Were the rulers of nations more just and rational, theological opinions would not affect the public tranquillity, more than the disputes of natural philosophers, physicians, grammarians, and critics. It is tyranny which causes theological quarrels to be attended with serious consequences.

Those, who extol the importance and utility of Religion, ought to shew us its happy effects, the advantages for instance, which the disputes and abstract speculations of theology can be to porters, artisans, and labourers, and to the mult.i.tude of unfortunate women and corrupt servants with which great cities abound. All these beings are religious; they have what is called _an implicit faith_. Their parsons believe for them; and they stupidly adhere to the unknown belief of their guides. They go to hear sermons, and would think it a great crime to transgress any of the ordinances, to which, in childhood, they are taught to conform. But of what service to morals is all this? None at all. They have not the least idea of Morality, and are even guilty of all the roguery, fraud, rapine, and excess, that is out of the reach of law.

The populace have no idea of their Religion; what they call Religion is nothing but a blind attachment to unknown opinions and mysterious practices. In fact, to deprive people of Religion is to deprive them of nothing. By overthrowing their prejudices, we should only lessen or annihilate the dangerous confidence they put in interested guides, and should teach them to mistrust those, who, under the pretext of Religion, often lead them into fatal excesses.

198.

While pretending to instruct and enlighten men, Religion in reality keeps them in ignorance, and stifles the desire of knowing the most interesting objects. The people have no other rule of conduct, than what their priests are pleased to prescribe. Religion supplies the place of every thing else: but being in itself essentially obscure, it is more proper to lead mortals astray than to guide them in the path of science and happiness. Religion renders enigmatical all Natural Philosophy, Morality, Legislation and Politics. A man blinded by religious prejudices, fears truth, whenever it clashes with his opinions: he cannot know his own nature he cannot cultivate his reason, he cannot perