
 individuals than to society. In, every 
 country, the Divinity was, as we have 
 seen, represented under the most re- 
 volting traits, and the superstitious 
 man, when consistent in his principles, 
 was always an unhappy being; super- 
 stition is a domestic enemy which man 
 always carries within himself. Those 
 who shall seriously occupy themselves 
 with this formidable phantom, will live 
 in continual agonies and inquietude; 
 they will neglect those objects which 
 are the most worthy of their attention 
 to run after chimeras ; they will com- 
 monly pass their melancholy days in 
 groaning, in praying, in sacrificing, and 
 in expiating the faults, real or imagina- 
 ry, which they believe likely to otfend 
 their rigid God. Frequently in their 
 fury, they will torment themselves, they 
 will make a duty of inflicting upon 
 themselves the most barbarous punish- 
 ments to prevent the blows of a God rea- 
 dy to strike ; they will arm themselves 
 against themselves, in the hopes of dis- 
 arming the vengeance and the cruelty of 
 an atrocious master, whom they think 
 they have irritated ; they will believe 
 they appease an angry God in becoming 
 the executioners of themselves, and do- 
 ing themselves all the harm their ima- 
 gination shall be capable of inventing. 
 Society reaps no benefit from the mourn- 
 ful notions of these pious irrationals ; 
 their mind finds itself continually ab- 
 sorbed by their sad reveries, and their 
 time is dissipated in irrational ceremo- 
 nies. The most religious men are com- 
 monly misanthropists, extremely use- 
 less to the world, and injurious to them- 
 selves. If they show energy, it is only 
 to imagine means to afflict themselves, 
 to put themselves to torture, to deprive 
 themselves of those objects which their 
 nature desires. We find, in all the coun- 
 tries of the earth, penitents intimately 
 persuaded that by dint of barbarities 
 exercised upon themselves, and lin- 
 gering suicide, they shall merit the fa- 
 vour of a ferocious God, of whom, how- 
 ever, they every where publish the 
 goodness. We see madmen of this 
 
 species in all parts of the world ; the 
 idea of a terrible God has in all times 
 and in all places, given birth to the 
 most cruel extravagances ! 
 
 If these irrational devotees only in- 
 jure themselves, and deprive society of 
 that assistance which they owe it, they 
 without doubt, do less harm than those 
 turbulent and zealous fanatics Avho, 
 filled with their religious ideas, believe 
 themselves obliged to disturb the world, 
 and to commit actual crimes to sustain 
 the cause of their celestial phantom. It 
 very frequently happens, that in outra- 
 ging morality, the fanatic supposes he 
 renders himself agreeable to his God. 
 He makes perfection consist either in 
 tormenting himself, or breaking, in fa- 
 vour of his fantastical notions, the most 
 sacred ties which nature has made for 
 mortals. 
 
 Let us, then, acknowledge, that the 
 ideas of the Divinity are not more suit- 
 able to procure the Avell-being, the con- 
 tent, and peace of individuals than of 
 the society of which they are members. 
 If some peaceable, honest, inconclu- 
 sive enthusiasts find consolation and 
 comfort in their religious ideas, there 
 are millions who, more conclusive to 
 their principles, are unhappy during 
 their whole life, perpetually assailed by 
 the melancholy ideas of a fatal God 
 their disordered imagination shows 
 them every instant. Under such a for- 
 midable God, a tranquil and peaceable 
 devotee is a man who has not reasoned 
 upon him. 
 
 In short, every thing proves that re- 
 ligious ideas /have the strongest influ- 
 ence over men to torment, divide, and 
 render them unhappy; they inflame the 
 mind, envenom the passions, without 
 ever restraining them, except when the 
 temperament proves too feeble to propel 
 them forward. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Theological Notions cannot be (he Basis of 
 Morality. Comparison between Theo- 
 logical Morality and Natural Morality. 
 Theology Prejudicial to the Progress of 
 the Human Mind. 
 
 A SUPPOSITION to be useful to men, 
 ought to render them happy. What 
 right have we to flatter ourselves that 
 an hypothesis which here makes only
 
 MORALITY, AND NATURAL MORALITY. 
 
 275 
 
 unhappy being?, may one day conduct j 
 us to permanent felicity? If God has ! 
 only made mortals to tremble and to 
 groan in this world, of which they have 
 a knowledge, upon what foundation ; 
 can they expect that he will, in the end, 
 treat them with more gentleness in an i 
 unknown world. If we see a man com- | 
 mil crying injustice, even transiently, 
 ought it not to render him extremely 
 suspected by us, and make him forever 
 forfeit cur confidence? 
 
 On the other hand, a supposition 
 which should throw light on every 
 thing, or which should give an easy so- 
 lution to all the questions to which it 
 could be applied, when even it should 
 not be able to demonstrate the certi- 
 tude, would probably be true : but a 
 system which should only obscure the 
 clearest notions, and render more insol- 
 uble all the problems desired to be 
 resolved by its means, would most cer- 
 tainly be looked upon as false, as use- 
 less, as dangerous. To convince our- 
 selves of this principle, let us examine, 
 without prejudice, if the existence of 
 the theological God has ever giv- 
 en the solution of any one difficulty. 
 Has the human understanding pro- 
 gressed a single step by the assistance 
 of theology 1 This science, so impor- 
 tant and so sublime, has it not totally 
 obscured morality ? Has it not render- 
 ed the most essential duties of our na- 
 ture doubtful and problematical 1 Has 
 it not shamefully confounded all no- 
 tions of justice and injustice, of vice 
 and of virtue? Indeed, what is virtue 
 in the ideas of our theologians ? It is, 
 they will tell us, that which is conform- 
 able to the will of the incomprehensible 
 being who governs nature. But what 
 is this being, of whom they are unceas- 
 ingly speaking without being able to 
 comprehend it ; and how can we have 
 a knowledge of his will? They will 
 forthwith tell you what this being is 
 not, without ever being capable of tell- 
 ing you what he is ; if they do under- 
 take to give you an idea of him. they 
 will heap upon this hypothetical being 
 a multitude of contradictory and incom- 
 patible attributes, which will form a 
 chimera impossible to be conceived ; or 
 else they will refer you to those super- 
 natural revelations, by which this phan- 
 tom has made known his divine inten- 
 tions to men. But how will they prove 
 
 the authenticity of these revelations? 
 it will be by miracles ! How can we 
 believe miracles, which, as we have 
 seen, are contrary even to those notions 
 which theology gives us of its intelli- 
 gent, immutable, and omnipotent Di- 
 vinity 1 As a last resource, then, it 
 will be necessary to give credit to the 
 honesty and good faith of the priests, 
 who are charged with announcing the 
 divine oracles. But who will assure 
 us of their mission ? Are they not these 
 priests themselves who announce to 
 us, that they are the infallible inter- 
 preters of a God whom they acknow- 
 ledge they do not know. This granted, 
 the priests, that is to say, men ex- 
 tremely suspicious, and but little in 
 harmony among themselves, will be 
 the arbiters of morality ; they will de- 
 cide, according to their uncertain know- 
 ledge, or their passions, those laws 
 which ought to be followed ; enthusi- 
 asm or interest are the only standard 
 of their decisions ; their morality is as 
 variable as their whims and their ca- 
 price ; those who listen to them will 
 never know to what line of conduct 
 they should adhere ; in their inspired 
 books, we shall always find a Divinity 
 of little morality, who will sometimes 
 command crime and absurdity ; who 
 will sometimes be the friend and some- 
 times the enemy of the human race ; 
 who will sometimes be benevolent, 
 reasonable, and just ; and who will 
 sometimes be irrational, capricious, un- 
 just, and despotic. What will result 
 from all this- to a rational man ? It will 
 be, that neither inconstant Gods nor 
 their priests, whose interests vary every 
 moment, can be the models or the 
 arbiters of a morality which ought to 
 be as regular and as certain as the in- 
 variable laws of nature, from which 
 we never see her derogate. 
 
 No ! arbitrary and inconclusive opin- 
 ions, contradictory notions, abstract 
 and unintelligible speculations, can 
 never serve for the basis of the science 
 of morals. They must be evident 
 principles, deduced from the nature of 
 man, founded upon his wants, inspired 
 by education, rendered familiar by 
 habit, made sacred by laws : these will 
 carry conviction to our minds, will 
 render virtue useful and dear to us, and 
 will people nations with honest men 
 and good citizens. A God, necessarily
 
 27B 
 
 COMPARISON BETWEEN THEOLOGICAL 
 
 incomprehensible, presents nothing hut 
 a vague idea to pur imagination ; a 
 terrihle God leads it astray ; a changea- 
 ble God, and who is frequently in con- 
 tradiction with himself, will always 
 prevent us from ascertaining the road 
 we ought to pursue. The menaces 
 made to us, on the part of a fantastical 
 being, who is unceasingly in contra- 
 diction with our nature, of which he is 
 the author, will never do more than 
 render virtue disagreeable ; fear alone 
 will make us practise that which reason 
 and our own immediate interest ought 
 to make Us execute with pleasure. A 
 terrible or wicked God, which is one 
 and the same thing, will only serve to 
 disturb honest people, without arrest- 
 ing the progress of the profligate and fla- 
 gitious ; the greater part of men, when 
 they shall be disposed to sin, or deliver 
 themselves up to vicious propensities, 
 will cease to contemplate the terrible 
 God, and will only see the merciful God, 
 who is filled with goodness ; men never 
 view things but on the side which is 
 most conformable to their desires. 
 
 The goodness of God cheers the 
 wicked, his rigour disturbs the honest 
 man. Thus, the qualities which the- 
 ology attributes to its God, themselves 
 turn out disadvantageous to sound mo- 
 rality. It is upon this infinite goodness 
 that the most corrupt men will have 
 the audacity to reckon when they are 
 hurried along by crime, or given up to 
 habitual vice. If, then, we speak to 
 them of their God, they tell us that 
 God is good, that his clemency and 
 his mercy are infinite. Does not super- 
 stition, the accomplice of the iniquities 
 of mortals, unceasingly repeat to them, 
 that by the assistance of certain cere- 
 monies, of certain prayers, of certain 
 acts of piety, they can appease the 
 anger of their God, and cause them- 
 selves to be received with open arms 
 by this softened and relenting God ? 
 Do not the priests of all nations pos- 
 sess infallible secrets for reconciling 
 the most perverse men to the Divinity ? 
 
 It must be concluded from this, that 
 under whatever point of view the Di- 
 vinity is considered, he cannot serve 
 for the basis of morality, formed to be 
 always invariably the same. An iras- 
 cible God is only useful to those who 
 have an interest in terrifying men, that 
 they may take advantage of their ig- 
 
 norance, of their fears, and of their 
 expiations ; the nobles of the earth, 
 who are commonly mortals the most 
 destitute of virtue and of morals, will 
 not see this formidable God, when they 
 shall be inclined to yield to their pas- 
 sions ; they will, however, make use 
 of him to frighten others, to the end 
 that they may enslave them, and keep 
 them under their guardianship, whilst 
 they will themselves only contemplate 
 this God under the traits of his good- 
 ness ; they will always see him in- 
 dulgent to those outrages which they 
 commit against his creatures, provided 
 they have a respect for him themselves ; 
 besides, religion will furnish them with 
 easy means of appeasing his wrath. 
 This religion appears to have been in- 
 vented only to furnish to the ministers 
 of the Divinity an opportunity to ex- 
 piate the crimes of human nature. 
 
 Morality is not made to follow the 
 caprices of the imagination, the pas- 
 sions, and the interests of men : it ought 
 to possess stability ; it ought to be the 
 same for all the individuals of the human 
 race ; it ought not to vary in one country, 
 or in one time, from another ; religion 
 has no right to make its immutable 
 rules bend to the changeable laws of 
 its Gods. There is only one method 
 to give morality this firm solidity ; we 
 have more than once, in the course of 
 this work, pointed it out ;* there is no 
 other way than to found it upon our 
 duties, upon the nature of man, upon 
 the relations subsisting between intel- 
 ligent beings, who are, each of them, 
 in love with their happiness, and oc- 
 cupied with conserving themselves ; 
 who live together in society, that they 
 may more surely attain these ends. In 
 short, we mus.t take for the basis of 
 morality the necessity of things. 
 
 In weighing these principles, drawn 
 from nature, which are self-evident, 
 confirmed by constant experience, and 
 approved by reason, we shall have a 
 certain morality, and a system of con- 
 duct, which will never be in contra- 
 diction with itself. Man will have no 
 occasion to recur to theological chi- 
 meras to regulate his conduct in the 
 visible world. We shall then be ca- 
 pacitated to reply to those who pretend 
 
 * See vol. i. chap. viii. of this work ; also 
 what is said in chap, xii., and at the conclu- 
 sion of chap. ziv. of the same volume.
 
 MORALITY AND NATURAL MORALITY. 
 
 277 
 
 that without a God, there cannot be 
 any morality ; and that this God, by 
 virtue of his power and the sovereign 
 empire which belongs to him over his 
 creatures, has alone the right to impose 
 laws, and to subject them to those du- 
 ties to which they are compelled. If 
 we reflect on the long train of errours 
 and of wanderings which flow from 
 the obscure notions we have of the 
 Divinity, and on the sinister ideas 
 which all religions in every country 
 give, it would be more conformable 
 to truth to say, that all sound morality, 
 all morality useful to the human spe- 
 cies, all morality advantageous to so- 
 ciety, is totally incompatible with a 
 being wko is never presented to men 
 but under the form of an absolute mon- 
 arch, whose good qualities are con- 
 tinually eclipsed by dangerous caprices : 
 consequently, we shall be obliged to 
 acknowledge that, to establish morality 
 upon a sure foundation, we must ne- 
 cessarily commence by overturning the 
 chimerical systems upon which they 
 have hitherto founded the ruinous edi- 
 fice of supernatural morality, which, 
 during so many ages, has been useless- 
 ly preached up to the inhabitants of the 
 earth. 
 
 Whatever may have been the cause 
 that placed man in the abode which he 
 inhabits, and that gave him his facul- 
 ties ; whether we consider the hu- 
 man species as the work of nature, or 
 whether we suppose that he owes his 
 existence to an intelligent being, dis- 
 tinguished from nature ; the existence 
 of man, such as he is, is a fact ; we 
 see in him a being who feels, who 
 thinks, who has intelligence, who loves 
 himself, who tends to his own con- 
 servation ; who, in every moment of 
 his life, strives to render his existence 
 agreeable ; who, the. more easily to 
 satisfy his wants, and to procure him- 
 self pleasure, lives in society with 
 beings similar to himself, whom his 
 conduct can render favourable or dis- 
 affected to him. It is, then, upon these 
 general sentiments, inherent in our na- 
 ture, and which will subsist as long as 
 the race of mortals, that we ought to 
 found morality, which is only the sci- 
 ence of the duties of men living 'in 
 society. 
 
 Here, then, are the true foundations 
 of our duties ; these duties are neces- 
 
 sary, seeing that they flow from our 
 peculiar nature, and that we cannot 
 arrive at the happiness we propose to 
 ourselves, if we do not take the means 
 without which we shall never obtain 
 it. Then, to be permanently happy, 
 we are obliged to merit the affection 
 and the assistance of those beings with 
 whom we are associated ; these will 
 not take upon themselves to love us, 
 to esteem us, to assist us in our pro- 
 jects, to labour to our peculiar felicity, 
 but in proportion as we are disposed 
 to labour to their happiness. It is this 
 necessity which is called moral obli- t 
 gallon. It is founded upon reflection, 
 on the motives capable of determining 
 sensible and intelligent beings, who 
 tend towards an end, to follow the con- 
 duct necessary to arrive at it. These 
 motives can be in us only the desire, 
 always regenerating, of procuring our- 
 selves good, and of avoiding evil. 
 Pleasure and pain, the hope of happi- 
 ness or the fear of misery, are the only 
 motives capable of having an effiacious 
 influence on the will of sensible beings; 
 to compel them, then, it is sufficient 
 that these motives exist, and may be 
 understood ; to know them, it is suffi- 
 cient to consider our constitution, ac- 
 cording to which we can love or ap- 
 prove in ourselves only those actions 
 from whence result our real and recip- 
 rocal utility, which constitutes virtue. 
 In consequence, to conserve ourselves, 
 to enjoy security, we are compelled to 
 follow the conduct necessary to this 
 end ; to interest others in our own con- 
 servation, we are obliged to interest 
 ourselves in their's, or to do nothing 
 that may interrupt in them the will of 
 co-operating with us to our own feli- 
 city. Such a/e the true foundations 
 of moral obligation. 
 
 We shall always deceive ourselves, 
 when we shall give any other basis to 
 morality than the nature of man ; we 
 cannot have any that is more solid and 
 more certain. Some authors, even of 
 integrity, have thought, that, to render 
 more respectable and more sacred, in 
 the eyes of men, those duties which 
 nature imposes on them, it was neces- 
 sary to clothe them with the authority 
 of a being, which they made superior 
 to nature, and stronger than necessity. 
 Theology has, in consequence, invaded 
 morality, or has strove to connect it
 
 COMPARISON BETWEEN THEOLOGICAL 
 
 with the religious system; it has been 
 thought that this union would render 
 virtue more sacred ; that the fear of 
 the invisible power who governs na- 
 ture, would give more weight and effi- 
 cacy to its laws ; in short, it has been 
 imagined, that men, persuaded of the 
 necessity of morality, m seeing it united 
 with religion, would look upon this re- 
 ligion itself as necessary to their hap- 
 piness. Indeed, it is the supposition 
 that a God is necessary to support 
 morality, that sustains the theological 
 ideas, and the greater part of the reli- 
 .gious systems of the earth ; it is ima- 
 gined that, without a God, man would 
 neither have a knowledge of, nor prac- 
 tise that which he owes to others. 
 This prejudice once established, it is 
 always believed that the vague ideas 
 of a metaphysical God are in such a 
 manner connected with morality and 
 the welfare of society, that the Divinity 
 cannot be attacked without overturn- 
 ing at the same time the duties of na- 
 ture. It is thought, that want, the 
 desire of happiness, the evident interest 
 of society, and of individuals, would 
 be impotent motives, if they did not 
 borrow all their force and their sanc- 
 tion from an imaginary being who has 
 been made the arbiter of all things. 
 
 But it is always dangerous to con- 
 nect fiction with truth, the unknown 
 with the known, the delirium of en- 
 thusiasm with the tranquillity of reason. 
 Indeed, what has resulted from the 
 confused alliance which theology has 
 made of its marvellous chimeras with 
 realities? The imagination bewildered, 
 truth is mistaken ; religion, by the aid 
 of its phantom, would command na- 
 ture, make reason bend under its yoke, 
 subject man to its own peculiar ca- 
 prices, and frequently, in the name of 
 the Divinity, it obliges him to stifle 
 his nature, and to piously violate most 
 evident duties of morality. When this 
 same religion Avas desirous of restrain- 
 ing mortals whom it had taken care to 
 render blind and irrational, it gave 
 them only ideal curbs and motives ; it 
 could substitute only imaginary causes 
 to true causes ; marvellous and super- 
 natural motive-powers to those which 
 were natural and known ; romances 
 and fables, to realities. By this in- 
 version of principles, morality no longer 
 had any fixed basis ; nature, reason, 
 
 virtue, demonstrations, depended upon 
 an ^indefinable God, who never spoke 
 distinctly, who silenced reason, who 
 only explained himself by inspired be- 
 ings, by impostors, by fanatics, whose 
 delirium or the desire of profiting by 
 the wanderings of men, interested them 
 in preaching up only an abject sub- 
 mission, factitious virtues, frivolous 
 ceremonies ; in short, an arbitrary mo- 
 rality, conformable to their own pecu- 
 liar passions, and frequently very pre- 
 judicial to the rest of the human 
 species. 
 
 Thus, in making morality flow from 
 God, they in reality subjected it to the 
 passions of men. In being disposed to 
 found it upon a chimera, they founded 
 it upon nothing ; in deriving it from 
 an imaginary being, of whom every- 
 one forms to himself a different notion, 
 of whom the obscure oracles were in- 
 terpreted either by men in a delirium, 
 or by 'knaves; in establishing it upon 
 his pretended will, goodness, or malig- 
 nity ; in short, in proposing to man, for 
 his model, a being who is supposed to 
 be changeable, the theologians, far 
 from giving to morality a steady basis, 
 have weakened, or even annihilated 
 that which is given by nature, and have 
 substituted in its place nothing but 
 incertitude. This God, by the quali- 
 ties which are given him, is an inex- 
 plicable enigma, which each expounds 
 after his own manner, which each re- 
 ligion explains in its own mode, in 
 which all the theologians of the world 
 discover every thing that suits their 
 purpose, and according to which each 
 man separately forms his morals, con- 
 formable to his peculiar character. If 
 God tells the gentle, indulgent, equita- 
 ble man to be good, compassionate, and 
 benevolent, he tells the furious man, 
 who is destitute of compassion, to be 
 intolerant, inhuman, and without pity. 
 The morality of this God varies in 
 each man, from one country to another: 
 some people shiver with horrour at the 
 sight of those actions which other peo- 
 ple look upon as sacred and meritorious. 
 Some see God filled with gentleness 
 and mercy ; others judge him to be 
 cruel, and imagine that it is by cruel- 
 tits they can acquire the advantage of 
 pleasing him. 
 
 The morality of nature is clear ; it is 
 evident even to those who outrage it. It
 
 MORALITY AND NATURAL MORALITY. 
 
 279 
 
 is not so with religious morality, this 
 is as obscure as the Divinity who pre- 
 scribes it, or rather as changeable as 
 the passions and the temperaments of 
 those who make him speak, or who 
 adore him. If it were left to the the- 
 ologians, morality ought to be con- 
 sidered as a science the most proble- 
 matical, the most uncertain, and the 
 most difficult to fix. It would require 
 the most subtile or the most profound 
 genius, the most penetrating and active 
 mind, to discover the principles of the 
 duties of man towards himself and 
 others. Are not, then, the true sources 
 of morality calculated to be known 
 only to a small number of thinkers or 
 of metaphysicians 1 To derive it from 
 a God, whom nobody sees but within 
 himself, and which each modifies after 
 his own peculiar ideas, is to submit it 
 to the caprice of each man ; to derive 
 it from a being which no man upon the 
 earth can boast of knowing, is to say 
 they do not know whence it could come 
 to us. Whatever may be the agent 
 upon whom they make nature, and all 
 the beings which it contains, depend, 
 whatever power they may suppose him 
 to have, it is very possible that man 
 should or should not exist ; but as soon 
 as he shall have made him what he is, 
 when he shall have rendered him sen- 
 sible, in love with his own being, and 
 living in society, he cannot, without 
 annihilating or new-moulding him, 
 cause him to exist otherwise than he 
 does. According to his actual essence, 
 qualities, and modifications, which con- 
 stitute him a being of the human spe- 
 cies, morality is necessary to him, and 
 the desire of conserving himself will 
 make him prefer virtue to vice, by the 
 same necessity that it makes him pre- 
 fer pleasure to pain.* 
 
 To say that man cannot possess any 
 moral sentiments without the idea of 
 
 * According to theology, man has occa- 
 sion for supernatural grace to do good : this 
 doctrine was, without doubt, very hurtful to 
 sound morality. Men always waited for the 
 call from above to do good, and those who 
 governed them never employed the calls from 
 below, that is to say, the natural motives to 
 excite them to virtue. Nevertheless, Tertul- 
 lian says to us : " Wherefore will ye trouble 
 yourselves, seeking after the law of God, 
 whilst ye have that which is common to all 
 the world, and which is written on the tablets 
 of nature VTcrtull. DC Corona Militis. 
 
 God, is to say that he cannot distin- 
 guish vice from virtue ; it is to pretend 
 that, without the idea of God, man 
 would not feel the necessity of eating 
 to live, would not make any distinction 
 or choice in his food : it is to pretend 
 that, without being acquainted with the 
 name, the character, and the qualities 
 of him who prepares a mess for us, we 
 are not in a state to judge whether 
 this mess be agreeable or disagreeable, 
 good or bad. He who does not know 
 what opinion to hold upon the exist- 
 ence and the moral attributes of a God, 
 or who formally denies them, cannot 
 at least doubt his own existence, his 
 own qualities, his own mode of feeling 
 and of judging : neither can he doubt 
 the existence of other organized beings 
 like himself, in whom every thing dis- 
 covers to him qualities analogous with 
 his own, and of whom he can, by cer- 
 tain actions, attract the love or the 
 hatred, the assistance or the ill-will, the 
 esteem or the contempt : this know- 
 ledge is sufficient to enable him to dis- 
 tinguish rhoral good and evil. In short, 
 every man enjoying a well-ordered 
 organization,' or the faculty of making 
 true experience, will only have to con- 
 template himself, in order to discover 
 what he owes to others : his own na- 
 ture will enlighten him much better 
 upon his duties than those Gods, in 
 which he can only consult his own 
 passions, or those of some enthusiasts 
 or impostors. He will allow, that to 
 conserve himself, and secure his own 
 permanent wellbeing, he is obliged to 
 resist the impulse, frequently blind, of 
 his own desires ; and that to conciliate 
 the benevolence of others, he must act 
 in a mode conformable to their advan- 
 tage ; in reasoning thus, he will find 
 out what virtue is ;* if he put this 
 
 * Hitherto theology has not known how to 
 give a true definition of virtue. According to 
 it, it is an effect of grace, that disposes us to 
 do that which is agreeable to the Divinity. 
 But what is the Divinity? What is grace? 
 How does it act upon man ? What is that 
 which is agreeable to God 1 Wherefore does 
 not this God give to all men the grace to do 
 that which is agreeable in his eyes? Adhuc 
 sub judice Us est. 3Ien are unceasingly told 
 to do good, because God requires it ; never 
 have they been informed what it was to do 
 good, and priests have never been able to tell 
 them what God was, nor that which he was 
 desirous they should do.
 
 COMPARISON BETWEEN THEOLOGICAL 
 
 theory into practice, he will he virtuous ; 
 he will be rewarded for his conduct, 
 by the happy harmony of his machine, 
 by the legitimate esteem of himself, 
 confirmed by the kindness of others : 
 if he act in a contrary mode, the trouble 
 and the disorder of his machine will 
 quickly warn him that nature, whom 
 he thwarts, disapproves his conduct, 
 which is injurious to himself, and he 
 will be obliged to add the condemna- 
 tion of others, Avho will hate him and 
 blame his actions. If the wanderings 
 of his mind prevent him from seeing 
 the most immediate consequences of 
 his irregularities, neither will he per- 
 ceive the distant rewards and punish- 
 ments of the invisible monarch, whom 
 they have so vainly placed in the em- 
 pyreum ; this God will never speak to 
 him in so distinct a manner as his 
 conscience, which will either reward 
 him or punish him on the spot. 
 
 Every thing that has been advanced, 
 evidenly proves, that religious morality 
 is an infinite loser, when compared 
 with the morality of nature, with which 
 it is found in perpetual contradiction. 
 Nature invites man to love himself, to 
 preserve himself, to incessantly aug- 
 ment the sum of his happiness : reli- 
 gion orders him to love only a formi- 
 dable God, that deserves to be hated ; 
 to detest himself, to sacrifice to his 
 frightful idol the most pleasing and 
 legitimate pleasures of his heart. Na- 
 ture tells man to consult reason, and to 
 take it for his guide : religion teaches 
 him that his reason is corrupted, that 
 it is only a treacherous guide, given 
 by a deceitful God to lead his creatures 
 astray. Nature tells man to enlighten 
 himself, to search after truth, to in- 
 struct himself in his duties : religion 
 enjoins him to examine nothing, to re- 
 main in ignorance, to fear truth ; it 
 persuades him, that there are no rela- 
 tions more important than those which 
 subsist between him and a being of 
 whom he will never have any know- 
 ledge. Nature tells the being who is 
 in love with his welfare, to moderate 
 his passions, to resist them when they 
 are destructive to himself, to counter- 
 balance them by real motives borrowed 
 from experience : religion tells the 
 sensible being to have no passions, to 
 be an insensible mass, or to combat 
 his propensities by motives borrowed 
 
 from the imagination, and variable as 
 itself. Nature tells man to be sociable, 
 to love his fellow-creatures, to be just, 
 peaceable, indulgent, and benevolent, 
 to cause or suffer his associates to en- 
 joy their opinions : religion counsels 
 him to fly society, to detach himself 
 from his fellow-creatures, to hate them, 
 when their imagination does not pro- 
 cure them dreams conformable to his 
 own, to break the most sacred bonds 
 to please his God, to torment, to afflict, 
 to persecute, and to massacre those who 
 will not be mad after his own manner. 
 Nature tells man in society to cherish 
 glory, to labour to render himself esti- 
 mable, to be active, courageous, and 
 industrious : religion tells him to be 
 humble, abject, pusillanimous, to live 
 in obscurity, to occupy himself with 
 prayers, with meditations, and with 
 ceremonies ; it says to him, be useful 
 to thyself, and do nothing for others.* 
 Nature proposes to the citizen for a 
 model, men endued with honest, noble, 
 energetic souls, who have usefnlly 
 served their fellow-citizens ; religion 
 commends to them abject souls, extols 
 pious enthusiasts, frantic penitents, 
 fanatics, who, for the most ridiculous 
 opinions, have disturbed empires. Na- 
 ture tells the husband to be tender, to 
 attach himself to the company of his 
 mate, and to cherish her in his bosom : 
 religion makes a crime of his tender- 
 ness, and frequently obliges him to 
 look upon the conjugal bonds as a state 
 of pollution and imperfection. Nature 
 tells the father to cherish his children, 
 and to make them useful members of 
 society: religion tells him to rear them 
 in the fear of God, and to make them 
 blind and superstitious, incapable of 
 serving society, but extremely well cal- 
 culated to disturb its repose. Nature 
 tells children to honour, to love, to 
 listen to their parents, to be the sup- 
 port of their old age : religion tells 
 them to prefer the oracles of their God, 
 and to trample father and mother under 
 feet,in support of the divine interests. 
 Nature says to the philosopher, occupy 
 
 * It is very easy to perceive that religious 
 worship does a real injury to political socie- 
 ties, by the loss of time, by the laziness and 
 inaction which it causes, and of which it 
 makes a duty. Indeed, religion suspends the 
 most useful labours during a considerable 
 portion of the year.
 
 MORALITY AND NATURAL MORALITY. 
 
 251 
 
 thyself with useful objects, consecrate 
 thy cares to thy country, make for it 
 advantageous discoveries, calculated to 
 perfectionate its condition : religion says 
 to him, occupy thyself with useless 
 reveries, with endless disputes, with 
 researches suitable to sow the seeds of 
 discord and carnage, and obstinately 
 maintain opinions, which thou wilt 
 never understand thyself. Nature tells 
 the perverse man to blush for his vices, 
 for his shameful propensities, for his 
 crimes ; it shows him, that his most 
 secret irregularities will necessarily 
 have an influence on his own felicity : 
 religion says to the most corrupted and 
 wicked man, " Do not irritate a God, 
 whom thou knowest not; but if, against 
 his laws, thou deliverest thyself up to 
 crime, remember that he will be easily 
 appeased ; go into his temple, humiliate 
 thyself at the feet of his ministers, ex- 
 piate thy transgressions by sacrifices, 
 by offerings, by ceremonies, and by 
 prayers : these important ceremonies 
 will pacify thy conscience, and cleanse 
 thee in the eyes of the Eternal." 
 
 The citizen, or the man in society, 
 is not less depraved by religion, which 
 is always in contradiction with sound 
 politics. Nature says to man, thou 
 art free, no power on earth can legit- 
 imately deprive thee of thy rights : 
 religion cries out to^him, that he is a 
 slave, condemned by his God to groan 
 all his life under the iron rod of his 
 representatives. Nature tells man to 
 love the country which gave him birth, 
 to serve it faithfully, to blend his in- 
 terests with it against all those who 
 shall attempt to injure it : religion or- 
 ders him to obey, without murmuring, 
 the tyrants who oppress his country, 
 to serve them against it, to merit their 
 favours, by enslaving their fellow-citi- 
 zens, under their unruly caprices. Nev- 
 ertheless, if the sovereign be not suffi- 
 ciently devoted to his priests, religion 
 quickly changes its language ; it calls 
 upon subjects to become rebels, it makes 
 it a duty in them to resist their master, 
 it cries out to them, that it is better to 
 obey God than man. Nature tells 
 princes they are men ; that it is not 
 their whim that can decide what is 
 just, and what is unjust, that the pub- 
 lic will maketh the law : religion, 
 sometimes says to them, that they are 
 Gods, to whom nothing in this world 
 
 No. IX. 36 , 
 
 ought to offer resistance ; sometimes it 
 transforms them into tyrants whom 
 enraged Heaven is desirous should be 
 immolated to its wrath. 
 
 Religion corrupts princes ; these 
 princes corrupt the law, which, like 
 themselves, becomes unjust ; all the 
 institutions are perverted ; education 
 forms only men who are base, blinded 
 with prejudices, smitten with vain ob- 
 jects, with riches, with pleasures which 
 they can obtain only by iniquitous 
 means : nature is mistaken, reason is 
 disdained, virtue is only a chimera, 
 quickly sacrificed to the slightest in- 
 terest ; and religion, far from remedy- 
 ing these evils, to which it has given 
 birth, does no more than aggravate 
 them still farther ; or else only causeg 
 steril regret, which it quickly effaces ; 
 and thus man is obliged to yield to 
 the torrent of habit, of example, of pro- 
 pensities, and of dissipation, which 
 conspire to hurry all his species to 
 commit crimes, who will not renounce 
 their own wellbeing. 
 
 Here is the mode in which religion 
 and politics unite their efforts to per- 
 vert, abuse, and poison the heart of 
 man ; all the human institutions ap- 
 pear to have only for their object to 
 render man base or wicked. Do not, 
 then, let us be at all astonished, if 
 morality is every where only a barren 
 speculation, from which every one is 
 obliged to deviate in practice, if he will 
 not risk the rendering himself unhappy. 
 Men can be moral only when renoun- 
 cing their prejudices, they consult their 
 nature ; but the continual impulses, 
 which their minds are receiving every 
 moment, on the part of more powerful 
 motives, quickly oblige them to forget 
 those rules which nature points out to 
 them. They are continually floating 
 between vice and virtue ; we see them 
 unceasingly in contradiction with them- 
 selves ; if sometimes they feel the 
 value of an honest conduct, experience 
 very soon shows them that this con- 
 duct cannot lead them to any thing 
 good, and can even become an invin- 
 cible obstacle to that happiness which 
 their heart never ceases to search after. 
 In corrupt societies it is necessary to 
 become corrupt, in order to become 
 happy. 
 
 Citizens, led astray at the same time 
 both by their spiritual and temporal
 
 282 
 
 COMPARISON BETWEEN THEOLOGICAL 
 
 guides, neither knew reason nor virtue. 
 The slaves of both Gods and men, 
 they had all the vices attached to slave- 
 ry ; kept in a perpetual state of in- 
 fancy, they had neither knowledge nor 
 principles ; those who preached up vir- 
 tue to them, knew nothing of it them- 
 selves, and could not undeceive them 
 with respect to those playthings in 
 which they had learned to make their 
 happiness consist. In vain they cried 
 out to them to stifle those passions 
 which every thing conspired to un- 
 loose : in vain they made the thunder 
 of the Gods roll to intimidate men, 
 whom tumultuous passions rendered 
 deaf. It was quickly perceived, that 
 the Gods of heaven were much less 
 feared than those of the earth ; that 
 the favours of these procured a much 
 more certain wellbeing than the pro- 
 mises of the others ; that the riches of 
 this world were preferable to the trea- 
 sures which heaven reserved for its 
 favourites ; that it was much more ad- 
 vantageous for men to conform them- 
 selves to the views of visible powers 
 than to those of powers whom they 
 never saw. 
 
 In short, society, corrupted by its 
 chiefs, and guided by their caprices, 
 could only bring forth corrupt children. 
 It gave birth only to avaricious, ambi- 
 tious, jealous, and dissolute citizens, 
 who never saw any thing happy but 
 crime, who beheld meanness rewarded, 
 incapacity honoured, fortune adored, 
 rapine favoured, and debauchery es- 
 teemed ; who every where found tal- 
 ents discouraged, virtue neglected, 
 truth proscribed, elevation of soul 
 crushed, justice trodden Under feet, 
 moderation languishing in misery, and 
 obliged to groan under the weight of 
 haughty injustice. 
 
 In the midst of this disorder, of this 
 confusion of ideas, the precepts of mo- 
 rality could only be vague declama- 
 tions, incapable of convincing any one. 
 What barrier can religion, with its 
 imaginary motive-powers, oppose to 
 the general corruption ? When it 
 spake reason, it was not heard ; its 
 Gods were not sufficiently strong to 
 resist the torrent ; its menaces could 
 not arrest those hearts which every 
 thing hurried on to evil ; its distant 
 promises could not counterbalance pre- 
 sent advantages ; its expiations, always 
 
 ready to cleanse mortals from their ini- 
 quities, emboldened them to persevere 
 in crime ; its frivolous ceremonies 
 calmed their consciences ; in short, its 
 zeal, its disputes, and its whims, only 
 multiplied and exasperated the evils 
 with which society found itself af- 
 flicted ; in the most vitiated nations, 
 there were a multitude of devotees, 
 and very few honest men. Great and 
 small listened to religion when it ap- 
 peared favourable to their passions ; 
 they listened to it no longer when it 
 counteracted them. Whenever this 
 religion was conformable to morality, 
 it appeared incommodious it was only 
 folloAved when it combated morality, 
 or totally destroyed it. The despot 
 found it marvellous when it assured 
 him he was a God upon earth ; that 
 his subjects were born to adore him 
 alone, and to administer to his phan- 
 tasms. He neglected religion when 
 it told him to be just : from hence he 
 saw that it was in contradiction with 
 itself, and that it was useless to preach 
 equity to a deified mortal. Besides, 
 he was assured that his God would 
 pardon every thing as soon as he 
 should consent to recur to his priests, 
 always ready to reconcile him. The 
 most wicked subjects reckoned, in the 
 same manner, upon their divine assist- 
 ance : thus religion, far from restrain- 
 ing them, assured them of impunity ; 
 its menaces could not destroy the ef- 
 fects which its unworthy flattery had 
 produced in princes; these same men- 
 aces could not annihilate the hopes 
 which its expiations furnished to all. 
 Sovereigns, puffed up with pride, or al- 
 ways certain of expiating their crimes, 
 no longer feared the Gods ; become 
 Gods themselves, they believed they 
 were permitted to do any thing against 
 poor pitiful mortals, whom they no 
 longer considered in any other light 
 than as playthings, destined to amuse 
 them on this earth. 
 
 If the nature of man were consult- 
 ed in politics, which supernatural ideas 
 have so shamefully depraved, it would 
 completely rectify the false notions 
 which are entertained equally by sove- 
 reigns and subjects: it would con- 
 tribute, more amply than all the reli- 
 gions in the world, to render society 
 happy, powerful, and flourishing under 
 rational authority. Nature would teach
 
 MORALITY AND NATURAL MORALITY. 
 
 them, that it is for the purpose of en- 
 joying a greater quantum of happiness 
 that mortals live together in society ; 
 that it is its own conservation, and its 
 felicity that every society should have 
 for its constant and invariable end ; 
 that without equity, a nation only re- 
 sembles a congregation of enemies ; 
 that the most cruel enemy to man is 
 he who deceives, in order to enslave 
 him; that the scourge most to be 
 feared by him is those priests who 
 corrupt his chiefs, and who assure 
 them of impunity for their crimes, in 
 the name of the Gods. It would prove 
 to them, that association is a misfor- 
 tune under unjust, and negligent, and 
 destructive governments. 
 
 This nature, interrogated by princes, 
 would teach them, that they are men, 
 and not Gods ; that their power is 
 only derived from the consent of other 
 men ; that they are citizens, charged 
 by other citizens with the care of 
 watching over the safety of the whole ; 
 that the law ought to be only the ex- 
 pression of the public will, and that it 
 is never permitted them to counteract 
 nature, or to thwart the invariable end 
 of society. This nature would make 
 these monarchs feel that, in order to be 
 truly great and powerful, they ought 
 to command elevated and virtuous 
 minds, and not minds equally degraded 
 by despotism and superstition. This 
 nature would teach sovereigns that, in 
 order to be cherished by their subjects, 
 they ought to afford them succours, 
 and cause them to enjoy those benefits 
 which the wants of their nature de- 
 mand; that they ought to maintain 
 them inviolably in the possession of 
 their rights, of which they are the de- 
 fenders and the guardians. This na- 
 ture would prove to all those princes 
 who should deign to consult her, that 
 it is only by good works and kindness 
 that they can merit the love and attach- 
 ment of the people ; that oppression 
 only raises up enemies against them ; 
 that violence procures them only an 
 unsteady power ; that force cannot con- 
 fer any legitimate right on them ; and 
 that beings essentially in love with 
 happiness, must sooner or later finish ; 
 by revolting against an authority that j 
 only makes itself felt by violence. 
 This, then, is the manner- in which na- I 
 ture the sovereign of all beings, and j 
 
 283 
 
 to whom all are equal, would speak to 
 one of those superb monarchs whom 
 flattery has deified : " Untoward, head- 
 strong child ! Pigmy, so proud of 
 commanding pigmies ! Have they, 
 then, assured thee that thou wert a 
 God ? Have they told thee that thou 
 wert something supernatural? But 
 know, that there is nothing superior to 
 me. Contemplate thine own insignifi- 
 cance, acknowledge thine impotence 
 against the slightest of my blows. I 
 can break thy sceptre, I can take away 
 thy life, I can reduce thy throne to 
 powder, I can dissolve thy people, I 
 can even destroy the earth, which thou 
 inhabitest : and thou believest thyself 
 a God ! Be, then, again thyself; hon- 
 estly avow that thou art a man, 
 made to submit to my laws, like the 
 least of thy subjects. Learn, then, 
 and never let it escape thy memory, 
 that thou art the man of thy people ; 
 the minister of thy nation ; the inter- 
 preter and the executor of its will ; the 
 fellow-citizen of those whom thou hast 
 the right of commanding only because 
 they consent to obey thee, in view of 
 the wellbeing which thou promisest 
 to procure for them. Reign, then, on 
 these conditions ; fulfil thy sacred en- 
 gagements. Be benevolent, and above 
 all, equitable. If thou art willing to 
 have thy power assured to thee, never 
 abuse it ; let it be circumscribed by 
 the immoveable limits of eternal jus- 
 tice. Be the father of thy people, and 
 they will cherish thee as thy children. 
 But if thou neglectest them ; if thou 
 separates! thine interests from those of 
 thy great family ; if thou refusest to 
 thy subjects the happiness which thou 
 owest them; if thou armest thyself 
 against them, thou shalt be like all 
 tyrants, the slave of gloomy care, of 
 alarm, and of cruel suspicion. Thou 
 wilt become the victim of thine own 
 folly. Thy people, in despair, will no 
 longer acknowledge thy divine rights. 
 In vain, then, thou wouldst sue for 
 aid to that religion which has deified 
 thee ; it can avail nothing with those 
 people whom misery has rendered deaf; 
 Heaven will abandon thee to the fury 
 of those enemies which thy phrensy 
 shall have made thee. The Gods can 
 effect nothing against my irrevocable de- 
 crees, which will, that man shall be irri- 
 tated against the cause of his sorrows."
 
 294 
 
 COMPARISON BETWEEN THEOLOGICAL 
 
 In short, every thing would make 
 known to rational princes, that they 
 have no occasion for Heaven to be 
 faithfully obeyed on earth ; that all the 
 powers of Heaven will not sustain 
 them when they shall act the tyrant, 
 that their true friends are those who 
 undeceive the people of their delusion ; 
 that their real enemies are those who 
 intoxicate them with flattery, who hard- 
 en them in crime, who make the road 
 to heaven too easy for them ; who feed 
 them with chimeras, calculated to draw 
 them aside from those cares and those 
 sentiments which they owe to their 
 nations.* 
 
 It is, then, I repeat it, only by recon- 
 ducting men to nature that we can 
 procure them evident notions, and cer- 
 tain knowledge ; it is only by show- 
 ing them their true relations with each 
 other that we can place them on the 
 road to happiness. The human mind, 
 blinded by theology, has scarcely ad- 
 vanced a single step. Man's religious 
 systems have rendered him dubious of 
 the most demonstrable truths. Super- 
 stition influenced every thing, and 
 served to corrupt all. Philosophy, guid- 
 ed by it, was no longer any thing more 
 than imaginary science : it quitted the 
 real world to plunge into the ideal 
 world of metaphysics ; it neglected na- 
 ture to occupy itself with Gods, with 
 spirits, and with invisible powers, which 
 only served to render all questions more 
 obscure and more complicated. In all 
 difficulties, they brought in the Divin- 
 ity, and from thence things only be- 
 came more and more perplexed, until 
 nothing could be explained. Theolo- 
 gical notions appear to have been in- 
 vented only to put man's reasons to 
 flight, to confound his judgment, to 
 deceive his mind, to overturn his clear- 
 est ideas of every science. In the 
 hands of the theologians, logic, or the 
 art of reasoning, was nothing more 
 than an unintelligible jargon, calcu- 
 lated to support sophism and falsehood, 
 and to prove the most palpable contra- 
 dictions. Morality became, as we have 
 seen, uncertain and wavering, because 
 it was founded on an ideal being, who 
 was never in accord with himself; 
 
 * Ad generum cercris, sine ccede et vulnere 
 
 pauci. 
 
 Descendant rcges et sicca morte tyranni. 
 Juvenal, sat. xv. 110. 
 
 his goodness, his justice, his moral 
 qualities, and his useful precepts, were 
 continually contradicted by an iniqui- 
 tous conduct, and the most barbarous 
 commands. Politics, as we have said, 
 were perverted by the false ideas which 
 were given to sovereigns of their rights. 
 Jurisprudence and the laws were sub- 
 jected to the caprice of religion, who 
 put shackles on the labour, the com- 
 merce, the industry, and the activity of 
 nations. Every thing was sacrih'ced 
 to the interests of the theologians ; for 
 every science, they only taught ob- 
 scure and quarrelsome metaphysics, 
 which, hundreds of times, caused the 
 blood of those people to flow who 
 were incapable of understanding it. 
 
 Born an enemy to experience, the- 
 ology, that supernatural science, was 
 an invincible obstacle to the progress 
 of the natural sciences, as it almost 
 always threw itself in their way. It 
 was not permitted for natural philoso- 
 phy, for natural history, or for anato- 
 my, to see .any thing but through the 
 medium of the jaundiced eye of su- 
 perstition. The most evident facts 
 were rejected with disdain, and pro- 
 scribed with horrour, whenever they 
 could not be made to square with the 
 hypotheses of religion.f In short, the- 
 ology unceasingly opposed itself to the 
 happiness of nations, to the progress 
 of the human mind, to useful research- 
 es, and to the liberty of thought : it 
 kept man in ignorance, all his steps 
 guided by it were no more than errours. 
 Is it resolving a question in natural 
 philosophy, to say that an effect which 
 surprises us, that an unusual phenom- 
 enon, that a volcano, a deluge, a com- 
 et, &c., are signs of divine wrath, or 
 works contrary to the laws of nature ? 
 In persuading nations, as it has done, 
 that the calamities, whether physical 
 
 t Virgil, the bishop of Saltzburg, was con- 
 demned by the church, for having dared to 
 maintain the existence of the antipodes. All 
 the world are acquainted with the persecu- 
 tions which Galileo suffered for pretending 
 that the sun did not make its revolution round 
 the earth. Descartes was put to death in a 
 foreign land. Priests have a right to be ene- 
 mies to the sciences ; the progress of reason 
 will annihilate, sooner or later, superstitious 
 ideas. Nothing that is founded on nature 
 and on truth can ever be lost; the works of 
 imagination and of imposture must be over- 
 turned first or last.
 
 MORALITY, AND NATURAL MORALITY. 
 
 285 
 
 or moral, which they experience, are 
 the effects of the will of God, or chas- 
 tisements, which his power inflicts on 
 them, is it not preventing them from 
 seeking after remedies for these evils ?* 
 Would it' not have been more useful 
 to have studied the nature of things, 
 and to seek in nature herself, in human 
 industry, for succours against those 
 sorrows with which mortals are afflict- 
 ed, than to attribute the evil which 
 man experiences to an unknown power, 
 
 * In the year 1725, the city of Paris was 
 afflicted with a scarcity, which it was thought 
 would cause an insurrection of the people ; 
 they brought down the shrine of St. Gene- 
 vieve, the patroness or tutelary goddess of 
 the Parisians, and it was carried in procession 
 to cause this calamity to cease, which was 
 brought on by monopolies in which the mis- 
 tress of the then prime minister was inter- 
 ested. 
 
 In the year 1795, England was afflicted 
 with a scarcity, brought on by an ill judged 
 war against the French people, for having 
 thrown off the tyranny of their monarchy, 
 in which contest immense quantities of grain 
 and other provisions were destroyed, to pre- 
 vent them falling into the hands of the French 
 republicans, and also by the dismemberment 
 of Poland (the granary of Europe) by the 
 king of Prussia and the emperess of Russia, 
 whose troops laid waste every thing they came 
 near, because a general named Kosciusko, 
 of the most exemplary courage, had, with a 
 chosen body of brave Poles, endeavoured, 
 though vainly, to prevent the cruel injustice, 
 by opposing force to force. This alarming 
 scarcity induced a meeting, at the London 
 Tavern, in London, to consider of the means 
 to alleviate the distresses of the English peo- 
 ple, which proved as fruitless as the opposi- 
 tion of the Poles to these crowned robbers. 
 At this meeting, a Doctor Vincent, a Chris- 
 tian priest, and the then master of Westmin- 
 ster school, made a grave and solemn speech, 
 in which he attributed the whole calamity to 
 the chastisement of God for the sins of the 
 people. 
 
 The name of this God is always made use 
 of by wicked and abandoned men to cover 
 their own iniquities, and screen themselves 
 from the resentment of the people ; the priests, 
 those pests to society, who are immediately 
 interested in their peculations and oppressions, 
 always maintain the doctrine of these de- 
 signing knaves, and the ignorance of the citi- 
 zens suffers these fables to pass for incontest- 
 able truths: it is thus that kingcraft and 
 priestcraft, in uniting their forces, always 
 keep men in a state of degrading slavery, 
 never suffering the bandeau of delusion to be 
 removed from before their eyes, by decreeing, 
 in the name of God, the most cruel punish- 
 ments against those who attempt to throw 
 the light of day on the secret caverns of im- 
 position and despotism. 
 
 against whose will it cannot be sup- 
 posed there is any relief? The study 
 of nature, the search after truth, ele- 
 vates the mind, expands the genius, 
 and is calculated to render man active 
 and courageous ; theological notions 
 appear to have been made to debase 
 him, to contract his mind, to plunge 
 him into despondency.* In the place 
 of attributing to the divine vengeance 
 those wars, those famines, those ster- 
 ilities, those contagions, and that mul- 
 titude of calamities which desolate the 
 people, would it not have been more 
 useful, and more consistent with truth, 
 to have shown that these evils were to 
 be ascribed to their own folly, or rather 
 to the passions, to the want of energy, 
 and to the tyranny of their princes, 
 who sacrifice nations to their frightful 
 delirium'? These irrational people, 
 instead of amusing themselves with 
 expiations for their pretended crimes, 
 and seeking to render themselves ac- 
 ceptable to imaginary powers, should 
 they not have sought in a more rational 
 administration the true means of avoid- 
 ing those scourges to which they were 
 the victims ? Natural evils demand 
 natural remedies : ought not experience 
 long since to have convinced mortals 
 of the inefficacy of supernatural reme- 
 dies, of expiations, of prayers, of sac- 
 rifices, of fasting, of processions, &c., 
 which all the people of the earth have 
 vainly opposed to the disasters which 
 they experienced 1 
 
 Let us then conclude, that theology 
 and its notions, far from being useful 
 to the human species, are the true 
 sources of all those sorrows which af- 
 flict the earth, of all those errours by 
 which men are blinded, of those pre- 
 judices which benumb them, of that 
 ignorance which renders them credu- 
 lous, of those vices which torment them, 
 of those governments which oppress 
 them. Let us then conclude, that those 
 divine and supernatural ideas with 
 which we are inspired from our infan- 
 cy, are the true causes of our habitual 
 folly, of our religious quarrels, of our 
 sacred dissensions, of our inhuman per- 
 secutions. Let us at length acknow- 
 ledge, that they are the fatal ideas 
 which have obscured morality, corrupt- 
 
 * Non enim aliunde venit animo robur, quam 
 a bonis artibus, quam a contemplatione naturae. 
 Senec. quasi. Nalur. lib, vi. chap, xxxii.
 
 MEN'S IDEAS OF THE DIVINITY, &c. 
 
 ed politics, retarded the progress of the 
 sciences, and even annihilated happi- 
 ness and peace in the heart of man. 
 Let it then be no longer dissimulated, 
 that all those calamities, for which 
 man turns his eyes towards heaven, 
 bathed in tears, are to be ascribed to 
 those vain phantoms which his imagi- 
 nation has placed there ; let him cease 
 to implore them ; let him seek in na- 
 ture, and in his own energy, those.re- 
 sources which the Gods, who are deaf 
 to his cries, Avill never procure for him. 
 Let him consult the desires of his heart, 
 and he will find that which he owes to 
 himself, and that which he owes to 
 others ; let him examine the essence 
 and the aim of society, and he will no 
 longer be a slave ; let him consult ex- 
 perience, he will find truth, and he will 
 acknowledge that errour can never pos- 
 sibly render him happy.* 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Men can form no Conclusion from the Ideas 
 which are given them of the Divinity : of the 
 want of Just Interference, in, and of the In- 
 utility of , their Conduct on his Account, 
 
 IF, as we have proved, the false ideas 
 which men have in all times formed to 
 themselves of the Divinity, far from 
 being of utility, are prejudicial to mo- 
 rality, to politics, to the happiness of 
 society, and the members who com- 
 pose it ; in short, to the progress of the 
 human understanding ; reason and our 
 interest ought to make us feel the ne- 
 cessity of banishing from our mind 
 these vain and futile opinions, which 
 will never do more than confound it, 
 and disturb the tranquillity of our 
 hearts. In vain should we flatter our- 
 selves with arriving at the rectification 
 
 * The author of the book of wisdom, has 
 said, and with reason, infandorum enim ido- 
 lorum cultura, omnis mali est causa et initium 
 ct finis. SEE CHAP. xxiv. VER. 27. He did 
 not see that his God was an idol more preju- 
 dicial than all the others. At all events, it 
 appears that the dangers of superstition have 
 been felt by all those who have sincerely taken 
 to heart the interest of the human species. 
 This, without doubt, is the reason why phi- 
 losophy, which is the fruit of reflection, was 
 almost always at open war with religion, 
 which, as we have shown, is itself the fruit of 
 ignorance, of imposture, of enthusiasm, and 
 of imagination. 
 
 of theological notions ; false in their 
 principles, they are not susceptible of 
 reform. Under whatever shape an 
 errour presents itself, as soon as men 
 shall attach a great importance to it, 
 it will end, sooner or later, by produ- 
 cing consequences as extensive as dan- 
 gerous. Besides, the inutility of the 
 researches which in all ages have been 
 made after the Divinity, of whom the 
 notions have never had any other effect 
 than to obscure him more and more, even 
 for those themselves who have most 
 meditated upon him ; this inutility, I say, 
 ought it not to convince us, that these 
 notions are not within the reach of our 
 capacity, and that this imaginary being 
 will not be better known Sy us, or by 
 our descendants, than it has been by 
 our ancestors, either the most savage 
 or the most ignorant ? The object 
 which men in all ages have the most 
 considered, reasoned upon the most, 
 and written upon the most, remains, 
 nevertheless, the least known ; nay, 
 time has only rendered it more impos- 
 sible to be conceived. If God be such 
 as modern theology depicts him, he 
 he must be himself a God who is ca- 
 pable of forming an idea of him.* We 
 know little of man, we hardly know 
 ourselves and our own faculties, and 
 we are disposed to reason upon a being 
 inaccessible to all our senses ! Let us, 
 then, travel in peace over the line de- 
 scribed for us by nature, without di- 
 verging from it, to run after chimeras ; 
 let us occupy ourselves with our true 
 happiness ; let us profit by the benefits 
 which are spread before us ; let us la- 
 bour to multiply them, by diminishing 
 the number of our errours ; let us sub- 
 mit to those evils which we cannot 
 avoid ; and do not let us augment them 
 by filling our mind with prejudices cal- 
 culated to lead it astray. When we 
 shall reflect on it, every thing will 
 clearly prove that the pretended science 
 of God, is, in truth, nothing but a pre- 
 sumptuous ignorance, masked under 
 pompous and unintelligible words. In 
 short, let us terminate unfruitful re- 
 searches ; let us, at least, acknowledge 
 
 * A modern poet has composed a piece of 
 poetry, that received the sanction of the 
 French academy, upon the attributes of God, 
 in which the following line was particularly 
 applauded : 
 " To say what he is, 'ticere need to behimself"
 
 MEN'S IDEAS OF THE DIVINITY, &c. 
 
 287 
 
 our invincible ignorance ; it will be 
 more advantageous to us than an ar- 
 rogant science, which hitherto has done 
 nothing more than sow discord on the 
 earth and affliction in our hearts. 
 
 In supposing a sovereign intelligence, 
 who governs the world ; in supposing 
 a God, who exacts from his creatures 
 that they should know him, that they 
 should be convinced of his existence, of 
 liis wisdom, of his power, and who is 
 desirous they should render him hom- 
 age, it must be allowed, that no man 
 on earth completely fulfils in this re- 
 spect the views of Providence. Indeed, 
 nothing is more demonstrable than the 
 impossibility in which the theologians 
 find themselves to form to their mind 
 any idea whatever of their Divinity.* 
 The weakness and the obscurity of the 
 proofs which they give of his existence ; 
 the contradictions into which they fall ; 
 the sophisms and the begging of the 
 question which they employ, evidently 
 prove that they are very frequently in 
 the greatest incertitude upon the nature 
 of the being with whom it is their pro- 
 fession to occupy themselves. But, 
 granting that they have a knowledge 
 of him, that his existence, his essence, 
 and his attributes were so fully demon- 
 strated to them as not to leave one 
 doubt in their mind, do the rest of hu- 
 man beings enjoy the same advantage? 
 Ingenuously, how many persons will 
 be found in the world who have the 
 leisure, the capacity, and the penetra- 
 tion necessary to understand what is 
 meant to be designated under the name 
 of an immaterial being, of a pure spi- 
 rit, who moves matter, without being 
 matter himself; who is the motive- 
 power of nature, without being con- 
 tained in nature, and without being 
 able to touch it ? Are there, in the most 
 religious societies, many persons who 
 are in a state to follow their spiritual 
 guides in those subtile proofs which 
 they give them of the existence of the 
 God which they make them adore? 
 
 * Procopius, the first bishop of the Goths, 
 says, in a very solemn manner : " I esteem it 
 a very foolish temerity to be disposed to pene- 
 trate into the knowledge of the nature of God." 
 And farther on he acknowledges, that he " has 
 nothing more to say of him, except that he 
 is perfectly good. He who knoweth more, 
 whether he be ecclesiastic or layman, lias only 
 to tell it." 
 
 Very few men, without doubt, are 
 capable of a profound and connected 
 meditation ; the exercise of thought is, 
 for the greater part, a labour as painful 
 as it is unusual. The people, obliged to 
 toil hard in order to subsist, are com- 
 monly incapable of reflection. Nobles, 
 men of the world, women, and young 
 people, occupied with their own affairs, 
 with, the care of gratifying their pas- 
 sions, of procuring themselves pleasure, 
 think as rarely as the uninformed. 
 There are not, perhaps, two men in a 
 hundred thousand, who have seriously 
 asked themselves the question, what it 
 is they understand by the word God ? 
 whilst it is extremely rare to find per- 
 sons to whom the existence of God is 
 a problem: nevertheless, as we have 
 said, conviction supposes that evidence 
 which can alone procure certitude to 
 the mind. Where, then, are the men 
 who are convinced of the existence of 
 their God ? Who are those in whom 
 we shall find the complete certitude of 
 this pretended truth, so important to 
 all? Who are the persons who have 
 given themselves an accurate account 
 of the ideas which they have formed 
 to themselves upon the Divinity, upon 
 his attributes, and upon his essence ? 
 Alas! I see in the whole world only 
 some speculators, who, by dint of oc- 
 cupying themselves with him, have 
 foolishly believed they have discovered 
 something in the confused and uncon- 
 nected wanderings of their imagina- 
 tion ; they have endeavoured to form 
 a whole, which, chimerical as it is, 
 they have accustomed themselves to 
 consider as really existing : by dint of 
 musing upon it, they have sometimes 
 persuaded themselves they saw it dis- 
 tinctly, and they have succeeded in 
 making others believe it, who have 
 not mused upon it quite s.o much as 
 themselves. 
 
 It is only upon hearsay that the mass 
 of the people adore the God of their 
 fathers and their priests : authority, 
 confidence, submission, and habit, take 
 place of conviction and proofs ; they 
 prostrate themselves, and pray, be- 
 cause their fathers have taught them 
 to fall down and worship ; but where- 
 fore have these fallen upon their knees? 
 It is because, in times far-distant, their 
 legislators and their guides have irn- 
 posed it on them as a duty. " Adore
 
 288 
 
 MEN'S IDEAS OF THE DIVINITY, &c. 
 
 and believe," have they been told, 
 " those Gods, Avhom ye cannot com- 
 prehend ; yield yourselves in this re- 
 spect to our profound wisdom ; we 
 know more than you about the Di- 
 vinity." But wherefore should I take 
 this matter on your authority ? It is 
 because God wills it thus ; it is be- 
 cause God will punish you, if you dare 
 resist. But is not this God the thing 
 in question 1 And yet, men have al- 
 ways satisfied themselves with this 
 circle of errours ; the idleness of their 
 mind made them find it more easy to 
 yield themselves to the judgment of 
 others. All religious notions are uni- 
 formly founded on authority ; all the 
 religions of the world forbid examina- 
 tion, and are not disposed that men 
 should reason upon them ; it is author- 
 ity that wills they should believe in 
 God ; this God is himself founded 
 solely upon the authority of some men, 
 who pretend to have a knowledge of 
 him, and to be sent to announce him 
 to the earth. A God made by men, 
 has, without doubt, occasion for men 
 to make him known to men.* 
 
 Is it not, then, for the priests, the 
 
 * Men are always as credulous as children 
 upon those objects which relate to religion ; 
 as they comprehend nothing about it, and are 
 nevertheless told that they must believe it, 
 they imagine they run no risk in joining senti- 
 ments with their priests, whom they suppose 
 to have been able to discover that which they 
 do not themselves understand. The most 
 rational people say to themselves, What sliall I 
 do ? what interest can so many people have to 
 deceive ? I say to them, they do deceive you, 
 either because they are themselves deceived, 
 or because they have a great interest in de- 
 ceiving you. 
 
 By the confession of the theologians them- 
 selves, men are without religion : they have 
 only superstition. Superstition, according to 
 them, is a worship of the Divinity, badly un- 
 derstood and irrational, or else, a worship 
 rendered to a false Divinity. But where are 
 the people or the clergy, who will allow that 
 their Divinity is false, and their worship irra- 
 tional 7 How shall it be decided, who is right 
 or who is wrong? It is evident, that in mis 
 affair, all men are equally wrong. Indeed, 
 Buddaeus, in his Treatise on Atheism, tells us : 
 " In order that a religion may be true, not only 
 the object of the worship must be true, but we 
 must also have a just idea of it. He, then, 
 who adores God, without knowing him, adores 
 him in a perverse and corrupt manner, and is 
 guilty of superstition." This granted, could 
 it not be demanded of all the theologians in 
 the world, if they can boast of having a just 
 idea, or a rcal'knowledge of the Divinity ? 
 
 inspired, and the metaphysicians, that 
 the conviction of the existence of a 
 God would be reserved, which is never- 
 theless said to be so necessary for the 
 Avhole human species ? But shall we 
 find any harmony among the theologi- 
 cal notions of the different inspired 
 men, or those thinkers who are scat- 
 tered over the earth ? Those them- 
 selves, who make a profession of ador- 
 ing the same God, are they in accord 
 with respect to him 1 Are they con- 
 tented with the proofs which their col- 
 leagues bring of his existence ? Do 
 they unanimously subscribe to the ideas 
 which they present upon his nature, 
 upon his conduct, upon the manner of 
 understanding his various oracles ? Is 
 there one country on earth where the. 
 science of God is really perfectionated ? 
 Has this science obtained any degree of 
 that consistency and uniformity which 
 we see attached to human knowledge, 
 in the most futile arts, or in those 
 trades which are most despised ? The 
 words spirit, immateriality, creation, 
 predestination, grace ; this multitude 
 of subtile distinctions with which the- 
 ology is throughout filled in some coun- 
 tries ; these inventions, so ingeniously 
 imagined by those thinkers who have 
 succeeded each other during so many 
 ages, have done no more, alas ! than 
 perplex things ; and hitherto the sci- 
 ence the most necessary to man, has 
 never been able to acquire the least 
 degree of stability. For thousands of 
 years past, these idle dreamers have 
 been relieving each other to meditate 
 on the Divinity, to divine his conceal- 
 ed ways, to invent hypotheses suita- 
 ble to develop this important enigma. 
 Their slender success has not at all 
 discouraged theological vanity ; they 
 have always spoken of God ; they 
 have disputed ; they have cut each 
 others' throats for him ; and this sub- 
 lime being nevertheless remains the 
 most unknown and the most exam- 
 ined.* 
 
 * If things were coolly examined, it would 
 be acknowledged that religion is by no means 
 formed for the greater part of mankind, who 
 are utterly incapable of comprehending any 
 of those aerial subtilties upon which it rests. 
 Who is the man that understands any thing 
 of the fundamental principles of his religion ; 
 of the spirituality of God ; of the {materiality 
 of the soul ; of the mysteries of which he is 
 told every day 7 Are there many people who
 
 MEN'S IDEAS OP THE DIVINITY, &c. 
 
 299 
 
 Men would have been too happy, if, 
 confining themselves to those visible 
 objects which interest them, they had 
 employed, in perfectionating the real 
 sciences, the laws, the morals, and their 
 education, half those efforts which they 
 have wasted in their researches after 
 the Divinity. They had been also 
 much wiser, and more fortunate, if they 
 had agreed to let their idle and un- 
 employed guides quarrel between them- 
 selves, and fathom those depths calcu- 
 lated to stun and amaze them without 
 intermeddling with their irrational dis- 
 putes. But at is the essence of igno- 
 rance to attach importance to every 
 thing it does not understand. Human 
 vanity makes the mind bear up against 
 difficulties. The more an object eludes 
 our inquiry, the more efforts we make 
 to compass it, because, from thence, 
 our pride is spurred on, our curiosity 
 is irritated, and it appears interesting 
 to us. On the other hand, the longer 
 and more laborious our researches have 
 been, the more importance we attach 
 to our real or pretended discoveries, 
 the more we are desirous not to have 
 lost our time; besides, we are always 
 ready to defend warmly the soundness 
 of our judgment. Do not let us, then, 
 be surprised at the interest which ig- 
 norant people have at all times taken 
 in the discoveries of their priests ; nor 
 at the obstinacy which these have al- 
 ways manifested in their disputes. In- 
 deed, in combating for his God, each 
 fought only for the interests of his own 
 vanity, which, of all human passions, 
 is the most quickly alarmed, and the 
 most suitable to produce very great 
 follies. 
 
 If, throwing aside for a moment the 
 fatal ideas which theology gives us oi 
 a capricious God, whose partial and 
 despotic decrees decide the condition 
 of human beings, we would only fix 
 our eyes upon his pretended goodness, 
 which all men, even when trembling 
 before this God, agree to give him : if 
 we suppose him to have in view what 
 
 can boast of perfectly understanding the state 
 of the question in those theological specula- 
 tions, which have frequently the power of 
 disturbing the repose of mankind ? Never- 
 theless, even women believe themselves ob- 
 liged, to take a part in the quarrels excited by 
 idle speculators, who are of less utility to so- 
 ciety than the meanest artisan. 
 No. X. 37 
 
 they have ascribed to him ; to hare 
 laboured only to his own glory ; to 
 exact the homage of intelligent beings; 
 to seek in all his works only the well- 
 being of the human species : how can 
 we reconcile all this with the igno- 
 rance, truly invincible, in which this 
 God, so glorious and so good, leaves 
 the greater part of mankind with re- 
 spect to him 1 If God is desirous to be 
 known, cherished, and thanked, where- 
 fore does he not show himself, under 
 favourable traits, to all those intelligent 
 beings, by whom he would be loved 
 and adored ? Wherefore does he not 
 manifest himself to all the earth in an 
 unequivocal manner, much more likely 
 to convince us than those particular 
 revelations which appear to accuse the 
 Divinity of a fatal partiality for some 
 of his creatures ? Has the omnipotent 
 no better means of showing himself to 
 men than those ridiculous metamor- 
 phoses, those pretended incarnations, 
 which are attested by writers so little 
 in harmony with each other ? Instead 
 of such a number of miracles, invented 
 to prove the divine mission of so many 
 legislators held in reverence bv the 
 different people of the world, could not 
 the sovereign of minds have convinced 
 at once the human mind of those things 
 with which he was desirous it should 
 be acquainted ? In the room of sus- 
 pending a sun in the vaulted firmament; 
 in lieu of diffusing without order the 
 stars and constellations, which fill up 
 the regions of space, would it not have 
 been more conformable to the views of 
 a God so jealous of his glory, and so 
 well-intentioned towards man, to have 
 written, in a manner not liable to dis- 
 pute, his name, his attributes, his ever- 
 lasting will, in indelible characters, 
 and equally legible to all the inhabit- 
 ants of the earth?* No one, then, 
 could have doubted the existence of a 
 God, of his manifest will, of his visible 
 intentions ; no mortal would have dared 
 
 * I foresee that the theologians will oppose 
 to this passage, their cceli enarrant gloriam 
 Dei. But we shall reply to them, that the 
 heavens prove nothing, except the power of 
 nature, the immutability of its laws, the power 
 of attraction, of repulsion, of gravitation, the 
 energy of matter ; and that the heavens in no 
 way announce the existence of an immaterial 
 cause, of a God who is in contradiction with 
 himself, and who can never do that which he, 
 wishes to do.
 
 290 
 
 MEN'S IDEAS OF THE DIVINITY, &c. 
 
 to place himself in a situation to attract 
 his wrath ; in short, no man would have 
 had the audacity to have imposed on 
 men in his name, or to have interpreted 
 his Avill, according to his own whim 
 and caprice. 
 
 Theology is truly the vessel of the 
 Danaides. By dint of contradictory 
 qualities and bold assertions, it has so 
 shackled its God, as to make it impos- 
 sible for him to act. Indeed, when 
 even we should suppose the existence 
 of the theological God, and the reality 
 of those attributes, so discordant, which 
 are given him, we can conclude nothing 
 from them to authorize the conduct or 
 sanction the worship which they pre- 
 scribed. If God be infinitely good, 
 what reason have we to fear him ? If 
 .he be infinitely wise, wherefore disturb 
 ourselves with our condition ? If he 
 be omniscient, wherefore inform him of 
 our wants, and fatigue him with our 
 prayers ? If he be omnipresent, where- 
 fore erect temples to him ? If he be 
 Lord of all, wherefore make sacrifices 
 and offerings to him 1 If he be just, 
 wherefore believe that he punishes 
 those creatures whom he has filled 
 with imbecility ? If his grace works 
 every thing in man, what reason has 
 he to reward him ? If he be omnipo- 
 tent, how can he be offended ; and how 
 can we resist him 1 If he be rational, 
 how can he be enraged against those 
 blind mortals to whom he has left the 
 liberty of acting irrationally ? If he be 
 immutable, by what right shall we pre- 
 tend to make him change his decrees ? 
 If he be inconceivable, wherefore should 
 we occupy ourselves with him ? If he 
 has spoken, wherefore is the universe 
 not convinced ? If the knowledge of 
 a God be the most necessary thing, 
 wherefore is it not more evident and 
 more manifest 1 
 
 But, on the other hand, the theologi- 
 cal God has two faces. Nevertheless, 
 if he be wrathful, jealous, vindictive, 
 and wicked, as theology supposes him 
 to bf , without being disposed to allow 
 it, we shall no longer be justified in 
 addressing our prayers to him, nor in 
 sorrowfully occupying ourselves with 
 his idea. On the contrary, for our 
 present happiness, and for our quiet, 
 we ought to make a point of banishing 
 him from our thought ; we ought to 
 place him in the rank of those neces- 
 
 sary evils, which are only aggravated 
 by a consideration of them. Indeed, 
 if God be a tyrant, how is it possible 
 to love him? Are not affection and 
 tenderness sentiments incompatible 
 with habitual fear 1 How could we 
 experience love for a master who gives 
 to his slaves the liberty of offending 
 him, to the end that he may take them 
 on their weak side, and punish them 
 with the utmost barbarity ? If to this 
 odious character, God has joined om- 
 nipotence ; if he hold in his hands the 
 unhappy playthings of this fantastic 
 cruelty, what can we conclude from 
 it? Nothing; save that, whatever ef- 
 forts we may make to escape our des- 
 tiny, we shall always be incapacitated 
 to withdraw ourselves from it. If a 
 God, cruel or wicked by his nature, be 
 armed with infinite power, and take 
 pleasure in rendering us eternally mis- 
 erable, nothing will divert him from 
 it ; his wickedness will always pursue 
 its course ; his malice would, without 
 doubt, prevent him from paying any 
 attention to our cries ; nothing would 
 be able to soften his obdurate heart. 
 
 Thus, under whatever point of view 
 we contemplate the theological God, 
 we have no worship to render him, no 
 prayers to offer up to him. If he be 
 perfectly good, intelligent, equitable, 
 and wise, what have we to ask of him ? 
 If he be supremely wicked, if he be 
 gratuitously cruel, as all men believe, 
 without daring to avow it, our evils 
 are without remedy ; such a God would 
 deride our prayers, and, sooner or la- 
 ter, we should be obliged to submit to 
 the rigour of the lot which he has des- 
 tined for us. 
 
 This granted, he who can undeceive 
 himself with regard to the afflicting 
 notions of the Divinity, has this ad- 
 vantage over the credulous and trem- 
 bling superstitious mortal, that he es- 
 tablishes in his heart a momentary 
 tranquillity, which, at least, renders 
 him happy in this life. If the study 
 of nature has banished from him those 
 chimeras with which the superstitious 
 man is infested, he enjoys a security 
 of which this one is himself deprived. 
 In consulting nature, his fears are dis- 
 sipated ; his opinions, true or false, be- 
 come steady ; and a calm succeeds the 
 storm which panic terrours and waver- 
 ing notions excite in the hearts of all
 
 MEN'S IDEAS OF THE DIVINITY, &c. 
 
 291 
 
 men who occupy themselves with the 
 Divinity. If the human soul, cheered 
 by philosophy, had the boldness to con- 
 sider things coolly, it would no longer 
 behold the universe governed by an 
 implacable tyrant, always ready to 
 strike. If he were rational, he would 
 see that, in committing evil, he did not 
 disturb nature ; that he did not outrage 
 his author ; he injures himself alone, 
 or he injures other beings, capable of 
 feeling the effects of his conduct ; from 
 thence, he knows the line of his duties ; 
 he prefers virtue to vice, and for his 
 own permanent repose, satisfaction, 
 and felicity in this world, he feels him- 
 self interested in the practice of vir- 
 tue, in rendering it habitual to his 
 heart, in avoiding vice, in detesting 
 crime, during the whole time of his 
 abode amongst intelligent and sensible 
 beings, from whom he expects his hap- 
 piness. By attaching himself to these 
 rules, he will live contented with him- 
 self, and be cherished by those who 
 shall be capable of experiencing the 
 influence of his actions ; he will ex- 
 pect, without inquietude, the term when 
 his existence shall have a period ; he 
 will have no reason to dread the exist- 
 ence which shall follow the one he at 
 present enjoys ; he will not fear to be 
 deceived in his reasonings ; guided by 
 demonstration and honesty, he will 
 perceive, that, if contrary to his expec- 
 tation, there did exist a good God, he 
 would not punish him for his involun- 
 tary errours, depending upon the organ- 
 ization he should have received. 
 
 Indeed, if there did exist a God ; if 
 God were a being full of reason, equity, 
 and goodness, and not a ferocious, irra- 
 tional, and malicious genius, such as 
 religion is pleased so frequently to de- 
 pict him ; what could a virtuous athe- 
 ist have to apprehend, who, believing 
 at the moment of his death he falls 
 asleep for ever, should find himself in 
 the presence of a God whom he should 
 have mistaken and neglected during 
 his life 1 
 
 " O, God !" would he say, " father, 
 who hast rendered thyself invisible to 
 thy child ! inconceivable and hidden 
 author, whom I could not discover ! 
 pardon me, if my limited understand- 
 ing has not been able to know thee in 
 a nature where every thing has ap- 
 peared to me to be necessary ! Excuse 
 
 me, if my sensible heart has not dis- 
 cerned thine august traits under those 
 of the austere tyrant whom supersti- 
 tious mortals tremblingly adore. I could 
 only see a phantom in that assemblage 
 of irreconcilable qualities, with which 
 the imagination has clothed thee. How 
 should my coarse eyes perceive thee 
 in a nature in which all my senses have 
 never been able to know but material 
 beings and perishable forms ? Could 
 I, by the aid of these senses, discover 
 thy spiritual essence, of which i they 
 could not furnish any proof? How 
 should I find the invariable demonstra- 
 tion of thy goodness in thy works, 
 which I saw as frequently prejudicial 
 as favourable to the beings of my spe- 
 cies ? My feeble brain, obliged to 
 form its judgments after its own capa- 
 city, could it judge of thy plan, of thy 
 wisdom, of thine intelligence, whilst 
 the universe presented to me only 
 continued mixture of order and confu- 
 sion, of good and of evil, of formation 
 and destruction ? Have I been able to 
 render homage to thy justice, whilst I 
 so frequently saw crime triumphant 
 and virtue in tears ? Could I acknow- 
 ledge the voice of a being filled with 
 wisdom, in those ambiguous, contra- 
 dictory, and puerile oracles which im- 
 postors published in thy name, in the 
 different countries of the earth which 
 I have quitted 1 If I have refused to 
 believe thine existence, it is because I 
 have not known, either what thou 
 couldst be, or where thou couldst be 
 placed, or the qualities which could be 
 assigned to thee. My ignorance is ex- 
 cusable, because it was invincible : my 
 mind could not bend itself under the 
 authority of some men, who acknow- 
 ledged themselves as little enlightened 
 upon thine essence as myself, and 
 who, for ever disputing amongst them- 
 selves, were in harmony only in im- 
 periously crying out to me to sacri- 
 fice to them that reason which thou 
 hast given men. But, O God ! if thou 
 cherishest thy creatures, I also have 
 cherished them like thee ; I have en- 
 deavoured to render them happy in the 
 sphere in which I have lived. If thou 
 art the author of reason, I have always 
 listened to it, and followed it ; if vir- 
 tue please thee, my heart has always 
 honoured it ; I have never outraged 
 it ; and, when my powers have permit-
 
 292 
 
 MEN'S IDEAS OF THE DIVINITY, &c. 
 
 ted me, I have myself practised it ; I was 
 an affectionate husband, a tender father, 
 a sincere friend, a faithful and zealous 
 citizen. I have held out consolation 
 to the afflicted : if the foibles of my 
 nature have been injurious to myself, 
 or incommodious to others, I have not, 
 at least, made the unfortunate groan 
 under the weight of my injustice ; I 
 have not devoured the substance of the 
 poor ; I have not seen without pity the 
 widow's tears ; I have not heard with- 
 out commiseration the cries of the or- 
 phan. If thou didst render man so- 
 ciable, if thou wast disposed that so- 
 ciety should subsist and be happy, I 
 have been the enemy of all those who 
 oppressed him, or deceived him, in or- 
 der that they might take advantage of 
 his misfortunes. 
 
 " If I have thought amiss of thee, it 
 is because my understanding could not 
 conceive thee ; if I have spoken ill of 
 thee, it is because my heart, partaking 
 too much of human nature, revolted 
 against the odious portrait which was 
 painted of thee. My wanderings have 
 been the effect of a temperament which 
 thou hast given me ; of the circum- 
 stances in which, without my consent, 
 thou hast placed me ; of those ideas 
 which, in despite of me, have entered 
 into my mind. If thou art good and 
 just, as we are assured thou art, thou 
 canst not punish me for the wanderings 
 of my imagination, for faults caused by 
 my passions, which are the necessary 
 consequence of the organization which 
 I have received from thee. Thus, I 
 cannot fear thee, I cannot dread the 
 condition which thou prepares! for me. 
 Thy goodness cannot have permitted 
 that I should incur punishments for in- 
 evitable errours. Wherefore didst thou 
 not rather prevent my being born, than 
 have called me into the rank of intelli- 
 gent beings, there to enjoy the fatal 
 liberty of rendering myself unhappy ? 
 If thou punishest me with severity, and 
 eternally, for having listened to the 
 reason which thou gavest me ; if thou 
 correctest me for my illusions ; if thou 
 art wroth, because my feebleness has 
 made me fall into those snares which 
 thou hast every where spread for me ; 
 thou wilt be the most cruel and the 
 most unjust of tyrants ; thou wilt not 
 be a God. but a malicious demon, to 
 whom I shall be obliged to yield, and 
 
 satiate the barbarity ; but of whom I 
 shall at least congratulate myself to 
 have for some time shook off the in- 
 supportable yoke." 
 
 It is thus that a disciple of nature 
 would speak, who, transported all at 
 once into the imaginary regions, should 
 there find a God, of whom all the ideas 
 were in direct contradiction to those 
 which wisdom, goodness, and justice 
 furnish us here. Indeed, theology ap- 
 pears to have been invented only to 
 overturn in our mind all natural ideas. 
 This illusory science seems to be bent 
 on making its God a being the most 
 contradictory to human reason. It is, 
 nevertheless, according to this reason 
 that we are obliged to judge in this 
 world ; if in the other, nothing is con- 
 formable to this, nothing is of more in- 
 utility than to think of it, or reason 
 upon it. Besides, wherefore leave 
 it to the judgment of men, who are 
 themselves only enabled to judge like 
 us? 
 
 However, in supposing God the au- 
 thor of all, nothing is more ridiculous 
 than the idea of pleasing him, or irrita- 
 ting him by our actions, our thoughts, 
 or our words ; nothing is more incon- 
 clusive than to imagine that man, the 
 work of his hands, can have merits or 
 demerits with respect to him. It is 
 evident that he cannot injure an om- 
 nipotent being, supremely happy by 
 his essence. It is evident that he can- 
 not displease him, who has made him 
 what he is: his passions, his desires, 
 and his propensities, are the necessary 
 consequence of the organization which 
 he has received ; the motives which 
 determine his will towards good or 
 evil, are evidently due to qualities in- 
 herent to the beings which God places 
 around him. If it be an intelligent be- 
 ing who has placed us in the circum- 
 stances in which we are, who has giv- 
 en the properties to those causes which, 
 in acting upon us, modify our will, 
 how can we offend him 1 If I have a 
 tender, sensible, and compassionate 
 soul, it is because I have received from 
 God organs easily moved, from whence 
 results a lively imagination, which edu- 
 cation has cultivated. If I am insen- 
 sible and cruel, it is because he has 
 given me only refractory organ s r from 
 whence results an imagination of little 
 feeling, and a heart difficult to be
 
 MEN'S IDEAS OF THE DIVINITY, &c. 
 
 293 
 
 touched. If I profess a religion, it is 
 because I have received it from parents, 
 from whom it did not depend upon me 
 to receive my birth, who professed it 
 before me, whose authority, example, 
 and instructions, have obliged my mind 
 to conform itself to theirs. If I am 
 incredulous, it is because, little sus- 
 ceptible of fear or enthusiasm for un- 
 known objects, my circumstances have 
 so ordered it, that I should undeceive 
 myself of the chimeras with which I 
 had occupied myself in my infancy. 
 
 It is, then, for want of reflecting on 
 his principles, that the theologian tells 
 us that man can please or displease 
 the powerful God who has formed him. 
 Those who believe they have merited 
 well, or deserved punishment of their 
 God, imagine that this being will be 
 obliged to them for the organization 
 which he has himself given them, and 
 will punish them for that which he 
 has refused them. In consequence of 
 this idea, so extravagant, the affection- 
 ate and tender devotee flatters himself 
 he shall be recompensed for the warmth 
 of his imagination. The zealous dev- 
 otee doubts not that his God will some 
 day reward him for the acrimony of 
 his bile or the heat of his blood. Pen- 
 itent, frantic, and atrabilious beings, 
 imagine that God will keep a register 
 of those follies which their vicious 
 organization or their fanaticism make 
 them commit ; and, above all, will be 
 extremely contented with their melan- 
 choly humour, the gravity of their 
 countenance, and their antipathy to 
 pleasure. Devotees, zealous, obstinate, 
 and quarrelsome beings, cannot per- 
 suade themselves that their God, which 
 they always form after their own mod- 
 el, can be favourable to those who are 
 more phlegmatic, who have less bile 
 in their composition, or have a cooler 
 blood circulating through their veins. 
 Each mortal believes his own organi- 
 zation is the best, and the most con- 
 formable to that of his God. 
 
 What strange ideas must these blind 
 mortals have of their Divinity, who 
 imagine that the absolute master of all 
 can be offended with the motions which 
 take place in their body or in their 
 mind ! What contradiction, to think 
 that his unalterable happiness can he 
 disturbed, or his plan deranged, by the 
 transitory shocks which the impercep- 
 
 tible fibres of the brain of one of his 
 creatures experience. Theology gives 
 us very ignoble ideas of a God, of 
 whom, however, it is unceasingly ex- 
 alting the power, the greatness, and 
 the goodness. 
 
 Without a very marked derangement 
 of our organs, our sentiments hardly 
 ever vary upon those objects which our 
 senses, experience, and reason have 
 clearly demonstrated to us. In what- 
 ever circumstances we are found, we 
 have no doubt either upon the white- 
 ness of snow, the light of day, or the 
 utility of virtue. It is not so with those 
 objects which depend solely on our im- 
 agination, and which are not proved to 
 us by the constant evidence of our 
 senses ; we judge of them variously, 
 according to the disposition in which 
 we find ourselves. These dispositions 
 vary by reason of the involutary im- 
 pressions which our organs receive at 
 each instant on the part of an infinity 
 of causes, either exterior to us, or con- 
 tained within our own machine. These 
 organs are, without our knowledge, 
 perpetually modified, relaxed, or bent, 
 by the greater or less weight or elasti- 
 city in the air; by heat or cold, by dry- 
 ness or humidity, by health or sickness, 
 by the heat of the blood, by the abun- 
 dance of the bile, by the state of the 
 nervous system, &c. These different 
 causes necessarily have an influence 
 on the momentary ideas, thoughts, and 
 opinions of man. He is, consequent- 
 ly, obliged to see variously those ob- 
 jects which his imagination presents 
 to him, without being able to be cor- 
 rected by experience and memory. 
 Here is the reason why man is obliged 
 continually to see his God and his re- 
 ligious chimeras under different aspects. 
 In a moment when his fibres find them- 
 selves disposed to tremble, he will be 
 cowardly and pusillanimous, he will 
 think of this God only with trembling ; in 
 a moment when these same fibres shall 
 be more firm, he will contemplate this 
 same God with more coolness. The 
 theologian, or the priest, will call his 
 pusillanimity, inward feeling, -warn- 
 ing from Heaven, secret inspiration; 
 but he who knows man, will say that 
 this is nothing but a mechanical mo- 
 tion, produced by a physical or natural 
 cause. Indeed, it is by a pure physi- 
 cal mechanism that we can explain all
 
 294 
 
 MEN'S IDEAS OF THE DIVINITY, &c. 
 
 the revolutions which take place fre- | 
 quently from one moment to another ' 
 in the systems, in all the opinions, and ; 
 in all the judgments of men : in con- j 
 sequence, we see them sometimes rea- 
 soning justly, and sometimes irration- 
 ally. 
 
 Here is the mode by which, with- 
 out recurring to grace, to inspirations, 
 to visions, and to supernatural move- 
 ments, we can render ourselves an ac- 
 count of that uncertain and wavering 
 state into which we sometimes see 
 persons fall, otherwise extremely en- 
 lightened, when there is a question of 
 religion. Frequently, in despite of all 
 reasoning, momentary dispositions re- 
 conduct them to the prejudices of their 
 infancy, from which on other occasions 
 they appear to be completely unde- 
 ceived. These changes are very mark- 
 ed, especially in infirmities and sick- 
 ness, and at the approach of death. 
 The barometer of the understanding 
 is then frequently obliged to fall. 
 Those chimeras which they despised, 
 or which, in a state of health, they set 
 down at their true value, are then re- 
 alized. They tremble, because the 
 machine is enfeebled ; they are irra- 
 tional, because the brain is incapable 
 of exactly fulfilling its functions. It is 
 evident that these are the true chances 
 which the priests have the knavery to 
 make use of against incredulity, and 
 from which they draw proofs of the re- 
 ality of their sublime opinions. Those 
 conversions, or those changes, which 
 take place in the ideas of men, have 
 always their origin in some physical 
 derangement of their machine, brought ! 
 on by chagrin, or by some natural and 
 known cause. 
 
 Subjected to the continual influence 
 of physical causes, our systems, then, 
 always follow the variations of our 
 body ; we reason well when our body 
 is healthy and well-constituted ; we 
 reason badly when this body is de- 
 ranged ; from thence our ideas discon- 
 nect themselves, we are no longer ca- 
 pable of associating them with preci- 
 sion, of finding our principles, to draw 
 from them just inferences ; the brain > 
 is shaken, and we no longer see any : 
 thing under its true point of view. 
 Such a man does not see his God, in 
 frosty weather, under the same traits 
 as in cloudy and rainy weather : he 
 
 does not contemplate him in the same 
 manner in sorrow as in gayety, when 
 in company as when alone. Good 
 sense suggests to us, that it is when the 
 body is sound, and the mind undis- 
 turbed by any mist, that we can reason 
 with precision ; this state can furnish 
 us with a general standard suitable to 
 regulate our judgments, and even rec- 
 tify our ideas, when unexpected causes 
 shall make them waver. 
 
 If the opinions of the same individ- 
 ual upon his God are wavering and 
 subject to vary, how many changes 
 must they experience in the various be- 
 ings who compose the human race ? 
 If there do not, perhaps, exist two men 
 who see a physical object exactly un- 
 der the same point of view, what much 
 g-reater variety must they not have in 
 their modes of contemplating those 
 things which have existence only in 
 their imagination? What an infinity 
 of combinations of ideas must not 
 minds, essentially different, make to 
 themselves, to compose an ideal being, 
 which each moment of life must pre- 
 sent under a different form 1 It would 
 then be an irrational enterprise to at- 
 tempt to prescribe to men what they 
 ought to think of religion and of God, 
 which are entirely under the cogni- 
 zance of the imagination, and for which, 
 as we have very frequently repeated, 
 mortals will never have any common 
 standard. To combat the religious 
 opinions of men, is to combat with 
 their imagination, with their organiza- 
 tion, and with their habits, which suf- 
 fice to identify with their existence the 
 most absurd and the least founded ideas. 
 The more imagination men have, the 
 greater enthusiasts will they be in mat- 
 ters of religion, and reason will be less 
 capable of undeceiving them of their 
 chimeras : these chimeras will become 
 a food necessary for their ardent im- 
 agination. In fine, to combat the reli- 
 gious notions of men, is to combat the 
 passion which they have for the mar- 
 vellous. In despite of reason, those 
 persons who have a lively imagina- 
 tion, are perpetually reconducted to 
 those chimeras which habit render dear 
 to them, even when they are trouble- 
 some and fatal. Thus, a tender soul 
 has occasion for a God that loves him ; 
 the happy enthusiast needs a God who 
 rewards him : the unfortunate enthu-
 
 MEN'S IDEAS OF THE DIVINITY, &c. 
 
 295 
 
 siast wants a God, who takes part in 
 his sorrows ; the melancholy devotee 
 has occasion for a God who chagrins 
 him, and who maintains him in that 
 trouble which has become necessary 
 to his diseased organization ; the fran- 
 tic penitent needs a cruel God, who 
 imposes on him an obligation to be in- 
 human towards himself; whilst the 
 furious fanatic would believe himself 
 unhappy if he were deprived of a God 
 who orders him to make others experi- 
 ence the effects of his inflamed humours 
 and of his unruly passions. 
 
 He is, without question, a less dan- 
 gerous enthusiast who feeds himself 
 with agreeable illusions, than he whose 
 soul is tormented by odious spectres. 
 If a virtuous and tender mind does not 
 commit ravages in society, a mind agi- 
 tated by incommodious passions, can- 
 not fail to become, sooner or later, 
 troublesome to his fellow-creatures. 
 The God of a Socrates, or of a Fene- 
 lon, may be suitable to minds as gentle 
 as theirs ; but he cannot be the God 
 of a whole nation, in which it will al- 
 ways be extremely rare to find men of 
 their temper. The Divinity, as we 
 have frequently said, will always be 
 for the greater portion of mortals a 
 frightful chimera, calculated to disturb 
 their brain, to set their passions afloat, 
 and to render them injurious to their 
 associates. If honest men only see 
 their God as filled with goodness ; vi- 
 cious, restless, inflexible, and wicked 
 men, will give to their God their own 
 character, and will authorize them- 
 selves, from this example, to give a 
 free course to their own passions. Each 
 man can see his chimera only with his 
 own eyes ; and the number of those 
 who will paint the Divinity as hideous, 
 afflicting, and cruel, will be always 
 greater and more to be feared, than 
 those who describe him under sedu- 
 cing colours ; for one mortal whom this 
 chimera can render happy, there will 
 be thousands which it will make mis- 
 erable ; it will be, sooner or later, an 
 inexhaustible source of divisions, of 
 extravagancies, and of madness ; it 
 will disturb the mind of the ignorant, 
 over whom impostors and fanatics will 
 always have an influence ; it will 
 frighten the cowardly and the pusil- 
 lanimous, whom their weakness will 
 incline to perfidy and cruelty ; it will 
 
 make the most honest tremble, who, 
 even while practising virtue, will fear 
 the displeasure of a fantastical and ca- 
 pricious God ; it will not stop the pro- 
 gress of the wicked, who will put it 
 aside, in order to deliver themselves 
 up to crime ; or who will even avail 
 themselves of this divine chimera to 
 justify their transgressions. In short, 
 in the hands of tyrants, this God, who 
 is himself a tyrant, will only serve to 
 crush the liberty of the people, and 
 violate, with impunity, the rights of 
 equity. In the hands of priests, this 
 God will be a talisman, suitable to in- 
 toxicate, blind, and subjugate equally 
 the sovereign and the subject; in fine, 
 in the hands of the people, this idol 
 will always be a two-edged weapon, 
 with which they will give themselves 
 the most mortal wounds. 
 
 On the other hand, the theological 
 God, being, as we have seen, only a 
 heap of contradictions ; being repre- 
 sented, in despite of his immutability, 
 sometimes as goodness itself, some- 
 times as the most cruel and the most 
 unjust of beings ; being besides con- 
 templated by men, whose machines 
 experience continual variations ; this 
 God, I say, cannot at all times appear 
 the same to those who occupy them- 
 selves with him. Those who form the 
 most favourable ideas of him are fre- 
 quently obliged to acknowledge that 
 the portrait, which they paint to them- 
 selves, is not always conformable to 
 the original. The most fervent de- 
 votees, the most prepossessed enthusi- 
 asts cannot prevent themselves from 
 seeing the traits' of their Divinity 
 change ; and if they were capable of 
 reasoning, they would feel the want of 
 just inference in the conduct which 
 they unceasingly hold with respect 
 to him. Indeed, would they not see, 
 that his conduct appeared to contra- 
 dict, every moment, the marvellous 
 perfections which they assign to their 
 God 1 To pray to the Divinity, is it 
 not doubting of his wisdom, of his be- 
 nevolence, of his providence, of his 
 omniscience, and of his immutability 1 
 Is it not to accuse him of neglecting 
 his creatures, and to ask him to alter 
 the eternal decree of his justice, to 
 change those invariable laws which 
 he has himself determined ? To pray 
 to God, is it not to say to him : " O, my
 
 296 
 
 MEN'S IDEAS OF THE DIVINITY, &c. 
 
 God, I acknowledge your wisdom, your 
 omniscience, and your infinite good- 
 ness ; nevertheless, you forget me ; 
 you lose sight of your creature ; you 
 are ignorant, or you feign ignorance 
 of that which he wants ; do you not 
 see that I suffer from the marvellous 
 arrangement which your wise laws 
 have made in the universe ? Nature, 
 against your commands, actually ren- 
 ders mine existence painful ; change, 
 then, I pray you, the essence which 
 your will has given to all beings. See 
 that the elements, at this moment, lose 
 in my favour their distinguishing pro- 
 perties ; order it so, that heavy bodies 
 shall not fall, that fire shall not burn, 
 that the brittle frame which I have re- 
 ceived from you shall not suffer those 
 shocks which it experiences every in- 
 stant. Rectify, for my happiness, the 
 plan which your infinite prudence has 
 marked out from all eternity." Such 
 are very nearly the prayers which men 
 form ; such are the ridiculous demands 
 which they every moment make to the 
 Divinity, of whom they extol the wis- 
 dom, the intelligence, the providence, 
 and the equity, whilst they are hardly 
 ever contented with the effects of his 
 divine perfections. 
 
 Men are not more consistent in the 
 thanksgivings which they believe them- 
 selves obliged to offer him. Is it not just, 
 say they, to thank the Divinity for his 
 kindness ? Would it not be the height 
 of ingratitude to refuse our homage to 
 the author of our existence, and of 
 every thing that contributes to render 
 it agreeable 1 But I shall say to them, 
 then your God acts from interest ; sim- 
 ilar to men, who, even when they are 
 the most disinterested, expect at least 
 that we should give them proofs of the 
 impression which their kindness makes 
 upon us. Your God, so powerful, and 
 so great, has he occasion that you 
 should prove to him the sentiments 
 of your acknowledgments ? Besides, 
 upon what do you found this grati- 
 tude ? Does he distribute his benefits 
 equally to all men 1 Are the greater 
 number among them contented with 
 their condition ? you yourself, are you 
 always satisfied with your existence ? 
 It will be answered me, without doubt, 
 that this existence alone is the greatest 
 of all benefits. But how can we look 
 upon it as a signal advantage 1 This 
 
 existence, is it not in the necessary 
 order of things ? Has it not neces- 
 sarily entered into the unknown plan 
 of your God ? Does the stone owe 
 any thing to the architect for having 
 judged it necessary to his building? 
 Do you know better than this stone 
 the concealed views of your God? If 
 you are a thinking and sensible being, 
 do you not find that this marvellous 
 plan incommodes you every instant ; 
 do not even your prayers to the archi- 
 tect of the world prove that you are 
 discontented ? You were born with- 
 out your consent ; your existence is 
 precarious ; you suffer against your will ; 
 your pleasures and your sorrows do not 
 depend upon you ; you are not master 
 of any thing ; you have not the smallest 
 conception of the plan formed by the 
 architect of the universe whom you 
 never cease to admire, and in which, 
 without your consent, you find your- 
 self placed ; you are the continual sport 
 of the necessity which you deify : after 
 having called you into life, your God 
 obliges you to quit it. Where, then, 
 are those great obligations which you 
 believe you owe to Providence ? This 
 same God, who gives you the breath 
 of life, who furnishes you your wants, 
 who conserves you, does he not in a 
 moment ravish from you these pre- 
 tended advantages ? If you consider 
 existence as the greatest of all benefits, 
 is not the loss of this existence, ac- 
 cording to yourself, the greatest of all 
 evils? If death and sorrow are formi- 
 dable evils, do not this grief and death 
 efface the benefit of existence, and the 
 pleasure that may sometimes accom- 
 pany it ? If your birth and your fune- 
 ral, your enjoyments and your sorrows, 
 have equally entered into the views of 
 his providence, I see nothing that can 
 authorize you to thank him. What 
 can be the obligations which you have 
 to a master who, in despite of you, 
 obliges you to enter into this world, 
 there to play a dangerous and unequal 
 game, by which you may gain or lose 
 an eternal happiness ? 
 
 They speak to us, indeed, of another 
 life, where we are assured that man 
 will be completely happy. But in sup- 
 posing for a moment the existence of 
 this other life, which has as little foun- 
 dation as that of the being from whom 
 it is expected, it were necessary, at
 
 MEN'S IDEAS OF THE DIVINITY, &c. 
 
 297 
 
 least, for man to suspend his acknow- 
 ledgment until he enter into this other 
 life : in the life of which we have a 
 knowledge, men are much more fre- 
 quently discontented than fortunate ; 
 if God, in the world which we occupy, 
 has not been able or willing to permit 
 that his beloved creatures might be 
 perfectly happy, how shall we assure 
 ourselves that he will have the power 
 or the disposition to render them in 
 the end more happy than they are 
 now ? They will then cite to us the 
 revelations, the formal promises of the 
 Divinity, who engages to compensate 
 his favourites for the sorrows of the 
 present life. Let us, for an instant, 
 admit the authenticity of these prom- 
 ises ; do not these revelations them- 
 selves teach us that the divine good- 
 ness reserves eternal punishments for 
 the greater number of men 1 If these 
 menaces be true, do mortals, then, owe 
 acknowledgments to a God who, with- 
 out consulting them, only gives them 
 their existence, that they may, with 
 the assistance of their pretended liberty, 
 run the risk of rendering themselves 
 eternally miserable 1 Would it not 
 have been more beneficial for them not 
 to have existed, or at least to have ex- 
 isted only like stones or brutes, from 
 whom it is supposed God exacts no- 
 thing, than to enjoy those extolled 
 faculties the privilege of having me- 
 rits or demerits which may conduct 
 intelligent beings to the most frightful 
 misfortunes ? In paying attention to 
 the small number of the elect, and to 
 the great number of the condemned, 
 where is the man of feeling who, if 
 he had been the master, had consented 
 to run the risk of eternal damnation ? 
 
 Thus, under whatever point of view 
 we contemplate the theological phan- 
 tom, men, if they were consistent, even 
 in their errours, neither owe him pray- 
 ers, nor homage, nor worship, nor 
 thanksgivings. But in matters of re- 
 ligion, mortals never reason ; they only 
 follow the impulse of their fears, of 
 their imagination, of their tempera- 
 ment, of their peculiar passions, or 
 those guides who have acquired the 
 right of controuling their understand- 
 ings. Fear has made Gods ; terrour 
 unceasingly accompanies them; it is 
 impossible to reason when we tremble. 
 Thus men will never reason when 
 
 No. X. 3S 
 
 there shall be a question of those ob- 
 jects of which the vague idea will ever 
 be associated to that of terrour. If a 
 mild and honest enthusiast sees his 
 God only as a beneficent father, the 
 greater portion of mortals will only 
 view him as a formidable sultan, a dis- 
 agreeable tyrant, and a cruel and per- 
 verse genius. Thus, this God will al- 
 ways be for the human race a danger- 
 ous leaven, suitable to imbitter it, and 
 put it into a fatal fermentation. If, to 
 the peaceable, humane, and moderate 
 devotee, could be left the good God 
 which he has formed to himself after 
 his own heart, the interest of the hu- 
 man race demands that an idol should 
 be overthrown to which fear has given 
 birth, which is nourished by melan- 
 choly, of whom the idea and the name 
 are only calculated to fill the universe 
 with carnage and with follies. 
 
 We do not, however, flatter ourselves 
 that reason will be at all once capable 
 of delivering the human race from those 
 errours with Avhich so many causes 
 united have conspired to poison it. 
 The vainest of all projects would be 
 the expectation of curing in an instant 
 those epidemical and hereditary errours, 
 rooted during so many ages, and con- 
 tinually fed and corroborated by the 
 ignorance, the passions, the customs, 
 the interests, the fears, and the calami- 
 ties of nations, always regenerating. 
 The ancient revolutions of the earth 
 have brought forth its first Gods, new 
 revolutions would produce new ones, 
 if the old ones should chance to be for- 
 gotten. Ignorant, miserable, and trem- 
 bling beings, will always form to them- 
 selves Gods, or else their credulity will 
 make them receive those which im- 
 posture or fanaticism shall announce 
 to them. 
 
 Then do not let us propose more to 
 ourselves than to hold reason to those 
 who may be able to understand it ; to 
 present truth to those who can sustain 
 its lustre ; to undeceive those who shall 
 not be inclined to oppose obstacles to 
 demonstration, and who will not obsti- 
 nately persist in errour. Let us infuse 
 courage into those who have not the 
 power to break with their illusions. 
 Let us cheer the honest man who is 
 much more alarmed by his fears than 
 the wicked, who, in despite of his opin- 
 ions, always follows his passions ; let
 
 298 
 
 MEN'S IDEAS OF THE DIVINITY, &c. 
 
 us console the unfortunate, who groans 
 under a load of prejudices, which he 
 has not examined ; let us dissipate the 
 incertitude of him who doubts, am 
 who, ingenuously seeking after truth 
 finds in philosophy itself only waver- 
 ing opinions, little calculated to fix his 
 mind. Let us banish from the man o 
 genius the chimera which makes him 
 waste his time : let us wrest his gloomy 
 phantom from the intimidated mortal 
 who, duped by his own fears, become 
 useless to society : let us remove from 
 the atrabilarious being a God who af- 
 flicts him, who exasperates him, and 
 who does nothing more than kindle his 
 anger : let us tear from the fanatic the 
 God who arms him with poniards ; let 
 us pluck from impostors and from ty- 
 rants a God who serves them to ter- 
 rify, enslave, and despoil, the human 
 species. In removing from honest men 
 their formidable notions, let us not en- 
 courage the wicked, the enemies ol 
 society ; let us deprive them of those 
 resources upon which they reckon to 
 expiate their transgressions ; to uncer- 
 tain and distant terrours, which cannot 
 stop their excesses, let us substitute 
 those which are real and present ; let 
 them blush at seeing themselves what 
 they are ; let them tremble at finding 
 their conspiracies discovered ; let them 
 have the fear of one day seeing those 
 mortals whom they abuse, cured of the 
 errours of which they avail themselves 
 to enslave them. 
 
 If we cannot cure nations of their 
 inveterate prejudices, let us endeavour, 
 at least, to prevent them from again 
 falling into those excesses into Avhich 
 religion has so frequently hurried them ; 
 let men form to themselves chimeras ; 
 let them think of them as they will, 
 provided their reveries do not make 
 them forget they are men, and that a 
 sociable being is not made to resemble 
 ferocious animals. Let us balance the 
 fictitious interests of heaven, by the 
 sensible interests of the earth. Let 
 sovereigns, and the people, at length 
 acknowledge that the advantages re- 
 sulting from truth, from justice, from 
 good laws, from a rational education, 
 and from a human and peaceable mo- 
 rality, are much more solid than those 
 which they so vainly expect from their 
 Divinities : let them feel that benefits 
 so real and so precious ought not to be 
 
 sacrificed to uncertain hopes, so fre- 
 quently contradicted by experience. In 
 order to convince themselves, let every 
 rational man consider the numberless 
 crimes which the name of God has 
 caused upon the earth ; let them study 
 his frightful history, and that of his 
 odious ministers, who have every where 
 fanned the spirit of madness, discord, 
 and fury. Let princes, and subjects 
 at least, sometimes learn to resist the 
 passions of these pretended interpreters 
 of the Divinity, especially when they 
 shall command them in his name to 
 be inhuman, intolerant, and barbarous ; 
 to stifle the cries of nature, the voice 
 of equity, the remonstrances of reason, 
 and to shut their eyes to the interests 
 of society. 
 
 Feeble mortals ! how long will your 
 imagination, so active and so prompt 
 to seize on the marvellous, continue to 
 seek, out of the universe, pretexts to 
 make you injurious to yourselves, and 
 to the beings with whom ye live in 
 society ? Wherefore do ye not follow 
 in peace the simple and easy route 
 which your nature has marked out for 
 ye ? Wherefore strew with thorns the 
 road of life? Wherefore multiply those 
 sorrows to which your destiny exposes 
 ye? What advantages can ye expect 
 from a Divinity which the united ef- 
 forts of the whole human species have 
 not been able to make you acquainted 
 with ? Be ignorant, then, of that which 
 the human mind is not formed to com- 
 prehend ; abandon your chimeras ; oc- 
 cupy yourselves with truth ; learn the 
 art of living happy ; perfection your 
 morals, your governments, and your 
 laws ; look to education, to agriculture, 
 and to the sciences that are truly use- 
 ful ; labour with ardour ; oblige nature 
 by your industry to become propitious 
 to ye, and the Gods will not be* able 
 to oppose any thing to your felicity. 
 Leave to idle thinkers, and tq useless 
 enthusiasts, the unfruitful labour of 
 fathoming depths from which ye ought 
 :o divert your attention : enjoy the 
 Benefits attached to your present ex- 
 istence ; augment the number of them ; 
 never throw yourselves forward beyond 
 your sphere. If you must have chi- 
 neras, permit your fellow-creatures to 
 lave theirs also ; and do not cut the 
 throats of your brethren, when they 
 cannot rave in your own manner. If
 
 SENTIMENTS CONTAINED IN THIS WORK, &c. 
 
 299 
 
 ye will have Gods, let your imagina- 
 tion give birth to them; but do not 
 Suffer these imaginary beings so far to 
 intoxicate ye as to make ye mistake 
 that which ye owe to those real beings 
 with whom ye live. If ye will have 
 unintelligible systems, if ye cannot 
 be contented without marvellous doc- 
 trines, if the infirmities of your nature 
 require an invisible crutch, adopt such 
 as may suit with your humour ; select 
 those which you may think most cal- 
 culated to support your tottering frame, 
 do not insist on your neighbours ma- 
 king the same choice with yourself: but 
 do not suffer these imaginary theories 
 to infuriate your mind : always re- 
 member that, among the duties you 
 owe to the real beings with whom ye 
 are associated, the foremost, the most 
 consequential, the most immediate, 
 stands a reasonable indulgence for the 
 foibles of others. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Defence of the Sentiments contained in this 
 Work. Of Impiety. Do there exist Athe- 
 ists? 
 
 WHAT has been said, in the course 
 of this work, ought to be sufficient to 
 undeceive those men who are capable 
 of reasoning on the prejudices to which 
 they attach so much importance. But 
 the most evident truths must prove 
 abortive against enthusiasm, habit, and 
 fear ; nothing is more difficult than to 
 destroy errour, when long prescrip- 
 tion has given it possession of the hu- 
 man mind. It is unassailable when it 
 is supported by general consent, pro- 
 pagated by education, when it has 
 grown inveterate by custom, when it 
 is fortified by example, maintained by 
 authority, and unceasingly nourished 
 by the hopes and the fears of the peo- 
 ple, who look upon their errours as a 
 remedy for their sorrows. Such are 
 the united forces which sustain the 
 empire of the Gods in this world, and 
 which appear to render their throne 
 firm and immoveable. 
 
 We need not, then, be surprised, to 
 see the greater number of men cherish 
 their own blindness, and fear the truth. 
 Every where we find mortals obsti- 
 nately attached to phantoms, from 
 
 which they expect their happiness, 
 notwithstanding these phantoms are 
 evidently the source of all their sor- 
 rows. Smitten with the marvellous, 
 disdaining that which is simple and 
 easy to be comprehended, but little in- 
 structed in the ways of nature, accus- 
 tomed to neglect the use of their rea- 
 son, the uninformed, from age to age, 
 prostrate themselves before those in- 
 visible powers which they have been 
 taught to adore. They address their 
 most fervent prayers to them, they im- 
 plore them in their misfortunes, they 
 despoil themselves for them of the 
 fruits of their labour, they are unceas- 
 ingly occupied with thanking these 
 vain idols for benefits which they have 
 not received, or in demanding of them 
 favours which they cannot obtain. 
 Neither experience nor reflection can 
 undeceive them ; they do not perceive 
 that their Gods have always been deaf; 
 they ascribe to it their own conduct; 
 they believe them to be irritated ; they 
 tremble, they groan, and they sigh at 
 their feet ; they strew theic altars with 
 presents ; they do not see that these 
 beings, so powerful, are subjected to 
 nature, and are never propitious but 
 when this nature is favourable. It is 
 thus that .nations are the accomplices 
 of those who deceive them, and are as 
 much opposed to truth, as those who 
 lead them astray. 
 
 In matters of religion, there are very 
 few persons who do not partake, more 
 or less, of the opinions of the unin- 
 formed. Every man who throws aside 
 the received ideas, is generally looked 
 upon as a madman, a presumptuous be- 
 ing, who insolently believes himself 
 much wiser than others. At the ma- 
 gical names of religion and the Divinity, 
 a sudden and panic terrour takes pos- 
 session of men's minds ; and as soon 
 as they see them attacked, society is 
 alarmed, each imagines that he already 
 sees the celestial monarch lift his 
 avenging arm against the country 
 where rebellious nature has produced 
 a monster, with sufficient temerity to 
 brave his wrath. Even the most mod- 
 erate persons tax the man with folly 
 and sedition who dares to contest, with 
 this imaginary sovereign, those rights 
 which good sense has never examined. 
 In consequence, whoever undertakes to 
 tear the veil of prejudice, appears an
 
 300 
 
 DEFENCE OF THE SENTIMENTS 
 
 irrational being, and a dangerous citi- 
 zen ; his sentence is pronounced with 
 a voice almost unanimous ; the public 
 indignation, stirred up by fanaticism 
 and imposture, renders it impossible 
 for him to be heard ; every one be- 
 lieves himself culpable if he does not 
 display his fury against him, and his 
 zeal in favour of a terrible God, whose 
 anger is supposed to be provoked. 
 Thus, the man who consults his rea- 
 son, the disciple of nature, is looked 
 upon as a public pest ; the enemy of 
 an injurious phantom is regarded as 
 the enemy of the human species ; he 
 who would establish a lasting peace 
 amongst men, is treated as the disturb- 
 er of society ; they unanimously pro- 
 scribe him who should be disposed to 
 cheer affrighted mortals by breaking 
 those idols under which prejudice 
 has obliged them to tremble. At the 
 bare name of an atheist, the supersti- 
 tious man quakes, and the deist him- 
 self is alarmed ; the priest enters the 
 judgment-seat with fury, tyranny pre- 
 pares his funeral pile ; the uninformed 
 applaud those punishments which ir- 
 rational laws decree against the true 
 friend of the human species. 
 
 Such are the sentiments which eve- 
 ry man must expect to excite who 
 shall dare to present to his fellow-crea- 
 tures that truth which all appear to be 
 in search of, but which all fear to 
 find, or else mistake when we are dis- 
 posed to show it to them. Indeed, 
 what is an atheist? He is a man, 
 who destroys chimeras prejudicial to 
 the human species, in order to recon- 
 duct men back to nature, to experience, 
 and to reason. He is a thinker, who, 
 having meditated upon matter, its en- 
 ergy, its properties, and its modes of 
 acting, has no occasion, in order to ex- 
 plain the phenomena of the universe, 
 and the operations of nature, to invent 
 ideal powers, imaginary intelligences, 
 beings of the imagination, who, far 
 from making him understand this na- 
 ture better, do no more than render it 
 capricious, inexplicable, unintelligible, 
 and useless to the happiness of man- 
 kind. 
 
 Thus, the only men who can have 
 simple and true ideas of nature, are 
 considered as absurd or knavish spec- 
 ulators. Those who form to them- 
 selves intelligible notions of the mo- 
 
 tive-power of the universe, are accused 
 of denying the existence of this power : 
 those who found every thing that is 
 operated in this world, upon constant 
 and certain laws, are accused of at- 
 tributing every thing to chance ; they 
 are taxed with blindness and delirium 
 by those enthusiasts whose imagina- 
 tion, always wandering in a vacuum 
 attributes the effects of nature to ficti- 
 tious causes, which have no existence 
 but in their own brain; to beings of 
 the imagination, to chimerical powers, 
 which they obstinately persist in pre- 
 ferring to real and known causes. No . 
 man, in his proper senses, can deny 
 the energy of nature, or the existence 
 of a power, by virtue of which matter 
 acts and puts itself in motion ; but no 
 man can, without renouncing his rea- 
 son, attribute this power to a being 
 placed out of nature, distinguished from 
 matter, having nothing in common 
 with it. Is it not saying that this power 
 does not exist, to pretend that it re- 
 sides in an unknown being, formed by 
 a heap of unintelligible qualities, of 
 incompatible attributes, from whence 
 necessarily results a whole impossible 
 to have existence ? The indestructi- 
 ble elements, the atoms of Epicurus, 
 of which the motion, the meeting, and 
 the combination, have produced all be- 
 ings, are, without doubt, causes much 
 more real than the theological God. 
 Thus, to speak precisely, they are the 
 partisans of an imaginary and contra- 
 dictory being, impossible to be con- 
 ceived, which the human mind can- 
 not compass on any side, who offer us 
 nothing but a vague name, of which 
 nothing can be affirmed ; they are those, 
 I say, whomakeof such a being the cre- 
 ator, the author, the preserver of the 
 universe, who are irrational. Are not 
 those dreamers, who are incapable of 
 attaching any one positive idea to the 
 cause of which they are unceasingly 
 speaking, true atheists? Are not 
 those thinkers, who make a pure no- 
 thing the source of all the beings, truly 
 blind men ? Is it not the height of 
 folly to personify abstractions, or nega- 
 tive ideas, and then to prostrate our- 
 selves before the fiction of our own 
 brain '? 
 
 Nevertheless, they are men of this 
 temper who regulate the opinions of 
 the world, and who hold out to public
 
 CONTAINED IN THIS WORK. 
 
 301 
 
 scorn and vengeance, those who arc 
 more rational than themselves. If you 
 will believe but these profound dream- 
 ers, there is nothing short of madness 
 and phrensy that can reject in nature 
 a motive-power, totally incomprehen- 
 sible. Is it, then, delirium to prefer 
 the known to the unknown ? Is it a 
 crime to consult experience, to call in 
 the evidence of our senses, in the ex- 
 amination of the thing the most im- 
 portant to be known 1 Is it a horrid 
 outrage, to address ourselves to reason : 
 to prefer its oracles to the sublime de- 
 cisions of some sophists, who them- 
 selves acknowledge that they do not 
 comprehend any thing of the God 
 whom they announce to us ? Never- 
 theless, according to them, there is no 
 crime more worthy of punishment, 
 there is no enterprise more dangerous 
 against society, than to despoil the 
 phantom, which they know nothing 
 about, of those inconceivable qualities, 
 and of that imposing equipage, with 
 which imagination, ignorance, fear, and 
 imposture, have emulated each other 
 in surrounding him ; there is nothing 
 more impious and more criminal than 
 to cheer up mortals against a spectre, 
 of which the idea alone has been the 
 source of all their sorrows ; there is 
 nothing more necessary, than to ex- 
 terminate those audacious beings, who 
 have sufficient temerity to attempt to 
 break an invisible charm, which keeps 
 the human species benumbed in errour ; 
 to be disposed to break man's chains, 
 was to rend asunder his most sacred 
 bonds. 
 
 In consequence of these clamours, 
 perpetually renovated by imposture, 
 and repeated by ignorance, those na- 
 tions, which reason, in all ages, has 
 sought to undeceive, have never dared 
 to listen to her benevolent lessons. 
 The friends of mankind were never 
 listened to, because they were the 
 enemies of their chimeras. Thus, the 
 people continue to tremble ; very few 
 philosophers have the courage to cheer 
 them; scarcely any person dares brave 
 public opinion, infected by supersti- j 
 tion ; they dread the power of impos- 
 ture, and the menaces of tyranny, which 
 always seek to support themselves by I 
 illusions. The yell of triumphant ig- j 
 norance. and haughty fanaticism, at all 
 times stifled the feeble voice of nature ; 
 
 she was obliged to keep silence, her 
 lessons were quickly forgotten, and 
 when she dared to speak, it was fre- 
 i quently only in an enigmatical lan- 
 ] guage, unintelligible to the greater num- 
 | her of men. How should the unin- 
 I formed, who with difficulty compass 
 | truths the most evident and the most 
 distinctly announced, have been able 
 | to comprehend the mysteries of na- 
 ture, presented under half words and 
 emblems 1 
 
 In contemplating the outrageous lan- 
 guage which is excited among the the- 
 ologians, by the opinions of the athe- 
 ists, and the punishments which at 
 their instigation were frequently de- 
 creed against them ; should we not be 
 authorized to conclude, that these doc- 
 tors either are not so certain as they 
 say they are of the existence of their 
 God, or else that they do not consider 
 the opinions of their adversaries to be 
 quite so absurd as they pretend ? It is 
 always distrust, weakness, and fear, 
 that render men cruel ; they have no 
 anger against those whom they de- 
 spise : they do not look upon folly as a 
 punishable crime : we should be con- 
 tent with laughing at an irrational 
 mortal, who should deny the existence 
 of the sun ; we should not punish him, 
 if we were not irrational ourselves. 
 This theological fury never proves 
 more than the weakness of its cause ; 
 the inhumanity of these interested men, 
 whose profession it is to announce 
 chimeras to nations, proves to us, that 
 they alone have an interest in these in- 
 visible powers, of whom they success- 
 fully avail themselves to terrify mor- 
 tals.* They are, however, tyrants of 
 the mind, who, but little consistent 
 with their own principles, undo with 
 one hand, that which they rear with 
 the other : they are those, who after 
 having made a Divinity, filled with 
 goodness, wisdom, and equity, traduce, 
 disgrace, and completely annihilate 
 him, by saying, that he is cruel, that he 
 is capricious, unjust, and despotic, that 
 he thirsts after the blood of the un- 
 happy. This granted, these men are 
 truly impious. 
 
 * Lucian describes Jupiter, who, disputing 
 with Menippus, is disposed to strike him down 
 with thunder; upon which the philosopher 
 says to him : " Ah ! thou waxeth wroth, thou 
 uscst thy thunder ! then thou art in the wrong."
 
 302 
 
 DEFENCE OP THE SENTIMENTS 
 
 He who knows not the Divinity, can- 
 not do him an injury, nor consequently, 
 be called impious. " To be impious" 
 says Epicurus, " is not to take away 
 from the uninformed the Gods which 
 they have, it is to attribute to these 
 Gods the opinions of the uninformed." 
 To be impious, is to insult a God in 
 whom we believe ; it is to knowingly 
 outrage him. To be impious, is to 
 admit a good God, whilst at the same 
 time we preach persecution and car- 
 nage. To be impious, is to deceive 
 men, in the name of a God, whom we 
 make use of as a pretext for our un- 
 worthy passions. To be impious, is 
 to say, that a God, who is supremely 
 happy and omnipotent, can be offended 
 by his feeble creatures. To be im- 
 pious is to speak falsely on the part of 
 a God whom we suppose to be the 
 enemy of falsehood. In fine, to be 
 impious, is to make use of the Divinity, 
 to disturb society, to enslave them to 
 tyrants ; it is to persuade them, that 
 the cause of imposture is the cause of 
 God ; it is to impute to God those 
 crimes which would annihilate his di- 
 vine perfections. To be impious and 
 irrational at the same time, is to make 
 a mere chimera of the God whom we 
 adore. 
 
 On the other hand, to be pious, is to 
 serve our country ; it is to be useful to 
 our fellow-creatures ; to labour to their 
 wellbeing : every one can put in his 
 claim to it, according to his faculties ; 
 he who meditates, can render himself 
 useful, when he has the courage to an- 
 nounce truth, to combat errour, to at- 
 tack those prejudices which every where 
 oppose themselves to the happiness of 
 mankind ; it is to be truly useful, and 
 it is even a duty, to wrest from the 
 hands of mortals, those weapons which 
 fanaticism distributes to them, to de- 
 prive imposture and tyranny of that 
 fatal empire of opinion, of which they 
 successfully avail themselves at all 
 times and in all places, to elevate them- 
 selves upon the ruins of liberty, secu- 
 rity, and public felicity. To be truly 
 pious, is to religiously observe the 
 wholesome laws of nature, and to fol- 
 low faithfully those duties which she 
 prescribes to us ; to be pious, is to be 
 humane, equitable, and benevolent ; is 
 to respect the rights of men. To be 
 pious and rational, is to reject those 
 
 reveries, which would lead us to mis- 
 take the sober councils of reason. 
 
 Thus, whatever fanaticism and im- 
 posture may say, he who denies the 
 existence of a God, seeing that it has 
 no other foundation than an alarmed 
 imagination ; he who rejects a God 
 perpetually in contradiction with him- 
 self; he who banishes from his mind, 
 and his heart, a God continually wres- 
 tling with nature, reason, and the hap- 
 piness of men ; he, I say, who unde- 
 ceives himself on so dangerous a chi- 
 mera, may be reputed pious, honest, 
 and virtuous, when his conduct shall 
 not deviate from those invariable rules, 
 which nature and reason prescribe to 
 him. Because a man refuses to admit 
 a contradictory God, as well as the 
 obscure oracles which are given out 
 in his name, does it then follow, that 
 such a man, refuses to acknowledge 
 the evident and demonstrable laws of 
 a nature upon which he depends, of 
 which he experiences the power, of 
 which he is obliged to fulfil the neces- 
 sary duties, under pain of being pun- 
 ished in this world 1 It is true, that 
 if virtue, by chance, consisted in an 
 ignominious renunciation of reason, in 
 a destructive fanaticism, in useless 
 customs, the atheist could not pass for 
 a virtuous being ; but if virtue con- 
 sist in doing to society all the good of 
 which we are capable, the atheist may 
 lay claim to it ; his courageous and 
 tender heart will not be guilty for hur- 
 ling his legitimate indignation against 
 prejudices, fatal to the happiness of 
 the human species. 
 
 Let us listen, however, to the im- 
 putations which the theologians lay 
 upon the atheists ; let us coolly and 
 without peevishness examine the ca- 
 lumnies which they vomit forth against 
 them : it appears to them that atheism 
 is the highest degree of delirium that 
 can assail the mind, the greatest stretch 
 of perversity that can inflict the human 
 heart ; interested in blackening their 
 adversaries, they make absolute incre- 
 dulity appear to be the effect of crime 
 or folly. We do not, say they to us, 
 see those men fall into the horrours of 
 atheism, who have reason to hope that 
 the future state will be for them a state 
 of happiness. In short, according to 
 our theologians, it is the interest of 
 their passions which makes them seek
 
 \ CONTAINED IN THIS WORK. 
 
 303 
 
 to doubt the existence of a being, to 
 whom they are accountable for the 
 abuses of this life ; it is the fear of 
 punishment alone which is known to 
 atheists ; they are unceasingly repeat- 
 ing the words of a Hebrew prophet, 
 who pretends that nothing but folly 
 makes men deny the existence of the 
 Divinity.* If you believe some others, 
 " nothing is blacker than the heart 
 of an atheist, nothing is more false 
 than his mind." " Atheism," accord- 
 ing to them, " can only be the offspring 
 of a tortured conscience, that seeks to 
 disengage itself from the cause of its 
 trouble." " We have a right," says 
 Derham, " to look upon an atheist as 
 a monster amongst rational beings, as 
 one of those extraordinary productions 
 which we hardly ever meet with in 
 the whole human species, and who 
 opposing himself to all other men, re- 
 volts not only against reason and hu- 
 man nature, but against the Divinity 
 himself." 
 
 We shall simply reply to all these 
 calumnies, by saving, that is for the 
 reader to judge if the system of athe- 
 ism be as absurd as these profound 
 speculators, perpetually in dispute on 
 the uninformed, contradictory, and fan- 
 tastical productions of, their own brain, 
 would have it believed to be ?f It is 
 true, perhaps, that hitherto the system 
 of naturalism has not been developed 
 in all its extent; unprejudiced persons 
 will, at least,be enabled to know whether 
 the author has reasoned well or ill, 
 whether he has disguised the most im- 
 portant difficulties, whether he has been 
 disingenuous, whether, like unto the 
 enemies of human reason, he has had 
 recourse to subterfuges, to sophisms, 
 and to subtile distinctions, which ought 
 
 * Dexit insipiens in corde suo non est Deus. 
 In taking away the negation, the proposition 
 would be nearer truth. Those who shall be 
 disposed to see the abuse which theological 
 spleen knows how to scatter upon atheists, 
 have only to read a work of Doctor Bentley, 
 entitled, The. Folly of Atiidsm: it is trans- 
 lated into Latin, in octavo. 
 
 t In seeing the theologians so frequently 
 accuse the atheists with being absurd, we 
 should be tempted to believe that they have 
 no idea of that which the atheists have to 
 oppose to them ; it is true, they have estab- 
 lished an excellent method; the priests say 
 and publish what they please, whilst their ad- 
 versaries can never defend themselves. 
 
 always to make it be suspected of those 
 who use them, either that they do not 
 know, or that they fear the truth. It 
 belongs, then, to candour, to disinter- 
 estedness, and to reason, to judge 
 whether the natural principles, which 
 have been here brought forward, be 
 destitute of foundation ; it is to these 
 upright judges, that a disciple of na- 
 ture submits his opinions ; he has a 
 right to except against the judgment 
 of enthusiasm, of presumptuous igno- 
 rance, and interested knavery. Those 
 persons who are accustomed to think, 
 will, at least, find reasons to doubt 
 many of those marvellous notions, 
 which appear as incontestable truths, 
 only to those who have never examin- 
 ed them by the standard of good sense. 
 We agree with Derham that atheists 
 are rare ; superstition has so disfigured 
 nature, and its rights ; enthusiasm has 
 so dazzled the human mind ; terrour 
 has so disturbed the hearts of men ; 
 imposture and tyranny have so en- 
 slaved thought; in fine, errour, igno- 
 rance, and delirium, have so perplexed 
 and entangled the clearest ideas, that 
 nothing is more uncommon, than to 
 find men who have sufficient courage to 
 undeceive themselves of notions, which 
 every thing conspires to identify with 
 their existence. Indeed, many theolo- 
 gians, in despite of those invectives 
 with which they attempt to overwhelm 
 atheists, appear frequently to have 
 doubted whether any existed in the 
 world, or if there were persons who 
 could honestly deny the existence of 
 a God.* Their uncertainty was, with- 
 
 * Those same persons, who at the present 
 day discover atheism to be such a strange 
 system, admit there could have been atheists 
 formerly. Is it, then, that nature has endued 
 us with a less portion of reason than she did 
 men of other times ? Or should it be that the 
 God of the present day would be less absurd 
 than the Gods of antiquity ? Has the human 
 species then acquired information; with re- 
 spect to this concealed motive-power of na- 
 ture 1 Is the God of modern mythology, re- 
 jected by Vanini, Hobbes, Spinosa, ana some 
 others, more to be credited than the Gods of 
 the pagan mythology, rejected by Epicurus, 
 Strato, Theodoras, Diagoras, &c. &c. ? Ter- 
 tullian pretended that Christianity had dissi- 
 pated that ignorance in which the pagans 
 were immersed, respecting the divine essence, 
 and that there was not an artisan among the 
 Christians who did not see God, and who did 
 not know him. Nevertheless, Tertullian him- 
 self admitted a corporeal God, and was there-
 
 304 
 
 DEFENCE OF THE SENTIMENTS 
 
 out doubt, founded upon the absurd 
 ideas which they ascribe to their ad- 
 versaries, whom they have unceasingly 
 accused of attributing every thing to 
 chance, to blind causes, to dead and 
 inert matter, incapable of acting by 
 itself. We have, I think, sufficiently 
 justified the partisans of nature, from 
 these ridiculous accusations ; we have, 
 throughout the whole, proved, and we 
 repeat it, that chance is a word devoid 
 of sense, which, as well as the word 
 God, announces nothing but an igno- 
 rance of true causes. We have de- 
 monstrated that matter is not dead ; 
 that nature, essentially active, and self- 
 existent, had sufficient energy to pro- 
 duce all the beings which it contains, 
 and all the phenomena which we be- 
 hold. We have, throughout, proved, 
 that this jcause was much more real, 
 and more easy to be conceived than 
 the fictitious, contradictory, inconceiv- 
 able, and impossible cause, to which 
 theology ascribes the honour of those 
 great effects which it admires. We 
 have made it evident, that the incom- 
 prehensibility of natural effects was 
 not a sufficient reason for assigning 
 them a cause, still more incomprehen- 
 sible than all those of which we can 
 have a knowledge. In fine, if the in- 
 comprehensibility of God does not 
 authorize us to deny his existence, it 
 is at least certain that the incompati- 
 bility of the attributes which they ac- 
 cord to him, authorizes us to deny that 
 the being who unites them can be any 
 thing more than a chimera, of which 
 the existence is impossible. 
 
 This granted, we shall be able to fix 
 the sense that ought to be attached to 
 the name of atheist, which, notwith- 
 standing, the theologians, lavish in- 
 discriminately upon all those who de- 
 viate in any thing from their revered 
 opinion. If by atheist, be designated 
 a man who denies the existence of a 
 power inherent in matter, and without 
 which we cannot conceive nature, and 
 if it be to this power that the name of 
 God is given, there do not exist any 
 atheists, and the word under which 
 they are designated would only an- 
 nounce fools : but, if by atheists, be 
 understood men without enthusiasm, 
 
 fore an atheist, according to the notions of 
 modern theology. See the note to chap. iv. 
 of this volume, page 237. 
 
 guided by experience, and the evidence 
 of their senses, who see nothing in na- 
 ture but that which they find really to 
 have existence, or that which they are 
 capacitated to know ; who do not per- 
 ceive, and cannot perceive, any thing 
 but matter, essentially active and move- 
 able, diversely combined, enjoying from 
 itself various properties, and capable 
 of producing all the beings which dis- 
 play themselves to our visual faculties : 
 if by atheists, be understood, natural 
 philosophers, who are convinced that, 
 without recurring toa chimerical cause, 
 they can explain every thing simply 
 by the laws of motion, by the relations 
 subsisting between beings, by their 
 affinities, their analogies, their attrac- 
 tion, and their repulsion ; by their pro- 
 portions, their composition, and their 
 decomposition :* if by atheists be un- 
 derstood those persons who do not 
 know what a spirit is, and who do not 
 see the necessity of spiritualizing, or 
 of rendering incomprehensible those 
 corporeal, sensible, and natural causes, 
 which they see act uniformly ; who do 
 not find that to separate the motive- 
 power from the universe, to give it to 
 a being placed out of the great whole, 
 to a being of an essence totally incon- 
 ceivable, and whose abode cannot be 
 shown, is a means of becoming better 
 acquainted with it : if, by atheists, be 
 understood those men who ingenuous- 
 ly allow that their mind cannot con- 
 ceive nor reconcile the negative attri- 
 butes, and the theological abstractions, 
 with the human and moral qualities, 
 
 * Dr. Cudworth, in his Sysfema Intdlec- 
 tuale, chap. ii. reckons four species of atheists 
 among the ancients: 1st, The disciples of 
 Anaximander, called Hylopathians, who at- 
 tributed the formation of every thing to mat- 
 ter, destitute of feeling. 2d, The atomists, or 
 the disciples of Democritus, who attributed 
 every thing to the concurrence of atoms. 3d, 
 The stoical atheists, who admitted a blind 
 nature, hut acting under certain laws. 4th, 
 The Hylpzoists, or the disciples of Strato, 
 who attributed life to matter. It is well to 
 observe, that the most learned natural philos- 
 ophers of antiquity have been atheists, either 
 openly or secretly ; but their doctrine was al- 
 ways opposed by the superstition of the un- 
 informed, and almost totally eclipsed by the 
 fanatical and marvellous philosophy of Py- 
 thagoras, and above all by that of Plato. So 
 true it is, that, enthusiasm, and that which is 
 vague and obscure, commonly prevail over 
 that which is simple, natural, and intelligible. 
 --SeeLe Cltrc's Select Pieces, vol. ii.
 
 CONTAINED IN THIS WORK. 
 
 305 
 
 which are attributed to the Divinity ; 
 or those men, who pretend that from 
 this incompatible alliance, there can 
 only result an imaginary being, seeing 
 that a pure spirit is destitute of the or- 
 gans necessary to exercise the qualities 
 and faculties of human nature : if by 
 atheists be designated those men who 
 reject a phantom, of whom the odious 
 and discordant qualities are calculated 
 only to disturb the human species, and 
 plunge it into very prejudicial follies: 
 if, I say, thinkers of this sort, are those 
 who are called atheists, it is not possi- 
 ble to doubt of their existence; and 
 there would be found a considerable 
 number of them, if the lights of sound 
 natural philosophy, and of just reason, 
 were more generally diffused ; from 
 thence they would neither be consid- 
 ered as irrational, nor as furious beings, 
 but as men devoid of prejudice, of 
 whom the opinions, or, if they will, the 
 ignorance, would be much more useful 
 to the human species, than those sci- 
 ences, and those vain hypotheses, which 
 have so long been the true causes of 
 all man's sorrows. 
 
 On the other hand, if by atheists, 
 it is wished to designate those men 
 who are themselves obliged to avow 
 that they have no one idea of the chi- 
 mera whom they adore, or which they 
 announce to others ; who cannot ren- 
 der themselves an account, either of 
 the nature, or-of the essence of their 
 deified phantom ; who can never agree 
 amongst themselves, upon the proofs 
 of the existence of their God, of his 
 qualities, or of his mode of action ; 
 Avho, by dint of negations, have made 
 him a pure nothing; who prostrate 
 themselves, or cause others to fall pros- 
 trate, before the absurd fictions of their 
 own delirium ; if, I say, by 'atheists, 
 be designated men of this kind, we 
 shall be obliged to allow that the world 
 is filled with atheists ; and we shall 
 even be obliged to place in this num- 
 ber the most active theologians who 
 are unceasingly reasoning upon that 
 which they do not understand ; who 
 are disputing upon a being of whom i 
 they cannot demonstrate the existence ; I 
 who by their contradictions very effi- j 
 caciously undermine his existence : , 
 who annihilate their perfect good be- 
 ing, by the numberless imperfections 
 which they ascribe to him ; who rebel 
 
 No. X. 39 
 
 against this God, by the atrocious char- 
 acter under which they depict him. 
 In short, we shall be able to consider, 
 as true atheists, those credulous people, 
 who, upon hearsay, and from tradition, 
 fall upon their knees before a being of 
 whom they have no other ideas,- than 
 those which are furnished them by 
 their spiritual guides, who themselves 
 acknowledge that they comprehend no- 
 thing about the matter. An atheist is 
 a man who does not believe the exist- 
 ence of a God ; npw, no one can be 
 certain of the existence of a being whom 
 he does not conceive, and who is said 
 to unite incompatible qualities. 
 
 What has been said, proves that the 
 theologians themselves, have not al- 
 ways known the sense which they 
 would attach to the word atheist ; they 
 have vaguely calumniated and com- 
 bated them as persons, whose senti- 
 ments and principles were opposed to 
 their own. Indeed, we find that these 
 sublime doctors, always infatuated with 
 their own particular opinions, have fre- 
 quently been lavish in their accusations 
 of atheism, against all those whom they 
 were disposed to injure and to blacken, 
 and whose systems they sought to ren- 
 der odious : they were certain of alarm- 
 ing the uninformed and the silly, by 
 vague imputation, or by a word to 
 which ignorance attaches an idea of 
 terrour, because they have no know- 
 ledge of its true sense. In consequence 
 of this policy, we have frequently seen 
 the partisans of the same religious sect, 
 the adorers of the same God, recipro- 
 cally treat each other as atheist, in the 
 heat of their theological quarrels: to 
 be an atheist, in this sense, is not to 
 have, in every point, exactly the same 
 opinions as those with whom we dis- 
 pute upon religion. In all times, the 
 uninformed have considered those as 
 atheists, who did not think of the Di- 
 vinity, precisely in the same manner as 
 the guides whom they were accus- 
 tomed to follow. Socrates, the adorer 
 of a unique God, was no more than an 
 atheist in the eyes of the Athenian 
 people. 
 
 Still more, as we have already ob- 
 served, those persons have frequer 
 been accused of atheism, who 
 taken the greatest pains to e r 
 the existence of a God, but - 
 not produced satisfactory
 
 306 
 
 ATHEISM COMPATIBLE WITH MORALITY. 
 
 When on a similar subject the proofs 
 were frail and perishable, it was easy 
 for their enemies to make them pass 
 for atheists, who have wickedly be- 
 trayed the cause of the Divinity by 
 defending him too feebly. I shall here 
 stop, to show what little foundation 
 there is, for that which is said to be an 
 evident truth, whilst it is so frequently 
 attempted to be proved, and yet can 
 never be verified, even to the satisfac- 
 tion of those who boast so much of 
 being intimately convinced of it; at 
 least, it is certain, that in examining 
 the principles of those who have es- 
 sayed to prove the existence of God, 
 they have been generally, found weak 
 or false, because they could not be 
 either solid or true ; the theologians 
 themselves, have been obliged to dis- 
 cover, that their adversaries could draw 
 from them inductions quite contrary to 
 those notions, which they have an in- 
 terest in maintaining ; in consequence, 
 they have been frequently very highly 
 incensed, against those who believed 
 they had discovered the most forcible 
 proofs of the existence of their God ; 
 they did not perceive, that it was im- 
 possible not to lay themselves open to 
 attack in establishing principles, or sys- 
 tems, visibly founded upon an imagin- 
 ary and contradictory being, which each 
 man sees variously.* 
 
 In a word, all those who have taken 
 the cause of the theological God in 
 
 * What can we think of the sentiments of 
 a man who expresses himself like Paschal, in 
 the eighth article of his thoughts, wherein he 
 discovers a most complete' incertitude upon 
 the existence of God? "I have examined," 
 says he, " if this God, of whom all the world 
 speak, might not have left some marks of 
 himself. I look every where, and every where 
 I see nothing but obscurity. Nature offers 
 me nothing, that may not be a matter of 
 doubt and inquietude. If I saw nothing in 
 nature which indicated a Divinity, I should 
 determine with myself to believe nothing 
 about it. If I every where saw the sign of a 
 creator, I should repose myself in peace, in 
 the belief of one. But seeing too much to 
 deny, and too little to assure me of his exist- 
 ence, I am in a situation that I lament, and in 
 which I have a hundred times wished, that if 
 a God does sustain nature, he would give un- 
 equivocal marks of it, and that if the signs 
 \vnich he has given be deceitful, that he would 
 suppress them entirely : that he said all or 
 nothing, to the end that I might see which 
 side I ought to follow." Here is the state of a 
 good mind, wrestling with the prejudice* that 
 enslave it. 
 
 hand, with the most vigour, have been 
 taxed with atheism and irreligion ; his 
 most zealous partisans have been looked 
 upon as deserters and traitors ; the most 
 religious theologians have not been 
 able to guaranty themselves from. this 
 reproach ; they have mutually lavished 
 it on each other, and all have, without 
 doubt, merited it, if by atheists be 
 designated those men who have not 
 any idea of their God which does not 
 destroy itself, as soon as they are wil- 
 ling to submit it to the touchstone of 
 reason.! 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Is Atheism compatible with Morality 7 
 
 AFTER having proved the existence 
 of atheists, let us return to the calum- 
 nies which are lavished upon them, 
 by the deicoiists. " An atheist," ac- 
 cording to Abbadie, " cannot be virtu- 
 ous ; to him virtue is only a chimera, 
 probity no more than a vain scruple, 
 honesty nothing but foolishness. He 
 knows no other law than his interest j, 
 where this sentiment prevails, con- 
 science is only a prejudice, the law of 
 nature only an illusion, right no more 
 than errour ; benevolence has no longer 
 any foundation ; the bonds of society 
 are loosened ; fidelity is removed ; the 
 friend is ready to betray his friend ; the 
 citizen to deliver up his country ; the 
 son to assassinate his father in order 
 to enjoy his inheritance, whenever he 
 shall find an occasion, and that au- 
 
 t Whence we may conclude that errour will 
 not stand the test of investigation that it 
 will not pass the ordeal of comparison that 
 it is in its hues a perfect chameleon, that con- 
 sequently it can never do more than lead to* 
 the most absurd deductions. Indeed, the most 
 ingenious systems, when they have their 
 foundations m hallucination^ crumble like dust 
 under the rude hand of the essayer : the most 
 sublinated doctrines, when they lack the sub- 
 stantive quality of rectitude, evaporate under 
 the scrutiny of the sturdy examiner who tries 
 them in the crucible. It is not, therefore, by 
 levelling abusive language against those who 
 investigate sophisticated theories, that they 
 will either be purged of their absurdities, ac- 
 quire solidity, or find an establishment to give 
 them perpetuity. In short, moral obliquities- 
 can never be made rectilinear by the mere ap- 
 plication of unintelligible terms, or by the in- 
 considerate jumble of discrepant properties, 
 however gaudy the assemblage.
 
 ATHEISM COMPATIBLE WITH MORALITY. 
 
 307 
 
 thority or silence, will shield him from 
 the arm of the secular power, which 
 alone is to be feared. The most invio- 
 lable rights, and the most sacred laws, 
 must no longer be considered, but as 
 dreams and visions."* 
 
 Such, perhaps, would be the conduct, 
 not of a thinking, feeling, and reflecting 
 being, susceptible of reason, but of a 
 ferocious brute, of an irrational crea- 
 ture, who should not have any idea of 
 the natural relations which subsist be- 
 tween beings necessary to their recip- 
 rocal happiness. Can it be supposed, 
 that a man, capable of experience, fur- 
 nished with the faintest glimmerings 
 of good sense, would lend himself to 
 the conduct which is here ascribed to 
 the atheist, that is to say, to a man, 
 who is sufficiently susceptible of reflec- 
 tion to undeceive himself by reasoning 
 upon those prejudices, which every 
 thing strives to show him as important 
 and sacred 1 Can it, I say, be sup- 
 posed, that there is, in any polished so- 
 ciety, a citizen sufficiently blind not to 
 acknowledge his most natural duties, 
 his dearest interests, the danger which 
 he runs in disturbing his fellow-crea- 
 tures, or in following no other rule than 
 his momentary appetites 1 A being, 
 who reasons the least in the world, is 
 he not obliged to feel that society is 
 advantageous to him, that he has need 
 of assistance, that the esteem of his 
 fellow-creatures is necessary to his 
 happiness, that he has every thing to 
 fear from the wrath of his associates, 
 that the laws menace whoever dare 
 infringe them? Every man, who has 
 received a virtuous education, who has 
 in his infancy experienced the tender 
 cares of a father, who has in conse- 
 quence tasted the sweetness of friend- 
 ship, who has received kindness, who 
 knows the value of benevolence and 
 equity, who feels the pleasure which 
 the affection of our fellow-creatures 
 procures for us, and the inconvenience? 
 which result from their aversion and 
 their contempt, is he not obliged to 
 tremble at losing such manifest ad- 
 vantages, and at incurring by his con- 
 duct such visible dangers 1 Will not 
 the hatred, the fear, the contempt of 
 himself, disturb his repose, every time 
 
 * See Abbadie on the Truth of the. Chris- 
 tian Religion, vol. i. chap. xvii. 
 
 that, turning inwardly upon his own 
 conduct, he shall contemplate himself 
 Avith the same eyes as others? Is there, 
 then, no remorse, but for those who be- 
 lieve in a God ? The idea of being 
 seen by a being of whom we have at 
 best very vague notions, is it more for- 
 cible, than the idea of being seen by 
 men, of being seen by ourselves, of 
 being obliged to fear, of being in the 
 cruel necessity of hating ourselves, and 
 to blush in thinking of our conduct, 
 and of the sentiments which it must 
 infallibly inspire? 
 
 This granted, we shall reply, delibe- 
 rately, to this Abbadie, that an atheist 
 is a man who knows nature and its 
 laws, who knows his own nature, and 
 who knows what it imposes upon him. 
 An atheist has experience, and this ex- 
 perience proves to him, every moment, 
 that vice can injure him, that his most 
 concealed faults, that his most secret 
 dispositions may be detected and dis- 
 play him in open day ; this experience 
 proves to him that society is useful to 
 his happiness ; that his interest de- 
 mands he should attach himself to the 
 country w r hich protects him, and which 
 enables him to enjoy in security the 
 benefits of nature ; every thing shows 
 him, that in order to be happy, he must 
 make himself beloved ; that his father 
 is for him the most certain of friends ; 
 that ingratitude would remove from 
 him his benefactor; that justice is ne- 
 cessary to the maintenance of every 
 association ; and that no man, what- 
 ever may be his power, can be content 
 with himself, when he knows he is an 
 object of public hatred. 
 
 He who has maturely reflected upon 
 himself, upon his own nature, and upon 
 that of his associates, upon his own 
 wants, and upon the means of satisfy- 
 ing them, cannot be prevented from 
 knowing his duties, from discovering 
 that which he owes to himself, and that 
 which he owes to others ; then he has 
 morality, he has real motives to con- 
 form himself to its dictates ; he is 
 obliged to feel that these duties are 
 necessary; an'l if hi? reason be not 
 disturbed by blind passions, or by vi- 
 cious habits, he will feel that virtue is 
 for all men the surest road to felicity. 
 The atheists, or the fatalists, found all 
 their systems upon necessity ; thus, 
 their moral speculations, founded upon
 
 308 
 
 ATHEISM COMPATIBLE WITH MORALITY. 
 
 the necessity of things, are at least, 
 much more permanent and more in- 
 variable than those which only rest 
 upon a God who changes his aspect 
 according to the dispositions and the 
 passions of all those who contemplate 
 him. The nature of things, and its 
 immutable laws, are not subject to 
 vary ; the atheist is always obliged to 
 call that which injures him, vice and 
 folly ; to call that which is advantage- 
 ous to society, or which contributes to 
 its permanent happiness, virtue. 
 
 We see, then, that the principles of 
 the atheist are much less liable to be 
 shaken than those of the enthusiast, 
 who founds his morality upon an ima- 
 ginary being, of whom the idea so fre- 
 quently varies, even in his own brain. 
 If the atheist deny the existence of a 
 God, he cannot deny his own exist- 
 ence, nor that of beings similar to him- 
 self with whom he sees himself sur- 
 rounded ; he cannot doubt the relations 
 which subsist between them and him, 
 he cannot question the necessity of the 
 duties which flow from these relations; 
 he cannot, then, be dubious on the 
 principles of morality, which is nothing 
 more than the science of the relations 
 subsisting between beings living to- 
 gether in society. 
 
 If, satisfied with a barren speculative 
 knowledge of his duties, the atheist 
 do not apply them to his conduct ; if 
 hurried aAvay by his passions, or by 
 criminal habits, if given up to shame- 
 ful vices, if possessing a vicious tem- 
 perament, he appear to forget his mo- 
 ral principles, it does not follow that 
 he has no principles, or that his prin- 
 ciples are false ; it can only be con- 
 cluded from such conduct, that, in the 
 intoxication of his passions, in the con- 
 fusion of his reason, he does not put in 
 practice speculations extremely true ; 
 that he forgets principles ascertained, 
 to follow those propensities which lead 
 him astray. 
 
 Nothing is more common amongst 
 men than a very marked discrepance 
 between the mind and the heart ; that 
 is to say, between the temperament, 
 the passions, the habits, the whims, 
 the imagination, and the mind, or the 
 judgment, assisted by reflection. No- 
 thing is more rare, than to find these 
 things in harmony ; it is then that we 
 see speculation influence practice. The 
 
 most certain virtues, are those which 
 are founded upon the temperament of 
 men. Indeed, do we not every day see 
 mortals in contradiction with them- 
 selves? Does not their judgment un- 
 ceasingly condemn the extravagances 
 to which their passions deliver them 
 up ?. In short, does not every thing 
 prove to -us, that men, with the best 
 theory, have sometimes the worst prac- 
 tice ; and with the most vicious theory, 
 have frequently the most estimable con- 
 duct ? In the blindest, the most atro- 
 cious superstitions, and those which 
 are the most contrary to reason, we 
 meet with virtuous men ; the mildness 
 of their character, the sensibility of 
 their heart, the excellence of their tem- 
 perament, reconduct them to humanity, 
 and to the laws of nature, in despite of 
 their furious theories. Amongst the 
 adorers of a cruel, vindictive, and jeal- 
 ous God, we find peaceable minds, who 
 are enemies to persecution, to violence, 
 and to cruelty ; and amongst the dis- 
 ciples of a God filled with mercy and 
 clemency, we see monsters of barbarity 
 and inhumanity. Nevertheless, the 
 one and the other acknowledge that 
 their God ought to serve them for a 
 model : wherefore do they not conform 
 themselves to him ? It is because the 
 temperament of man is always more 
 powerful than his God ; it is because 
 the most wicked Gods cannot always 
 corrupt a virtuous mind, and that the 
 most gentle Gods cannot always re- 
 strain hearts driven along Ly crime. 
 The organization will always be more 
 puissant than religion: present objects, 
 momentary interests, rooted habits, 
 public opinion, have much more power 
 than imaginary beings, or than theories 
 which themselves depend upon the 
 organization of man. 
 
 The point in question, then, is to 
 examine if the principles of the atheist 
 are true, and not if his conduct is com- 
 mendable. An atheist, who, having 
 an excellent theory, founded upon na- 
 ture, experience, and reason, delivers 
 himself up to excesses, dangerous to 
 himself, and injurious to society, is, 
 without doubt, an inconsistent man. 
 But he is not more to be feared than a 
 religious and zealous man, who. be- 
 lieving in a good, equitable, and per- 
 fect God, does not scruple to commit 
 the most frightful excesses in his name.
 
 ATHEISM COMPATIBLE WITH MORALITY. 
 
 303 
 
 
 
 An atheistical tyrant would not be 
 more to be dreaded than a fanatical 
 tyrant. An incredulous philosopher is 
 not so dreadful as an enthusiastic priest, 
 who fans the flame of discord among 
 his fellow-citizens. Would then an 
 atheist, clothed with power, be equally 
 dangerous as a persecuting king, a 
 savage inquisitor, a whimsical devotee, 
 or a morose bigot ? These are assured- 
 ly more numerous than atheists, of 
 whom the opinions and the vices are 
 far from heing in a condition to have 
 an influence upon society, which is 
 too much blinded by prejudice to be 
 disposed to give them a hearing. 
 
 An intemperate and voluptuous athe- 
 ist, is not a man more to be feared than 
 he who is superstitious, who knows 
 how to connect licentiousness, libertin- 
 ism, and corruption of morals, with his 
 religious notions. Can it be imagined, 
 with sincerity, that a man, because he 
 is an atheist, or because he does not 
 fear the vengeance of Gods, will be 
 continually intoxicated, will corrupt 
 the wife of his friend, will break open 
 his neighbour's dwelling, and permit 
 himself to commit all those excesses, 
 which are the most prejudicial to him- 
 self, or the most deserving of punish- 
 ment ? The blemishes of an atheist, 
 have not, then, any thing more extra- 
 ordinary in them, than those of the re- 
 ligious man, they have nothing to re- 
 proach his doctrine with. A tyrant, 
 who should be incredulous, would not 
 be a more incommodious scourge to 
 his subjects than a religious tyrant ; 
 would the people of the latter be more 
 happy from the circumstance that the 
 tiger who governed them believed in 
 a God, heaped presents upon his priests, 
 and humiliated himself at their feet 1 
 At least, under the dominion of an 
 atheist, they would not have to appre- 
 hend religious vexations, persecutions 
 for opinions, proscriptions, or those 
 strange outrages, for which the in- 
 terests of Heaven are frequently the 
 pretext, under the mildest princes. If 
 a nation be the victim of the passions 
 and the folly of a sovereign who is an 
 infidel, it will not, at least, suffer from 
 his blind infatuation for theological 
 systems, which he does not under- 
 stand, nor from his fanatical zeal, which 
 of all the passions that infest kings, is 
 always the most destructive and the 
 
 most dangerous. An atheistical tyrant, 
 who should persecute for opinions, 
 would be a man not consistent with 
 his principles ; he would only furnish 
 one more example, that mortals much 
 more frequently follo\v their passions, 
 their interests, their temperaments, 
 than their speculations. It is, at least, 
 evident, that an atheist has one pretext 
 less than a credulous prince, for exer- 
 cising his natural wickedness. 
 
 Indeed, if men condescended to ex- 
 amine things coolly, they would find 
 that the name of God is never made 
 use of on earth, but for a pretext to in- 
 dulge their passions. Ambition, im- 
 posture, and tyranny, have formed a 
 league, to avail themselves of its in- 
 fluence, to the end that they may blind 
 the people, and bend them beneath 
 their yoke. The monarch makes use 
 of it, to give a divine lustre to his per- 
 son, the sanction of Heaven to his 
 rights, and the confidence of its oracles 
 to his most unjust and most extrava- 
 gant whims. The priest uses it, to 
 give currency to his pretensions, to 
 the end that he may, with impunity, 
 gratify his avarice, pride, and inde- 
 pendence. The vindictive and en- 
 raged superstitious being introduces 
 the cause of his God, that he may give 
 free scope to his fury, which he quali- 
 fies with zeal. In short, religion be- 
 comes dangerous, because it justifies 
 and renders legitimate or commendable 
 those passions and crimes, of which it 
 gathers the fruit : according to its min- 
 isters, every thing is permitted to re- 
 venge the Most High; thus the Di- 
 vinity appears to be made only to au- 
 thorize and palliate the most injurious 
 transgressions. The atheist, when he 
 commits crimes, cannot, at least, pre- 
 tend that it is his God who commands 
 and approves them ; this is the excuse 
 which the superstitious being offers up 
 for his wickedness ; the tyrant for his 
 persecutions ; the priest for his cruelty 
 and sedition; the fanatic for his ex- 
 cesses ; the penitent for his inutility. 
 
 " They are not," says Bayle, " the 
 general opinions of the mind, which 
 determine us to act, but the passions." 
 Atheism is a system, which will not 
 make a good man wicked, neither will 
 it make a wicked man good. " Those," 
 says the same author, " who embraced 
 the sect of Epicurus, did not become
 
 310 
 
 ATHEISM COMPATIBLE WITH MORALITY. 
 
 debauchees because they had embraced 
 the doctrine of Epicurus ; they only 
 embraced the doctrine of Epicurus, thea 
 badly understood, because they were 
 debauchees."* In the same manner, 
 a perverse man may embrace atheism, 
 because he will flatter himself, that this 
 system will give full scope to his pas- 
 sions? he will nevertheless be deceiv- 
 ed ; atheism, if Avell understood, is 
 founded upon nature and reason, which 
 never will, like religion, either justify 
 or expiate the crimes of the wicked. 
 
 From the doctrine which makes mo- 
 rality depend upon the existence and 
 the will of a God who is proposed to 
 men for a model, there unquestionably 
 results a very great inconvenience. 
 Corrupt minds, in discovering how 
 much each of these suppositions are 
 erroneous or doubtful, let loose the rein 
 of all their vices, and concluded that 
 there were no real motives to do good ; 
 they imagined that virtue, like the 
 Gods, was only a chimera, and that 
 there was not any reason for practising 
 it in this world. Nevertheless, it is 
 evident, that it is not as creatures of 
 God that we are bound to fulfil the 
 duties of morality ; it is as men, as sen- 
 sible beings, living together in society, 
 and seeking to secure ourselves a happy 
 existence, that we feel the moral obli- 
 gation. Whether there exists a God, 
 or whether he exists not, our duties 
 will be the same ; and our nature, if 
 consulted, Avill prove, that vice is an 
 evil, and that virtue is a real and 
 substantial good.\ 
 
 i 
 
 * See Bayle's Thoughts on Various Sub- 
 
 2'ects, sec. 177. Seneca has said before him : 
 ta non ab Epicure* impulsi luxuriantur, sed 
 vitiis dediti, luxuriam suam in philosophies 
 sinu abscondunt. See Seneca, de vita beata, 
 chap. xii. 
 
 t We are assured, that there have been 
 found philosophers and atheists, who deny 
 the distinction of vice and virtue, and \vho 
 have preached up debauchery and licentious- 
 ness of manners : in this number, may be 
 reckoned Aristippus, and Theodoras, sur- 
 named the Atheist, Bion, the Boristhenite, 
 Pyrrho, &c. amongst the ancients, (see Dio- 
 genes Laertius,) and amonst the moderns, 
 the author of the Fable of the Bees, which, 
 however, could only be intended to show, that 
 in the present constitution of things, vices 
 have identified themselves with nations, and 
 have become necessary to them, in the same 
 manner as strong liquors to those who have 
 habituated themselves to their use. The au- 
 thor who published the Man Automaton, ha? 
 
 If, then, there be found atheists, 
 who have denied the distinction of 
 good and evil, or who have dared to 
 strike at the foundation of all morality, 
 we ought to conclude, that upon this 
 point they have reasoned badly ; that 
 they have neither been acquainted with 
 the nature of man, nor known the 
 true source of his duties ; that they 
 have falsely imagined that morality 
 as well as theology, was only an ideal 
 science, and that the Gods once de- 
 stroyed, there remained no longer any 
 bonds to connect mortals. Never- 
 theless, the slightest reflection would 
 have proved to them that morality is 
 founded upon the immutable relations 
 subsisting between sensible, intelligent, 
 and sociable beings ; that without vir- 
 tue no society can maintain itself; that 
 without putting a curb on his desires, 
 no man can conserve himself. Men 
 are constrained from their nature to 
 love virtue, and to dread crime, by the 
 same necessity that obliges them to 
 seek happiness, and fly from sorrow ; 
 thus nature obliges them to place a 
 difference between those objects which 
 please them, and those which injure 
 them. Ask a man who is sufficiently 
 irrational to deny the difference be- 
 tween virtue and vice, if it would be 
 indifferent to him. to be beaten, robbed, 
 
 reasoned upei morality like a madman. If 
 all these authors had consulted nature upon 
 morality, as well as upon religion, they would 
 have found that, far from being conducive to 
 vice and depravity, it is conducive to virtue. 
 Nunquam aliud natura, aliud sapientia dicil. 
 
 Juvenal, sat. 14, v. 321. 
 Notwithstanding the pretended dangers 
 which so many people believe they see in 
 atheism, antiquity dia not judge of it so un- 
 favourably. Diogenes Laertius informs us, 
 that Epicurus was in great favour, that his 
 country caused statues to be erected to him, 
 that he had a prodigious number of friends, 
 and that his school subsisted for a very long 
 period. See Diogenes Laertius, x. 9. Cicero, 
 although an enemy to the opinions of the Epi- 
 cureans, gives a brilliant testimony to the prob- 
 ity of Epicurus and his disciples, who were 
 remarkable for the friendship they bore each 
 other. See Cicero de Finibus, ii. 25. The 
 philosophy of Epicurus was publicly taught 
 in Athens during many centuries, and Lactan- 
 tius says, that it was the most followed. 
 Epicuri disciplina multo celebrior semper fiiit 
 quam caeterorum. V. Institut. Divin. iii. 17. 
 In the time of Marcus Aurelius, there was at 
 Athens a public professor of the philosophy of 
 Epicurus, paid by that emperor, who was him- 
 self a stoic.
 
 ATHEISM COMPATIBLE WITH MORALITY. 
 
 311 
 
 calumniated, repaid with ingratitude, 
 dishonoured by his wife, insulted by 
 his children, and betrayed by his friend ? 
 His answer will prove to you, that, 
 whatever he may say, he makes a differ- 
 ence in the actions of men ; and that 
 the distinction of good and evil does 
 not depend either upon the conventions 
 of men, or upon the ideas which they 
 can have upon the Divinity ; upon the 
 punishments or upon the recompenses 
 Avhich he prepares them in the other 
 life. 
 
 On the contrary, an atheist, who 
 should reason with justness, would 
 feel himself much more interested than 
 another, in practising those virtues to 
 which he finds his happiness attached 
 in this world. If his views do not ex- 
 tend themselves beyond the limits of 
 his present existence, he must at least 
 # desire to see his days roll on in happi- 
 ness and in peace. Every man. who, 
 during the calm of his passions, falls 
 back upon himself, will feel that his 
 interest invites him to conserve him- 
 self; that his felicity demands that he 
 should take the necessary means to 
 enjoy life peaceably, and exempt from 
 alarm and remorse. Man owes some- 
 thing to man, not because he would 
 offend a God if he were to injure his 
 fellow-creature, but because, in doing 
 him an injury, he would offend a man, 
 and would violate the laws of equity, 
 in the maintenance of which, every be- 
 ing of the human species finds himself 
 interested. 
 
 We every day see persons who are 
 possessed of great talents, knowledge, 
 and penetration, join to them the most 
 hideous vices, and have a very corrupt 
 heart: their opinions may be true in 
 some respects, and false in a great 
 many others ; their principles may be 
 just, but the inductions which they 
 draw from them are frequently defec- 
 tive and precipitate. A man may have 
 at the same time sufficient knowledge 
 to undeceive himself of some of his 
 errours, and too little energy to divest 
 himself of his vicious propensities. 
 Men are only that which their organi- 
 zation, modified by habit, by education, 
 by example, by the government, by 
 transitory or permanent circumstances, 
 makes them. Their religious ideas 
 and their imaginary systems are obliged 
 to yield or accommodate themselves to 
 
 their temperaments, their propensities, 
 and their interests. If the system, 
 which makes man an atheist, does not 
 remove from him the vices Avhich he 
 had before, neither does it give him 
 any new ones : whereas, superstition 
 furnishes its disciples with a thousand 
 pretexts for committing evil without 
 remorse, and even to applaud them- 
 selves for the commission of crime. 
 Atheism, at least, leaves men such as 
 they are ; it will not render a man more 
 intemperate, more debauched, more 
 cruel, than his temperament before in- 
 vited him to be ; whereas superstition 
 gives loose to the most terrible pas- 
 sions, or else procures easy expia- 
 tions for the most dishonourable vices. 
 "Atheism," says Chancellor Bacon, 
 " leaves to man reason, philosophy, 
 natural piety, laws, reputation, and ev- 
 ery thing that can serve to conduct him 
 to virtue ; but superstition destroys all 
 these things, and erects itself into a 
 tyranny over the understandings of 
 men : this is the reason why atheism 
 never disturbs the government, but 
 renders man more clear-sighted, as see- 
 ing nothing beyond the bounds of this 
 life." The same author adds, that 
 " the times in which men have turned 
 towards atheism have been the most 
 tranquil : whereas superstition has al- 
 ways inflamed their minds and carried 
 them on to the greatest disorders, be- 
 cause it infatuates the people with nov- 
 elties, which wrest from, and carry 
 with them all the authority of govern- 
 ment."* 
 
 Men habituated to meditate, and to 
 make study a pleasure, are not com- 
 monly dangerous citizens ; whatever 
 may be their speculations, they never 
 produce sudden revolutions upon the 
 earth. The minds of the people, at all 
 times susceptible of being inflamed by 
 the marvellous and by enthusiasm, ob- 
 stinately resist the most simple truths, 
 and never heat themselves for systems 
 which demand a long train of reflec- 
 tion and reasoning. The system ot 
 atheism can only be the result of long 
 and connected study ; of an imagina- 
 tion cooled by experience and reason- 
 ing. The peaceable Epicurus nevier 
 disturbed Greece ; the poem of Lucre- 
 tius caused no civil wars in Rome; 
 
 * See the Moral Essays of Bacon.
 
 312 
 
 ATHEISM COMPATIBLE WITH MORALITY. 
 
 Bodin was not the author of the league ; 
 the writings of Spinosa have not ex- 
 cited the same troubles in Holland, as 
 the disputes of Gomar and d'Armi- 
 nius. Hobbes did not cause blood to 
 flow in England, although, in his time, 
 religious fanaticism made a king perish 
 on the scaffold. 
 
 In short, we can defy the enemies to 
 human reason to cite a single example 
 which proves, in a decisive manner, 
 that opinions purely philosophical, or 
 directly contrary to religion, have ever 
 excited disturbances in the state. Tu- 
 mults have always arisen from theolo- 
 gical opinions, because both princes and 
 people have always foolishly believed 
 they ought to take a part in them. 
 There is nothing so dangerous as that 
 empty philosophy which the theolo- 
 gians have combined with their sys- 
 tems. It is to philosophy corrupted by 
 priests, to which it peculiarly belongs 
 to fan the flames of discord, invite the 
 people to rebellion, and cause rivers of 
 blood to flow. There is no theological 
 question which has not occasioned im- 
 mense mischief to man ; whilst all the 
 writings of the atheists, whether an- 
 cient or modern, have never caused any 
 evil but to their authors, whom omnip- 
 otent imposture has frequently immo- 
 lated at his shrine. 
 
 The principles of atheism are not 
 formed for the mass of the people, who 
 are commonly under the tutelage of 
 their priests ; they are not calculated 
 for those frivolous and dissipated minds 
 who fill society with their vices and 
 their inutility ; they are not suited to 
 the ambitious, to those intriguers, and 
 xestless minds, Avho find their interest 
 in disturbing the harmony of the social 
 compact; much less are they made for 
 a great number of persons enlightened 
 in other respects, who have but very 
 rarely the courage to completely di- 
 vorce themselves from the received pre- 
 judices. 
 
 So many causes unite themselves to 
 confirm men in those errours, which 
 they have been made to suck in with 
 their mother's milk, that every step that 
 removes them from these fallacies, costs 
 them infinite pains. Those persons who 
 are most enlightened, frequently cling 
 on some side to the general prejudice. 
 We feel ourselves as it were isolated ; 
 we do not speak the language of socie- 
 
 ty, when we are alone in our opinions ; 
 it requires courage to adopt a mode of 
 thinking that has but few approvers. 
 In those countries where human know- 
 ledge has made some progress, and 
 where, besides, a certain freedom of 
 thinking is enjoyed, we can easily find 
 a great number of deists or of incred- 
 ulous beings, who, contented with hav- 
 ing trampled under the foot the grosser 
 prejudices of the uninformed, have not 
 dared to go back to the source, and cite 
 the Divinity himself before the tribunal 
 of reason. If these thinkers did not 
 stop on the road, reflection would quick- 
 ly prove to them, that the God whom 
 they have not the courage to examine, 
 is a being as injurious, and as revolt- 
 ing to good sense, as any of those doc- 
 trines, mysteries, fables, or supersti- 
 tious customs, of which they have al- 
 ready acknowledged the futility ; they 
 would feel, as we have already proved, 
 that all these things are no more than 
 the necessary consequences of those 
 primitive notions which men have in- 
 dulged respecting their divine phantom, 
 and that, in admitting this phantom, 
 they have no longer any rational cause 
 to reject those inductions which th 
 imagination must draw from it. A lit- 
 tle attention would show them that it 
 is precisely this phantom who is the 
 true cause of all the evils of society ; 
 that those endless quarrels, and those 
 bloody disputes to which religion and 
 the spirit of party every instant give 
 birth, are the inevitable effects of the 
 importance which they attach to a 
 chimera, ever calculated to kindle the 
 minds of men into combustion. In 
 short, it is easy to convince ourselves 
 that an imaginary being, who is al- 
 ways painted under a terrific aspect, 
 must act in a lively manner upon the 
 imagination, and must produce, sooner 
 or later, disputes, enthusiasm, fanati- 
 cism, and delirium. 
 
 Many persons acknowledge that the 
 extravagances to which religion gives 
 birth, are real evils; many persons 
 complain of the abuse of religion, 
 but there are very few who feel that 
 this abuse and these evils are the ne- 
 cessary consequences of the funda- 
 mental principles of all religion, which 
 can itself be founded only upon those 
 grievous notions which men are obliged 
 to form of the Divinity. We daily see
 
 ATHEISM COMPATIBLE WITH MORALITY. 
 
 313 
 
 persons undeceived upon religion, whu 
 pretend, nevertheless, that this religion 
 is necessary for the people, who coulc 
 not be kept within bounds without it 
 But, to reason thus, is it not to say 
 that poison is useful to the people, tha 
 it is proper to poison them, to preven 
 them from making a bad use of thci 
 power ? Is it not to pretend that it i: 
 advantageous to render them absurd 
 irrational, and extravagant; that they 
 have need of phantoms, calculated to 
 make them giddy, to blind them, anc 
 to submit them to fanatics or to impos- 
 tors, who will avail themselves of their 
 follies to disturb the repose of the 
 world 1 Besides, is it quite true tha 
 religion has a useful influence over 
 the morals of the people ? It is very 
 easy to see that it enslaves them with- 
 out rendering them better ; it makes a 
 herd of ignorant slaves, whom their 
 panic terrours keep under the yoke oi 
 tyrants and priests; it forms stupid 
 beings, who know no other virtue than 
 a blind submission to futile customs, 
 to which they attach a much greater 
 value than to real virtues, or to the du- 
 ties of morality, which have never been 
 made known to them. If, by chance, 
 this religion restrains some few timid 
 individuals, it does not restrain the 
 greatest number, who suffer themselves 
 to be hurried along by the epidemical 
 vices with which they are infected. It is 
 in those countries where superstition 
 has the greatest power, wherein we shall 
 always find the least morality. Vir- 
 tue is incompatible with ignorance, su- 
 perstition, and slavery ; slaves are only 
 kept in subordination by the fear of 
 punishments ; ignorant children are 
 intimidated only for an instant by ima- 
 ginary terrours. To form men, to have 
 virtuous citizens, it is necessary to in- 
 struct them, to show them truth, to 
 speak reason to them, to make them 
 feel their interests, to learn them to re- 
 spect themselves, and to fear shame ; 
 to excite in them the ideas of true hon- 
 oicr, to make them know the value of 
 virtue, and the motives for following 
 it. How can these happy effects be 
 expected from religion, which degrades 
 men, or from tyranny which only pro- 
 poses to itself to vanquish them, to 
 divide them, and to keep them in an 
 abject condition ? 
 
 The false ideas which so manv per- 
 No. X. 40 
 
 sons have of the utility of religion, 
 which they at least judge to be calcu- 
 lated to restrain the people, arise from 
 the fatal prejudice that there are use- 
 ful errours, and that truth may be dan- 
 gerous. This principle is completely 
 calculated to eternise the sorrows of the 
 earth ; whoever shall have the courage 
 to examine these things, will acknow- 
 ledge, without hesitation, that all the 
 miseries of the human species are to 
 be ascribed to their errours, and that 
 of these, religious errours must be the 
 most prejudicial from the haughtiness 
 with which they inspire sovereigns, 
 from the importance which is attached 
 to them, from the abject condition which 
 they prescribe to subjects, from the 
 phrensy which they excite among the 
 people : we shall therefore be obliged 
 to conclude, that the sacred errours of 
 men are those of which the interest of 
 mankind demands the most complete 
 destruction, and that it is principally 
 to the annihilation of them, that sound 
 philosophy ought to be employed. It 
 is not to be feared, that this attempt 
 will produce either disorders or revolu- 
 tions ; the more freedom with which 
 truth shall be spoken, the more con- 
 vincing it will appear ; the more sim- 
 ple it shall be, the less it will seduce 
 men who are smitten with the marvel- 
 lous ; even those men who seek after 
 truth with the most ardour, have an 
 irresistible inclination, that urges them 
 on, and incessantly disposes them to 
 reconcile errour with its opposite.* 
 
 Here is, unquestionably, the reason 
 why atheism, of which, hitherto, the 
 principles have not been sufficiently 
 developed, appears to alarm even those 
 sersons who are the most destitute of 
 jrejudice. They find the interval too 
 great between the vulgar superstition, 
 and absolute irreligion ; they believe 
 they take a wise medium, in com- 
 
 * The illustrious Bayle, who teaches us so 
 ably to think, says, with abundant reason, 
 hat " there is nothing but a good and solid 
 philosophy, which can like another Hercules, 
 exterminate those monsters called popular 
 jrrours : it is that alone which can set the 
 mind at liberty." See Thoughts on Various 
 Subjects, 21. Lucretius had said before him : 
 Hunc igitur terrorem animi, tenebrasque 
 
 necesse est 
 
 Non radii solis, neque lucida tela dici 
 Diacutiant, sod naturae species, ratioque. 
 lib. i. v. 147.
 
 314 
 
 MOTIVES WHICH LEAD TO ATHEISM, &c. 
 
 pounding with errour ; they reject the 
 consequence while admitting the prin- 
 ciple ; they preserve the phantom with- 
 out foreseeing that, sooner or later, it 
 must produce the same effects, and 
 give birth, one after another, to the 
 same follies in the heads of human 
 beings. The major part of the incred- 
 ulous and of the reformers, do no 
 more than prune a cankered tree, to 
 whose roots they have not dared to 
 apply the axe ; they do not see that 
 this tree will, in the end, reproduce 
 the same fruits. Theology, or religion, 
 will always be a heap of combustible 
 matter ; generated in the imagination 
 of mankind, it will always finish by 
 causing conflagrations. As long as 
 the sacerdotal order shall have the 
 privilege of infecting youth, of habitu- 
 ating it to tremble before words, of 
 alarming nations with the name of a 
 terrible God,, fanaticism will be master 
 of the mind, imposture will, at its 
 pleasure, sow discord in the state. 
 The most simple phantom, perpetually 
 fed, modified, and exaggerated by the 
 imagination of men, will by degrees 
 become a colossus sufficiently power- 
 ful to upset every mind and overthrow 
 empires. Deism is a system at which 
 the human mind cannot stop long; 
 founded upon a chimera, sooner or 
 later, it will be seen to degenerate into 
 an absurd and dangerous superstition. 
 Many incredulous beings, and many 
 deists are met with in those countries 
 where liberty of thought reigns ; that 
 is to say, where the civil power has 
 known how to counterbalance super- 
 stition. But above all, atheists will be 
 found in those nations, where super- 
 stition, backed by the sovereign author- 
 ity, makes the weight of its yoke felt, 
 and imprudently abuses its unlimited 
 power.* Indeed, when, in this kind 
 
 i * Atheists are, it is said, more rare in Eng- 
 land and in Protestant countries, where toler- 
 ation is established, than in Roman Catholic 
 countries, where the princes are commonly in- 
 tolerant and enemies to the liberty of thought. 
 In Japan, in Turkey, in Italy, and above all 
 in Rome, many atheists are found. The more 
 power superstition has, the more those minds 
 which it has not been able to subdue will re- 
 volt against it. It is Italy that produced Jor- 
 dano Bruno, Campanella, Vanini, &c. There 
 is every reason to believe, that had it not been 
 for the persecutions and ill treatment of the 
 synagogue, Spinosa would never have per- 
 
 of countries, science, talents, the seeds 
 of reflection are not entirely stifled : 
 the greater part of the men who think, 
 revolt at the crying abuses of religion, 
 at its multifarious follies, at the cor- 
 ruption and the tyranny of its priests, 
 at those chains which it imposes, be- 
 lieving with reason, that they can never 
 remove themselves too far from its 
 principles ; the God who serves for 
 the basis of such a religion, becomes 
 as odious to them as the religion it- 
 self; if this oppresses them they ascribe 
 it to God. they feel that a terrible, jeal- 
 ous, and vindictive God, must be served 
 by cruel ministers ; consequently, this 
 God becomes a detestable object to 
 every enlightened and honest mind 
 amongst whom are always found the 
 love of equity, liberty, humanity, and 
 indignation against tyranny. Oppres- 
 sion gives a spring to the soul, it obliges 
 man to examine closely the cause of 
 his sorrows ; misfortune is a powerful 
 incentive, that turns the mind to the 
 side of truth. How formidable must 
 not irritated reason be to falsehood ? 
 It tears away its mask, it follows it 
 even into its last entrenchment ; it at 
 least inwardly enjoys its confusion. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Of the Motives which lead to Atheism ? Can 
 this System be Dangerous ? Can it be Em- 
 braced by the Uninformed ? 
 
 THE preceding reflections will fur- 
 nish us wherewith to reply to those 
 who ask what interest men have in not 
 admitting a God? The tyrannies, the 
 persecutions, the numberless outrages 
 committed in the name of this God, 
 the stupidity and the slavery into which 
 
 haps promulgated his system. It may also 
 be presumed, that the horrours produced in 
 England by fanaticism, which cost Charles I. 
 his head, pushed Hobbes on to atheism : the 
 indignation which he also conceived at the 
 power of the priests, suggested, perhaps, his 
 principles so favourable to the absolute power 
 of kings. He believed that it was more ex- 
 pedient for a state to have a single civil des- 
 pot, a sovereign over religion itself, than to 
 nave a multitude of spiritual tyrants, always 
 ready to disturb it. Spinosa seduced by the 
 ideas of Hobbes, fell into the same errour in 
 his Tractates Tlieologico-Politicus, as well a 
 in his Treatise de Jure Ecclesiasiicorum.
 
 ..MOTIVES WHICH LEAD TO ATHEISM, &c. 
 
 315 
 
 the ministers of this God every where 
 plunge the people ; the bloody dispute:- 
 to which this God gives birth ; th< 
 number of unhappy beings with whicl 
 his fatal idea fills the world, are they 
 then not motives sufficiently powerful 
 sufficiently interesting to determine aL 
 sensible men who are capable of think- 
 ing, to examine the titles of a being 
 who causes so many evils to the in- 
 habitants of the earth ? 
 
 A theist, very estimable for his 
 talents, asks, if there can be any other 
 cause than an evil disposition which 
 can make men atheists ?* I reply to 
 him, yes, there are other causes ; there 
 is the desire of having a knowledge of 
 interesting truths ; there is the power- 
 ful interests of knowing what opinion 
 to hold upon the object which is an- 
 nounced to us as the most important ; 
 there is the fear of deceiving ourselves 
 upon the being who occupies himself 
 with the opinions of men, and who 
 does not permit that they should de- 
 ceive themselves respecting him with 
 impunity. But when these motives or 
 these causes should not subsist, are not 
 indignation, or. if they will, an evil dis- 
 position, legitimate causes, good and 
 powerful motives, for closely examin- 
 ing the pretensions and the rights of 
 an invisible tyrant, in whose name so 
 many crimes are committed on the 
 earth ? Can any man, who thinks, who 
 feels, who has any elasticity in his 
 soul, prevent himself from being in- 
 censed against an augtere despot, who 
 is visibly the pretext and the source 
 of all those evils with which the hu- 
 man species is assailed on every side ? 
 Is it not this fatal God who is at once 
 the cause and the pretext of that iron 
 yoke which oppresses men, of that 
 
 * See Lord Shaftesbury in his Lstter on 
 Enthusiasm. Spencer says, that "it is by 
 the cunning of the devil who strives to render 
 the Divinity hateful, that he is represented to 
 us under that revolting character which ren- 
 ders him like unto the head of Medusa, inso- 
 much that men are sometimes obliged to 
 plunare into atheism, inr order to dis^nnrnss 
 themselves from this hideous demon." "But 
 it might be said to Spencer, that the demon 
 if/io strives to render the Divinity haicful is 
 the interest of the clergy, which was in all 
 times and in every country, to terrify men, in 
 order to make them the slaves and the in- 
 struments of their passions. A God who 
 should not make men tremble would be of no 
 use whatever to the priests. 
 
 slavery in which they live, of that 
 blindness which covers them, of that 
 superstition which disgraces them, of 
 those irrational customs which torment 
 them, of those quarrels which divide 
 them, of those outrages which they 
 experience ? Must not every mind in 
 which humanity is not* extinguished, 
 irritate itself against a phantom, who, 
 in every country, is made to speak only 
 like a capricious, inhuman, and irra- 
 tional tyrant ? 
 
 To motives so natural, we shall join 
 those which are still more urgent and 
 personal to every man who reflects : 
 namely, that troublesome fear, which 
 must have birth, and be unceasingly 
 nourished by the idea of a capricious 
 God, so touchy, that he irritates him- 
 self against man, even for his most 
 secret thoughts, who can be offended 
 without our knowing it, and whom we 
 are never certain of pleasing ; who, 
 moreover, is not restrained by any of 
 the ordinary rules of justice, who owes 
 nothing to the feeble work of his hands, 
 who permits his creatures to have un- 
 happy propensities, who gives them 
 liberty to follow them, to the end that 
 he may have the odious satisfaction of 
 punishing them for faults, which he 
 suffers them to commit ? What can be 
 more reasonable, and more just, than 
 to verify the existence, the qualities, 
 and the rights of a judge, who is so 
 severe that he will everlastingly avenge 
 the crimes of a moment ? Would it 
 not be the height of folly, to wear with- 
 out inquietude, like the greater number 
 of mortals, the overwhelming yoke of 
 a God, always ready to crush us in 
 bis fury. The frightful qualities with 
 which the Divinity is disfigured by 
 those impostors who announce his de- 
 crees, oblige every rational being to 
 drive him from his heart, to shake off 
 iiis detestable yoke, and to deny the 
 existence of a God, who is rendered 
 lateful by the conduct which is as- 
 cribed to him ; to scorn a God who 
 is rendered ridiculous by those fables, 
 ivhich in every country are detailed of 
 him. If there existed a God who was 
 ealous of his glory, the crime the most 
 :alculated to irritate him would un- 
 questionably be the blasphemy of those 
 cnaves who unceasingly paint him un- 
 der the most revolting character; this 
 od ought to be much more offended
 
 31ft 
 
 MOTIVES WHICH LEAD TO ATH El S M, <tc.' 
 
 against his hideous ministers than 
 against those who deny his exist- 
 ence. The phantom which supersti- 
 tion adores, while cursing him at the 
 hottom of his heart, is an object so ter- 
 rible that every wise man who medi- 
 tates upon it. is obliged to refuse him 
 his homage, t<3 hate him, to prefer anni- 
 hilation to the fear of falling into his 
 cruel hands. It is frightful, the fa- 
 natic cries out to us, to fall into the 
 hands of the living God ; and in or- 
 der that he may escape falling into 
 them, the man who thinks maturely, 
 will throw himself into the arms of 
 nature ; and it is there alone that he 
 will find a safe asylum against those 
 continual storms, which supernatural 
 ideas produce in the mind. 
 
 The deist will not fail to tell the 
 atheist that God is not such as super- 
 stition paints him. But the atheist will 
 reply to him, that superstition itself, 
 and all the absurd and prejudicial no- 
 tions to which it gives birth, are only 
 corollaries of those false and obscure 
 principles which are held respecting 
 the Divinity. That his incomprehen- 
 sibility suffices to authorize the incom- 
 prehensible absurdities and mysteries 
 which are told of him, that these mys- 
 terious absurdities flow necessarily from 
 an absurd chimera which can only give 
 birth to other chimeras, which the be- 
 wildered imagination of mortals will 
 incessantly multiply. This fundamen- 
 tal chimera must be annihilated to as- 
 sure the repose of man, that he may 
 know his true relations and his duties, 
 and obtain that serenity of soul with- 
 out which there is no happiness on the 
 earth. If the God of the superstitious 
 be revolting and mournful, the God of 
 the theist will always be a contradicto- 
 ry being, who will become fatal, when 
 he shall meditate on him, or with which, 
 sooner or later, imposture will not fail 
 to abuse him. Nature alone, and the 
 truths which she discovers to us, are 
 capable of giving to the mind and to 
 the heart, a firmness, which falsehood 
 will not be able to shake. 
 
 Let us again reply to those who un- 
 ceasingly repeat, that the interest of 
 the passions alone conduct us to athe- 
 ism, and that it is the fear of punish- 
 ments to come, that determine corrupt 
 men to make efforts to annihilate this 
 judge whom they have reason to dread. 
 
 We shall, without hesitation, agree 
 that the interests and the passions of 
 men excite them to make inquiries ; 
 without interest no man is tempted to 
 seek ; without passion no man will 
 seek vigorously. The question, then, 
 to be examined here, is, if the passions 
 and interests, which determine some 
 thinkers to examine the rights of God, 
 are legitimate or not ? We have ex- 
 posed these interests, and we have 
 found that every rational man finds in 
 his inquietudes and his fears, reasona- 
 ble motives, to ascertain whether or 
 not it be necessary to pass his life in 
 perpetual fears and agonies ? Will it 
 be said, that an unhappy being, unjust- 
 ly condemned to groan in chains, has 
 not the right of desiring to break them, 
 or to take some means of liberating 
 himself from his prison, and from those 
 punishments which menace him at 
 each instant ? Will it be pretended 
 that his passion for liberty has no le- 
 gitimate foundation, and that he does 
 an injury to the companions of his 
 misery, in withdrawing himself from 
 the strokes of tyranny, and in furnish- 
 ing them with assistance to escape from 
 these strokes also ? Is, then, an in- 
 credulous man any thing more than 
 one who has escaped from the general 
 prison in which tyrannical imposture 
 detains all mankind? Is not an athe- 
 ist who writes, one that has escaped, 
 and furnishes to those of his associates, 
 who have sufficient courage to follow 
 him, the means of setting themselves 
 free from the terrours which menace 
 them ?* 
 
 * The priests unceasingly repeat that it is 
 pride, vanity, and the desire of distinguishing 
 himself from the generality of mankind, that 
 determines man to incredulity. In this they 
 act like the great, who treat all those as t'n- 
 solent, who refuse to cringe before them. 
 Would not every rational man have a right 
 to ask a priest, where is thy superiority in 
 matters of reasoning? What motives can I 
 have to submit my reason to thy delirium ? 
 On the other hand, may it not be said to the 
 clergy that it is interest which makes them 
 priests : that it is interest which renders them 
 theologians ; that it is the interest of their 
 passions, of their pride, of their avarice, of 
 their ambition, &c., which attaches them to 
 their systems, of which they alone reap the 
 benefits'? Whatever it may be, the priests, 
 contented with exercising their empire over 
 the uninformed, ought to permit those men 
 who think, not to bend their knee before their
 
 MOTIVES WHICH LEAD TO ATHEISM, &e. 
 
 317 
 
 We also agree, that frequently th( 
 co.ruption of morals, debauchery, li 
 centiousness, and even levity of mind 
 can conduct men to irreligion or to 
 incredulity ; but it is possible to be a 
 libertine, irreligious, and to make a 
 parade of incredulity, without being an 
 atheist on that account : there is un- 
 questionably a difference between those 
 who are led to irreligion by dint o: 
 reasoning, and those who reject or 
 despise religion, only because they 
 look upon it as a melancholy object, 
 or an incommodious restraint. Many 
 people renounce received prejudices 
 through vanity, or upon hearsay ; these 
 pretended strong minds have examined 
 nothing for themselves, they act on 
 the authority of others, whom they 
 suppose to have weighed things more 
 maturely. This kind of incredulous 
 beings have not, then, any certain 
 ideas, and are but little capacitated to 
 reason for themselves ; they are hardly 
 in a state to follow the reasoning of 
 others. They are irreligious in the 
 same manner as the majority of men 
 are religious, that is to say, by credu- 
 lity, like the people, or through interest, 
 like the priests. A voluptary, a de- 
 bauchee, buried in drunkenness ; an 
 ambitious mortal, an intriguer, a frivo- 
 lous and dissipated man, a loose woman, 
 a choice spirit of the day, are they 
 personages really capable of judging 
 of a religion which they have not deep- 
 ly examined and maturely weighed, 
 of feeling the force of an argument, of 
 comparing the whole of a system ? 
 If they sometimes discover some faint 
 glimmerings of truth amidst the tem- 
 pest of their passions, which blind them, 
 these leave on them only some evanes- 
 cent traces, no sooner received than 
 obliterated. Corrupt men attack the 
 Gods only when they conceive them 
 to be the enemies of their passions.* 
 
 vain idols. Tertullian has said, quis enim 
 philosophum sacrificare compellit I 
 
 See Tertull. Apolog. Chap. 614. 
 
 * Arian says, that when men imagine the 
 Gods are in opposition to their passions, they 
 abuse them and overturn their altars. 
 
 The bolder the sentiments of an atheist, 
 and the more strange and suspicious they 
 appear to other men, the more strictly and 
 scrupulously he ought to observe and to per- 
 form his duties, especially if he be not desir- 
 ous that hie morals should calumniate his 
 
 The honest man attacks them because 
 he finds they are inimical to virtue, in- 
 jurious to his happiness, contradictory 
 to his repose, and fatal to the human 
 species. 
 
 Whenever our will is moved by con- 
 cealed and complicated motives, it is 
 extremely difficult to decide what de- 
 termines it ; a wicked man may be led 
 to irreligion or to atheism by those 
 motives which he dare not avow even 
 to himself: he may form to himself an 
 illusion and only follow the interest of 
 his passions in believing he seeks after 
 truth ; the fear of an avenging God will 
 perhaps determine him to deny his 
 existence without much examination, 
 uniformly because he is incommodious 
 to him. Nevertheless, the passions 
 happen to be sometimes just ; a great 
 interest carries us on to examine things 
 more closely : it may frequently make 
 a discovery of the truth, even to him 
 who seeks after it the least, or who is 
 only desirous of being lulled asleep, 
 and of deceiving himself. It is the 
 same with a perverse man who stum- 
 bles upon the truth, as it is with him 
 who, flying from an imaginary danger, 
 should find in his road a dangerous 
 serpent, which in his haste he should 
 kill ; he does that by accident, and 
 without design, which a man less 
 trouble'd in his mind would have done 
 with premeditated deliberation. A 
 wicked man who fears his God, and 
 who would escape from him, may 
 certainly discover the absurdity of 
 ihose notions which are entertained of 
 nim, without discovering for that reason 
 that those same notions in no wise 
 change or alter the evidence and the 
 necessity of his duties. 
 
 To judge properly of things, it is 
 necessary to be disinterested ; it is 
 necessary to have an enlightened and 
 connected mind to compass a great 
 system. It belongs only to the honest 
 man, to examine the proofs of the ex- 
 stence of a God, and the principles of 
 religion ; it belongs only to the man 
 acquainted with nature and its ways, 
 o embrace with intelligence the cause 
 )f the System of Nature. The wicked 
 and the ignorant are incapable of judg- 
 
 iystem, which, duly weighed, will make the 
 necessity and the certitude of morality felt, 
 whilst every species of religion tends to render 
 
 t problematical, or even to corrupt it.
 
 319 
 
 MOTIVES WHICH LEAD TO ATHEISM, &c. 
 
 ing with candour ; the honest and vir- 
 tuous are alone competent judges in so 
 weighty an affair. What do I say ? is 
 not the virtuous man from thence in a 
 situation to desire the existence of a 
 God who remunerates the goodness of 
 men 1 If he renounce these advantages 
 which his virtue gives him the right to 
 hope for, it is because he finds them 
 imaginary, as well as the remunerator 
 who is announced to him ; and that in 
 reflecting on the character of this God, 
 he is obliged to acknowledge that it is 
 not possible to rely upon a capricious 
 despot, and that the enormities and 
 follies to which he serves as a pretext, 
 infinitely surpass the pitiful advantages 
 that can result from his idea. Indeed, 
 every man who reflects, quickly per- 
 ceives that for one timid mortal, of 
 whom this God restrains the feeble 
 passions, there are millions whom he 
 cannot curb, and of whom, on the con- 
 trary, he excites the fury ; for one that 
 he consoles, there are millions whom 
 he affrights, whom he afflicts, whom 
 he obliges to groan ; in short, he finds 
 that against one inconsistent enthu- 
 siast, which this God, whom he be- 
 lieves good, renders happy, he carries 
 discord, carnage, and affliction, into 
 vast countries, and plunges whole peo- 
 ple in grief and tears. 
 
 However this may be, do no\ let us 
 inquire into the motives which may 
 determine a man to embrace a system : 
 let us examine the system, let us con- 
 vince ourselves if it be true, and if we 
 shall find that it is founded upon truth, 
 we shall never be able to esteem it 
 dangerous. It is always falsehood 
 which injures men ; if errour be visibly 
 the source of their sorrows, reason is 
 the true remedy for them. Do not let 
 us farther examine the conduct of a 
 man who presents us with a system ; 
 his ideas, as we have already said, 
 may be extremely sound, when even 
 his actions are highly deserving cen- 
 sure. If the system of atheism cannot 
 render him perverse who is not so by 
 his temperament, it cannot render him 
 good who does not otherwise know the 
 motives which should conduct him to 
 virtue. At least, we have proved that 
 the superstitious man, when he has 
 strong passion,* and a depraved heart, 
 finds even in his religion a thousand 
 pretexts more than the atheist for in- 
 
 ! juring the human species. The atheist 
 ! has not, at least, the mantle of zeal to 
 | cover his vengeance, his transports, and 
 | his fury ; the atheist has not the faculty 
 I of expiating, at the expense of money, 
 or by the aid of certain ceremonies, the 
 outrages which he commits against 
 society ; he has not the advantage of 
 being able to reconcile himself with 
 his God, and by some easy custom, to 
 quiet the remorse of his disturbed con- 
 science ; if crime has not deadened 
 every feeling of his heart, he is obliged 
 continually to carry within himself an 
 inexorable judge, who unceasingly re- 
 proaches him for his odious conduct, 
 who forces him to blush, to hate him- 
 self, and to fear the looks and the re- 
 sentment of others. The superstitious 
 man, if he be wicked, gives himself up 
 to crime, which is followed by re- 
 morse ; but his religion quickly fur- 
 nishes him with the means of getting 
 rid of it ; his life is generally no more 
 than a long series of errour and grief, 
 of sin and expiation : still more, he 
 frequently commits, as we have al- 
 ready seen, crimes of greater magni- 
 tude, in order to expiate the first : des- 
 titute of any permanent ideas of mo- 
 rality, he accustoms himself to look 
 upon nothing as a crime, but that which 
 the ministers and the interpreters of 
 his God forbid him to commit : he con- 
 siders as virtues, or as the means of 
 effacing his transgressions, actions of 
 the blackest die, which are frequently 
 held out to him as agreeable to this 
 God. It is thus we have seen fanatics 
 expiate, by the most atrocious perse- 
 cutions, their adulteries, their infamy, 
 their unjust wars, and their usurpa- 
 tions ; and to wash away their iniqui- 
 ties, bathe themselves in the blood 
 of those superstitious beings, whose 
 infatuation made them victims and 
 martyrs. 
 
 An atheist, if he has reasoned justly, 
 if he has consulted nature, has prin- 
 ciples more certain, and always more 
 humane than the superstitious : his re- 
 ligion, whether gloomy or enthusiastic, 
 always conducts the latter either to 
 folly or to cruelty. The imagination 
 of an atheist will never be intoxicated 
 to that degree, to make him believe 
 that violence, injustice, persecution, or 
 assassination, are virtuous or legitimate 
 actions. We every day see that reli-
 
 MOTIVES WHICH LEAD TO ATHEISM, &c. 
 
 319 
 
 gion, or the cause of Heaven, hood- 
 winks those persons who are humane, 
 equitable, and rational on every other 
 occasion, so much that they make it a 
 duty to treat with the utmost barbarity 
 those men who step aside from their 
 mode of thinking. A heretic, an in- 
 credulous being, ceases to be a man in 
 the eyes of the superstitious. Every 
 society, infected with the venom of re- 
 ligion, offers us innumerable examples 
 of juridicial assassinations, which the 
 tribunals commit without scruple, and 
 without remorse ; judges, who are equi- 
 table on every other occasion, are no 
 longer so as soon as there is a question 
 of theological chimeras; in bathing 
 themselves in blood, they believe they 
 conform to the views of the Divin- 
 ity. Almost every where, the laws 
 are subordinate to superstition^ and 
 make themselves accomplices m its 
 fury ; they legitimate or transform into 
 duties those cruelties which are the 
 most contrary to the rights of humani- 
 ty.* Are not all these avengers of re- 
 ligion blind men, who, with gayety of 
 heart, and through piety and duty, im- 
 molate to it those victims which it ap- 
 points ? Are they not tyrants, who 
 have the injustice to violate thought, 
 and who have the folly to believe they 
 can enslave it 1 Are they not fanatics 
 on whom the law, dictated by inhu- 
 man prejudices, impose the necessity 
 of becoming ferocious brutes'? Are 
 not all those sovereigns, who, to avenge 
 Heaven, torment and persecute their 
 subjects, and sacrifice human victims 
 to the wickedness of their anthroph- 
 poagite Gods, men whom religious zeal 
 has converted into tigers ? Are not 
 those priests, so careful of the soul's 
 health, who insolently break into the 
 sanctuary of the thoughts, to the end 
 that they may find in the opinions of 
 man motives for injuring him, odious 
 knaves and disturbers of the mind's 
 repose, .whom religion honours, and 
 whom reason detests ? What villains 
 
 * The president Grammont relates, with a 
 satisfaction truly worthy a cannibal, the par- j 
 ticulars of the punishment of Vanini, who i 
 was burnt at Toulouse, although he had dis- i 
 avowed the opinions with which he was ac- I 
 cused. This president even goes so far as to | 
 find wicked the cries and Rowlings which j 
 torment wrested from this unhappy victim of | 
 religious cruelty. i 
 
 are more odious in the eyes of human- 
 ity than those infamous inquisitors, 
 who. by the blindness of princes, enjoy 
 the advantage of judging their own 
 enemies, and of committing them to 
 the flames 1 Nevertheless the super- 
 stition of the people makes them re- 
 spected, and the favour of kings over- 
 whelms them with kindness ! . Do not 
 a thousand examples prove that reli- 
 gion has every where produced and 
 justified the most unaccountable hor- 
 rours ? Has it not a thousand times 
 armed men with the poniards of homi- 
 cides, let loose passions much more 
 terrible than those which it pretended 
 to restrain, and broken the most sacred 
 bonds of mortals ? Has it not, under 
 the pretexts of duty, of faith, of piety, 
 of zeal, favoured cruelty, stupidity, 
 ambition, and tyranny? Has not the 
 cause of God made murder, perfidy, 
 perjury, rebellion, and regicide legiti- 
 mate ? Have not those princes, who 
 frequently have made themselves the 
 avengers of Heaven, the lictors of re- 
 ligion, hundreds of times been its vic- 
 tims 1 In short, has not the name of 
 God been the signal for the most dis- 
 mal follies, and the most frightful and 
 wicked outrages ? Have not the altars 
 of the Gods every where swam iu 
 blood ; and under whatever form they 
 may have shown the Divinity, was he 
 not always the cause or the pretext of 
 the most insolent violation of the rights 
 of humanity ?f 
 
 t It is right to remark that the religion of 
 the Christians which boasts of giving to men 
 the most just ideas of the Divinity ; which 
 every time that it is accused of being turbu- 
 lent and sanguinary, only shows its God as 
 on the side of goodness and mercy; which 
 prides itself on naving taught the purest sys- 
 tem of morality ; which pretends to have es- 
 tablished for ever concord and peace amongst 
 those who profess it : It is well, I say, to re- 
 mark that it has caused more divisions and 
 disputes, more political and civil wars, more 
 crimes of every species, than all the other re- 
 ligions of the world united. We will perhaps 
 be told, that trie-progress of learning will pre- 
 vent this superstition from producing in future 
 such dismal effects as those which it has for- 
 merly done ; but we shall reply, that fanati- 
 cism will ever be equally dangerous, or that 
 the cause not being removed, the effects will 
 always be the same. Thus so long as super- 
 stition shall be held in consideration, and 
 shall have power, there will be disputes, per- 
 secutions, regicides, disorders, &c., &c. So 
 long as mankind shall be sufficiently irra-
 
 320 
 
 MOTIVES WHICH LEAD TO ATHEISM, &c. 
 
 Never will an atheist, as long as he 
 enjoys his right senses, persuade him- 
 self that similar actions can be justifia- 
 ble ; never will he believe that he who 
 commits them can be an estimable 
 man ; there is no one but a supersti- 
 tious being, whose blindness makes 
 him forget the most evident principles 
 of morality, of nature, and of reason, 
 who can possibly imagine that the 
 most destructive crimes are virtues. 
 If the atheist be perverse, he, at least, 
 knows that he does wrong ; neither 
 God nor his priests will be able to per- 
 suade him that he does right, and what- 
 ever crimes he may allow himself to 
 commit, he will never be capable of 
 exceeding those which superstition 
 causes to be committed without scru- 
 ple, by those whom it intoxicates with 
 its fury, or to whom it holds forth 
 crimes themselves as expiations and 
 meritorious actions. 
 
 Thus the atheist, however wicked 
 he may be supposed to be, will at most 
 be only on a level with the devotee, 
 whose religion frequently encourages 
 him to commit crime which it trans- 
 forms into virtue. As to conduct, if he 
 be debauched, voluptuous, intemper- 
 ate, and adulterous, the atheist differs 
 in nothing from the most credulous 
 superstitious being, who frequently 
 knows how to connect with his credu- 
 lity those vices and crimes which his 
 priests will always pardon, provided 
 'he render homage to their power. If 
 he be in Hindostan, nis bramins will 
 wash him in the Ganges while reciting 
 a prayer. If he be a Jew, upon ma- 
 king an offering, his sins will be effaced ; 
 if he be in Japan, he will be cleansed 
 by performing a pilgrimage ; if he be 
 a Mahometan, he will be reputed a 
 saint for having visited the tomb of 
 his prophet: if he be a Christian, he 
 will pray, he will fast, he will throw 
 
 tional to look upon religion as a thing of the 
 first importance to them, the ministers of re- 
 ligion will have the opportunity of confound- 
 ing every thing on earth under the pretext of 
 serving the interest of the Divinity, which 
 will never he other than their own peculiar 
 interests. The Christian church would only 
 have one mode of wiping away the accusation 
 which is brought against it of being intolerant 
 or cruel, and that would be solemnly to de- 
 clare that it is not allowable to persecute or in- 
 jure any one for kis opinions ; but this is 
 what its ministers will never do. 
 
 himself at the feet of his priests and 
 confess his faults to them ; these will 
 give him absolution in the name of 
 the Most High, will sell him the in- 
 dulgences from Heaven, but never will 
 they censure him for those crimes 
 which he shall have committed in- sup- 
 port of their several faiths. 
 
 We are constantly told, thai the in- 
 decent or criminal conduct of the priests 
 and of their sectaries proves nothing 
 against the goodness of their religious 
 systems ; but wherefore do they not 
 say the same thing of the conduct of 
 the atheist, who, as we have already 
 proved, may have a very good and very 
 true system of morality, even while 
 leading a dissolute life ? If it be ne- 
 cessary to judge the opinions of man- 
 kind according to their conduct, which 
 is the religion that would bear this 
 scrutiny ? Let us, then, examine the 
 opinions of the atheist without approv- 
 ing of hi conduct; let us adopt his 
 mode of thinking, if we judge it to be 
 true, useful, and rational ; let us reject 
 his mode of acting, if we find it blame>- 
 able. At the sight of a work filled 
 with truth, we do not embarrass our- 
 selves with the morals of the work- 
 man. Of what importance is it to the 
 universe whether Newton were a sober 
 or an intemperate, a chaste or a de- 
 bauched man ? It only remains for us 
 to examine whether he reasoned well, 
 if his principles be certain, if the parts 
 of his system are connected, if his work 
 contains more demonstrable truths than 
 bold ideas. Let us judge in the same 
 manner of the principles of an atheist ; 
 if they are strange and unusual, that 
 is a reason for examining them more 
 strictly; if he has spoken truth, if he 
 has demonstrated his positions, let us 
 yield to the evidence ; if he he de- 
 ceived in some parts let us distinguish 
 the true from the false, but do not let 
 us fall into the hackneyed prejudice, 
 which on account of one errour ia the 
 detail, rejects a multitude of incontest- 
 able truths.* The atheist, when he is 
 deceived, has unquestionably as much 
 
 * Dr. Johnson (the Christian bear or kog) 
 says in his preface to his dictionary, that 
 " where a man shall have executed his task 
 with all the accuracy possible, he will only be 
 allowed to have done his duty; bat if he 
 commit the slighteet errour, a thousand 
 enarlers are ready to point it out.' 1
 
 MOTIVES WHICH LEAD TO ATHEISM, &c. 
 
 321 
 
 right to throw his faults on the fragility 
 of his nature as the superstitious man. 
 An atheist may have vices and defects, 
 he may reason badly ; but at least his 
 errours will never have the consequen- 
 ces of religious novelties ; they will 
 not, like these, kindle up the fire of 
 discord in the bosom of nations ; the 
 atheist will not justify his vices and 
 his wanderings by religion ; he will 
 not pretend to infallibility, like those 
 self-conceited theologians who attach 
 the divine sanction to their follies, and 
 who suppose that Heaven authorizes 
 those sophisms, those falsehoods, and 
 those errours, which they believe them- 
 selves obliged to distribute over the 
 face of the earth. 
 
 It will perhaps be said that the refu- 
 sal to believe in the Divinity, will rend 
 asunder one of the most powerful bonds 
 of society, in making the sacredness 
 of an oath vanish. I reply, that per- 
 jury is by no means rare in the most 
 religious nations, nor even amongst 
 those persons who make a boast of 
 being the most thoroughly convinced of 
 the existence of the Gods. Diagoras, 
 . superstitious as he was, became, it is 
 said, an atheist on seeing that the Gods 
 had not thundered their vengeance on 
 a man who had taken them as evidence 
 to a falsity. Upon this principle, how 
 many atheists ought to be made among 
 us? From the principle which has 
 made an invisible and an unknown be- 
 ing the depositary of man's engage- 
 ments, we do not see it result that their 
 engagements and their most solemn 
 contracts are more solid for this vain 
 formality. Conductors of nations, it 
 is you above all, that I call upon to 
 witness my assertions ! This God, of 
 whom ye say ye are the images, from 
 whom ye pretend to hold the right of 
 governing ; this God, whom ye so often 
 make the witness of your oaths, the 
 guarantee of your treaties ; this God, 
 of whom ye declare ye fear the judg- 
 ment, has he much weight with ye, 
 whenever there is a question of the 
 most futile interest ? Do ye religious- 
 ly observe those sacred engagements 
 which ye have made with your allies, 
 and with your subjects ? Princes ! 
 who to so much religion frequently 
 join so little probity, I see the power of 
 truth overwhelms ye ; without doubt, 
 you blush at this question ; and you 
 No.XI.-41 
 
 are constrained to allow that you equal- 
 ly mock Gods and men. What do I 
 say ? Does not religion itself fre- 
 quently absolve you from your oaths ? 
 Does it not prescribe that you should 
 be perfidious, and violate plighted faith, 
 above all, when there is a question of 
 its sacred interests, does it not order 
 you to dispense with the engagements 
 you have made with those whom it 
 condemns? And after haying ren- 
 dered you perfidious and perjured, has 
 it not sometimes arrogated the right of 
 absolving your subjects from those 
 oaths which bound them to you !* If 
 we consider things attentively, we shall 
 see, that under such chiefs, religion 
 and politics are schools of perjury. 
 Therefore, knaves of every condition 
 never recoil when it is necessary to 
 attest the name of God to the most 
 manifest frauds, and for the vilest in- 
 terests. What end then do oaths 
 answer? They are snares in which 
 simplicity alone can suffer itself to be 
 caught ; oaths are every where vain 
 formalities, they impose nothing on 
 villains, nor do they add any thing to 
 the engagements of honest men, who, 
 without oaths, would not have had the 
 temerity to violate them. A perfidious 
 and perjured superstitious being, un- 
 questionably has not any advantage 
 over an atheist who should fail in his 
 promises ; neither the one nor the other 
 any longer deserves the confidence of 
 their fellow-citizens, nor the esteem 
 of good men : if one does not respect 
 his God in Avhom he believes, the other 
 neither respects his reason, his repu- 
 tation, nor public opinion, in which all 
 rational men cannot refuse to believe.f 
 
 * It is a maxim constantly received in the 
 Roman Catholic religion, mat is to say, in 
 that sect of Christianity, the most si ^ersti- 
 tious and the most numerous, that no fiithis 
 to be held with heretics. The general Council 
 of Constance decided thus, when, notwith- 
 standing the emperor's passport, it decreed 
 John Hus, and Jerome Prague to be burnt. 
 The Roman Pontiff has, it is well known, the 
 right of relieving his secretaries from their 
 oaths, and annulling their vows; the same 
 Pontiff has frequently arrogated to himself 
 the right of deposing kings, and of absolving 
 their subjects from their oaths of fidelity. 
 
 It is very extraordinary that oaths should 
 be prescribed by the laws of those nations who 
 profess the Christian religion, whilst Christ 
 has expressly prohibited the use of them. 
 
 t " An oath," says Hobbes, " adds nothing
 
 322 
 
 MOTIVES WHICH LEAD TO ATHEISM, &c. 
 
 It has been frequently asked, if there 
 ever was a nation that had no idea of 
 the Divinity, and if a people uniformly 
 composed of atheists would be able to 
 subsist ? Whatever some speculators 
 may say, it does not appear likely that 
 there ever has been upon our globe a 
 numerous people, who have not had an 
 idea of some invisible power, to whom 
 they have shown marks of respect and 
 submission.* Man, inasmuch as he is 
 a fearful and ignorant animal, neces- 
 sarily becomes superstitious in his mis- 
 fortunes: either he forms a God for 
 himself, or he admits the God which 
 others are disposed to give him. It 
 does not then appear that we can ra- 
 tionally suppose there may have been, 
 or that there actually is, a people upon 
 the earth a total stranger to the notion 
 of some Divinity. One will show us 
 the sun, or the moon and stars ; the 
 other will show us the sea, the lakes, 
 the rivers, which furnish him his sub- 
 sistence ; the trees which afford him 
 an asylum against the inclemency of 
 the air ; another will show us a rock 
 of an odd form, a high mountain or 
 volcano that frequently astonishes him ; 
 another will present you with his croc- 
 odile, whose malignity he fears ; his 
 dangerous serpent, the reptile to which 
 he attributes his good or his bad for- 
 tune. In short, each man will make 
 you see his phantasm, his domestic or 
 tutelary God with respect. 
 
 But from the existence of his Gods, 
 the savage does not draw the same in- 
 ductions as the civilized and polished 
 
 to an obligation, it only augments, in the im- 
 agination of him who swears, the fear of vio- 
 lating an engagement, which he would have 
 been obliged to keep ever without any oath." 
 
 * It has been sometimes believed that the 
 Chinese were atheists ; but this errour is due 
 to the Christian Missionaries, who are accus- 
 tomed to treat all those as atheists who do 
 not hold opinions similar to their own upon 
 the Divinity. It always appears that the 
 Chinese are a people extremely superstitious, 
 but that they are governed by chiefs who are 
 not so, without, however, their being atheists 
 for that reason. If the empire of China be 
 as flourishing as it is said to be, it at least fur- 
 nishes a very forcible proof that those who 
 govern, have no occasion "to be superstitious 
 in order to govern with propriety, a people 
 who is so. 
 
 It is pretended that the Greenlanders have 
 no idea of the Divinity. Nevertheless, it is 
 difficult to believe it of a nation BO savage and 
 o ill-treated bv .Nature. 
 
 man ; the savage does not believe it a 
 duty to reason much upon his Divini- 
 ties ; he does not imagine that they 
 ought to influence his morals, nor en- 
 tirely occupy his thoughts: content 
 with a gross, simple, and exterior wor- 
 ship, he does not believe that these in- 
 visible powers trouble themselves with 
 his conduct towards his fellow-crea- 
 tures ; in short, he does not connect his 
 morality with his religion. This mo- 
 rality is coarse, as must be that of all 
 ignorant people ; it is proportioned to 
 his wants, which are few ; it is fre- 
 quently irrational, because it is the 
 fruit of ignorance, of inexperience, and 
 of the passions of men, but slightly 
 restrained in their infancy. It is only 
 in numerous, stationary, and civilized 
 societies, where man's Avants multiply 
 themselves, and his interests clash, 
 that he is obliged to have recourse to 
 governments, to laws, and to public 
 worship, in order to maintain concord : 
 it is then that men approximating, rea- 
 son and combine their ideas, refine and 
 subtilize their notions ; it is then that 
 those who govern them, avail them- 
 selves of the fear of invisible powers . 
 to keep them within bounds, to render 
 them docile, and oblige them to obey 
 and live peaceably. It is thus that by 
 degrees, morals and politics find them- 
 selves connected with religious sys- 
 tems. The chiefs of nations, frequent- 
 ly superstitious themselves, but little 
 enlightened upon their own interests r 
 but little versed in sound morality, and 
 but little instructed in the true motive- 
 powers of the human heart, believe 
 that they have done every thing for 
 their own authority as well as for the 
 happiness and repose of society, in 
 rendering their subjects superstitious, 
 in menacing them with the wrath of 
 their invisible phantoms, in treating 
 them like children, who are appeased 
 with fables and chimeras. By the as- 
 sistance of these marvellous inventions, 
 to which even the chiefs and the con- 
 ductors of nations are themselves fre- 
 quently the dupes, and which are trans- 
 mitted from race to race in their duties; 
 sovereigns are dispensed from the 
 trouble of instructing themselves ; they 
 neglect the laws, they enervate them- 
 selves in ease and sloth, they follow 
 nothing but the caprice, they repose in 
 their deities the care of restraining their
 
 MOTIVES WHICH LEAD TO ATHEISM, &c. 
 
 323 
 
 subjects ; they confide the instruction 
 of the people to priests, who are com- 
 missioned to render them good, sub- 
 missive, and devout, and to teach them, 
 in an early age, to tremble under the 
 yoke of the visible and invisible Gods. 
 
 It is thus that nations are kept by 
 their tutors in a perpetual state of in- 
 fancy, and are only restrained by vain 
 chimeras. It is thus that politics, ju- 
 risprudence, education, and morality, 
 are every where infected with super- 
 stition. It is thus that men no longer 
 know any duties but those of religion ; 
 it is thus that the idea of virtue is 
 falsely associated with that of those 
 imaginary powers to which imposture 
 gave that language which is most con- 
 ducive to its own immediate interests. 
 It is thus that men are persuaded that 
 without a God there no longer exists 
 any morality for them. It is thus that 
 princes and subjects, equally blind to 
 their true interests, to the duties of na- 
 ture, and to their reciprocal rights, have 
 habituated themselves to consider re- 
 ligion as necessary to morals, as indis- 
 pensably requisite to govern men, and 
 as the most certain means of arriving 
 at power and happiness. 
 
 It is from these dispositions, of which 
 we have so frequently demonstrated 
 the falsity, that so many persons, other- 
 wise extremely enlightened, look upon 
 it as an impossibility, that a society of 
 atheists could subsist for any length 
 of time. It does not admit a question, 
 that a numerous society who should 
 neither have religion, morality, govern- 
 ment, laws, education, nor principles, 
 could not maintain itself, and that it 
 would simply draw together beings 
 disposed to injure each other, or chil- 
 dren who would only blindly follow the 
 most fatal impulsions ; but then, with 
 all the religion in the world, are not hu- 
 man societies very nearly in this state? 
 Are not the sovereigns of almost every 
 country in a continual state of warfare 
 with their subjects ? Are not these 
 subjects, in despite of religion and the 
 terrible notions which it gives them of 
 the Divinity, unceasingly occupied in 
 reciprocally injuring each other, and 
 rendering themselves mutually unhap- 
 py ? Does not religion itself, with its 
 supernatural notions, unremittingly flat- 
 ter the vanity and the passions of sove- 
 reigns, and throw oil into the tire of dis- 
 
 cord between those citizens who are 
 divided in opinion? Could those in- 
 fernal powers, who are supposed to 
 be ever upon the watch to injure the 
 human species, be capable of producing 
 greater evils upon the earth than spring 
 from fanaticism, and the fury to which 
 theology gives birth ? In short, could 
 atheists, assembled together in society, 
 however irrational they may be sup- 
 posed to be, conduct themselves to- 
 wards each other in a more criminal 
 manner, than do these superstitious 
 beings, filled with real vices and ex- 
 travagant chimeras, who have, during 
 so many ages, done nothing more than 
 destroy themselves and cut each other's 
 throats, without reason, and without 
 pity ? It cannot be pretended they 
 would ; on the contrary, we boldly as- 
 sert, that a society of atheists, destitute 
 of all religion, governed by wholesome 
 laws, formed by a good education, in- 
 vited to virtue by recompenses, deterred 
 from crime by equitable punishments, 
 and disentangled from illusions, false- 
 hood, and chimeras, would be infinitely 
 more honest and more virtuous than 
 those religious societies, in which every 
 thing conspires to intoxicate the mind 
 and to corrupt the heart. 
 
 When we shall be disposed usefully 
 to occupy ourselves with the happiness 
 of men, it is with the Gods in heaven 
 that the reform must commence ; it is 
 by abstracting these imaginary beings, 
 destined to affright people who are ig- 
 norant and in a state of infancy, that 
 we shall be able to promise ourselves to 
 conduct man to a state of maturity. It 
 cannot be too often repeated, there is no 
 morality without consulting the nature 
 of man and his true relations with the 
 beings of his species ; no fixed princi- 
 ples for man's conduct in regulating 
 it upon unjust, capricious, and wicked 
 Gods ; no sound politics, without con- 
 sulting the nature of man, living in 
 society to satisfy his wants, and to 
 assure his happiness and its enjoy- 
 ment. No wise government can found 
 itself upon a despotic God, he will al- 
 ways make tyrants of his representa- 
 tives. No laws will be good without 
 consulting the nature and the end ot 
 society. No jurisprudence can be ad- 
 vantageous for nations, if it is regu- 
 lated upon the caprice and passions of 
 deified tyrants. No education will be
 
 324 
 
 MOTIVES WHICH LEAD TO ATHEISM, &c. 
 
 rational, unless it be founded upon 
 reason, and not upon chimeras and 
 prejudices. In short there is no virtue, 
 no probity, no talents, under corrupt 
 masters, and under the conduct of those 
 priests who render men the enemies 
 of themselves and of others, and who 
 seek to stifle in them the germs of 
 reason, science, and courage. 
 
 It will, perhaps, be asked, if we can 
 reasonably flatter ourselves with ever 
 arriving at the point of making a peo- 
 ple entirely forget their religious opin- 
 ions, or the ideas which they have of 
 the Divinity ? I reply, that the thing 
 appears utterly impossible, and that 
 this is not the end which we can pro- 
 pose to ourselves. The idea of a God, 
 inculcated from the /nost tender in- 
 fancy, does not appear of a nature to 
 admit eradication from the mind of the 
 majority of mankind : it would, per- 
 haps, be as difficult to give it to those 
 persons, who, arrived at a certain age, 
 should never have heard it spoken of, 
 as to banish it from the minds of those 
 who have been imbued with it from 
 their earliest infancy. Thus it cannot 
 be supposed that it is possible to make 
 a whole nation pass from the abyss of 
 superstition, that is to say, from the 
 bosom of ignorance and of delirium, 
 into absolute atheism, which supposes 
 reflection, study, knowledge, a long 
 series of experience, the habit of con- 
 templating nature, the science of the 
 causes of its various phenomena, of its 
 combinations, of its laws, of the beings 
 who compose it, and of their different 
 properties. In order to be an atheist, 
 or to be assured of the powers of na- 
 ture, it is necessary to have meditated 
 profoundly ; a superficial glance of the 
 eye will not make us acquainted with 
 her powers ; eyes but little exercised, 
 will unceasingly be deceived ; the ig- 
 norance of actual causes will make us 
 suppose those which are imaginary ; 
 and ignorance will thus reconduct the 
 natural philosopher himself to the feet 
 of a phantom, in which his limited 
 vision, or his idleness will make him 
 believe he shall find the solution of 
 every difficulty. 
 
 Atheism, as well as philosophy and 
 all profound and abstract sciences, 
 then, is not calculated for the unin- 
 formed, neither is it suitable for the 
 majority of mankind. There are in 
 
 all populous and civilized nations, per- 
 sons whose circumstances enable them 
 to meditate, to make researches, and 
 useful discoveries, which, sooner or 
 later, finish by extending themselves, 
 and becoming beneficial when they 
 have been judged advantageous and 
 true. The geometrician, the mechanic, 
 the chymist, the physician, the civilian, 
 the artisan himself, labour in their 
 closets or in their workshops, seeking 
 the means to serve society each in his 
 sphere ; nevertheless, not one of these 
 sciences or professions are known to 
 the uninitiated, who, however, do not 
 fail in the long run to profit by, and 
 reap the advantages of those labours 
 of which they themselves have no idea. 
 It is for the mariner that the astron- 
 omer labours : it is for him that the 
 geometrician and the mechanic calcu- 
 late : it is for the mason and the labourer 
 that the skilful architect draws learned 
 designs. Whatever may be the pre- 
 tended utility of religious opinions, the 
 profound and subtile theologian cannot 
 boast of labouring, of writing, or of 
 disputing for the advantage of the peo- 
 ple, whom, however, they contrive to 
 tax exorbitantly for those systems and 
 those mysteries which they will never 
 understand, and which never can at 
 any time be of any utility whatever to 
 them. 
 
 It is not, then, for the multitude that 
 a philosopher ought to propose to him- 
 self to write or to meditate. The prin- 
 ciples of atheism, or the System of 
 Nature, are not even calculated, as 
 we have shown, for a great number of 
 persons, extremely enlightened on other 
 points, but frequently too much prepos- 
 sessed in favour of received prejudices. 
 It is extremely rare to find men who, 
 to an enlarged mind, extensive know- 
 ledge, and great talents, join either 
 a well-regulated imagination, or the 
 courage necessary to combat success- 
 fully those habitual chimeras with 
 which the brain has been long inocu- 
 lated. A secret and invincible incli- 
 nation frequently reconducts, in despite 
 of all reasoning, the most solid and 
 the best-fortified minds to those preju- 
 dices which they see generally estab- 
 lished, and of which they have them- 
 selves drank copiously from their most 
 tender infancy. Nevertheless, by de- 
 grees, those principles which then ap-
 
 MOTIVES WHICH LEAD TO ATHEISM, &c. 
 
 325 
 
 pear strange or revolting, when they 
 have truth on their side, insinuate 
 themselves into the mind, become fa- 
 miliar, extend themselves far and wide, 
 and produce the most advantageous 
 effects over every society : in time, men 
 familiarize themselves with those ideas 
 which originally they had looked upon 
 as absurd and irrational ; at least, they 
 cease to consider those as odious who 
 profess opinions upon things of which 
 experience makes it evident, they may 
 be permitted to have doubts without 
 danger to the public. 
 
 The diffusion of ideas, then, amongst 
 men, is not to be dreaded. Are they 
 useful? By degrees they will fructify. 
 The man who writes, must neither fix 
 his eyes upon the time in which he 
 lives, nor upon his actual fellow-citi- 
 zens, nor upon the country which he 
 inhabits. He must speak to the hu- 
 man species, he must foresee future 
 generations ; in vain will he expect 
 the applauses of his contemporaries ; 
 in vain shall he flatter himself with see- 
 ing his precocious principles received 
 kindly by prejudiced minds ; if he has 
 told truth, the ages that shall follow 
 will render justice to his efforts; mean- 
 time, let him content himself with the 
 idea of having done well, or with the 
 secret suffrages of those few friends to 
 truth who inhabit the earth. It is after 
 his death that the writer of truth tri- 
 umphs ; it is then that the stings of 
 hatred and the shafts of envy, either 
 exhausted or blunted, give place to 
 truth, which being eternal, must sur- 
 vive all the errours of the earth.* 
 
 Besides, we shall say with Hobbes, 
 that " We cannot do men any harm 
 by proposing our ideas to them ; the 
 
 * It is a problem with a great many people, 
 if truth may not be injurious. The best in- 
 tentioned persons arc themselves frequently 
 in great doubt upon this important point. 
 Truth never injures any but those who de- 
 ceive men : these have the greatest interest 
 in being undeceived. Truth may be injurious 
 to him who announces it, but no truth can 
 possibly injure the human species, and never 
 can it be too clearly announced to beings al- 
 ways little disposed to listen to, or compre- 
 hend it. If all those who write to announce 
 important truths, which are always consider- 
 ed as the most dangerous, were sufficiently 
 wanned with the public welfare to speak free- 
 ly, even at the risk of displeasing their readers, 
 the human race would be much more en- 
 lightened and much happier than it is. To 
 
 worst mode is to leave them in doubt 
 and dispute ; indeed, are they not so 
 already ?" If an author who writes 
 be deceived, it is because he may have 
 reasoned badly. Has he laid down 
 false principles ? It remains to ex- 
 amine them. Is his system false and 
 ridiculous? It will serve to make 
 truth appear in its greatest splendour ; 
 his work will fall into contempt ; and 
 the writer, if he be witness to its 
 fall, will be sufficiently punished for 
 his temerity ; if he be dead, the liv- 
 
 ing cannot disturb his ashes. 
 
 No man 
 
 writes with a design to injure his fel- 
 low-creatures ; he always proposes to 
 himself to merit their suffrages, either 
 by amusing them, by exciting their 
 curiosity, or by communicating to them 
 discoveries which he believes useful. 
 No work can be dangerous ; above all, 
 if it contains truth. It would not be 
 so, even if it contained principles evi- 
 dently contrary to experience and good 
 sense. Indeed, what would result, from 
 a work that should now tell us the sun 
 is not luminous ; that parricide is legit- 
 imate ; that robbery is allowable ; that 
 adultery is not a crime ? The smallest 
 reflection would make us feel the falsity 
 of these principles, and the whole hu- 
 man race would protest against them. 
 Men would laugh at the folly of the 
 author, and presently his book and his 
 name would be known only by their 
 ridiculous extravagancies. There is 
 nothing but religious follies that are 
 pernicious to mortals ; and wherefore 1 
 It is because authority always pretends 
 to establish them by violence, to make 
 them pass for virtues, and rigorously 
 punishes those who should be disposed 
 to laugh at or to examine them. If 
 men were more rational, they would 
 
 write in ambiguous words, is frequently to 
 write to nobody. The human mind is idle, 
 we must spare it as much as possible the 
 trouble and embarrassment of reflecting. 
 What time and study does it not require at 
 the present day to unravel the ambiguous 
 oracles of the ancient philosophers, whose 
 true sentiments are almost entirely lost to us ! 
 If truth be useful to men, it is an injustice 
 to deprive them of it ; if truth ought to be 
 admitted, we must admit its consequences, 
 which also are truths. Men, for the most 
 part, are fond of truth, but its consequences 
 inspire them with so much fear, that fre- 
 quently they prefer remaining in errour, of 
 which habit prevents them from feeling the 
 deplorable effects.
 
 326 
 
 MOTIVES WHICH LEAD TO ATHEISM, &c. 
 
 consider religious opinions and theolo- 
 gical systems with the same eyes as 
 systems of natural philosophy, or prob- 
 lems in geometry : these latter never 
 disturb the repose of society, although 
 they sometimes excite very warm dis- 
 putes amongst some of the learned. 
 Theological quarrels would never be 
 attended with any evil consequences, 
 if men could arrive at the desirable 
 point of making those who have power 
 in their hands, feel that they ought not 
 to have any other sensations than those 
 of indifference and contempt, for the 
 disputes of persons who do not them- 
 selves understand the marvellous ques- 
 tions upon which they never cease dis- 
 puting. 
 
 It is at least, this indifference, so 
 just, so rational, so advantageous for 
 states, that sound philosophy proposes 
 to introduce by degrees upon the earth. 
 Would not the human species be much 
 happier, if the sovereigns of the world, 
 occupied with the welfare of their sub- 
 jects, and leaving to superstition its 
 futile contests, submitted religion to 
 politics ; obliged its haughty ministers 
 to become citizens ; and carefully pre- 
 vented their quarrels from interrupting 
 the public tranquillity ? What advan- 
 tages would there not result to science, 
 to the progress of the human mind, to 
 the perfectionating of morality, of juris- 
 prudence, of legislation, of education, 
 from the liberty of thought? At pres- 
 ent genius every where finds shackles ; 
 religion continually opposes itself to 
 its course : man, enveloped with ban- 
 dages, does not enjoy any one of his 
 faculties ; his mind itself is tortured, 
 and appears continually wrapped up 
 in the swaddling clothes of infancy. 
 The civil power, leagued with the spi- 
 ritual power, appears only disposed to 
 rule over brutalized slaves, confined 
 in an obscure prison, where they make 
 each other reciprocally feel the effects 
 of their mutual ill-humour. Sove- 
 reigns detest liberty of thought, be- 
 cause they fear truth ; this truth ap- 
 pears formidable to them, because it 
 would condemn their excesses; these 
 excesses are dear to them, because they 
 know no more than their subjects their 
 true interests, which ought to blend 
 themselves into one. 
 
 Let not the courage of the philoso- 
 pher, however, be abated by so many 
 
 united obstacles, which would appear 
 to exclude for ever truth from its do- 
 minion ; reason from the mind of man ; 
 and nature from its rights. The thou- 
 sandth part of those cares which are 
 bestowed to infect the human mind, 
 would be sufficient to make it Avhole. 
 Do not then let us despair, do not let 
 us do man the injury to believe that 
 truth is not made for him; his mind 
 seeks after it incessantly ; his heart de- 
 sires it ; his happiness demands it loud- 
 ly ; he fears it or mistakes it, only be- 
 cause religion, which has overthrown 
 all his ideas, perpetually keeps the 
 bandeau of delusion over his eyes, and 
 strives to render him a total stranger 
 to virtue. 
 
 Maugre the prodigious exertions that 
 are made to drive truth, reason, and 
 science, from the earth ; time, assisted 
 by the progressive knowledge of ages, 
 may be able one day to enlighten even 
 those princes who are so outrageous 
 against truth, suqh enemies to justice, 
 and to the liberty of mankind. Des- 
 tiny will, perhaps, one day conduct 
 them to the throne of some enlight- 
 ened, equitable, courageous, and be- 
 nevolent sovereign, who acknowledg- 
 ing the true source of human miseries, 
 shall apply to them the remedies with 
 which wisdom has furnished him : per- 
 haps he will feel that those Gods, from 
 whom he pretends he derives his power, 
 are the true scourges of his people ; 
 that the ministers of these Gods are 
 his own enemies and rivals ; that the 
 religion which he looks upon as the 
 support of his power, does, in fact, 
 only weaken and shake it; that super- 
 stitious morality is false, and serves 
 only to pervert his subjects, and to 
 give them the vices of slaves, in lieu 
 of the virtues of the citizen ; in short, 
 he will see in religious errours, the 
 fruitful source of the sorrows of the 
 human species ; he will feel that they 
 are incompatible Avith every equitable 
 administration. 
 
 Until this desirable epoch for hu- 
 manity, the principles of naturalism 
 will be adopted only by a small num- 
 ber of thinkers, they cannot natter 
 themselves with having a great many 
 approvers or proselytes; on the con- 
 trary, they will find ardent adversaries, 
 or contemners, even in those persons 
 who, upon every other subject, dis-
 
 MOTIVES WHICH LEAD TO ATHEISM, &c. 
 
 327 
 
 cover the most acute minds and di 
 play the greatest knowledge. Thos 
 men who have the greatest share o 
 talents, as we have already observed 
 cannot always resolve to divorce them 
 selves completely from their religiou 
 ideas ; imagination, so necessary t< 
 splendid talents, frequently forms in 
 them an insurmountable obstacle to 
 the total extinction of prejudice ; this 
 depends much more on the judgmen 
 than on the mind. To this disposi- 
 tion, already so prompt to form illu- 
 sions for them, is also joined the 
 power of habit ; to a great many men 
 it would be wresting from them a por- 
 tion of themselves to take away their 
 ideas of God ; it would be depriving 
 them of an accustomed aliment ; it 
 would be plunging them into a vacuum, 
 and obliging their distempered minds 
 to perish for want of exercise.* 
 
 Let us not, then, be surprised if very 
 great and learned men obstinately shut 
 their eyes, or run counter to their ordi- 
 nary sagacity, every time there is a 
 question respecting an object which 
 they have not the courage to examine 
 with that attention which they have 
 lent to many others. Lord Chancel- 
 lor Bacon pretends that " a little phi- 
 losophy disposes men to atheism, but 
 that great depth reconducts them to 
 religion." If we analyze this propo- 
 sition, we shall find it to signify, that 
 very moderate and indifferent thinkers 
 are quickly enabled to perceive the 
 gross absurdities of religion, but that 
 little accustomed to meditate, or desti- 
 tute of those certain principles which 
 could serve to guide them, their imagi- 
 nation presently replaces them in the 
 theological labyrinth, from whence rea- 
 son, too weak, appeared disposed to 
 withdraw them. Timid souls fear even 
 to take courage again ; minds accus- 
 tomed to be satisfied with theological 
 
 * Menage has remarked, that history speaks 
 of very few incredulous women, or female 
 atheists. This is not surprising, their organ- 
 ization renders them fearful, the nervous sys- 
 tem undergoes periodical variations in them, 
 and the education which they receive, dis- 
 poses them to credulity. Those amongst 
 them who have a sound constitution, and 
 imagination, have occasion for chimeras suit- 
 able to occupy their idleness ; above all, when 
 the world abandons them, devotion and its 
 ceremonies then become a business or an 
 amusement for them. 
 
 solutions, no longer see in nature any 
 thing but an inexplicable enigma, an 
 abyss which it is impossible to fathom. 
 Habituated to fix their eyes upon an 
 ideal and mathematical point, which 
 they have made the centre of every 
 thing, the universe becomes a jumble 
 to them, whenever they lose sight of 
 it ; and in the confusion in which they 
 find themselves involved, they rather 
 prefer returning to the prejudices of 
 their infancy, which appear to explain 
 every thing, than to float in the vacuum, 
 or quit that foundation which they judge 
 to be immoveable. Thus, the proposi- 
 tion of Bacon, appears to indicate no- 
 thing, except it be, that the most ex- 
 perienced persons cannot defend them- 
 selves against the illusions of their 
 imagination, the impetuosity of which 
 resists the strongest reasoning. 
 
 Nevertheless, a deliberate study of 
 nature is sufficient to undeceive every 
 man who will calmly consider things : 
 tie will see that every thing in the 
 world is connected by links invisible 
 to the superficial and to the too im- 
 jetuous observer, but extremely intel- 
 igible to him who views things with 
 coolness. He will find that the most 
 unusual, and the most marvellous, as 
 well as the most trifling and ordinary 
 ;ffects are equally inexplicable ; but that 
 hey must flow from natural causes, 
 and that supernatural causes, under 
 whatever name they may be designa- 
 ed, with whatever qualities they may 
 e decorated, will do no more than in- 
 crease difficulties, and make chimeras 
 nultiply. The simplest observation 
 vill incontestably prove to him that 
 every thing is necessary, that all the 
 effects which he perceives are mate- 
 ial, and can only originate in causes 
 if the same nature, when even he 
 hould not be able, by the assistance 
 )f the senses, to recur to these causes. 
 Thus his mind will every where show 
 lira nothing but matter acting some- 
 imes in a manner which his organs 
 
 mit him to follow, and sometimes 
 n a mode imperceptible to him : he 
 vill see that all beings follow constant 
 nd invariable laws, by which all com- 
 inations form and destroy themselves, 
 11 forms change, whilst the great whole 
 ver remains the same. Then cured 
 f the notions with which he was im- 
 ued. undeceived in those erroneous
 
 328 
 
 MOTIVES WHICH LEAD TO ATHEISM, &c. 
 
 ideas, which, from habit, he attached 
 to imaginary beings, he will cheerfully 
 consent to be ignorant of that which 
 his organs cannot compass ; he will 
 know that obscure terms, devoid of 
 sense, are not calculated to explain 
 difficulties ; and guided by reason, he 
 will throw aside all hypotheses of the 
 imagination, to attach himself to those 
 realities which are confirmed by ex- 
 perience. 
 
 The greater number of those who 
 study nature, frequently do not con- 
 sider, that with the eyes of prejudice 
 they will never discover more than that 
 which they have resolved beforehand 
 to find ; as soon as they perceive facts 
 contrary to their own ideas, they quickly 
 turn aside, and believe their eyes have 
 deceived them ; or else, if they turn 
 back, it is in hopes to be able to recon- 
 cile them with those notions with which 
 their mind is imbued. It is thus we 
 find enthusiastic philosophers, whose 
 prepossessions show them, even in 
 those things which most openly con- 
 tradict their opinions, incontestable 
 proofs of those systems with which 
 they are preoccupied. Hence those 
 pretended demonstrations of the ex- 
 istence of a good God, which are drawn 
 from final causes, from the order of 
 nature, from his kindness to man, &c., 
 &c. Do the same enthusiasts perceive 
 disorder, calamities, and revolutions ? 
 They induct new proofs from the wis- 
 dom, the intelligence, the bounty of 
 their God, whilst all these things as 
 visibly contradict these qualities, as 
 the first appear to confirm or to estab- 
 lish them. These prejudiced observers 
 are in an ecstasy at the sight of the 
 periodical motion and order of the stars, 
 at the productions of the earth, at the 
 astonishing harmony of the parts of 
 animals ; they forget, however, the 
 laws of motion, the powers of attrac- 
 tion and repulsion, and of gravitation, 
 and assign all these great phenomena 
 to an unknown cause of which they 
 have no idea ! In short, in the heat of 
 their imagination, they place man in 
 the centre of nature ; they believe him 
 to be the object and the end of all that 
 exists ; that it is for him that every 
 thing is made ; that it is to rejoice and 
 please him that every thing has been 
 created ; whilst they do not perceive 
 that very frequently the whole of na- 
 
 ture appears to be loosed against him, 
 and that destiny obstinately persists in 
 rendering him the most miserable of 
 beings.* 
 
 Atheism is only so rare because every 
 thing conspires to intoxicate man, from 
 his most tender age, with a dazzling 
 enthusiasm, or to puff him up with a 
 systematic and organized ignorance, 
 which is of all ignorance the most dif- 
 ficult to vanquish and to root out. 
 Theology is nothing more than a sci- 
 ence of words, which, by dint of repeti- 
 tion, we accustom ourselves to substi- 
 tute for things ; as soon as we feel dis- 
 posed to analyze them, we find that 
 they do not present us with any actual 
 sense. There are very few men in the 
 world who think deeply, who render 
 to themselves an account of their ideas, 
 and who have penetrating minds ; just- 
 ness of intellect is one of the rarest 
 gifts which nature bestows on the hu- 
 man species.f Too lively an imagina- 
 tion, an over-eager curiosity, are as 
 powerful obstacles to the discovery of 
 truth, as too much phlegm, a slow con- 
 ception, indolence of mind, the want 
 of a thinking habit. All men have 
 more or less imagination, curiosity, 
 phlegm, bile, indolence, activity : it is 
 from the just equilibrium, which nature 
 
 * The progress of sound philosophy will 
 always be fatal to superstition, which nature 
 will continually contradict. Astronomy has 
 caused judiciary astrology to vanish ; experi- 
 mental philosophy, the study of natural his- 
 tory and chymistry, render it impossible for 
 jugglers, priests, and sorcerers, to perform 
 miracles. Nature, deeply studied, must ne- 
 cessarily cause that phantom, which igno- 
 rance has substituted in its place, to disap- 
 pear. 
 
 t It is not to be understood here that na- 
 ture has any choice in the formation of her 
 beings, it is merely to be considered that the 
 circumstances which enable the junction of 
 a certain quantity of those atoms or parts 
 necessary to form a human machine in such 
 due proportions that one disposition shall not 
 overbalance the other, and thus render the 
 judgment erroneous by giving it a particular 
 bias, very rarely occur. We know the pro- 
 cess of making gunpowder ; nevertheless, it 
 will sometimes happen, that the ingredients 
 have been so happily blended, that this de- 
 structive article is of a superior quality to the 
 general produce of the manufactory, without, 
 however, the chymist being on that account 
 entitled to any particular commendation ; cir- 
 cumstances have been favourable) and these 
 seldom occur.
 
 MOTIVES WHICH LEAD TO ATHEISM, &c. 
 
 329 
 
 has observed in their organization, that 
 justness of mind depends. Neverthe- 
 less, as we have heretofore said, the 
 organization of man is subject to 
 change, and the judgment of his mind 
 varies with the changes which his ma- 
 chine is obliged to undergo: hence those 
 almost perpetual revolutions which lake 
 place in the ideas of mortals, above all 
 when there is a question concerning 
 those of objects upon which experience 
 does not furnish them with any fixed 
 basis whereon to support them. 
 
 To seek and discover truth, which 
 every thing strives to conceal from us, 
 and which (the accomplices of those 
 who lead us astray) we are frequently 
 disposed to dissimulate to ourselves, 
 or which our habitual terrours make 
 us fear to find, there needs a just mind, 
 an upright heart, in good faith with it- 
 self, and an imagination tempered with 
 reason. With these dispositions, we 
 shall discover truth, which never shows 
 itself either to the enthusiast, smitten 
 with his reveries ; to the superstitious 
 being, nourished with melancholy ; 
 to the vain man, puffed up with his 
 presumptuous ignorance ; to the man 
 devoted to dissipation and to his pleas- 
 ures ; or to the reasoner, disingenuous 
 with himself, who is only disposed to 
 form illusions to his mind. With these 
 dispositions the attentive philosopher, 
 the geometrician, the moralist, the pol- 
 itician, the theologian himself, when 
 he shall sincerely seek truth, will find 
 that the angular stone, which serves 
 for the foundation of all religious sys- 
 tems, evidently supports falsehood. 
 The philosopher will find in matter a 
 sufficient cause of his existence, of his 
 motion, of his combination, of his 
 modes of acting, always regulated by 
 general laws incapable of varying. 
 The geometrician will calculate the 
 active force of matter, and without 
 quitting nature, he will find that, to 
 explain her phenomena, it is not ne- 
 cessary to have recourse to a being or 
 to a power incommensurable with all 
 known powers. The politician, in- 
 structed in the true motive-powers, 
 which can act on the mind of nations, 
 will feel that it is not necessary to re- 
 cur to imaginary motive-powers, whilst 
 there are real ones to act upon the will 
 of the citizens, and to determine them 
 to labour to the maintenance of their 
 No. XL 42 
 
 association ; he will acknowledge that 
 a fictitious motive-power is only cal- 
 culated to slacken or disturb the motion 
 of a machine so complicated as that of 
 society. He who shall more honour 
 truth than the subtilties of theology, 
 will quickly perceive .that this vam 
 science is nothing more than an un- 
 intelligible heap of false hypotheses, 
 begging of principles, of sophisms, of 
 vitiated circles, of futile distinctions, 
 of captious subtilties, of disingenuous 
 arguments, from which it is not pos- 
 sible there should result any thing but 
 puerilities, or endless disputes. In 
 short, all men who have sound ideas 
 of morality, of virtue, of that which is 
 useful to man in society, whether to 
 conserve himself, or to conserve the 
 body of which he is a member, will 
 acknowledge that men. in order to dis- 
 cover their relations and their duties, 
 have only to consult their own nature, 
 and ought to be particularly careful 
 not to found them upon a contradictory 
 being, or to borrow them from a model 
 which will do more than disturb their 
 minds, and render them uncertain of 
 their proper mode of acting. 
 
 Thus every rational thinker, in re- 
 nouncing his prejudices, may feel the 
 inutility and the falsity of so many ab- 
 stract systems, which hitherto have 
 only served to confound all our notions 
 and render doubtful the clearest truths. 
 In re-entering his proper sphere, and 
 quitting the regions of the empyreum, 
 where his mind can only bewilder it- 
 self; in consulting reason, man will 
 discover that of which he needs a 
 knowledge, and undeceive himself of 
 those chimerical causes which enthu- 
 siasm, ignorance, and falsehood, have 
 every where substituted to true causes 
 and to real motive-powers, that act in 
 a nature out of which the human mind 
 can never ramble without going astray, 
 and without rendering itself miserable. 
 
 The Deicolists, and all theologians, 
 unceasingly reproach their adversaries, 
 with their taste for paradoxes, or for 
 systems, whilst they themselves found 
 all their reasoning upon imaginary 
 hypotheses, and make a principle of 
 renouncing experience, of despising 
 nature, of setting down as of no ac- 
 count the evidence of their senses, and 
 of submitting their understanding to 
 the yoke of authority. Would not,
 
 MOTIVES WHICH LEAD TO ATHEISM, &c. 
 
 330 
 
 then the disciples of nature be justi- 
 fied in saying to these men : " We 
 only assure ourselves of that which 
 we see ; we yield to nothing but evi- 
 dence ; if we have . a system, it is 
 founded only upon facts. We per- 
 ceive in ourselves and every where 
 else nothing but matter, and we con- 
 clude from it, that matter can both feel 
 and think. We see that every thing 
 operates in the world after mechanical 
 laws, by the properties, by the com- 
 bination, by the modification of matter, 
 and we seek no other explication of 
 the phenomena which nature presents. 
 We conceive only a single and unique 
 world, in which every thing is linked 
 together, where each effect is due to 
 a natural cause, either known or un- 
 known, which it produces according 
 to necessary laws. We affirm nothing 
 that is not demonstrable, and which 
 you are not obliged to admit as well 
 as us; the principles which we lay 
 down are clear and evident: they are 
 facts ; if some things be obscure and 
 unintelligible to us, we ingenuously 
 agree to their obscurity ; that is to say, 
 to the limits of our own knowledge.* 
 But we do not imagine an hypothesis 
 in order to explain these effects ; we 
 either consent to be for ever ignorant 
 of them, or else we wait until time, 
 experience, and the progress of the 
 human mind shall throw a light upon 
 them. Is not our manner of philoso- 
 phizing the true one? Indeed, in every 
 thing which we advance on the subject 
 of nature, we proceed precisely in the 
 same manner as our adversaries them- 
 selves proceed in all the other sciences, 
 such as natural history, natural 
 philosophy, mathematics, chymistry, 
 morality, and politics. We scrup- 
 ulously confine ourselves to that which 
 is known to us through the medium of 
 our senses, the only instruments which 
 nature has given us to discover truth. 
 What is the conduct of our adver- 
 saries ? In order to explain things 
 which are unknown to them, they 
 imagine beings still more unknown 
 than those things which they are de- 
 sirous of explaining ; beings of whom 
 they themselves acknowledge they have 
 no one notion ! They invert, then, the 
 
 * Nescira quaedam magna par? est ea- 
 pientjse. 
 
 true principles of logic, which consist 
 in proceeding from that which is most 
 known to that with which we are least 
 acquainted. But upon what do they 
 found the existence of these beings by 
 whose aid they pretend to resolve all 
 difficulties ? It is upon the universal 
 ignorance of men, upon their inexperi- 
 ence, upon their terrours, upon their 
 disordered imaginations, upon a pre- 
 tended intimate sense, which is in 
 reality only the effect of ignorance, 
 fear, the want of a reflecting habit, 
 and the suffering themselves to be 
 guided by authority. Such, O theolo- 
 gians, are the ruinous foundations upon 
 which ye build the edifice of your doc- 
 trine ! After this, ye find it impossible 
 to form to yourselves any precise idea 
 of those Gods who serve for the basis 
 of your systems ; ye are unable to 
 comprehend either their attributes, 
 their existence, the nature of their re- 
 sidence, or their manner of acting. 
 Thus, even by your own confession, 
 ye are in a state of profound ignorance 
 on the primary elements (of which it 
 is indispensably requisite to have a 
 knowledge) of a thing which ye con- 
 stitute the cause of all that exists. 
 Thus, under whatever point of view 
 ye are contemplated, it is ye that build 
 systems in the air, and of all systema- 
 tizers ye are the most absurd ; because, 
 in relying on your imagination to cre- 
 ate a cause, this cause ought at least 
 to diffuse light over the whole ; it is 
 upon this condition alone that its in- 
 comprehensibility could be pardoned : 
 but can this cause serve to explain any 
 thing ? Does it make us conceive more 
 clearly the origin of the world, the na- 
 ture of man, the faculties of the soul, 
 the source of good and of evil 1 No, 
 unquestionably, this imaginary cause 
 either explains nothing, multiplies of 
 itself the difficulties to infinity, or 
 throws embarrassments and obscurity 
 on all those matters in which they have 
 made it interpose. Whatever may be 
 the question agitated, it becomes com- 
 plicated as soon as they introduce the 
 name of God : this name envelops the 
 clearest sciences in clouds, and renders 
 the most evident notions complicated 
 and enigmatical. What idea of mo- 
 rality does your Divinity present to 
 man, upon whose will and example 
 you found all the virtues 1 Do not all
 
 SUMMARY OP THE CODE OF NATURE. 
 
 331 
 
 your revelations show him to us under 
 the character of a tyrant who sports 
 witn the human species ; who com- 
 mits evil for the pleasure of doing it, 
 who only governs the world according 
 to the rules of his unjust caprices ? 
 All your ingenious systems, all your 
 mysteries, all the subtleties which ye 
 have invented, are they capable of clear- 
 ing your God, whom ye say is so per- 
 fect, from that blackness and atrocity 
 with which good sense cannot fail to 
 accuse him ? In short, is it not in his 
 name that ye disturb the universe, that 
 ye persecute, that ye exterminate all 
 who refuse to subscribe to those sys- 
 tematical reveries which ye have deco- 
 rated with the pompous name of reli- 
 gion. Acknowledge, then, O theolo- 
 gians ! that ye are, not only sys- 
 tematically absurd, but also that ye 
 Jinish by being atrocious and cruel 
 from the importance which your pride 
 and your interest attach to those ruin- 
 ous systems, under which ye equally 
 overwhelm human reason and the fe- 
 licity of nations." 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 A Summary of the Code of Nature. 
 
 TRUTH is the only object worthy the 
 research of every wise man ; since that 
 which is false cannot be useful to him: 
 whatever constantly injures him can- 
 not be founded upon truth ; conse- 
 quently, ought to be for ever proscribed. 
 It is, then, to assist the human mind, 
 truly to labour for his happiness, to 
 point out to him the clew by which he 
 may extricate himself from those fright- 
 ful labyrinths in which his imagination 
 wanders ; from those sinuosities whose 
 devious course makes him err, without 
 ever finding a termination to his incer- 
 titude. Nature alone, known through 
 experience, can furnish him with this 
 desirable thread ; her eternal energies 
 can alone supply the means of attack- 
 ing the Minotaur ; of exterminating the 
 figments of hypocrisy ; of destroying 
 those monsters, who during so many 
 ages, have devoured the unhappy vic- 
 tims, which the tyranny of the min- 
 isters of a pretended God have exacted 
 as a cruel tribute from affrighted mor- 
 tals. By steadily grasping this ines- 
 
 timable clew, man can never be led 
 astray will never ramble out of his 
 course ; but if, careless of its invalua- 
 ble properties, for a single instant he 
 suffers it to drop from his hand ; if, 
 like another Theseus, ungrateful for 
 the favour, he abandons the fair be- 
 stower, he will infallibly fall again 
 into his ancient wanderings ; most as- 
 suredly become the prey to the canni- 
 bal offspring of the White Bull. In 
 vain shall he carry his views towards 
 heaven, to find resources which are 
 at his feet ; so long as man, infatuated 
 with his religious notions, shall seek 
 in an imaginary world the rule of his 
 earthly conduct, he will be without 
 principles; while he shall pertinaci- 
 ously contemplate the regions of a 
 fanciful heaven, so long he will grope 
 in those where he actually finds him- 
 self; his uncertain steps will never en- 
 counter the welfare he desires ; never 
 lead him to that repose after which he 
 so ardently sighs, nor conduct him to 
 that surety which is so decidedly re- 
 quisite to consolidate his happiness. 
 
 But man, blinded by his prejudices, 
 rendered obstinate in injuring his fel- 
 low, by his enthusiasm, ranges him- 
 self in hostility even against those who 
 are sincerely desirous of procuring for 
 him the most substantive benefits. Ac- 
 customed to be deceived, he is in a 
 state of continual suspicion ; habitu- 
 ated to mistrust himself, to view his 
 reason with diffidence, to look upon 
 truth as dangerous, he treats as ene- 
 mies even those who most eagerly 
 strive to encourage him ; forewarned 
 in early life against delusion, by the 
 subtlety of imposture, he believes him- 
 self imperatively called upon to guard, 
 with the most sedulous activity, the 
 bandeau with which they have hood- 
 winked him ; he thinks his future wel- 
 fare involved in keeping it for ever 
 over his eyes ; he therefore wrestles 
 with all those who attempt to tear it 
 from his obscured optics. If his visual 
 organs, accustomed to darkness, are 
 for a moment opened, the light offends 
 thorn ; he is distressed by its efful- 
 gence ; he thinks it criminal to be en- 
 lightened ; he darts with fury upon 
 those who hold the flambeau by which 
 he is dazzled. In consequence, the 
 atheist is looked upon as a malignant 
 pest, as a public poison, which like
 
 332 
 
 SUMMARY OF THE CODE OP NATURE. 
 
 another Upas, destroys every thing 
 within the vortex of its influence ; he 
 who dares to arouse mortals from the 
 lethargic habit which the narcotic doses 
 administered by the theologians have 
 induced, passes for a perturbator ; he 
 who attempts to calm their frantic 
 transports, to moderate the fury of their 
 maniacal paroxysms, is himself viewed 
 as a madman, who ought to be closely 
 chained down in the dungeons appro- 
 priated to lunatics ; he who invites his 
 associates to rend their chains asunder, 
 to break their galling fetters, appears 
 only like an irrational, inconsiderate 
 being, even to the wretched captives 
 themselves : who have been taught to 
 believe, that nature formed them for 
 no other purpose than to tremble : only 
 called them into existence that they 
 might be loaded Avith shackles. In 
 consequence of these fatal preposses- 
 sions, the Disciple of Nature is gen- 
 erally treated as an assassin ; is com- 
 monly received by his fellow-citizens 
 in the same manner as the feathered 
 race receive the doleful bird of night, 
 which, as soon as it quits its retreat, 
 all the other birds follow with a com- 
 mon hatred, uttering a variety of dole- 
 ful cries. 
 
 No, mortals blended by terrour ! The 
 friend of nature, is not your enemy ; 
 its interpreter is not the minister of 
 falsehood ; the destroyer of your vain 
 phantoms is not the devastator of those 
 truths necessary to your happiness ; 
 the disciple of reason is not an irra- 
 tional being, who either seeks to poison 
 you, or to infect you with a dangerous 
 delirium. If he wrests the thunder 
 from the hands of those terrible Gods 
 that affright ye, it is 'that ye may dis- 
 continue your march, in the midst of 
 storms, over roads that ye can only 
 distinguish by the sudden, but evanes- 
 cent glimmerings of the electric fluid. 
 If he breaks those idols, which fear has 
 served with myrrh and frankincense 
 which superstition has surrounded by 
 gloomy despondency which fanati- 
 cism has imbrued with blood ; it is to 
 substitute in their place those consoling 
 truths that are calculated to heal the 
 desperate wounds ye have received ; 
 that are suitable to inspire you with 
 courage, sturdily to oppose yourselves 
 to such dangerous errours ; that have 
 power to enable you to resist such 
 
 formidable enemies. If he throws 
 down the temples, overturns the altars, 
 so frequently bathed with the bitter 
 tears of the unfortunate, blackened by 
 the most cruel sacrifices, smoked with 
 servile incense, it is that he may erect 
 a fane sacred to peace ; a hall dedi- 
 cated to reason ; a durable monument 
 to virtue, in which ye may at all 
 times find an asylum against your 
 own phrensy ; a refuge from your own 
 ungovernable passions ; a sanctuary 
 against those powerful men, by whom 
 ye are oppressed. If he attacks the 
 haughty pretensions of deified tyrants, 
 who crush ye with an iron sceptre, it 
 is that ye may enjoy the rights of your 
 nature ; it is to the end that ye may 
 be substantively freemen, in mind as 
 well as in body ; that ye may not be 
 slaves, eternally chained to the oar of 
 misery ; it is that ye may at length be 
 governed by men who are citizens, 
 who may cherish their own semblances, 
 who may protect mortals like them- 
 selves, who may actually consult the 
 interests of those from whom they hold 
 their power. If he battles with im- 
 posture, it is to re-establish truth in 
 those rights which have been so long 
 usurped by fiction. If he undermines 
 the base of that unsteady, fanatical . 
 morality, which has hitherto done no- 
 thing more than perplex your minds, 
 without correcting your hearts ; it is 
 to give to ethics an immoveable basis, 
 a solid foundation, secured upon your 
 own nature ; upon the reciprocity of 
 those wants which are continually re- 
 generating in sensible beings : dare, 
 then, to listen to his voice ; you will 
 find it much more intelligible than 
 those ambiguous oracles, which are 
 announced to you as the offspring of a 
 capricious Divinity ; as imperious de- 
 crees that are unceasingly at variance 
 with themselves. Listen, then, to na- 
 ture, she never contradicts her own 
 eternal laws. 
 
 " O thou !" cries this nature to man, 
 "who, following the impulse I have 
 given you, during your whole existence, 
 incessantly tend towards happiness, do 
 not strive to resist my sovereign law. 
 Labour to your own felicity ; partake 
 without fear of the banquet which is 
 spread before you, and be happy ; you 
 will find the means legibly written on 
 your own heart. Vainly dost thou, O
 
 SUMMARY OF THE CODE OF NATURE. 
 
 333 
 
 superstitious being!* seek after thine 
 happiness beyond the limits of the uni- 
 verse, in which my hand hath placed 
 thee : vainly shall thou ask it of those 
 inexorable phantoms, which thine ima- 
 gination, ever prone to wander, would 
 establish upon my eternal throne : vain- 
 ly dost thou expect it in those celestial 
 regions, to which thine own delirium 
 hath given a locality and a name : vain- 
 ly dost thou reckon upon capricious dei- 
 ties with whose benevolence thou art in 
 such ecstasies, whilst they only fill thine 
 abode with calamity thine heart with 
 dread thy mind with illusions thy 
 bosom with groans. Dare, then, to 
 affranchise thyself from the trammels 
 of religion, my self-conceited, prag- 
 matic rival, who mistakes my rights ; 
 renounce those Gods, who are usurpers 
 of my privileges, ana return under the 
 dominion of my laws. It is . in my 
 empire alone that true liberty reigns. 
 Tyranny is unknown to its soil ; equity 
 unceasingly watches over the rights of 
 all my subjects, maintains them in the 
 possession of their just claims ; bene- 
 volence, grafted upon humanity, con- 
 nects them by amicable bonds ; truth 
 enlightens them, and never can im- 
 posture blind them with his obscuring 
 mists. Return, then, my child, to thy 
 fostering mother's arms ! Deserter, 
 trace back thy wandering steps to na- 
 ture ! She will console thee for thine 
 evils ; she will drive from thine heart 
 those appalling fears which overwhelm 
 thee ; those inquietudes that distract 
 thee ; those transports which agitate 
 thee ; those hatreds that separate thee 
 from thy fellow-man, whom thou 
 shouldst love as thyself. Return to 
 nature, to humanity, to thyself! Strew 
 flowers over the road of life : cease to 
 contemplate the future ; live to thine 
 own happiness ; exist for thy fellow- 
 creatures ; retire into thyself, examine 
 thine own heart, then consider the 
 sensitive beings by whom thou art sur- 
 rounded, and leave those Gods who 
 can effect nothing towards thy felicity. 
 Enjoy thyself, and cause others also 
 to enjoy those comforts which I have 
 placed with a liberal hand, for all the 
 children of the earth, who all equally 
 emanate from my bosom : assist them 
 to support the sorrows to which destiny 
 has submitted them in common with 
 thyself. Know, that I approve thy 
 
 pleasures, when without injuring thy- 
 self, they are not fatal to thy brethren, 
 whom I have rendered indispensably 
 necessary to thine own individual hap- 
 piness. These pleasures are freely 
 permitted thee, if thou indulges! them 
 with moderation ; with that discretion 
 which I myself have fixed. Be happy, 
 then, O man ! Nature invites thee to 
 participate in it ; but always remem- 
 ber, thou canst not be so alone ; be- 
 cause I invite all mortals to happiness 
 as well as thyself; thou will find it is 
 only in securing their felicity that thou 
 canst consolidate thine own. Such is 
 the decree of thy destiny : if thou shalt 
 attempt to withdraw thyself from its 
 operation, recollect that hatred will 
 pursue thee ; vengeance overtake thy 
 steps ; and remorse be ever ready at 
 hand to punish the infractions of its 
 irrevocable decrees. 
 
 " Follow, then, O man ! in whatever 
 station thou findest thyself, the routine 
 I have described for thee, to obtain 
 that happiness to which thou hast an 
 indispensable right to challenge pre- 
 tension. Let the sensations of hu- 
 manity interest thee for the condition 
 of other men, who are thy fellow-crea- 
 tures ; let thine heart have commiser- 
 ation for their misfortunes ; let thy 
 generous hand spontaneously stretch 
 forth to lend succour to the unhappy 
 mortal who is overwhelmed by his 
 destiny ; always bearing in thy recol- 
 lection, that it may fall heavy upon 
 thyself, as it now does upon him. Ac- 
 knowledge, then, without guile, that 
 every unfortunate has an inalienable 
 right to thy kindness. Above all, wipe 
 from the eyes of oppressed innocence 
 the trickling crystals of agonizing feel- 
 ing ; let the tears of virtue in distress 
 fall upon thy sympathizing bosom ; let 
 the genial glow of sincere friendship 
 animate thine honest heart ; let the 
 fond attachment of a mate, cherished 
 by thy warmest affection, make thee 
 forget the sorrows of life : be faithful 
 to her love, responsible to her tender- 
 ness, that she may reward thee by a 
 reciprocity of feeling ; that under the 
 eyes of parents, united in virtuous 
 esteem, thy offspring may learn to set 
 a proper value on practical virtue ; that 
 after having occupied thy riper years, 
 they may comfort thy declining age, 
 gild with content thy setting sun, cheer
 
 334 
 
 SUMMARY OF THE CODE OF NATURE. 
 
 the evening of thine existence, by a 
 dutiful return of that care which thou 
 shall have bestowed on their imbecile 
 infancy. 
 
 " Be just, because equity is the sup- 
 port of human society ! Be good, be- 
 cause goodness connects all hearts in 
 adamantine bonds ! Be indulgent, be- 
 cause feeble thyself, thou livest with 
 beings who partake of thy weakness ! 
 Be gentle, because mildness attracts 
 attention ! Be thankful, because grat- 
 itude feeds benevolence, nourishes gen- 
 erosity ! Be modest, because haughti- 
 ness is disgusting to beings at all times 
 well with themselves. Forgive in- 
 juries, because revenge perpetuates 
 hatred ! Do good to him who in- 
 jureth thee, in order to show thyself 
 more noble than he is ; to make a friend 
 of him, who was once thine enemy ! 
 Be reserved in thy demeanour, tem- 
 perate in thine enjoyment, chaste in 
 thy pleasures, because voluptuousness 
 begets weariness, intemperance en- 
 genders disease ; forward manners are 
 revolting : excess at all times relaxes 
 the springs of thy machine, will ulti- 
 mately destroy thy being; and render 
 thee hateful to thyself, contemptible to 
 others. 
 
 " Be a faithful citizen ; because the 
 community is necessary to thine own 
 security ; to the enjoyment of thine 
 own existence ; to the furtherance of 
 thine own happiness. Be loyal, and 
 submit to legitimate authority; because 
 it is requisite to the maintenance of 
 that society which is necessary to thy- 
 self. Be obedient to the laws; be- 
 cause they are, or ought to be, the ex- 
 pression of the public will, to which 
 thine own particular will ought ever 
 to be subordinate. Defend thy country 
 with zeal ; because it is that which 
 renders thee happy, which contains 
 thy property, as well as those beings 
 dearest to thine heart : do not permit 
 this common parent of thyself, as well 
 as of thy fellow-citizens, to fall under 
 the shackles of tyranny ; because from 
 thence it will be no more than thy 
 common prison. If thy country, deaf 
 to the equity of thy claims, refuses 
 thee tappiness if, submitted to an 
 unjust power, it suffers thee to be op- 
 pressed, withdraw thyself from its 
 bosom in silence, but never disturb its 
 peace. 
 
 " In short, be a man ; be a sensible, 
 rational being ; be a faithful husband ; 
 a tender father ; an equitable master ; 
 a zealous citizen ; labour to serve thy 
 country by thy prowess, by thy talents, 
 by thine industry ; above all, by thy 
 virtues. Participate with thine asso- 
 ciates those gifts which nature has be- 
 stowed upon thee ; diffuse happiness 
 among thy fellow-mortals ; inspire thy 
 fellow-citizens with content ; spread 
 joy over all those who approach thee, 
 that the sphere of thine actions, en- 
 livened by thy kindness, illumined by 
 thy benevolence, may react upon thy- 
 self; be assured that the man who 
 makes others happy, cannot himself be 
 miserable. In thus conducting thyself, 
 whatever may be the injustice of others, 
 whatever may be the blindness of those 
 beings with whom it is thy destiny to 
 live, thou wilt never be totally bereft 
 of the recompense which is thy due ; 
 no power on earth will be able to ravish 
 from thee that never-failing source of 
 the purest felicity, inward content ; at 
 each moment thou wilt fall back with 
 pleasure upon thyself; thou wilt nei- 
 ther feel the rankling of shame, the 
 terrour of internal alarm, nor find thy 
 heart corroded by remorse. Thou wilt 
 esteem thyself; thou wilt be cherished 
 by the virtuous, applauded and loved 
 by all good men, whose suffrages are 
 much more valuable than those of the 
 bewildered multitude. Nevertheless, 
 if externals occupy thy contemplation, 
 smiling countenances will greet thy 
 presence ; happy faces will express 
 the interest they have in thy welfare ; 
 jocund beings will make thee partici- 
 pate in their placid feelings. A life so 
 spent, will each moment be marked by 
 the serenity of thine own mind, by the 
 affection of the beings who environ thee ; 
 will be made cheerful by the friendship 
 of thy fellows ; will enable thee to rise 
 a contented, satisfied guest from the 
 general feast, conduct thee gently down 
 the declivity of life, lead thee peaceably 
 to the period of thy days, for die thou 
 must : but already thou wilt survive 
 thyself in thought ; thou wilt aiways 
 live in the remembrance of thy friends ; 
 in the grateful recollection of those be- 
 ings whose comforts have been aug- 
 mented by thy fiiendly attentions; thy 
 virtues will, beforehand, have erected 
 to thy fame an imperishable mbnu-
 
 SUMMARY OF THE CODE OP NATURE 
 
 335 
 
 ment. If Heaven occupied itself with 
 thee, it would feel satisfied with thy 
 conduct, when it shall thus have con- 
 tented the earth. 
 
 " Beware, then, how thou corn- 
 plainest of thy condition ; be just, be 
 kind, be virtuous, and thou canst never 
 be wholly destitute of felicity. Take 
 heed how thou enviest the transient 
 pleasure of seductive crime ; the de- 
 ceitful power of victorious tyranny ; 
 the specious tranquillity of interested 
 imposture ; the plausible manners of 
 venal justice ; the showy, ostentatious 
 parade of hardened opulence. Never 
 be tempted to increase the number of 
 sycophants to an ambitious despot ; to 
 swell the catalogue of slaves to an un- 
 just tyrant ; never suffer thyself to be 
 allured to infamy, to the practice of 
 extortion, to the commission of out- 
 rage, by the fatal privilege of oppres- 
 sing thy fellows ; always recollect it 
 will be at the expense of the most bit- 
 ter remorse thou wilt acquire this bane- 
 ful advantage. Never be the mercenary 
 accomplice of the spoilers of thy coun- 
 try ; they are obliged to blush secretly 
 whenever they meet the public eye. 
 
 " For, do not deceive thyself, it is I 
 who punish, more surely than the Gods, 
 all the crimes of the earth ; the wicked 
 may escape the laws of man, but they 
 never escape mine. It is I who have 
 formed the hearts, as well as the bodies 
 of mortals ; it is I who have fixed the 
 laws which govern them. If thou de- 
 liverest thyself up to voluptuous enjoy- 
 ment, the companions of thy debauch- 
 eries may applaud thee ; but I shall 
 punish thee with the most cruel in- 
 firmities ; these will terminate a life 
 of shame with deserved contempt. If 
 thou givest thyself up to intemperate 
 indulgences, human laws may not cor- 
 rect thee, but I shall castigate thee 
 severely by abridging thy days. If 
 thou art vicious, thy fatal habits will 
 recoil on thine own head. Princes, 
 those terrestrial Divinities, whose 
 power places them above the laws of 
 mankind, are nevertheless obliged to 
 tremble under the silent operation of 
 my decrees. It is I who chastise them ; 
 it is I who fill their breasts with sus- 
 picion ; it is I who inspire them with 
 terrour ; it is I who make them writhe 
 under inquietude ; it is I who make 
 them shudder with honour, at the very 
 
 name of august truth ; It is I who, 
 amidst the crowd of nobles who sur- 
 round them, make them feel the in- 
 ward workings of shame ; the keen 
 anguish of guilt ; the poisoned arrows 
 of regret ; the cruel stings of remorse ; 
 it is I who, when they abuse my bounty, 
 diffuse weariness over their benumbed 
 souls ; it is I who follow uncreated, 
 eternal justice ; it is I who, without 
 distinction of persons, know how to 
 make the balance even ; to adjust the 
 chastisement to the fault ; to make the 
 misery bear its due proportion to the 
 depravity ; to inflict punishment com- 
 mensurate with the crime. The laws 
 of man are just, only when they are 
 in conformity with mine ; his judg- 
 ments are rational, only when I have 
 dictated them : my laws alone are im- 
 mutable, universal, irrefragable ; formed 
 to regulate the condition of the human 
 race, in all ages, in all places, under 
 all circumstances. 
 
 " If thou doubtest mine authority, if 
 thou questionest the irresistible power 
 I possess over mortals, contemplate the 
 vengeance I wreak on all those who 
 resist my decrees. Dive into the re- 
 cesses of the hearts of those various 
 criminals, whose countenances, as- 
 suming a forced smile, cover minds 
 torn with anguish. Dost thou not be- 
 hold ambition tormented day and night, 
 with an ardour which nothing can ex- 
 tinguish 1 Dost thou not see the mighty 
 conqueror become the lord of devastated 
 solitudes ; his victorious career, marked 
 by a blasted cultivation, reign sorrow- 
 fully over smoking ruins ; govern un- 
 happy wretches who curse him in their 
 hearts ; while his mind, gnawed by 
 remorse, sickens at the gloomy aspect 
 of his own triumphs ? Dost thou be- 
 lieve that the tyrant, encircled with 
 his flatterers, who stun him with their 
 praise, is unconscious of the hatred 
 which his oppression excites ; of the 
 contempt which his vices draw upon 
 him ; of the sneers which his inutility 
 call forth ; of the scorn which his de- 
 baucheries entail upon his name ? Dost 
 thou think that the haughty courtier 
 does not inwardly blush at the galling 
 insults he brooks, and despise, from the 
 bottom of his heart, those meannesses 
 by which he is compelled to purchase 
 favours 1 Contemplate the indolent 
 child of wealth, behold him a prey to
 
 336 
 
 SUMMARY OP THE CODE OF NATURE. 
 
 the lassitude of unmeasured enjoyment, 
 corroded by the satiety which always 
 follows his exhausted pleasures. View 
 the miser with an emaciated counte- 
 nance, the consequence of his own 
 penurious disposition, whose callous 
 heart is inaccessible to the calls of 
 misery, groaning over the accumulating 
 load of useless treasure, which at the 
 expense of himself, he has laboured to 
 amass. Behold the gay voluptuary, 
 the smiling debauchee, secretly lament 
 the health they have so inconsiderately 
 damaged, so prodigally thrown away : 
 see disunion, joined to hatred, reign be- 
 tween those adulterous married couples. 
 See the liar deprived of all confidence; 
 the knave stript of all trust ; the hypo- 
 crite fearfully avoiding the penetrating 
 looks of his inquisitive neighbour ; the 
 impostor trembling at the very name 
 of formidable truth. Bring under your 
 review the heart of the envious, use- 
 lessly dishonoured ; that withers at 
 the sight of his neighbour's prosperity. 
 Cast your eyes on the frozen heart of 
 the ungrateful wretch, whom no kind- 
 ness can warm, no benevolence thaw, 
 no beneficence convert into a genial 
 fluid. Survey the iron feelings of that 
 monster whom the sighs of the un- 
 fortunate cannot mollify. Behold the 
 revengeful being nourished with ven- 
 omous gall, whose very thoughts are 
 serpents ; who in his rage consumes 
 himself. Envy, if thou canst, the wa- 
 king slumbers of the homicide ; the 
 starlings of the iniquitous judge ; the 
 restlessness of the oppressor of inno- 
 cence ; the fearful visions of the ex- 
 tortioner ; whose couches are infested 
 with the torches of the furies. Thou 
 tremblest without doubt at the sight of 
 that distraction which, amidst their 
 splendid luxuries, agitates those farm- 
 ers and receivers of taxes, who fatten 
 upon public calamity who devour the 
 substance of the orphan who con- 
 sume the means of the widow who 
 grind the hard earnings of the poor : 
 thou shudderest at witnessing the re- 
 morse which rends the minds of those 
 reverend criminals, whom the unin- 
 formed believe to be happy, whilst the 
 contempt which they have for them- 
 selves, the unerring shafts of secret 
 upbraidings, are incessantly revenging 
 an outraged nation. Thou seest, that 
 content is for ever banished the heart 
 
 quiet for ever driven from the habita- 
 tions of those miserable wretches on 
 whose minds I have indelibly engraved 
 the scorn, the infamy, the chastisement 
 which they deserve. But, no ! thine 
 eyes cannot sustain the tragic spectacle 
 of my vengeance. Humanity obliges 
 thee to partake of their merited suffer- 
 ings ; thou art moved to pity for these 
 unhappy people, to whom consecrated 
 errours renders vice necessary ; whose 
 fatal habits make them familiar with 
 crime. Yes; thou shunnest them with- 
 out hating them ; thou wouldst succour 
 them, if their contumacious perversity 
 had left thee the means. When thou 
 comparest thine own condition, when 
 thou examinest thine own mind, thou 
 wilt have just cause to felicitate thy- 
 self, if thou shall find that peace has 
 taken up her abode wilh thee ; that 
 contentmenl dwells al ihe bollom of 
 ihine own heart In shorl, thou seest 
 accomplished upon ihem, as well as 
 upon ihyself, the unallerable decrees 
 of desliny, which imperiously demand, 
 lhal crime shall punish itself, thai vir- 
 tue never shall be destitule of remu- 
 neralion." 
 
 Such is the sum of those trulhs which 
 are contained in the Code of Nature; 
 such are the doctrines, which ils dis- 
 ciples can announce. They are un- 
 questionably preferable to that super- 
 natural religion which never does any 
 thing but mischief lo ihe human spe- 
 cies. Such is ihe worship lhat is taught 
 by thai sacred reason, which is ihe ob- 
 ject of contempl wilh ihe iheologian 
 which meets ihe insull of ihe fanalic, 
 who only estimates thai which man 
 can neither conceive nor practise ; who 
 makes his morality consist in fictitious 
 duties ; his virlue in actions generally 
 useless, frequently pernicious to the 
 welfare of society ; who, for want of 
 being acquainted with nature, which 
 is before their eyes, believe themselves 
 obliged to seek in ideal worlds imagi 
 nary motives, of which every thing 
 proves the inefficacy. The motive 
 which the morality of nature employs, 
 is the self-evident interesl of each in- 
 dividual, of each communily, of ihe 
 whole human species, in all limes, in 
 every country, under all circumslances. 
 Ils worship is ihe sacrifice of vice, ihe 
 practice of real virlues ; ils object is 
 the conservation of the human race.
 
 SUMMARY OF THE CODE OF NATURE. 
 
 337 
 
 the happiness of the individual, the 
 peace of mankind ; its recompenses are 
 affection, esteem, and glory ; or in their 
 default, contentment of mind, with 
 merited self-esteem, of which no power 
 will ever be able to deprive virtuous 
 mortals ; its punishments, are hatred, 
 contempt, and indignation ; which so- 
 ciety always reserves for those who 
 outrage its interests ; from which even 
 the most powerful can never effectually 
 shield themselves. 
 
 Those nations who shall be dis- 
 posed to practise a morality so wise, 
 who shall inculcate it in infancy, whose 
 laws shall unceasingly confirm it, will 
 neither have occasion for superstition, 
 nor for chimeras. Those who shall 
 obstinately prefer figments to their 
 dearest interests, will certainly march 
 forward to ruin. If they maintain 
 themselves for a season, it is because 
 the power of nature sometimes drives 
 them back to reason, in despite of those 
 prejudices which appear to lead them 
 on to certain destruction. Supersti- 
 tion, leagued with tyranny for the 
 waste of the human species, are them- 
 selves frequently obliged to implore 
 the assistance of a reason which they 
 contemn ; of a nature which they dis- 
 dain : which they debase ; which they 
 endeavour to crush under the ponder- 
 ous bulk of their false Divinities. Re- 
 ligion, in all times so fatal to mortals, 
 when attacked by reason, assumes the 
 sacred mantle of public utility ; it rests 
 its importance on false grounds, founds 
 its rights upon the indissoluble alliance 
 which it pretends subsists between 
 morality and itself, although it never 
 ceases for a single .instant to wage 
 against it the most cruel hostility. It 
 is, unquestionably, by this artifice, that 
 it has seduced so many sages. In the 
 honesty of their hearts, they believe it 
 useful to politics ; necessary to restrain 
 the ungovernable fury of the passions ; 
 thus hypocritical superstition, in order 
 to mask to superficial observers its own 
 hideous character, always knows how 
 to cover itself with the sacred armour 
 of utility; to buckle on the invulnera- 
 ble shield of virtue ; it has, therefore, 
 been believed imperative to respect it, 
 and favour imposture, because it has 
 artfully entrenched itself behind the 
 altars of truth. It is from this intrench- 
 ment we ought to drive it ; it should 
 
 No. XI.-43 
 
 be dragged forth to public view ; strip- 
 ped of its surreptitious panoply ; ex- 
 posed in its native deformity ; in order 
 that the human race may become ac- 
 quainted with its dissimulation ; that 
 mankind may have a knowledge of its 
 crimes ; that the universe may behold 
 its sacrilegious hands, armed with ho- 
 micidal poniards, stained with the blood 
 of nations, whom it either intoxicates 
 with its fury, or immolates without 
 pity to the violence of its passions. 
 
 The Morality of Nature is the only 
 religion which her interpreter offers to 
 his fellow-citizens, to nations, to the 
 human species, to future races, weaned 
 from those prejudices which have so 
 frequently disturbed the felicity of their 
 ancestors. The friend of mankind can- 
 not be the friend of God, who at all 
 times has been a real scourge to the 
 earth. The Apostle of Nature will not 
 be the instrument of deceitful chimeras, 
 by which this world is made only an 
 abode of illusions ; the adorer of truth 
 will not compromise with falsehood ; 
 he will make no covenant with errour, 
 conscious it must always be fatal -to 
 mortals. He knows that the happiness 
 of the human race imperiously exacts 
 that the dark unsteady edifice of su- 
 perstition should be razed to its foun- 
 dations, in order to elevate on its ruins 
 a temple to nature suitable to peace 
 a fane sacred to virtue. He feels it is 
 only by extirpating, even to the most 
 slender fibres, the poisonous tree, that 
 during so many ages has overshadowed 
 the universe, that the inhabitants of this 
 world will be able to use their own 
 eyes to bear with steadiness that light 
 which is competent to illumine their 
 understanding to guide their way- 
 ward steps to give the necessary 
 ardency to their minds. If his efforts 
 should be vain ; if he cannot inspire 
 with courage beings too much accus- 
 tomed to tremble ; he will, at least, 
 applaud himself for having dared the 
 attempt. Nevertheless, he will not 
 judge his exertions fruitless, if he has 
 only been enabled to make a single 
 mortal happy : if his principles have 
 calmed the conflicting transports of one 
 honest mind ; if his reasonings have 
 cheered up some few virtuous hearts. 
 At least he will have the advantage of 
 having banished from his own mind 
 the importunate terrour of superstition ;
 
 338 
 
 SUMMARY OF THE CODE OF NATURE. 
 
 of having expelled from his own heart 
 the gall which exasperates zeal : of 
 having trodden under foot those chi- 
 meras with which the uninformed are 
 tormented. Thus, escaped from the 
 peril of the storm, he will calmly con- 
 template from the summit of his rock, 
 those tremendous hurricanes which 
 superstition excites ; he will hold forth 
 a succouring hand to those who shall 
 be willing to accept it ; he will en- 
 courage them with his voice ; he will 
 second them with his unwearied ex- 
 ertions, and in the warmth of his 
 own compassionate heart, he will ex- 
 claim : 
 
 " O Nature, sovereign of all beings ! 
 and ye, her adorable daughters, Virtue, 
 Reason, and Truth ! remain for ever 
 our only Divinities : it is to you that 
 belong the praises of the human race : 
 to you appertains the homage of the 
 earth. Show us, then, O Nature ! that 
 which man ought to do, in order to ob- 
 tain the happiness which thou makest 
 him desire. Virtue! Animate him with 
 thy beneficent fire. Reason ! Conduct 
 his uncertain steps through the paths 
 of life. Truth ! Let thy torch illumine 
 his intellect, dissipate the darkness of 
 his road. Unite, O assisting Deities ! 
 your powers, in order to submit the 
 hearts of mankind to your dominion. 
 Banish errour from our mind ; wicked- 
 ness from our hearts ; confusion from 
 our footsteps ; cause knowledge to ex- 
 tend its salubrious reign ; goodness to 
 occupy our minds ; serenity to dwell 
 in our bosoms. Let imposture, con- 
 founded, never again dare to show its 
 head. Let our eyes, so long either 
 dazzled or blindfolded, be at length 
 fixed upon those objects we ought to 
 seek. Dispel for ever those mists of 
 ignorance, those hideous phantoms, to- 
 gether with those seducing chimeras, 
 
 which only serve to lead us astray. 
 Extricate us from that dark abyss into 
 which we are plunged by superstition ; 
 overthrow the fatal empire of delusion ; 
 crumble the throne of falsehood ; wrest 
 from their polluted hands the power 
 they have usurped. Command men, 
 without sharing your authority with 
 mortals : break the chains that bind 
 them down in slavery : tear away the 
 bandeau by which they are hoodwink- 
 ed ; allay the fury that intoxicates 
 them ; break in the hands of sanguin- 
 ary, lawless tyrants, that iron sceptre 
 with which they are crushed ; exile to 
 the imaginary regions, from whence 
 fear has imported them, those Gods 
 by whom they are afflicted. Inspire 
 the intelligent being with courage ; in- 
 fuse energy into his system, that, at 
 length, he may feel his own dignity ; 
 that he may dare to love himself; to 
 esteem his own actions when they 
 are worthy ; that a slave only to your 
 eternal laws, he may no longer fear 
 to enfranchise himself from all other 
 trammels ; that blest with freedom, he 
 may have the wisdom to cherish his 
 fellow-creature ; and become happy by 
 learning to perfection his own condi- 
 tion ; instruct him in the great lesson, 
 that the high road to felicity, is pru- 
 dently to partake himself, and also to 
 cause others to enjoy, the rich banquet 
 which thou, O Nature ! hast so bounti- 
 fully set before him. Console thy 
 children for those sorrows to which 
 their destiny submits them, by those 
 pleasures which wisdom allows them 
 to partake ; teach them to yield silently 
 to necessity. Conduct them without 
 alarm to that period which all beings 
 must find ; let them learn that time 
 changes all things, that consequently 
 they are made neither to avoid death 
 nor to fear its arrival." 
 
 THE END.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 THE 
 
 TRUE MEANING 
 
 OF THE 
 
 SYSTEM OF NATURE. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 MAN, Unfortunately for himself, 
 wishes to exceed the limits of his 
 sphere, and to transport himself be- 
 youd the visible world. He neglects 
 experience, and feeds himself with 
 conjectures. Early prepossessed by 
 artful men against reason, he. neglects 
 its cultivation. Pretending to know 
 his fate in another world, he is ina- 
 tentive to his happiness in the present. 
 
 The author's object is, to recal man 
 to reason by rendering it dear to him, 
 to dissipate the clouds which obscure 
 the way to this happiness, to offer 
 reflections useful to his peace and com- 
 fort, and favourable to mental improve- 
 ment. 
 
 So' far from wishing to destroy the 
 duties of morality^ it is the author's 
 object to give them double force, and 
 establish them on the altar of virtue, 
 which alone merits the homage of man- 
 kind. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 On Nature. 
 
 MAN is the work of nature, and sub- 
 ject to her laws, from which he cannot 
 free himself, nor even exceed in thought. 
 A being formed by nature, he is nothing 
 beyond the great whole of which he 
 forms a part. Beings supposed to be 
 superior to, or distinguished from, na- 
 ture, are mere chimeras, of which no 
 real idea can be formed. 
 
 Man is a being purely physical. The 
 moral man is only the physical man, 
 considered in a certain point of view. 
 His organization is the work of nature ; 
 his visible actions and invisible move- 
 ments are equally the natural effects 
 and consequences of his mechanism. 
 His inventions are the effect of his 
 essence. His ideas proceed from the 
 same cause. Art is only nature, acting 
 by instruments which she has herself 
 made all is the impulse of nature. 
 
 It is to physics and experience, that 
 man in all his researches ought to have 
 recourse. Nature acts by simple laws. 
 When we quit experience, imagination 
 leads us astray. 'Tis from want of 
 experience that men have formed wrong 
 ideas of matter.* 
 
 * Men have fallen into a thousand errours, 
 by ascribing an existence to the objects of our 
 interior perceptions, distinct from ourselves, 
 in the same manner as we conceive them 
 separately. It becomes of importance, there- 
 fore, to examine the nature of the distinctions 
 which subsist among those objects. 
 
 Some of these are so distinct from others, 
 that they cannot exist together. The surface 
 of a body cannot at the same time be both 
 white and black in all its parts : nor can one 
 body be more or less extended than another 
 of the same dimensions. Two ideas, thus 
 distinguished, necessarily exclude one an- 
 other : since the existence of one of them 
 necessarily infers the non-existence of the 
 other, ana, consequently, its own separate 
 and independent existence. This class I calL 
 real or exclusive existence. 
 
 But there is another class, which, in op- 
 position to the former, I call fictitious, or 
 imaginary existence. While a body is passing
 
 340 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Indolence is gratified in following 
 example: habit, and authority, rather 
 than experience, which demands acti- 
 vity, or reason, which requires reflec- 
 tion. Hence an aversion to every thing 
 that deviates from ordinary rules, and 
 
 from one colour or shape to another, we suc- 
 cessively experience different sensations : yet 
 it is evident that we remain the same, it only 
 being that body which changes colour or 
 shape. But the body is neither its colour nor 
 shape, since it could exist without them, and 
 still be the same body. Neither is the shape 
 or figure of a body, its colour, motion, extent, 
 nor hardness ; because those qualities are dis- 
 tinct from each other, and any of them can 
 exist separate from and independent of the 
 rest. But as they can exist together, they 
 are not distinguished like those wnich cannot 
 exist together at the same time. They can- 
 not have a separate and distinct existence 
 from bodies whose properties they are. The 
 same power by which a white body exists, is 
 that by which its whiteness also exists. What 
 we call whiteness cannot exist of itself, sep- 
 arate from a body. This is the distinction 
 between things capable of being separated, 
 though found joined together, and which, 
 though exciting in us different impressions, 
 may yet be separately considered, and be- 
 come so many distant objects of perception. 
 This class of imaginary or fictitious objects, 
 existing only in our mind, must not be con- 
 founded with the first class of objects, which 
 have a real, exclusive, and independent ex- 
 istence of their own. 
 
 Innumerable errpurs have arisen- by con- 
 founding those distinctions. In mathematics, 
 for example, we hear every moment of points 
 and lines, or extensions without length, and 
 surfaces having length and breadth without 
 depth, though geometers themselves con- 
 fess, that such bodies neither do nor can ex- 
 ist, but in the mind, while every body in na- 
 ture is truly extended in every sense. Un- 
 skilful materialists have fallen into gross ab- 
 surdities, by mistaking, for real and distinct 
 existences, the different properties of exten- 
 sion, separately considered by mathemati- 
 cians. Hence, they formed the world of 
 atoms, or small bodies, without either bulk 
 or extension, yet possessing infinite hardness, 
 and a great variety of forms. Bodies such 
 as those can only exist in the minds of atom- 
 ists. 
 
 If even able men can be so clumsily de- 
 ceived, by not distinguishing between the real 
 existence of externajbodies, and the fictitious 
 existence of perceptions, existing only in the 
 mind, it is not to be wondered at, that a mul- 
 titude of errours should have arisen, in com- 
 paring, not only. those perceptions themselves, 
 but even their mutual relations with one an- 
 other. 
 
 I do not say, that sensations can exist sep- 
 arate from ourselves. The sentiments of 
 pleasure and pain, though not distinct from 
 him who feels them, certainly are so4rom my 
 mind, which perceives, reflects upon, and 
 
 an implicit respect for ancient insti- 
 tutions. Credulity proceeds from in- 
 experience. By consulting experi- 
 ence and contemplating the universe, 
 we shall only find in it matter and 
 motion. 
 
 compares them with other sensations. As 
 the sentiment of real existence is, clearer than 
 that of imaginary or fictitious, we imagine 
 that a similar distinction exists between "all 
 the objects that the mind conceives. Hence 
 the operations of mind, and its different prop- 
 erties, -have been considered, like real beings, 
 as so many entities having a real existence 
 of their own, and have thus acquired a physi- 
 cal existence, winch they dp not possess of 
 themselves. Hence our mind has been dis- . 
 tinguished from ourselves, as the part is from 
 its whole. The mmd itself has been separ- 
 ated from the soul, or that which animates, 
 from that which makes us live. In the mind, 
 a distinction has been made between the un- 
 derstanding and the will ; in other words, 
 between that which perceives and that which 
 wills, that which wills and that which wills 
 not. Our perceptions have been distinguished 
 from ourselves, and from one another ; hence 
 thoughts, ideas, &c., which are nothing but 
 the faculty of perception itself, viewed in re- 
 lation to some of its functions. All these, how- 
 ever, are only, modifications of our essence, 
 and no more distinguished from themselves, 
 nor from us, than extension, solidity, shape, 
 colour, motion, or rest, from the same body. 
 Yet absolute distinctions have been made be- 
 tween them, and they have been considered 
 as so many small entities, of which we form 
 the assemblage. According, therefore, to 
 those philosophers, we are composed of thou- 
 sands of little bodies, as distinct from one 
 another as the different trees in a forest, each 
 of which exists by a particular and independ- 
 ent power. 
 
 With regard to things really distinct from 
 us, not only their properties, but even the rela- 
 tions of those properties, have been distinguish- 
 ed from themselves, and from one another; 
 and to these a real existence has been given. 
 It was observed," that bodies act upon, strike 
 and repel one another, and, in consequence 
 of their action and reaction, changes were 
 produced in them. When, for example, I put 
 my hand to the fire, I feel what is called heat : 
 in this case, fire is the cause, and heat the 
 effect. To abridge language, general terms, 
 applying to particular ideas of a similar na- 
 ture, were invented. The body that produces 
 the change in another, was called the cau?e, 
 and tli!' body suHi'ring the change, the effect. 
 As those terms produce in the mind some idea 
 of existence, action, reaction, and change, the 
 habit of using 'them makes men believe that 
 they have a clear and distinct perception of 
 them. By the continual use of these words, 
 me nhave at length believed, that there can 
 exist a cause, neither a substance, nor a body ; 
 a cause, though distinct from all matter, 
 without either action or reaction, yet capable 
 of producing every supposable effect.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 341 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Of Motion and its Origin. , 
 
 IT is motion Avhich alone forms the 
 connexion- fang and 
 
 external and internal objects. 
 
 A cause is a being that puts another 
 in motion, or which produces the change 
 that one body effects upon another by 
 means of motion. We only know the 
 manner in which a body acts upon us 
 by the change it produces. It is from 
 actions only that we can judge of in- 
 terior motions, as thoughts, and other 
 sentiments when we see a man flying 
 we conclude him to be afraid. 
 
 The motion of bodies is a necessary 
 consequence of their essence. Every 
 being has laws of motion_peiculiar_Jp 
 itself. 
 
 Every body in the universe is in 
 motion. Action, is essential jtojnattBr. 
 All beings hut come into existence,ln- 
 crease, diminish, and ultimately perish ; 
 metals, minerals, &c.. are all in action. 
 The stones which lie upon the ground 
 act upon it by pressure. Our sense of 
 smell is acted upon by emanations from 
 the most compact bodies. 
 
 Motion is inherent in nature, which 
 is the great whole, out of which nothing 
 can exist, and is essential to it. Mat- 
 ter moves by its own energy, and pos- 
 sesses properties, according to which 
 it acts. 
 
 In attributing the motion of matter 
 to a cause, we must suppose, that mat- 
 ter itself has come into existence a 
 thing impossible ; for since it cannot 
 be annihilated, how can we imagine it 
 to have had a beginning 1 
 
 Whence has matter come ? It has 
 always existed. What is the original 
 cause of its motion ? Matter has al- 
 ways been in motion, as motion is a 
 consequence of its existence, and ex- 
 istence always supposes properties in 
 the existing body. Since matter pos- 
 sesses properties, its manner of action 
 necessarily flows from its form of ex- 
 istence. Hence a hewvy body must 
 fall. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Of Matter and Us Motion. 
 
 THE changes, forms, and modifica- 
 tions of matter alone proceed from 
 
 motion. By motion, every body in 
 nature is formed, changed, enlarged, 
 diminished, and destroyed. 
 
 Motion produces a perpetual trans- 
 migration, exchange, and circulation 
 of the particles of matter. These 
 particles separate themselves to form 
 new bodies. One body nourishes other 
 bodies; and those afterwards restore 
 to the general mass the elements which 
 they had borrowed from it. Suns are 
 produced by the combinations of mat- 
 ter ; and those wonderful bodies, which 
 man in his transitory existence only 
 sees for a moment, will one da/, per- 
 haps, be dispersed by motion. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Laws of Motion common to all Beings At- 
 traction and Repulsion Necessity. 
 
 WE consider eflects as natural, when 
 we see their acting cause. When we 
 see an extraordinary effect, whose cause 
 is unknown to us, we have recourse to 
 imagination, which creates chimeras. 
 
 The visible end of all the motions 
 of -bodies, is the preservation of their 
 actual form of existence, attracting 
 what is favourable, and repelling what 
 is prejudicial to it. From the moment 
 of existence, we experience motions 
 peculiar to a determined essence 1 . 
 
 Every cause produces an effect, and 
 there cannot be an effect without a 
 cause. If every motion, therefore, be 
 ascribable to a cause ; and these causes 
 being determined by their nature, es- 
 sence and properties ; we must con- 
 clude, that they are all necessary, and 
 that every being, in nature, in its given 
 properties and circumstances, can only 
 act as it does. Necessity is the infalli- 
 ble an'd constant tie of causes to their 
 effects : and this irresist&le power, 
 universal necessity, is only a conse- 
 quence of the nature of things, in vir- 
 tue qff which the whole acts by immu- 
 table laws.* 
 
 -* Changes are produced in bodies by their 
 action and reaction upon one another. The 
 sanje body, at present a cause, was previous- 
 ly an effect ; or, in other words, the body 
 which- produces a change in another, by act- 
 i^ig upon it, has itself undergone a change bjr 
 the action of another body. One body may, 
 in relation to others, be, at the same time,
 
 342 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Of Order and Disordei Intelligence and 
 Chance. 
 
 THE view of the regular motions of 
 nature produces, in the human mind, 
 the idea of order. This word only ex- 
 presses a thing relative to ourselves. 
 The idea of order or disorder is no 
 proof that they really exist in nature, 
 since there every thing is necessary. 
 Disorder in relation to a being is no- 
 thing but its passage into a new order 
 or form of existence. Thus, in our 
 eyes, death is the greatest of all dis- 
 orders ; but death only changes our 
 essence. We are not less subject af- 
 terwards to the laws of motion. 
 
 Intelligence is called the power of 
 acting according to an end, which we 
 know the being possesses to whom we 
 ascribe it. We deny its existence in 
 
 both cause and effect. While I push forward 
 a body with the stick in my hand, the motion 
 of the suck, which is the effect of my impulse, 
 is the cause of the progression of the body 
 that is pushed. The word caiise .only de- 
 notes the perception of the chancre which one 
 body produces in another, considered in rela- 
 tion to the body that produces it ; and the 
 word effect^ signifies nothing more than the 
 perception of the same change, considered 
 relatively to the body that suffers it. ~ The 
 absurdity of supposing the existence of inde- 
 pendent and absolute causes, which neither 
 are nor can be effects, must appear obvious to 
 every unbiassed understanding. 
 
 The infinite progression of bodies which 
 have been in succession, cause and effect, 
 soon fatigued men desirous of discovering a 
 general cause for every particular effect. They 
 all at once, therefore, ascended to a first 
 cause, supposed to be universal, in relation 
 to which every particular cause is an effect, 
 though not itself the effect of any cause. The 
 only idea they can give of it is, that it pro- 
 duced all things ; not only the form of their 
 existence, but even their existence itself It 
 is not, according to them, either a body, or a 
 being like particular beings ; in a word, it is 
 the universal cause. And this is all they can 
 say about it. 
 
 From what has been said, it must appear, 
 that this universal cause is but a chimera, a 
 mere phantom, at most an imaginary or ficti- 
 tious being, only existing in the minds of those 
 who consider it. It is, however, the Destiny 
 of the Greeks, the God of philosophers, Jews, 
 and Christians, the Benevolent Spirit of the 
 new Parisian sect of Saint-Simonians ; the 
 only sect which has ever yet attempted to 
 found a worship upon principles beanng any 
 resemblance to morality, reason, or common 
 sense. 
 
 Those who, without acknowledging; this 
 universal cause, content themselves with par- 
 
 beings whose forms of action are dif- 
 ferent from ours. 
 
 When we do not perceive the con- 
 nexion of certain effects with their 
 causes, we attribute them to chance. 
 When we see, or think we see, what 
 is called order, we ascribe it to an in- 
 telligence, a quality borrowed from our- 
 selves, and from the particular form in 
 which we are affected. 
 
 An intelligent being thinks, wills, 
 and acts, to arrive at an end. For this 
 purpose, organs, and an end similar to 
 our own, are necessary. They would 
 above all be necessary to an intelli- 
 gence supposed to govern nature, as 
 without organs, there can neither, be 
 ideas, intuition, thought, will, plan nor 
 action. Matter, when combined in a 
 certain manner, assumes action^ intel- 
 ligence, and- life.* 
 
 ticular causes, have generally distinguished 
 them from material substances. Seeing the 
 same change often produced by different 
 actions or causes, they conceived the exist- 
 ence of particular causes, distinct from sensi- 
 ble bodies. Some have ascribed to them in- 
 telligence and will, hence gods, demons, 
 genii, good and bad spirits. Others, who can- 
 not conceive the existence of a mode of ac- 
 tion different from their own, have imagined 
 certain virtues to proceed from the influence 
 of the stars, chance, and a thousand other 
 dark, unintelligible terms, which signify no- 
 thing more than blind and necessary causes. 
 
 * Among the innumerable errours into 
 which men are continually falling, by con- 
 founding fictitious with real objects, is that 
 of supposing an infinite power, cause, wis- 
 dom, or intelligence, to exist, from only con- 
 sidering the properties of wisdom, power, and 
 intelligence, in the beings whom they see. 
 The term infinite, is totally incompatible with 
 the existence of any thing finite, positive or 
 real : in other words, it carries with it the im- 
 possibility of real existence. Those who call 
 a power, quantity, or number infinite, speak 
 of something undetermined, of which no just 
 idea can be formed ; because, however ex- 
 tended the idea may be, it must fall short of 
 the thing represented. An infinite number, 
 for example, can neither be conceived nor ex- 
 pressed. Admitting for a moment, the ex- 
 istence of such a number, it may be asked, 
 whether a certain part, the half for example, 
 may not be taken from it? This half is finite, 
 ana may be counted and expressed ; but by 
 doubling it, we make a sum equal tP an infi- 
 nite number, which will then be determined, 
 and to which a unit may at least be added. 
 This sum will then be greater than it was be- 
 fore, though infinite, or that to which nolhing 
 could be added, yet we can make no addition 
 to it ! It is, therefore, at the same time, both
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 343 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Of Man, his Physical and Moral Distinc- 
 tions His Origin. 
 
 MAN is always subject to necessity. 
 His temperament is independent of 
 him, yet it influences his passions. 
 His blood more or less abundant or 
 warm, his nerves more or less relaxed, 
 the aliments upon which he feeds, all 
 act upon him and influence him. 
 
 Man is an organized whole, com- 
 posed of different- matters, which act 
 according to their respective properties. 
 The difficulty of discovering the causes 
 of his motions and ideas, produced the 
 division of his essence into two na- 
 tures. He invented words, because 
 ignorant of things. 
 
 Man, like every thing else, is a pro- 
 duction of nature. What is his origin? 
 We want experience to answer the 
 question. N 
 
 Has he always existed, or is he an 
 instantaneous production of nature? 
 Either of the cases is possible. Mat- 
 ter is eternal, but its forms and com- 
 binations are transitory. It is probable, 
 that he was produced at a particular 
 period of our globe, upon which he, 
 like its other productions, varies ac- 
 cording to the difference of climate. 
 He was doubtless produced male and 
 female, and will exist so long as the 
 globe remains in its present state. 
 When that is changed, the human 
 species must give way to new beings, 
 capable of incorporating themselves 
 with the new qualities which the globe 
 will then possess. 
 
 When we are unable to account for 
 the production of man, to talk of God 
 and of creation, is but confessing our 
 ignorance of the energy of nature. 
 
 infinite and finite, and consequently possesses 
 properties exclusive of one another. We might, 
 with equal propriety, conceive the existence of 
 a white body which is not white, or, in other 
 words, a mere chimera; all we can say of 
 which is. that it neither does nor can exist. 
 
 What has been said of an infinite number, 
 equally applies either to an infinite cause, in- 
 telligence, or power. As there are different 
 degrees of causation, intelligence, and power, 
 those degrees must be considered as units, the 
 sum of which will express the quantity of the 
 power, and intelligence, of such causes. An 
 infinity of power, action, or intelligence, to 
 which nothing can be added, nor conceived, 
 is impossible, never has existed, and never 
 can exist. 
 
 Man has no right to believe himself 
 a privileged being in nature. He is 
 subject to the same vicissitudes as its 
 other productions. The i ( ' ea f human 
 excellence is merely 'bunded on the 
 the partiality which; man feels for him- 
 self. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Of Oie Soul and its Spirituality. 
 
 WHAT is called the soul moves with 
 us. Now, motion is a property of mat- 
 ter. The soul also shows itself ma- 
 terial 'm the invincible obstacles which 
 it encounters on the part of the body. 
 If the soul causes me to move my arm 
 when there is no obstacle in the way, 
 it ceases doing so when the arm is 
 pressed down by a heavy weight. 
 Here then is a mass of matter which 
 annihilates an impulse given by a spi- 
 ritual cause, which, being unconnected 
 with matter, ought to meet with no 
 resistance from it. 
 
 Motion supposes extent and solidity 
 in the body that is moved. When we 
 ascribe action to a cause, we must 
 therefore consider that cause to be ma- 
 terial. 
 
 While I walk forward, I do not leave 
 my soul behind me. Soul, therefore, 
 possesses one quality in common with 
 the body and peculiar to matter. The 
 soul makes a part of the body, and ex- 
 periences all its vicissitudes, in passing 
 through a state of infancy and of de- 
 bility, in partaking of its pleasures and 
 pains ; and with the body exhibiting 
 marks of dulness, debility, and death, 
 In short, it is only the body viewed in 
 relation to some of its functions. 
 
 What sort of substance is it which 
 can neither be seen nor felt ? An 
 immaterial being, yet acting upon 
 matter ! How can the body inclose 
 a fugitive being, which eludes all the 
 senses. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Of the, Intellectual Faculties All dcnvtd 
 from Sensation. 
 
 SENSATION is a manner of being af- 
 fected, peculiar to certain organs of
 
 344 
 
 animated bodies, occasioned 
 presence of a material object. 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 by the 
 Sensi- 
 
 bility is the result of an arrangement 
 peculiar to animals. The organs re- 
 ciprocally communicate impressions to 
 one another. 
 
 Every sensation is a shock given to 
 organs ; a perception, that shock com- 
 municated to the brain ; an idea the 
 image of the object which occasion- 
 ed the sensation and perception. If 
 our organs, therefore, be not moved, 
 we can neither have perceptions nor 
 ideas. 
 
 * Man is born with a disposition to know, 
 or to feel and receive impressions from the 
 action of other bodies upon him. Those im- 
 pressions are called sensations, perceptions, 
 or ideas. These impressions leave a trace or 
 vestige of themselves, which are sometimes 
 excited in the absence of the objects which 
 occasioned them. This is the faculty of me- 
 mory, or the sentiment by which a man has 
 a knowledge of former impressions, accom- 
 panied by a perception of the distinction be- 
 tween the time he received, and that in which 
 he remembers them. 
 
 Every impression produces an agreeable or 
 disagreeable sensation. When lively, we call 
 it pleasure, or pain ; when feeble, satisfaction, 
 ease, inconvenience, or uneasiness. The first 
 of these sentiments impels us towards objects, 
 and makes us use efforts to join and attach 
 them to ourselves, to augment and prolong 
 the force of the sensation, to renew and recall 
 it when it ceases. We love objects which 
 produce such sensations, and are happy in 
 possessing them : we seek and desire their 
 possession, and are miserable upon losing 
 them. The sentiment of pain induces us to 
 fly and shun objects which produce it, to fear, 
 hate, and detest their presence. 
 
 We are so constituted, as to love pleasure ] 
 and hate pain ; and this law, engraven by 
 nature on the heart of every human being, is I 
 so powerful, that in every action of life it 
 forces our obedience. Pleasure is attached to 
 every action necessary to the preservation of 
 life, and pain to those of an opposite nature. 
 Love of pleasure, and hatred of pain, induce 
 us, without either examination or reflection, 
 to act so as to obtain possession of the former 
 and the absence of the latter. 
 
 The impressions once received, it is not in 
 man's power either to prolong or to render 
 them durable. There are certain limits be- 
 yond which human efforts cannot exceed. 
 Some impressions are more poignant than 
 others, and render us either happy or misera- 
 ble. An impression, pleasant at its com- 
 mencement, frequently produces pain in its 
 progress. Pleasure and pain are so much 
 blended together, that it is seldom that the 
 one is felt without some part of the other. 
 
 Man, like every other animal, upon coming 
 into the world, abandons himself to present 
 impressions* without foreseeing their conse- 
 
 Mernory produces imagination. We 
 form a picture of the things we have 
 seen, and, by imagination, transport 
 ourselves to what we do not see. 
 
 Passions are movements of th will, 
 determined- by"the objects 'which "act 
 uponjt,- according to our actuai form 
 of existence. 
 
 The intellectual faculties attributfd 
 to the soul, are modifications ascriballe 
 to the objects which strike the senses. 
 Hence a trembling in the members, 
 when the brain is affected by the move- 
 ment called fear.* 
 
 quences or issue. Foresight can only be' ac- 
 quired by experience, and reflection upon the 
 impressions communicated to .u? by objects. 
 Some men, in~fliis respect, continue 'infants 
 'all their lives, never acquiring the faculty of 
 foresight ; and even among the most wise, 
 few are to be found, upon whom, at some 
 periods of life, certain violent impressions, 
 those of love, for example, the most violent 
 of all, have not reduced into a state of child- 
 hood, foreseeing nothing, and permitting them- 
 selves to be guided by momentary impulses. 
 
 As we advance in years, we acquire more 
 experience in comparing new and unknown 
 objects with the idea or image of those whose 
 impression memory has preserved. We judge 
 of the unknown from the known, and conse- 
 quently, know whether those ought to be 
 sought for or avoided. 
 
 .The faculty of comparing present with ab- 
 sent objects, which exist only in the memory, 
 constitutes reason. It is the balance with 
 which we weigh things ; and by recalling 
 those that are absent, we can judge of the 
 present, by their relations to one another. 
 This is the boasted reason which man, upon 
 I know not what pretext, arrogates to him- 
 self to the exclusion of all other animals. 
 We see all animals possessing evident marks 
 of judgment and comparison. Fishes resort 
 to the same spot at the precise hour in which 
 they have been accustomed to receive food. 
 The weaker animals form themselves into 
 societies for mutual defence. The sagacity of 
 the dog' is generally known, and the foresight 
 of the bee has long been proverbial. The 
 bears of Siberia, and the elephants of India, 
 seem to possess a decided superiority in un- 
 derstanding over the human savages and 
 slaves, who inhabit those countries. 
 
 Some philosophers suppose the existence 
 of the sense of touch in man, in a superior 
 degree than in other animals, sufficient to 
 account for his superiority over them. If to 
 that we add, the advantage of a greater lon- 
 gevity, and a.capacity of supporting existence 
 all over the globe, an advantage peculiar to 
 the human species, perhaps we have enume- 
 rated all the causes of superiority which man 
 ever received from nature, whatever may be 
 his pretensions. Speech, or the power of 
 communicating ideas, is common to almost 
 all animals. Some of them even possess it
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 other men. 
 
 345 
 
 Ditersity of the Intellectual Faculties They 
 depend, like the Moral Qualities, on Physi- 
 cal Causes. Natural Principles of So- 
 ciety. 
 
 TEMPERAMENT decides the moral 
 qualities. This we have from nature, 
 and from our parents. Its different 
 kinds are determined by the quality of 
 the air we breathe, by the climate we 
 inhabit, by education, and the ideas it 
 inspires. 
 
 By making mind spiritual, we ad- 
 minister to it improper remedies. Con- 
 stitution, which can be changed, cor- 
 rected and modified, should alone be 
 the object of our attention. 
 
 Genius is an effect of physical sen- 
 sibility. It is the faculty possessed by 
 some human beings, of seizing, at one 
 glance, a whole and its different parts. 
 
 By experience, we foresee effects not 
 yet felt hence prudence and foresight. 
 Reason is nature modified by experi- 
 ence. 
 
 The final end of man is self-preser- 
 vation, and rendering his existence 
 happy. Experience shows him the 
 need he stands in of others to attain; 
 that 9bject, and points out the means 
 of rendering them subservient to his 
 views. He sees what is agreeable or; 
 disagreeable to them, and these ex-! 
 periences give him the idea of msticej 
 &c. Neither virtue nor vice are TfourTd- 
 ed on conventions, but only rest upon 
 relations subsisting among all human 
 beings. 
 
 Men's duties to one another arise 
 from the necessity of employing those 
 means which tend to the end proposed 
 by nature. It is by promoting the hap- 
 piness of other men, that we engage 
 them to promote our own. 
 
 Politics should be the art of directing 
 the passions of men to the good of so- 
 ciety. Laws ought to have no other 
 object than the direction of their actions 
 also to the same object. 
 
 Happiness is the uniform object of 
 all the passions. These are legitimate 
 and natural, and can neither be called 
 good or bad, but in so far as they affect 
 
 in a higher degree than man in certain states 
 of society. Dampierre describes a nation, 
 whose speech consisted in the howling of a 
 few guttural sounds, and whose vocabulary 
 did not contain more than thirty words. 
 No. XL 14 
 
 To direct the passions to 
 virtue, it is necessary to show man- 
 kind advantages resulting from its 
 practice. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 The Mind draws no Ideas from itself We 
 have no Innate Ideas. 
 
 IP we can only form ideas of mate- 
 rial objects, how can their cause be 
 supposed immaterial ? 
 
 To this, dreams are opposed as an 
 objection ; but in sleep the brain is 
 filled with a crowd of ideas which it 
 received when awake. Memory al- 
 ways produces imagination. The cause 
 of dreams must be physical, as they 
 most frequently proceed from food, hu- 
 mours, and fermentations, unanalogous 
 to the healthy state of man. 
 
 The ideas supposed to be innate, 
 are those which are familiar to, and, 
 as it were, incorporated with us ; but 
 it is always through the medium of the 
 senses that we acquire them. They 
 are the effect of education, example, 
 and habit. Such are the ideas formed 
 of God, which evidently proceed from 
 the descriptions given of him. 
 
 Our moral ideas are the fruits of ex- 
 perience alone. The sentiments of 
 paternal and filial affection are the re- 
 sult of reflection and habit. 
 
 Man acquires all his notions and 
 ideas. The words beauty, intelligence, 
 order, virtue, grief, pain and pleasure, 
 are, to rrte, void of meaning, unless 
 I compare them with other objects. 
 Judgment presupposes sensibility ; and 
 judgment itself is the fruit of com- 
 parison. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Of the System of Man's Liberty. 
 
 MAN is a physical being, subject to 
 nature, and consequently to necessity. 
 Born without our consent, our organ- 
 ization is independent of us, and our 
 ideas come to us involuntarily. Action 
 is the sequel of an impulse communi- 
 cated by a sensible object. 
 
 I am thirsty, and see a well ; can I 
 hinder myself from wishing to drink 
 of it ? But I am told, the water is 
 poisoned, and I abstain from drinking.
 
 346 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Will it be said, that in this case I am 
 free 1 Thirst necessarily determined 
 me to drink; the discovery of poison 
 necessarily determines me not to drink. 
 The second motive is stronger than 
 the first, and I abstain from drinking. 
 But an imprudent man, it may be said, 
 "will drink. In this case his first im- 
 pulse will be strongest. In either case, 
 the action is necessary. He who drinks 
 is a madman ; but the actions of mad- 
 men are not less necessary than those 
 of other men. 
 
 A debauchee may be persuaded to 
 change his conduct. This circum- 
 stance does not prove that he is free ; 
 but only, that motives can be found, 
 sufficient to counteract the effect of 
 those which formerly acted upon him. 
 
 Choice by no means proves liberty ; 
 since hesitation only finishes when 
 the will is determined by sufficient 
 motives ; and man cannot hinder mo- 
 tives from acting upon his will. Can 
 he prevent himself from wishing to 
 possess what he thinks desirable ? 
 No ; but we are told he can resist the 
 desire, by reflecting upon its conse- 
 quences. But has he the power of re- 
 flecting ? Human actions are never 
 free; they necessarily proceed from 
 constitution, and,jiorn received idTeas, 
 strengthened by example, -education, 
 and experience. The motive which 
 determines man is always beyond his 
 power. 
 
 Notwithstanding the system of hu- 
 man liberty, men have universally 
 founded their systems upon necessity 
 alone. If motives were thought in- 
 capable of influencing the will, why 
 make use of morality, education, legis- 
 lation, and even religion ? We estab- 
 lish institutions to influence the will ; 
 a clear proof of our conviction, that they 
 must act upon it. These institutions 
 are necessity demonstrated to man. 
 
 The necessity that governs the phy- 
 sical, governs also the moral world, 
 where every thing is also subject to 
 the same law. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Examination of the Opinions which maintain 
 the System of Necessity to be Dangerous. 
 
 IF men's actions are necessary, by 
 what right, it is asked, are crimes 
 
 punished, since involuntary actions are 
 never the objects of punishment? 
 
 Society is an assemblage of sensible 
 beings, susceptible of reason, who love 
 pleasure, and hate pain. Nothing more 
 is necessary to engage their concur- 
 rence to the general welfare. Neces- 
 sity is calculated to impress all men. 
 The wicked are madmen against whom 
 others have a right to defend them- 
 selves. Madness is an involuntary 
 and necessary state, yet madmen are 
 confined. But society should never 
 excite desires, and afterwards punish 
 them. Robbers are often those whom 
 society has deprived of the means of 
 subsistence. 
 
 By ascribing all to necessity, we are 
 told the ideas of just and unjust, of 
 good and evil, are destroyed. No j 
 though no man acts from necessity, 
 Kis actions are just and good relative 
 to the society whose welfare he pro- 
 motes. E^ery man is sensible that he 
 is compelled to love a certain mode of 
 conduct in his neighbour. The ideas 
 of pleasure and pain, vice and virtue, 
 are founded upon our own essence. 
 
 Fatalism neither emboldens crime r 
 nor stifles remorse, always felt by the 
 wicked. They have long escaped 
 blame or punishment, they are not on 
 that account better satisfied with them- 
 selves. Amidst perpetual pangs, strug- 
 gles, and agitations, they can neither 
 find repose nor happiness. Every crime 
 costs them bitter torments and sleep- 
 less nights. The system of fatality 
 establishes morality, by demonstrating 
 its necessity. 
 
 Fatality, it is said, discourages man, 
 paralyzes his mind, and breaks the ties 
 that connect him with society. But 
 does the possession of sensibility de- 
 pend upon myself? My sentiments- 
 are necessary, and founded upon na- 
 ture. Though I know that all men 
 must die, am I on that account, the 
 less affected by the death of a wife, a 
 child, a father, or a friend ? 
 
 Fatalism ought to inspire man with 
 a useful submission and resignation to- 
 his fate. The opinion, that all is ne- 
 cessary, will render him tolerant. He 
 will lament and pardon his fellow- 
 men. He will be humble and modest^ 
 from knowing that he has received 
 every thing which he possesses. 
 
 Fatalism, it is said, degrades mars
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 317 
 
 into a mere machine. Such language 
 is the invention of ignorance, respect- 
 ing what constitutes his true dignity. 
 Every machine is valuable, when it 
 performs well the functions to which 
 it is destined. Nature is but a ma- 
 chine, of which the human species 
 makes a part. Whether the soul be 
 mortal or immortal, we do not the less 
 admire its grandeur and sublimity in a 
 Socrates. 
 
 The opinion of fatalism is advan- 
 tageous to man. It prevents useless 
 remorse from disturbing his mind. It 
 teaches him the propriety of enjoying 
 with moderation, as pain ever accom- 
 panies excess. He will follow the 
 paths of virtue, since every thing shows 
 its necessity for rendering him estima- 
 ble to others and contented with him- 
 self. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Of the SouFs Imrfiortatity The Dogma of a 
 Future State Fear of Death. 
 
 THE soul, step by step, follows the 
 different states of the body. With the 
 body, it comes into existence, is feeble 
 in infancy, partakes of its pleasures 
 and pains, its states of health and dis- 
 ease, activity or depression ; with the 
 body, is asleep or awake, and yet it 
 has been supposed immortal ! 
 
 Nature inspires man with the love 
 of existence, and the desire of its con- 
 tinuation produced the belief of the 
 soul's immortality. Granting the de- 
 sire of immortality to be natural, is 
 that any proof of its reality ? We de- 
 sire the immortality of the body, and 
 this desire is frustrated. Why should 
 not the desire of the soul's immortality 
 be frustrated also? 
 
 The soul is only the principle of 
 sensibility. To think, to suffer, to 
 enjoy, is to feel. "When the body, 
 therefore, ceases to live, it cannot ex- 
 ercise sensibility. Where there are no 
 senses, there can be no ideas. The 
 soul only perceives by means of the 
 organs : how then is it possible for it 
 to feel, after the dissolution ? 
 
 We are told of divine power but 
 divine power cannot make a thing ex- 
 ist and not exist at the same time. It 
 
 cannot make the^soul think without the 
 means necessary to acquire thoughts. 
 
 The destruction of his body always 
 alarms man, notwithstanding the opin- 
 ion of the soul's immortality ; a sure 
 proof that he is more affected by the 
 present reality, than by the hope of a 
 distant futurity. 
 
 The very idea of death is revolting 
 to man, yet he does every thing in his 
 power to render it more frightful. It 
 is a period which delivers us up de- 
 fenceless to the undescribable rigours 
 of a pitiless despot. This, it is said, 
 is the strongest rampart against human 
 irregularities. But what effect have 
 those ideas produced upon those who 
 are, or at least pretend to be, persuaded 
 of their truth ? The great bulk of 
 mankind seldom think of them ; never, 
 when hurried along by passion, preju- 
 dice, or example. If they produce any 
 effect, it is only upon those to whom 
 they are unnecessary in urging to do 
 good, and restraining from evil. They 
 fill the hearts of good men with ter- 
 rour, but have not the smallest influ- 
 ence over the wicked. 
 
 Bad men may be found among infi- 
 dels, but infidelity by no means implies 
 wickedness. On the contrary, the man 
 who thinks and meditates, better knows 
 motives for being good, than he who 
 permits himself to be blindly conducted 
 by the motives of others. The man 
 who does not expect another state of 
 existence, is the more interested in 
 prolonging his life, and rendering him- 
 self dear to his fellow-men, in the only 
 state of existence with which he is ac- 
 quainted. The dogma of a future state 
 destroys our happiness in this life ; we 
 sink under calamity, and remain in 
 errour, in expectation of being happy 
 hereafter. 
 
 The present state has served as the 
 model of the future. We feel pleasure 
 and pain hence a heaven and a hell. 
 A body is necessary for enjoying hea- 
 venly pleasures hence the dogma of 
 a resurrection. 
 
 But whence has the idea of hell 
 arisen? Because, like a sick person 
 who clings even to a miserable exist- 
 ence, man prefers a life of pain to an- 
 nihilation, which he considers as the 
 greatest of calamities. That notion 
 was besides counterbalanced by the 
 idea of divine mercy.
 
 348 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Did not men, by a happy inconsis- 
 tency, deviate in their conduct from 
 those insolent ideas, the terrours ascrib- 
 ed to a future state are so strong, that 
 they would sink into brutality, and the 
 world become a desert. 
 
 Although this dogma may operate 
 upon the passions, do we see fewer 
 wicked men among those who are the 
 most firmly persuaded of its truth ? 
 Men who think themselves restrained 
 by those terrours, impute to them ef- 
 fects ascribable only to present motives, 
 such as timidity, and apprehension of 
 the consequences of doing a bad action. 
 Can the fears of a distant futurity re- 
 strain the man upon whom those of 
 immediate punishment produce no ef- 
 fect ? 
 
 Religion itself destroys the effect of 
 those terrours. The remission of sin 
 emboldens the wicked man to his last 
 moment. This dogma is consequently 
 opposed to the former. 
 
 The inspirers of those terrours admit 
 them to be ineffectual ; priests are con- 
 tinually lamenting that man is still 
 hurried on by his vicious inclinations. 
 In fine, for one timid man who is re- 
 strained by those terrours, there are 
 millions whom 'they render ferocious, 
 useless, and wicked, and turn aside 
 from their duties to society, which they 
 are continually tormenting. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Of Education Morality and Laws sufficient 
 to Restrain Man Desire of Immortality 
 Suicide. 
 
 LET us not seek motives to action 
 in this world, in a distant futurity. It 
 is to experience and truth that \ve ou^ht 
 to have recourse, in providing remedies 
 to those evils which are incident to 
 our species. There, too, must be sought 
 those motives which give the heart in- 
 clinations useful to society. 
 
 Education, above all, gives the mind 
 habits, useful to the individual and to 
 society. Men have no need either of 
 celestial rewards or supernatural pun- 
 ishments. 
 
 Government stands in no need of 
 fables for its support. Present rewards 
 and punishments are more efficacious 
 than those of futurity, and they only 
 
 ought to be employed. Man is every 
 where a slave, and consequently void 
 of honour ; base, interested, and dissim- 
 ulating. These are the vices of gov- 
 ernments. Man is every where de- 
 ceived, and prevented from cultivating 
 his reason ; he is consequently stupid 
 and unreasonable: every where he sees 
 vice and crime honoured ; and there- 
 fore concludes the practice of vice to 
 lead to happiness, and, that of virtue, 
 a sacrifice of himself. Every where 
 he is miserable, and compelled to wrong 
 his neighbours, that he may be happy. 
 Heaven is held up to his view, but the 
 earth arrests his attention. Here he 
 will, at all events, be happy. Were 
 mankind happier and better governed, 
 there would be no need of resorting to 
 fraud for governing them. 
 
 Cause man to view this state as 
 alone capable of rendering him happy; 
 bound his hopes to this life, instead of 
 amusing him with tales of a futurity ; 
 show him what effect his actions have 
 over his neighbours ; excite his in- 
 dustry ; reward his talents ; make him 
 active, laborious, benevolent and vir- 
 tuous ; teach him to value the affection 
 of his contemporaries, and let him know 
 the consequences of their hatred. 
 
 However great the fear of death may 
 be, chagrin, mental affliction, and mis- 
 fortunes, cause us sometimes to regard 
 it as a refuge from human injustice. 
 
 Suicide has been, variously consider- 
 ed. Some have imagined that man 
 has no right to break the contract which 
 he has entered into with society. But 
 upon examining the connexions which 
 subsist between man and nature, they 
 will be found neither to be voluntary 
 on the one part, nor reciprocal on the 
 other. Man's will had no share in 
 bringing him into the world, and he 
 goes out of it against his inclination. 
 All his actions are compulsatory. He 
 can only love existence upon condition 
 that it renders him happy. 
 
 By examining man's contract with 
 society, we shall find that it is only con- 
 <|itional and reciprocal, and supposes 
 mutual advantages to the contracting 
 parties. Convenience is the bond of 
 connexion. Is it broken ? Man from 
 that moment becomes free. Would 
 we blame the man who, finding him- 
 self destitute of the means of subsist- 
 ence in the citv retires into the coun-
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 249 
 
 try ? He who dies, only retires into 
 solitude. 
 
 The difference of opinion upon this, 
 as well as other subjects, is necessary. 
 The suicide will tell you, that in his 
 situation, your conduct would be pre- 
 cisely similar : but to be in the situa- 
 tion of another, we must possess his 
 organization, constitution, and pas- 
 sions ; be, in short, himself, placed in 
 the same circumstances, and actuated 
 by the same motives. These maxims 
 may be thought dangerous : but max- 
 ims alone do not lead men to the adop- 
 tion of such violent resolutions. It is 
 a constitution whetted by chagrin, a 
 vicious organization, a derangement 
 of the machine in a word, necessity. 
 Death is a resource of which oppress- 
 ed virtue should never be deprived. 
 
 / CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Of Man's Interest, or the Ideas he forms of 
 Happiness Without Virtue he cannot be 
 Happy. 
 
 INTKRKST is the object to which 
 every man, according to his constitu- 
 tion, attaches happiness. The same 
 happiness does not suit all men, as 
 that of every man depends upon his 
 peculiar organization. It may, there- 
 fore, be easily conceived, that in beings 
 of such different natures, what consti- 
 tutes the pleasure of one man, may be 
 indifferent, or even disgusting to an- 
 other. No man can determine what 
 will constitute the happiness of his 
 neighbour. 
 
 Compelled, however, to judge of 
 actions from their effects upon our- 
 selves, we approve of the interest 
 which animates them, according to 
 the advantage which they produce to 
 the human species. Thus, we admire 
 valour, generosity, talents, and virtue. 
 
 It is the nature of man to love him- 
 self, to preserve his existence, and to 
 render it happy. Experience and rea- 
 son soon convince him, that he cannot 
 alone command the means of procu- 
 ring happiness. He sees other human 
 beings engaged in the same pursuit, 
 yet capable of assisting him to attain 
 his desired object. He perceive's, that 
 they will favour his views in so far 
 only as they coincide with their own 
 
 interest. He will then conclude, that 
 to secure his own happiness, he must 
 conciliate their attachment, approba- 
 tion, and assistance ; and that it is ne- 
 cessary to make them find advantage3 
 in promoting his views. The procu- 
 ring of those advantages to mankind 
 constitutes virtue. The wise man finds 
 it his interest to be virtuous. Virtue 
 is nothing more than the art of render- 
 ing a man happv, by contributing to 
 the happiness of others. Merit and 
 virtue are founded upon the nature and 
 wants of man. 
 
 The virtuous man is always happy. 
 In every face he reads the right which 
 he has acquired over the heart. Vice 
 is compelled to yield to virtue, whose 
 superiority she blushingly acknow- 
 ledges. Should the man of virtue 
 sometimes languish in contempt or ob- 
 scurity, the justice of his cause forms 
 his consolation for the injustice of 
 mankind. This consolation is denied 
 to the wicked, whose hearts are the 
 abode of anxiety, shame, and remorse. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 The Erroneous Opinions entertained by Man 
 of Happiness are the True Causes of hit 
 Misery. 
 
 NOTHING can be more frivolous than 
 the declamations of a gloomy philoso- 
 pher against the love of power, gran- 
 deur, riches, or pleasure. Every thing 
 which promises advantages is a natural 
 object of desire. 
 
 Paternal authority, those of rank, 
 riches, genius, and talents are founded 
 upon those advantages. It is only on 
 account of the advantages they pro- 
 duce, that the sciences are estimable. 
 Kings, rich and great men, may im- 
 pose upon us by show and splendour, 
 but it is from their benefits alone that 
 they have legitimate power over us. 
 
 Experience teaches us, that the ca- 
 lamities_of mankind have sprung from 
 religious opinions. The ignorance of 
 natural causes created Gods, and im- 
 posture made them terrible. Man lived 
 unhappy, because he was told that God 
 had condemned him to misery. He 
 never entertained a wish of breaking 
 his chains, as he was taught, that stu- 
 pidity, the renouncing of reason, mental
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 debility, and spiritual debasement, were 
 the means of obtaining eternal felicity. 
 Kings, transformed by men into Gods, 
 seemed to inherit the right of govern- 
 ment : and politics became the fatal 
 art of sacrificing the happiness of all 
 to the caprice of an individual. 
 
 The same blindness pervaded the 
 science of morality. Instead of found- 
 ing it upon the nature of man, and the 
 relations which subsist between him 
 and his fellows, or upon the duties re- 
 sulting from those relations, religion 
 established an imaginary connexion 
 between man and invisible beings. 
 The Gods, always painted as tyrants, 
 became the model of human conduct. 
 When man injured his neighbour, he 
 thought he had offended God, and be- 
 lieved that he could pacify him by 
 presents and humility. Religion cor- 
 rupted morality, and the expiations of 
 piety completed its destruction. Re- 
 ligious remedies were disgusting to 
 human passions, because unsuited to 
 the nature of man : and they were 
 called divine. Virtue appeared hate- 
 ful to man, because it was represented 
 to him as inimical to pleasure. In the 
 observance of his duties, he saw no- 
 thing but a sacrifice of every thing 
 dear ; and real motives to induce such 
 a sacrifice were never shown him. 
 The present prevailed over the future, 
 the visible over the invisible. Man 
 became wicked, as every thing told 
 him, that to enjoy happiness it was 
 necessary to be so. 
 
 Melancholy devotees, finding the 
 objects of human desire incapable of 
 satisfying the heart, decried them as 
 pernicious and abominable. Blind 
 physicians ! who take the natural state 
 of man for that of disease ! Forbid 
 man to love and to desire, and you 
 wrest from him his being ! Bid him 
 hate and despise himself, and you take 
 away his strongest motives to virtue. 
 
 In spite of our complaints against 
 fortune, there are many happy men in 
 this world. There are also to be found 
 sovereigns, ambitious of making na- 
 tions happy ; elevated souls who en- 
 courage genius, succour indigence, and 
 possess the desire of engaging admi- 
 ration. 
 
 Poverty itself is not excluded from 
 happiness. The poor man, habituated 
 to labour, knows the sweets of repose. 
 
 With limited knowledge, and few ideas, 
 he has still fewer desires. 
 
 The sum total of good exceeds that 
 of evil. There is no happiness in the 
 gross, though much of it in the detail. 
 In the whole course of a man's life 
 few days are altogether unhappy. 
 Habit lightens our sorrows, and sus- 
 pended grief is enjoyment. Every 
 want, at the moment of its gratification, 
 becomes a pleasure. Absence of pain 
 and of sickness is a happy state, which 
 we enjoy without being sensible of it. 
 Hope assists us to support calamity. 
 In short, the man who thinks himself 
 the most unhappy, sees not the ap- 
 proach of death without terrour, unless 
 despair has, to his eyes, disfigured the 
 whole of nature. When nature denies 
 us any pleasure, she leaves open a door 
 for our departure ; and should we not 
 make use of it, it is because we still 
 find a pleasure in existence. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Origin of our Ideas concerning tlie Dirinity. 
 
 EVIL is necessary to man, since with- 
 out it he would be ignorant of what is 
 good. Without evil, he could neither 
 have choice, will, passions, nor incli- 
 nations ; he could neither have motives 
 for loving nor hating. He would then 
 be an automaton, and no longer man. 
 
 The evil which he saw in the uni- 
 verse, suggested to man the idea of a 
 Divinity. A crowd of evils, such as 
 plagues, famines, earthquakes, inunda- 
 tions, and conflagrations, terrified him. 
 But what ideas did he form of the 
 cause which produced such effects ? 
 Man never imagined nature the cause 
 of the calamities which afflicted her- 
 self. Finding no agent on earth, capa- 
 ble of producing such effects, he di- 
 rected his attention to heaven, the 
 imagined residence of beings, whose 
 enmity destroyed his felicity in this 
 world. 
 
 Terrour was always associated with 
 the idea of those powerful beings. 
 
 From known objects, men judge of 
 unknown. Man gave, from himself, 
 a will, intelligence, and passions simi- 
 lar to.his own, to every unknown cause 
 which acted upon him. Influenced 
 himself by submission and presents,
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 351 
 
 he employed these to gain the favour 
 of the Divinity. 
 
 The business relative to those offer- 
 ings was confided to old men, and 
 much ceremony was used in making 
 them. The ceremonies were contin- 
 ued, and became custom. Thus re- 
 ligion and priestcraft were introduced 
 into the world. 
 
 The mind of man (whose essence it 
 is to labour incessantly upon unknown 
 objects, to which it originally attached 
 consequence, and dares not afterwards 
 coolly examine) soon modified those 
 systems. 
 
 By a necessary consequence of those 
 opinions, nature was soon stripped of 
 all power. Man could not conceive 
 the possibility of nature's permitting 
 him to suffer, were she not herself sub- 
 ject to a power, inimical to his happi- 
 ness, and having an interest in punish- 
 ing and afflicting him. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Of Mythology and Theology. 
 
 MAN originally worshipped nature. 
 All things were spoken of allegorically, 
 and every part of nature was personi- 
 fied. Hence a Saturn, Jupiter, Apollo, 
 &c. The vulgar did not perceive that 
 it was nature and her parts which 
 were thus allegorized. The source 
 from which Gods were taken was soon 
 forgotten. An incomprehensible being 
 was formed from the power of nature, 
 and called its mover. Thus nature 
 was separated from herself, and be- 
 came considered as an inanimate mass 
 incapable of action. 
 
 It became necessary to ascribe quali- 
 ties to this moving power. This being, 
 or, latterly, spirit, intelligence, incor- 
 poreal being ; that is to say, a sub- 
 stance different from any that we know, 
 was seen by nobody. Men could only 
 ascribe it to qualities from themselves. 
 What they called human perfection 
 was the model in miniature of the 
 perfection of the Divinity. 
 
 But, on the other hand, in viewing 
 the calamities and disorders to which 
 the world was so subject, why not at- 
 tribute to him malice, imprudence, and 
 caprice ? This difficulty was thought 
 removed in creating enemies to him. 
 
 This is the origin of the rebellious 
 angels. Notwithstanding his power, 
 he could not subdue them. He is un- 
 derstood to be in the same situation 
 with regard to those men who offend 
 him. 
 
 Having thus, in their own opinion, 
 satisfactorily accounted for human mis- 
 ery, another difficulty occurred. It 
 could not be denied, that just men 
 were sometimes included in the pun- 
 ishments of God. 
 
 It was then said, that because man 
 had sinned, God might avenge him- 
 self upon the innocent like those 
 wicked princes, who proportion pun- 
 ishment more to the grandeur and 
 power of the party offended, than to 
 the magnitude and reality of the of- 
 feijce. The most wicked .men, and 
 the most tyrannical governments, have 
 been the models of a Divinity, and his 
 divine administration. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Absurd and Extraordinary Theological 
 Opinions. 
 
 GOD, we are told, is good, but God 
 is the author of all things. All the 
 calamities which afflict mankind, must, 
 of course, be imputed to him. Good 
 and evil suppose two principles : if 
 there be only one, he must alternately 
 be good and wicked. 
 
 God, say theologians, is just, and 
 evil is a chastisement for the injuries 
 which men have done him. To offend 
 any one, supposes the existence of 
 connexions between the offending and 
 offended parties. To offend is to cause 
 pain; but how can a feeble creature 
 like man, who has received his very 
 existence from God, act against an in- 
 finite power, which never consents to 
 sin or disorder 1 
 
 Justice supposes the disposition of 
 rendering to every one his due ; and 
 we are told, that God owes us nothing : 
 that, without prejudice to his equity, 
 he may plunge the work of his hand 
 into an abyss of misery. Evils are 
 said only to be temporary surely, then, 
 they are unjust, during a certain period. 
 God chastises his friends for their 
 good : but if God be good, can he per- 
 mit them to suffer, even for a moment?
 
 352 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 If God be omniscient, why try his 
 friends, from whom he knows he has 
 nothing to fear ? If omnipotent, why 
 be disturbed by the petty plots raised 
 against him ? 
 
 What good man does not wish to 
 render his fellow-creatures happy ? 
 Why does not God make man happy? 
 No man has reason to be contented 
 with his lot. What can be said to all 
 this ? God's judgments are impene- 
 trable. In this case, how can men 
 pretend to reason about him ? Since 
 unsearchable, upon what foundation 
 can a single virtue be attributed to 
 him? What idea can we form of a 
 justice which bears no resemblance to 
 that of man ? 
 
 His justice is said to be balanced by 
 his mercy, but his mercy derogates 
 from his justice. If unchangeable, can 
 he for a moment alter his designs ? 
 
 God, say the priests, created the world 
 for his own glory. But already su- 
 perior to every thing, was any addition 
 wanting to his glory ? The love of 
 glory is the desire of being distinguish- 
 ed among our equals. If God be sus- 
 ceptible of it, why does he permit any 
 one to abuse his favours ? or why are 
 they insufficient to make us act accord- 
 ing to his wishes ? Because he has 
 made me a free agent. But why grant 
 me a liberty which he knows I will 
 abuse 1 
 
 In consequence of this freedom, men 
 will be eternally punished in the other 
 world, for the faults they have com- 
 mitted in this life. But why punish 
 eternally the faults of a moment? what 
 would we think of the king, that eter- 
 nally punished one of his subjects, 
 who, in the moment of intoxication. 
 had offended his pride, without how- 
 ever doing him any real injury, espe- 
 cially had he himself previously in- 
 toxicated him ? Would we consider 
 the monarch as all-powerful, who is 
 forced to permit all his subjects, with 
 the exception of a few faithful friends, to 
 insult his laws, and even his own person, 
 and thwart him in every measure ? 
 
 It is said, that the qualities of God 
 are so unlike to those of man, and so 
 eminent, that no resemblance what- 
 ever subsists between them. But in 
 this case, how can we form an idea of 
 them ? Why does theology presume 
 to announce them ? 
 
 But God has spoken, and made him- 
 self known to man. When and to 
 whom ? where are those divine oracles 1 
 in absurd and contradictory collections, 
 where the God of wisdom speaks an 
 obscure, insidious, and foolish lan- 
 guage 5 where the God of benevolence 
 is cruel and sanguinary ; where the 
 God of justice is unjust, partial, and 
 ordains iniquity ; where the God of 
 mercy decrees the most horrid punish- 
 ment to the victims of his wrath. 
 
 The relations subsisting between 
 God and man, can be only founded 
 upon moral qualities. But if man be 
 ignorant of these, how can they serve 
 as the model for his conduct? how can 
 he possibly imitate them? 
 
 There is no proportion between God 
 and man ; and where that is wanting, 
 there can be no relations. If God be in- 
 corporeal, how can he act upon bodies? 
 how can they act upon him, so as to 
 give him offence, disturb his repose, 
 and excite his anger ? If the potter be 
 displeased with the bad shape of the 
 vessel he has made, whom has he but 
 himself to blame for it ? 
 
 If God owes man nothing, man owes 
 him as little. Relations must be re- 
 ciprocal, and duties are founded upon 
 mutual wants. If these are useless to 
 God, he cannot owe any thing for 
 them, and man cannot him. God's 
 authority can only be founded upon 
 the good which he bestows upon men ; 
 and their duties must solely rest upon 
 the favours which they expect from 
 him. If God do not owe man happi- 
 ness, every relation between them is 
 annihilated. 
 
 How can we reconcile the qualities 
 ascribed to God with his metaphysical 
 attributes ? How can a pure spirit act 
 like man, a corporeal being ? A pure 
 spirit can neither hear our prayers, nor 
 be softened by our miseries. If im- 
 mutable, he cannot change. If all na- 
 ture, without being God, can exist in 
 conjunction with him, he cannot be 
 infinite. If he either suffers, or can- 
 not prevent, the evils and disorders of 
 the world, he cannot be omnipotent. 
 He cannot be every where, if he is not 
 in man while he commits sin, or goes 
 out of him at the moment of its com- 
 mission. 
 
 A revelation would prove malice in 
 the Deity. It supposes, that he has
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 for a long time denied man a know- 
 ledge necessary to his happiness. If 
 it be made to a small number only, it 
 is a partiality inconsistent with his 
 justice. Revelation would destroy 
 God's immutability, as it supposes him 
 to have done at one period what he 
 wished not to do at another. What 
 kind of revelation is it, which cannot 
 be understood 1 If one man only were 
 incapable of understanding it, that cir- 
 cumstance would be alone sufficient to 
 convict God of injustice. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Examination of Dr. Clarke's Proofs of the 
 Existence of a Deity. 
 
 ALL men, it is said, believe in the 
 existence of a deity, and the voice of 
 nature is alone sufficient to establish it. 
 It is an innate idea. 
 
 But what proves that idea to be ac- 
 quired is, the nature of the opinion, 
 which varies from age to age, and from 
 nation to nation. That it is unfounded, 
 is evident from this, that men have per- 
 fected every science, which has a real 
 object, while that of God has been al- 
 ways in nearly the same state. There 
 is no subject upon which men have en- 
 tertained such a variety of opinions. 
 
 Admitting every nation to have a 
 form of worship, that circumstance by 
 no means proves the existence of a 
 God. The universality of an opinion 
 does not prove its truth. Have not all 
 nations believed in the existence of 
 witchcraft and of apparitions? Pre- 
 vious to Copernicus, did not all men 
 believe that the earth was immoveable, 
 and that the sun turned round it? 
 
 The ideas of God and his qualities 
 are only founded upon the opinions of 
 our fathers, infused into us by educa- 
 tion; by habits contracted in infancy, 
 and strengthened by example and au- 
 thority. Hence the opinion, that all 
 men are born with an idea of the Di- 
 vinity. We retain those ideas, without 
 ever having reflected upon them. 
 
 Dr. Clarke has adduced the strongest 
 arguments which have ever yet been 
 advanced in support of the existence of 
 a Deity. His propositions may be re- 
 duced into the following : 
 
 1. " Something has existed from all 
 
 No. XII. 45 
 
 eternity." Yes; but what is it? Why 
 not matter, rather than spirit ? When 
 a thing exists, existence must be essen- 
 tial to it. That which cannot be an- 
 nihilated, necessarily exists: such is 
 matter. Matter, therefore, has always 
 existed. 
 
 2. "An independent and unchange- 
 able being has existed from all eter- 
 nity." 
 
 First of all, what is this being ? Is it 
 independent of its own essence ? No ; 
 for it cannot make the beings whom it 
 produces act otherwise than according 
 to their given properties. One body 
 only depends upon another, in so far as 
 it owes existence and form of action to 
 it. By this trifle alone can matter be 
 dependent. But if matter be eternal, it 
 cannot be indebted for its existence to 
 another being ; and if eternal and self- 
 existing, it is evident that, in virtue of 
 those qualities, it contains within itself 
 every thing requisite for action. Matter 
 being eternal, has no need of a maker. 
 
 Is this being unchangeable ? No ; as 
 such a being could neither will nor pro- 
 duce successive actions. If this being 
 created matter, there was a time in 
 which it had resolved that matter should 
 not exist, and another that it should. 
 This being, therefore, cannot be un- 
 changeable. 
 
 3. " This eternal, immutable, and 
 independent being is self-existence." 
 But since matter is eternal, why should 
 it not be self-existent? 
 
 4. " The essence of a self-existent 
 being is incomprehensible." True, and 
 such is the essence of matter. 
 
 5. " A necessarily self-existing being 
 is necessarily eternal." But it would 
 have that property in common with 
 matter? Why, then, separate this being 
 from the universe? 
 
 6. " The self-existing being must be 
 infinite, and every where present." In- 
 finite ! be it so ; but we have no reason 
 to think that matter is finite. Every 
 where present ! No ; matter certainly 
 occupies a part of space, and from that 
 part, at least, the Divinity must be ex- 
 cluded. 
 
 7. " The necessarily self-existent be- 
 ing must be one." Yes, if nothing can 
 exist out of it. But can any one deny 
 the existence of the universe? 
 
 8. " The self-existent.being is neces- 
 sarily intelligent." But intelligence is
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 a human quality. To have intelligence, 
 thoughts and senses are necessary. A 
 being that has senses is material, and 
 cannot be a pure spirit. But does this 
 being, this great whole, possess a par- 
 ticular intelligence which puts it in 
 motion ; Since nature contains intelli- 
 gent beings, why strip her pf intelli- 
 gence ? 
 
 9. " The self-existent being is a free 
 agent. 1 ' But does (rod find no difficulty 
 in executing his plans ? Does he wish 
 the continuance of evil, or can he not 
 prevent it ? In that case, he either per- 
 mits sin or is not free. He can only 
 act according to the laws of his es- 
 sence. His will is determined by the 
 wisdom and qualities which are attrib- 
 uted to him: He is not free. 
 
 10. " The supreme cause of all things 
 possesses infinite power." But if man 
 be free to commit sin, what becomes 
 of God's infinite power? 
 
 11. " The author of all things is ne- 
 cessarily wise." If he be the author 
 of all things, he is author of many 
 things which we think very foolish. 
 
 12. " The supreme cause necessarily 
 possesses every moral perfection." The 
 idea of perfection is abstract. It is rela- 
 tive to our mode of perception that a 
 thing appears perfect to us. When 
 injured by his works, and forced to la- 
 ment the evils we suffer, do we think 
 God perfect ? Is he so in respect to his 
 works, where we universally see con- 
 fusion blended with order ? 
 
 If it be pretended that we cannot 
 know God, and that nothing positive 
 can be said about him, we may well be 
 allowed to doubt of his existence. If 
 incomprehensible, can we be blamed 
 for not understanding him ? 
 
 We are told that common sense and 
 reason are sufficient to demonstrate his 
 his existence ; but we are also told that, 
 in these matters, reason is an unfaithful 
 guide. Conviction, besides, is always 
 the effect of evidence and demonstra- 
 tion. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Examinations of the Proofs of the Existence 
 of a Divinity. 
 
 No variety, it is said, can arise from 
 a blind physical necessity, which must 
 always be uniform ; that the variety we 
 
 see around us can only proceed from 
 the will and ideas of a necessarily ex- 
 isting being. 
 
 Why should not this variety arise 
 from natural causes from a self-acting 
 matter, whose motion joins and com- 
 bines various and analogous elements ? 
 Is not a loaf of bread produced from 
 the combination of meal, yeast, and 
 water? Blind necessity is a name 
 which we give to a power with whose 
 energy we are unacquainted. 
 
 But it is said that the regular move- 
 ments and admirable order of the uni- 
 verse, and the benefits daily bestowed 
 upon man, announce wisdom and intel- 
 ligence. Those movements are the 
 necessary effects of the laws of nature, 
 which we call either good or bad, as 
 they effect ourselves. 
 
 Animals, it is asserted, are a proof 
 of the powerful cause which created 
 them. The power of nature cannot he 
 doubted. Are animals, on account of 
 the harmony of their parts, the work 
 of an invisible being? They are con- 
 tinually changing, and finally perish. 
 If God cannot form them otherwise, he 
 is neither free nor powerful; if he 
 change his mind, he is not immutable ; 
 if he allow machines, whom he has 
 created sensible, to experience sorrow, 
 he is destitute of bounty ; if he cannot 
 make his works more durable, he is 
 deficient in skill. 
 
 Man, who thinks himself the chief 
 work in nature, proves either the malice 
 or incapacity of his pretended author. 
 His machine is more subject to de- 
 rangement than that of other beings. 
 Who, upon the loss of a loved object, 
 would not rather be a beast or a stone 
 than a human being? Better be an 
 inanimated rock than a devotee, trem- 
 bling under the yoke of his God, and 
 foreseeing still greater torments in a 
 future state of existence ! 
 
 Is it possible, say theologians, to 
 conceive the universe to be without a 
 maker, who watches over his work- 
 manship? Show a statue or a watch 
 to a savage, which he has not before 
 seen, and he will at once conclude it 
 to be the work of a skilful artist. 
 
 1. Nature is very powerful and in- 
 dustrious ; but we are as little acquaint- 
 ed with the manner in which she forms 
 a stone or a mineral as a. brain organ- 
 ized like that of Newton. Nature caa
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 355 
 
 do all things, and the existence of any 
 thing proves itself to be one of her pro- 
 ductions. Let us not conclude that the 
 works which most astonish us are not 
 of her production. 
 
 2. The savage to whom a watch is 
 shown will either have ideas of human 
 industry or hefcwill not. If he has. he 
 will at once consider it to be the pro- 
 duction of a being of his own species ; 
 if not, he will never think it the work 
 of a being like himself. He will con- 
 sequently attribute it to a genius or 
 spirit, i. e. loan unknown power, whom 
 he will suppose capable of producing 
 effects beyond those of human beings. 
 By this, the savage will only prove his 
 ignorance of what man is capable of 
 performing. 
 
 3. Upon opening and examining the 
 watch, the savage will perceive that it 
 must be a work of man. He will at 
 once perceive its difference from the 
 immediate works of nature, whom he 
 never saw produce wheels of polished 
 metal. But he will never suppose a 
 material work the production of an im- 
 material being. In viewing the world, 
 we see a material cause of its phe- 
 nomena, and this cause is nature, 
 whose energy is known to those who 
 study her. 
 
 Let us not be told, that we thus at- 
 tribute every thing to blind causes, and 
 to a fortuitous concourse of atoms : we 
 call those causes blind of which we are 
 ignorant: we attribute effects to chance, 
 when we do not perceive the tie which 
 connects them with their causes. Na- 
 ture is neither a blind cause, nor does 
 she act by chance: all her productions 
 are necessary, and always the effect of 
 fixed laws. There may be ignorance 
 on our part, but the words Spirit, God, 
 arid Intelligence, will not remedy, but 
 only increase that ignorance. 
 
 This is a sufficient answer to the 
 eternal objection made to the partisans 
 of nature, of attributing every thing to 
 chance. Chance is a word void of 
 meaning, and only exposes the igno- 
 rance of those who use it. We are told 
 that a regular work cannot be formed 
 by the combinations of chance ; that an 
 epic poem, like the Iliad, can never be 
 'produced by letters thrown together at 
 random. Certainly not. It is nature 
 that combines, according to fixed laws, 
 an organized head capable of producing 
 
 such a work. Nature bestows such a 
 temperament and organization upon a 
 brain, that a head, constituted like that 
 of Homer, placed in the same circum- 
 stances, must necessarily produce a 
 poem like the Iliad, unless it be denied 
 that the same causes produce the same 
 effects. 
 
 Every thing is the effect of the com- 
 binations of matter. The most admi- 
 rable of her productions which we be- 
 hold, are only the natural effects of her 
 parts, differently arranged.* 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 Of Deism, Optimism, and Final Causes, 
 
 ADMITTING the existence of a God, 
 and even supposing him possessed of 
 views and of intelligence, what is the 
 result to mankind 1 What connexion 
 can subsist between us and such a 
 being? Will the good or bad effects 
 proceeding from his omnipotence and 
 
 * Whatever may be their pretensions, the 
 partisans of religioncan only prove, that every 
 thing is the effect of a cause ; that we are often 
 ignorant of the immediate causes of the effects 
 we see ; that even when we discover them, we 
 find that they are the effects of other causes, 
 and so on, ad inftnitum. But they neither 
 have proved, nor can they prove, the necessity 
 of ascending to a first eternal cause, the uni- 
 versal cause of all particular ones, producing 
 not only the properties, but even the existence 
 of things, and which is independent of every 
 other cause. It is true, we do not always 
 know the tie, chain, and progress of every 
 cause; but what can be inferred from that? 
 Ignorance can never be a reasonable motive 
 either of belief or of determination. 
 
 I am ignorant of the cause that produces a 
 certain effect, and cannot assign one to my 
 own satisfaction. But must I be contented 
 with that assigned by another more presump- 
 tuous, though no better informed than I, who 
 says he is convinced ; especially when I know 
 the existence of such a cause to be impossible'? 
 The watch of a shipwrecked European having 
 fallen into the hands of an Indian tribe, they 
 held a consultation to discover the cause of 
 its extraordinary movements. For a long 
 time, they could resolve upon nothing. At 
 length, one of the group, bolder than the rest, 
 declared it to be an animal of a species differ- 
 ent from any with which they were acquaint- 
 ed ; and as none of them could convince him 
 that those movements of the watch could 
 proceed from any other principle than that 
 which produces animal life and action, he 
 thought himself entitled to oblige the assem- 
 bly to accept of his explication.
 
 356 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 providence be other than those of his 
 wisdom, justice, and eternal decrees? 
 Can we suppose that he will change 
 his plans on our account 1 Overcome 
 by our prayers, will he cause the fire to 
 cease from burning, or prevent a falling 
 building from crushing those who are 
 passing beneath it? What can we ask 
 of him, if he be compelled to give a 
 free course to the events which he has 
 ordained? Opposition, on our part, 
 would be phrensy. 
 
 Why deprive me of my God, says 
 the happy enthusiast, who favours me, 
 whom J view as a benevolent sove- 
 reign continually watching over me ? 
 Why, says the unfortunate man, de- 
 prive me of my God, whose consoling 
 idea dries up my tears? 
 
 I answer by asking them, on what do 
 they found the goodness which they 
 attribute to God? For one happy hu- 
 man being, bow many do we not see 
 miserable! Is he good to all men? 
 How many calamities do we not daily 
 see, while he is deaf to our prayers ? 
 Every man, therefore, must judge of 
 the Divinity according as he is affected 
 by circumstances. 
 
 In finding every thing good in the 
 world, where good is necessarily at- 
 tended with evil, the optimists Seem to 
 have renounced the evidence of their 
 senses. Good is, according to them, 
 the end of the whole. But the whole 
 can have no end : if it had, it would 
 cease being the whole. 
 
 God, say some men, knows how to 
 benefit us by the evils which he permits 
 us to suffer in this life. But how do 
 they know this ? Since he has treated 
 us ill in this life, what assurance have 
 we of a better treatment in a future 
 state ? What good can possibly result 
 from the plagues and famines which 
 desolate the earth ? It is necessary to 
 create another world to exculpate the 
 Divinity from blame for the calamities 
 he makes us suffer in the present. 
 
 Some men suppose that God, after 
 creating matter out of nothing, aban- 
 doned it for ever to its primary impulse. 
 These men only want a God to produce 
 matter, and suppose him to live in com- 
 plete indifference as to the fate of his 
 workmanship. Such a God is a being 
 quite useless to man. - J 
 
 Others have imagined certain duties 
 to be due by man to his Creator. Oth- 
 
 ers suppose that, in consequence of hia 
 justice, he will reward and punish. 
 They make a man of their God. But 
 these attributes contradict each other ; 
 for, by supposing him the author of all 
 things, he must, consequently, be the 
 author of both good and evil. We 
 might as well believe aK things. 
 
 It is asked of us, would you rather 
 depend upon blind nature than on a 
 good, wise, and intelligent being? 
 
 But, 1. Our interest does not deter- 
 mine the reality of things. 2. This be- 
 ing, so supereminently wise and good, 
 is presented to us as a foolish tyrant, 
 and it would be better for man to de- 
 pend upon blind nature than upon such 
 a being. 3. Nature, when well studied, 
 teaches us the means of becoming hap- 
 py, so far, at least, as our essence will 
 permit. She informs us of the proper 
 means of acquiring happiness. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Examination of Hie Supposed Advantages 
 which result to Man from the Notions of a 
 Divinity, or their Influence upon Morals, 
 Politics, Science, the Welfare of Nations, 
 and of Individuals. 
 
 MORALITY, originally having only for ' 
 its object the self-preservation of man, 
 and his Avelfare in society, had nothing 
 to do with religious systems. Man, from 
 his own mind, found motives for mod- 
 erating his passions and resisting his 
 vicious inclinations, and for rendering 
 himself useful and estimable to those 
 of whom he constantly stood in need. 
 
 Those systems which describe God 
 as a tyrant cannot render him an ob- 
 ject of imitation to man. They paint 
 him jealous, vindictive, and interested. 
 Thus religion divides men. They dis- 
 pute with and persecute one another, 
 and never reproach themselves with 
 crimes committed in the name of God. 
 
 The same spirit pervades religion. 
 There we hear of nothing but victims ; 
 and even the pure Spirit of the Chris- 
 tians must have his own son murdered 
 to appease his fury. 
 
 Man requires a morality, founded 
 upon nature and experience. 
 
 Do we find real virtue among priests? ' 
 Are these men, so firmly persuaded of 
 God's existence, the less addicted to 
 debauchery and intemperance ? Upon
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 357 
 
 seeing their conduct, we are apt to think 
 that they are entirely undeceived in 
 their opinions of the Divinity. 
 
 Does the idea of a rewarding and 
 avenging God impose upon those prin- 
 ces who derive their power, as they 
 pretend, from the Divinity himself? 
 Are those wicked and remorseless mon- 
 archs who spread destruction around 
 them atheists 1 They call the Divinity 
 to witness, at the very moment when 
 they are about to violate their oaths. 
 Have religious systems bettered the 
 morals of the people? Religion, in 
 their opinion, supersedes every thing. 
 Its ministers, content with supporting 
 dogmas and rites, useful to their own 
 power, multiply troublesome ceremo- 
 nies, with a view of drawing profit by 
 their slaves transgressing them. Be- 
 hold the work of religion and priestcraft 
 in a sale of the favours of Heaven ! 
 The unmeaning words, impiety, blas- 
 phemy, sacrilege, and heresy, were in- 
 vented by priests ; and those pretended 
 crimes have been punished with the 
 greatest severities. 
 
 What must be the fate of youth un- 
 der such preceptors? From infancy 
 the human mind is poisoned with un- 
 intelligible notions and disturbed by 
 phantoms, genius is cramped by a me- 
 chanical devotion, and man wholly 
 prejudiced against reason and truth. 
 
 Does religion form citizens, fathers, 
 or husbands ? It is placed above every 
 thing. The fanatic is told that he must 
 obey God, and not man ; consequently, 
 when he thinks himself acting in the 
 cause of Heaven, he will rebel against 
 his country, and abandon his family. 
 
 Were education directed to useful 
 objects, incalculable benefits would 
 arise therefrom to mankind. Notwith- 
 standing their religious education, how 
 many men are subject to criminal hab- 
 its. In spite of a hell, so horrid even 
 in description, what crowds of aban- 
 doned criminals fill our cities ! Those 
 men would recoil with horrour from 
 him who expressed any doubts of God's 
 existence. From the temple, where 
 sacrifices have been made, divine ora- 
 cles uttered, and vice denounced in the 
 name of Heaven, every man returns to 
 his former criminal courses. 
 
 Are condemned thieves and murder- 
 ers either atheists or unbelievers ? 
 those wretches believe in a God. They 
 
 have continually heard him spoken of; 
 neither are they strangers to the punish- 
 ment which he has destined to crimes. 
 But a hidden God and distant pun- 
 ishments are ill calculated to restrain 
 crimes, which present and certain chas- 
 tisements do not always prevent. 
 
 The man who would tremble at the 
 commission of the smallest crime in 
 the face of the world, does not hesitate 
 for a moment when he thinks himself 
 only seen by God. So feeble is the 
 idea of divinity when opposed to human 
 passions. 
 
 Does the most religious father, in 
 advising his son, speak to him of a vin- 
 dictive God ? His constitution destroy- 
 ed by debauchery, his fortune ruined by 
 gaming, the contempt of society these 
 are the motives he employs. 
 
 The idea of a God is both useless 
 and contrary to sound moralityx it 
 neither procures happiness to society 
 nor to individuals. Men always occu- 
 pied with phantoms, live in perpetual 
 terrour. They neglect their most im- 
 portant concerns, and pass a miserable 
 existence in groans, prayers, and expia- 
 tions. They imagine that they appease 
 God by subjecting themselves to every 
 evil. What fruit does society derive 
 from the lugubrious notions of those 
 pious madmen ? They are either mis- 
 anthropes, useless to themselves and 
 to the world, or fanatics who disturb 
 the peace of nations. If religious ideas 
 console a few timid and peaceable en- 
 thusiasts, they render miserable during 
 life millions of others, infinitely more 
 consistent with their principles. The 
 man who can be tranquil under a ter- 
 rible God must be a being destitute of 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 Religious Opinions cannot be the Foundation 
 of Morality Parallel between Religious 
 and Natural Morality Religion impedes 
 the Progress of the Mind. 
 
 ARBITRARY and inconsistent opinions, 
 contradictory notions, abstract and un- 
 intelligible speculations, can never 
 serve as a foundation to morality ; 
 which must rest upon clear and evident 
 principles, deduced from the nature of 
 man, and founded upon experience and 
 reason. Morality is always uniform,
 
 338 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 and never follows the imagination, pas- 
 sions, or interests of man. It must be 
 stable and equal for all men, never 
 varying with time or place. Morality, 
 fbeing the science of the duties of man 
 ' living in society, must be founded on 
 sentiments inherent in our nature. In 
 a word, its basis must be necessity. 
 
 Theology is wrong in supposing that 
 mutual wants, the desire of happiness, 
 and the evident interests of societies 
 and of individuals are insufficient mo- 
 tives to influence man. The ministers 
 of religion subject morality to human 
 passions by making it flow from God. 
 They found morality upon nothing by 
 founding it upon a chimera. 
 
 The ideas entertained of God, owing 
 to the different views which are taken 
 of him, vary with the fancy of every 
 man, from age to age, from one country 
 to another. 
 
 (Compare the morality of religion 
 with that of nature, and they will be 
 found essentially different. Nature in- 
 vites men to love one another, to pre- 
 serve their existence, and to augment 
 their happiness. Religion commands 
 him to love a terrible God, to hate him- 
 self, and sacrifice his soul's most pre- 
 cious joys to his frightful idol. Nature 
 bids man consult his reason ; religion 
 tells him that reason is a fallible guide. 
 Nature bids him search for truth ; reli- 
 gion prohibits all investigation. Nature 
 bids man be sociable, and love his 
 neighbours; religion commands him 
 to shun society, and sequester himself 
 from the world. Nature enjoins ten- 
 derness and affection to the husband ; 
 religion considers matrimony as a state 
 of impurity and corruption. Nature 
 bids the wicked man resist his shame- 
 ful propensities, as destructive to his 
 happiness ; religion, while she forbids 
 crime, promises pardon to the criminal, 
 by humbling himself before its minis- 
 ters, by sacrifices, offerings, ceremonies, 
 find prayers. 
 
 The human mind, perverted by reli- 
 gion, has hardly advanced a single step 
 in improvement. Logic has been uni- 
 formly employed to prove the most pal- 
 pable absurdities. Theology has in- 
 spired kings with false ideas of their 
 rights, by telling them that they hold 
 ttheir power from God. The laws be- 
 jcame subject to the caprices of religion. 
 Physics, anatomy, and natural history 
 
 c 
 ( l 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 were only permitted to see with the 
 eyes of superstition. The most clear 
 facts were refuted, when inconsistent 
 with religious hypothesis. 
 
 Is a question in natural philosophy 
 solved by saying, that phenomena, such 
 as volcanoes or deluges, are proofs of 
 Divine wrath? Instead of ascribing 
 wars and famines to the anger of God, 
 would it not have been more useful to 
 show men that they proceeded from 
 their own folly, and from the tyranny 
 of their princes? Men would then 
 have sought a remedy to their evils 
 in a better government. Experience 
 would have convinced man of the in-l 
 efficacy of fasts, prayers, sacrifices, and' 
 processions, which never produced any 
 good. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Man, from, the ideas which are given of the 
 Deity, can conclude nothing Their Ab- 
 surdity and Uselessness. 
 
 SUPPOSING the existence of an intel- 
 ligence, like that held out by theology, 
 it must be owned that no man has 
 hitherto corresponded to the wishes of 
 providence. God wishes himself to be 
 known by men, and even the theolo- 
 gians can form no idea of him. Ad- 
 mitting that they did so, that his being 
 and attributes are evident to them, do 
 the rest of mankind enjoy the same 
 advantages ? 
 
 Few men are capable of profound 
 and constant meditation. The com- 
 mon people of t>oth sexes, condemned 
 to toil for subsistence, never reflect. 
 People of fashion, all females, and 
 young people of both sexes, only occu- 
 pied about their passions and their 
 pleasures, think as little as the vulgar. 
 There are not, perhaps, ten men of a 
 million of people, who have seriously 
 asked themselves what they understand 
 by God ; and even fewer can be found 
 who have made a problem of the exist- 
 ence of a Divinity : yet conviction sup- 
 poses evidence, which can alone pro- 
 duce certainty. Who are the men that 
 are convinced of God's existence ? En- 
 tire nations worship God upon the au- 1 
 thority of their fathers and their priests. ' 
 Confidence, authority, and habit, stand 
 in the stead of conviction and proof.t 
 All rests upon authority ; reason and!
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 359 
 
 I investigation are universally prohib- 
 Vited. 
 
 Is the conviction of the existence of 
 a God, so important to all men, reserved 
 only to priests and the inspired ? Do 
 we find the same unanimity among 
 them as with those occupied with study- 
 ing the knowledge of useful arts 1 If 
 God wishes to be known to all men, 
 why does he not show himself to the 
 whole world, in a less equivocal and 
 more convincing manner than he has 
 hitherto done in those relations which 
 seem to charge him with partiality? 
 Are fables and metamorphoses the only 
 means which he can make use ofT 
 Why have not his name, attributes, 
 and will, been written in characters 
 legible by all men 1 ? 
 
 By ascribing to him contradictor}' 
 qualities, theology has put its God in a 
 situation where he cannot act. Admit- 
 ting that he existed with such extraor- 
 , dinary and contradictory qualities, we 
 can neither reconcile to common sense 
 nor to reason the conduct and worship 
 prescribed towards him. 
 
 If infinitely good, why fear him? if 
 infinitely wise, why interest ourselves 
 about our fate ? if omniscient, why tell 
 him of our wants, or fatigue him with 
 our prayers ? if every where, why erect 
 to him temples ? if master of all, why 
 make him sacrifices and offerings? if 
 just, whence has arisen the belief that 
 he will punish man, whom he has cre- 
 ated weak and feeble ? if reasonable, 
 why be angry with a blind creature 
 like man ? if immutable, why do we 
 pretend to change his decrees ? and if 
 inconceivable, why presume to form 
 any idea of him? 
 
 But if, on the other hand, he be iras- 
 cible, vindictive, and wicked, we are 
 not bound to offer up to him our prayers. 
 If a tyrant, how can we love him? 
 How can a master be loved by his 
 slaves, whom he has permitted to offend 
 him that he might have the pleasure oi 
 punishing them ? If all-powerful, how 
 can man fly from his wrath? If un- 
 changeable, how can man escape his 
 fate? 
 
 Thus, in whatever point of view we 
 consider God, we can neither render 
 him prayers nor worship. 
 
 Even admitting the existence of a 
 Deity, full of equity, reason, and be- 
 nevolence, what would a virtuous athe- 
 
 ist have to fear, who should unexpect- 
 edly find himself in the presence of a 
 being whom, during life, he had mis- 
 conceived and neglected? 
 
 " O, God !" he might say, " incon- 
 ceivable being, whom I could not dis- 
 cover, pardon, that the limited under- 
 standing thou hast given me has been 
 inadequate to thy discovery ! How 
 could I discover thy spiritual essence 
 by the aid of sense alone ? I could not 
 submit my mind to the yoke of men, 
 who, confessedly not more enlightened 
 than I, agreed only among themselves 
 in bidding me renounce the reason 
 which thou hast given ! But, O God ! 
 if thou lovest thy creatures, I have also 
 loved them ! It virtue pleaseth thee, 
 my heart ever honoured it. I have con- 
 soled the afflicted ; never did I devour 
 the substance of the poor. I have ever 
 been just, bountiful, and compassion- 
 ate." 
 
 In spite of reason, men are often, by 
 disease, brought back to the prejudices 
 of infancy. This is most frequently 
 the case with sick people: upon the 
 approach of death, they tremble, be- 
 cause the machine is enfeebled ; the 
 brain being unable to perform its func- 
 tions, they of course fall into deliriums. 
 Our systems experience the changes of 
 our body. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 Apology for the Sentiments contained in this 
 Work. 
 
 MEN tremble at the very name of an 
 atheist. But who is an atheist ? The 
 man who brings mankind back to rea- 
 son and experience, by destroying pre- 
 judices inimical to their happiness; 
 who has no need of resorting to super- 
 natural powers in explaining the phe- 
 nomena of nature. 
 
 It is madness, say theologians, to 
 suppose incomprehensible motions in 
 nature. Is it madness to prefer the 
 known to the unknown? to consult 
 experience and the evidence of our 
 senses? to address ourselves to rea- 
 son, and prefer her oracles to the deci- 
 sion of sophists, who even confess 
 themselves ignorant of the God they 
 announce ? 
 
 When we see priests so angry with 
 atheistical opinions, should we not sus-
 
 360 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 pect the justice of their cause ? Spirit- 
 ual tyrants ! 'tis ye who have defamed 
 the Divinity, by besmearing him with 
 the blood of the Avretched ! You are 
 the truly impious. Impiety consists in 
 insulting the God in whom it believes. 
 He who does not believe in a God can- 
 not injure him, and cannot of course be 
 impious. 
 
 On the other hand, if piety consists 
 in serving our country, in being useful 
 to our fellow-creatures, and in observ- 
 ing the laws of nature, an atheist is 
 pious, honest, and virtuous, when his 
 conduct is regulated by the laws which 
 reason and virtue prescribe to him. 
 
 Men, we are told, who have reason 
 to expect future happiness, never fall 
 into atheism. The interest of the pas- 
 sions and the fear of punishment alone 
 make atheists. But men who endeav- 
 our to enlighten that reason which im- 
 prints every idea of virtue, are not cal- 
 culated to reject the existence of a 
 future state, from an apprehension of 
 its chastisements. 
 
 It is true, the number of atheists is 
 inconsiderable, because enthusiasm has 
 dazzled the human mind, and the pro- 
 gress of errour has been so very great, 
 that few men have courage to search 
 f^f tfMth.4,Tf by atheists are meant 
 ffhose who, guided by experience and 
 the evidence of their senses, see nothing 
 1^1 nature but what really exists ; if by 
 atheists are meant natural philosophers, 
 who think every thing may be account- 
 ed for by the laws of motion, without 
 having recourse to a chimerical power ; 
 if by atheists are meant those who know 
 not what a spirit is, and who reject a 
 phantom whose opposite qualities only 
 disturb mankind ; doubtless, there are 
 many atheists : and their number would 
 be greater, were the knowledge of 
 physics and sound reason more gener- 
 ally disseminated. 
 
 s An atheist does not believe in the 
 (existence of a God. No man can be 
 j certain of the existence of an incon- 
 I ceivable being, in whom inconsistent 
 qualities are said to be united. In this 
 sense, many theologians would be athe- 
 ists, as well as those credulous beings 
 who prostrate themselves before a be- 
 ing of whom they have no other idea 
 than that given them by men avowedly 
 comprehending nothing of him them- 
 selves. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 Is Atheism Compatible with Smind Morality ? 
 
 THOUGH the atheist denies the exist- 
 ence of a God, he neither denies his 
 own existence nor that of other men j 
 he cannot deny th existence of rela- 
 tions which subsist between men, nor 
 the duties which necessarily result from 
 those relations. He cannot doubt the 
 existence of morality, or the science of 
 the relations which subsist between 
 men living in society. Though he 
 may sometimes seem to forget the 
 moral principles, it does not follow 
 that they do not exist. He may act 
 inconsistently with his principles, but 
 a philosophical infidel is not so much, 
 an object of dread as an enthusiastic 
 priest. Though the atheist disbelieves 
 in the existence of a God, can it be 
 thought that he will indulge to excesses 
 dangerous to himself and subject to 
 punishments 1 
 
 Whether would men be happier un-y 
 der an atheistical prince, or a believing 
 tyrant, continually bestowing presents 
 upon priests ? Would we not have to 
 fear religious quarrels from the latter ? 
 Would not the name of God, of which 
 the monarch avails himself, sometimes 
 serve as an excuse for the persecutions 
 of the tyrant? Would he not at least 
 hope to find in religion a pardon for his 
 crimes ? 
 
 Much inconveniency may arise from 
 making morality depend upon the exist- 
 ence of a God. When corrupt minds 
 discover the falsehood of those suppo- 
 sitions, they will think virtue itself, 
 like the Deity, a mere chimera, and see 
 no reason to practise it in life. It is, 
 however, as beings living in society, 
 that we are bound by morality. Our 
 duties must always be the same, wheth- 
 er a God exist or not. 
 
 If some atheists deny the existence, 
 of good and of evil, it only proves their/ 
 own ignorance. A natural sentiment 
 causes man to love pleasure and hate 
 pain. Ask the man who denies the 
 existence of virtue and vice, would he 
 be indifferent at being robbed, calum- 
 niated, betrayed, and insulted? His 
 answer will prove that he makes a dis- 
 tinction between men's actions: that 
 the distinctions of good and evil depend 
 neither upon human conventions nor 
 the idea of a Deity ; neither do they
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 361 
 
 a 
 \o 
 
 depend upon the rewards or punish- 
 ments of a future state of existence. 
 
 The atheist, believing only in the 
 present life, at least wishes to live 
 happy. Atheisnij says Bacon, renders 
 man prudent, as it limits his views to 
 this life. Men accustomed to study 
 and meditation never are bad citizens. 
 ^"Some men, undeceived themselves 
 in religious matters, pretend that reli- 
 gion is useful to the people, since, with- 
 out it, they could not be governed. But 
 has religion had a useful influence upon 
 popular manners ? It enslaves, without 
 making obedient ; it makes idiots, whose 
 sole virtue consists in a blind submis- 
 sion to paltry and silly ceremonies, to 
 which more consequence is attached 
 than to real virtue or pure morality. 
 Children are only frightened for a mo- 
 ment by imaginary terrours. It is only 
 by shov.'ing men the truth that they can 
 appreciate its value, and find motives 
 or cultivating it. 
 
 It is chiefly among nations where 
 superstition, aided by authority, makes 
 its heavy yoke be felt, and imprudently 
 abuses its power, that the number of 
 atheists is considerable. Oppression 
 infuses energy into the mind, and occa- 
 sions a strict investigation into the 
 causes of its evils. Calamity is a 
 powerful goad, stimulating the mind 
 to the side of truth. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 Motives which, lead to Atheism Can this be 
 Dangerous 1 
 
 WHAT interest, we are asked, can 
 men have to deny the existence of 
 God 1 But are the tyrannies exercised 
 in his name, and the slavery in which 
 men groan under priests, sufficient mo- 
 tives for determining us to examine 
 into the pretensions of a class that oc- 
 casions so much mischief in the world ? 
 Can there be a stronger motive than 
 the incessant dread excited by the belief 
 in a being who is angry with our most 
 secret thoughts, whom we may unknow- 
 ingly offend, who is never pleased with 
 us, who gives man evil inclinations that 
 he may punish him for them, who eter- 
 nally punishes the crime of a moment ? 
 
 The deist will tell us that we only 
 paint superstition ; but such a supposi- 
 
 No. XII. 46 
 
 tion will never prove the existence of 
 a Deity. If the God of superstition be 
 a disgusting being, that of deism must 
 always be inconsistent and impossible. 
 
 The depraved devotee finds in reli- 
 gion a thousand pretexts for being 
 wicked. The atheist has no cloak of 
 zeal to cover his vengeance and fury. 
 
 No sensible atheist thinks that the 
 cruel actions caused by religion are 
 capable of being justified. If the athe- 
 ist be a bad man, he knows when he is 
 committing wrong. Neither God nor 
 his priests can then persuade him that 
 he has been acting properly. 
 
 The indecent and criminal conduct 
 of his ministers, say some men, proves 
 nothing against religion. May not the 
 same thing be said of an atheist of good 
 principles and a bad practice? Athe- 
 ism, it is said, destroys the force of 
 oaths ; but perjury is common enough 
 with those nations who boast the most 
 of their piety. Are the most holy kings 
 faithful to their oaths ? Does not reli- 
 gion itself sometimes grant a dispen- 
 sation from them, especially when the 
 perjury is beneficial to the holy cause ? 
 Do criminals refrain from swearing, 
 when necessary to their justification ? 
 Oaths are a foolish formality, which 
 neither impose upon villains nor add 
 any thing to the engagements of good 
 men. 
 
 It has been asked, whether a people 
 ever existed that had not some idea of 
 a Deity ; and could a nation of atheists 
 exist 1 
 
 A timid and ignorant animal, like 
 man, necessarily becomes superstitious 
 under calamity. He either creates a 
 God himself or takes that which is 
 offered him by another. But the savage 
 does not draw the same conclusion 
 from the existence of his Gods as the 
 polished citizen. A nation of savages 
 content themselves with a rude wor- 
 ship, and never reason about the Divin- 
 ity. It is only in civilized states that 
 men subtilize those ideas. . - 
 
 A numerous society, without, either! 
 religion, morality, government, laws,/ 
 or principles, doubtless cannot exist,! 
 since it would only be an assemblage' 
 of men mutually disposed to injure one 
 another. But, in spite of all religions 
 in the world, are not all human socie- 
 ties nearly in that state ? A society of 
 atheists, governed by good laws, whom
 
 362 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 rewards excite to virtue, and punish- 
 ments deter from crime, would be infi- 
 /nitely more virtuous than those reli- 
 /gious societies in which every thing 
 I tends to disturb the mind and to deprave 
 \he heart. 
 
 We cannot expect to take away from 
 a whole nation its religious ideas, be- 
 cause they have been inculcated from 
 the tenderest infancy. But the vulgar, 
 in the long run, may reap advantages 
 Tom labours, of which they at present 
 lave no idea. Atheism, having truth 
 jn its side, will gradually insinuate 
 tself into the mind, and become famil- 
 iar to man. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 Abridgement of the System of Nature. 
 
 O YE, says Nature, who, according 
 to the impulse which I have given you, 
 tend every instant towards happiness, 
 do not resist my sovereign law ! lahour 
 at your felicity ; enjoy without fear ; 
 be happy. 
 
 Return, O devotee, to Nature ! She 
 will banish from thy heart the terrours 
 which are overwhelming thee. Cease 
 to contemplate futurity. Live for thy- 
 self and thy fellow-creatures. I ap- 
 prove of thy pleasures, while they 
 neither injure thee nor others, whom 
 I have rendered necessary to thy hap- 
 piness. 
 
 Let humanity interest thee in the fate 
 of thy fellow-creature. Consider that, 
 like Aim, thou mayest one day he mis- 
 erable. Dry up the tears of distressed 
 virtue and injured innocence. Let the 
 mild fervour of friendship, and the es- 
 teem of a loved companion, make thee 
 forget the pains of life. 
 
 Be just, since equity supports the 
 human race. Be good, as bounty at- 
 taches every heart. Be indulgent, since 
 thou livest among beings weak like 
 thyself. Be modest, as pride hurts the 
 self-love of every human being. Par- 
 
 don injuries, as vengeance eternizes 
 hatred. Do good to him who injures 
 thee, that thou mayest show thyself 
 greater than he, and also gain his friend- 
 ship. Be moderate, temperate, and 
 chaste, since voluptuousness, intem- 
 perance, and excess, destroy thy being, 
 and render thee contemptible. 
 
 It is I who punish the crimes of this 
 world. The wicked man may escape 
 human laws, but mine he can never fly 
 from. Abandon thyself to intemper- 
 ance, and man will not punish thee, 
 but I will punish thee, by shortening 
 thy existence. If addicted to vice, 
 thou wilt perish under thy fatal habits. 
 Princes, whose power surpasseth hu- 
 man laws, tremble under mine. I pun- 
 ish them by infusing suspicion and 
 terrour into their minds. Look into 
 the hearts of those criminals, whose 
 smiling countenances conceal an an- 
 guished soul. See the covetous miser, 
 haggard and emaciated, groaning under 
 wealth, acquired by the sacrifice of 
 himself. View the gay voluptuary, 
 secretly writhing under a broken con- 
 stitution; see the mutual hatred and 
 contempt which subsist between the 
 adulterous pair ! The liar, deprived 
 of all confidence ; the icy heart of in- 
 gratitude, which no act of kindness 
 can dissolve ; the iron soul of the mon- 
 ster whom the sight of misfortune could 
 never soften ; the vindictive being, 
 nourishing in his bosom the gnawing 
 vipers which are consuming him ! 
 Envy, if thou darest, the sleep of the 
 murderer, the iniquitous judge, or the 
 oppressor, whose couches are surround- 
 ed by the torches of the furies ! But 
 no ! humanity obliges thee to partake 
 of their merited torments. Comparing 
 thyself with them, and finding thy bo- 
 som the constant abode of peace, thou 
 wilt find a subject of self-congratula- 
 tion. Finally, behold the decree of 
 destiny fulfilled on all ! She wills that 
 virtue shall never go unrewarded, but 
 crime be ever its own punishment.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 tfviqfc Page 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT to the Public, ...... ft 
 
 Terms of the Free Enquirers' Family Library, .... vii 
 
 The Author's Preface, ......... viii 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Of Nature, - - - - '* V '*. 11 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Of Motion, and its Origin, ,.-ij:i- ;;-;-, - 16 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Of Matter: Of its various Combinations: of its diversified Mo- 
 tion; or, of the Course of Nature, ruwnA H - - - 24 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Of the Laws of Motion common to all Beings of Nature : Of At- 
 traction and Repulsion : of Inert Force : of Necessity, - 27 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Of Order and Confusion : of Intelligence : of Chance, 33 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Of Man : of his Distinction into Moral and Physical : of his 
 
 Origin, - >i|y - i'.^f] . " " " ^9 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Of the Soul, and of the Spiritual System, * - - - 47 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Of the Intellectual Faculties ; they are all derived from the Faculty 
 
 of Feeling, ' - " '" ; ^^ - - - - - - 53
 
 364 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Page 
 
 Of the Diversity of the Intellectual Faculties ; they depend on Phy- 
 sical Causes, as do their Moral Qualities. The Natural Prin- 
 ciples of Society. Of Morals. Of Politics, 59 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 The Soul does not derive its Ideas from itself. It has no innate 
 
 Ideas, ... lirj-fr'l ----- 75 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Of the System of Man's Free Agency, - - - - - 88 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 An Examination of the Opinion which pretends that the System of 
 
 Fatalism is Dangerous, - - - - - - -103 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Of the Immortality of the Soul : of the Doctrine of a Future State : 
 
 of the Fear of Death, ^ -i 1 '"' - - - - 116 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Education, Morals, and the Laws, suffice to restrain Man. Of the 
 
 Desire of Immortality. Of Suicide - - - - 130 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Of Man's true Interest, or of the Ideas he forms to himself of 
 
 Happiness. Man cannot be Happy without Virtue. - - 139 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 The Errours of Man, upon what constitutes Happiness, the true 
 
 Source of his Evil. Remedies that may be applied, - - 149 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Those Ideas which are true, or founded upon Nature, are the only 
 Remedies for the Evils of Man. Recapitulation. Conclu- 
 sion of the First Part, - - (*; -..iV; ;;.).,'; v ; ' " 157 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 The Origin of Man's ideas upon the Divinity, - - - 163 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Of Mythology and Theology, - 3.'$ e -i hlte - - * - 174
 
 365 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 SECOND VOLUME. 
 
 Page 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Of the confused and contradictory Ideas of Theology, - - 191 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Examination of the Proofs of the Divinity, as given by Clarke, - 205 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Examination of the Proofs of the Existence of God given by Des- 
 cartes, Malebranche, Newton, &c. ..... 225 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 1 4* - - * ^J 
 
 Of Pantheism, or of the Natural Ideas of Divinity, ... 236 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Of Theism or Deism : of the System of Optimism ; and of Final 
 
 Causes, .... -Ti[/, 246 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Examination of the Advantages which result to men from their No- 
 tions on the Divinity, or of their Influence upon Morals, upon 
 Politics, upon the Sciences, upon the Happiness of Nations 
 and Individuals, ..... ^.' - . 263 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Theological Notions cannot be the Basis of Morality. Comparison 
 between Theological Morality and Natural Morality. Theolo- 
 gy prejudicial to the Progress of the Human Mind, - - 274 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Men can form no Conclusion from the Ideas which are given them
 
 366 CONTENTS. 
 
 PfUTG 
 
 of the Divinity : of the want of Just Interference in, and of 
 
 the Inutility of their Conduct on his Account, ... 286 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Defence of the Sentiments contained in this Work. Of Impiety. 
 
 Do there exist Atheists ? -- 299 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Is Atheism compatible with Morality ? ^* V ... 306 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Of the Motives which lead to Atheism. Can this System be dan- 
 gerous ? Can it be Embraced by the Uninformed ? 314 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 ' .y .*$' i ' 
 
 A Summary of the Code of Nature, - - - 331 
 
 ^ . '.. . - ? vr-j-JTj I.-,-. . * IMP. 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Introduction, . - - - 339 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 On Nature, ... ..... 339 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Of Motion and its Origin, - *"/ .?.*'" " 341 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Of Matter and its Motion 1 - - - - 341 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Laws of Motion to all Beings. Attraction and Repulsion. Neces- 
 
 sity, : ." - - / ' v,'"^ ,-' I 341 
 
 !./ <v : f;l<j xtOSil-'U-J/jt*",?'-* 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Of Order and Disorder. Intelligence and Chance, *(Xj *jffij>T'! 342 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 Of Man ; his Physical and Moral Distinctions. His Origin, - 343 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 Of the Soul and its Spirituality, - 343 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Of the Intellectual Faculties. All derived from Sensation, ^ 343
 
 CONTENTS. 367 
 
 Page 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Diversity of Intellectual Faculties. They depend, like the Moral 
 
 Qualities, on Physical Causes. Natural Principles of Society, 345 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 The Mind draws no Ideas from Itself. We have no Innate Ideas, 345 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 Of the System of Man's Liberty, ---... 345 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Examination of the Opinions which maintain the System of Neces- 
 sity to be Dangerous, - - - }. V ";' . -J . 345 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Of the Soul's Immortality. The Dogma of a Future State. Fear 
 
 of Death, - - - .' 347 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Of Education. Morality and Laws sufficient to restrain Man. 
 
 Desire of Immortality. Suicide. ..... 343 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 Of Man's Interest, or the Ideas he forms of Happiness. Without 
 
 Virtue he cannot be happy, - - 349 
 
 ^1 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 w * 
 The erroneous Opinions entertained by Man of Happiness, are the 
 
 True Causes of his Misery, - - .^ - 349 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 Origin of our Ideas concerning the Divinity, .... 350 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Of Mythology and Theology, * * , - '. - - - - 351 
 
 , CHAPTER XIX. 
 Absurd and Extraordinary Theological Opinions, 351 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Examination of Dr. Clarke's Proofs of the Existence of a Deity, 353 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 Examination of the Proofs of the Existence of a Divinity, - - 354
 
 368 CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 Of Deism, Optimism, and Final Causes, - - - - - 355 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Examination of the Supposed Advantages which result to Man from 
 the Notions of a Divinity, or their Influence upon Morals, Pol- 
 itics, Science, the Welfare of Nations, and of Individuals, - 356 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 Religious Opinions cannot be the Foundation of Morality : Paral- 
 lel between Religious and Natural Morality : Religion impedes 
 the Progress of the Mind, ...... 357 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 Man, from the Ideas which are given of the Deity, can conclude 
 
 nothing : Their Absurdity and Uselessness, ... 358 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 Apology for the Sentiments contained in this Work, - - - 359 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 Is Atheism Compatible with Sound Morality I - '.-'*V - - 360 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 Motives which lead to Atheism : Can this be Dangerous, - - 361 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 Abridgment of the System of Nature, L -**^ J *%} ... 631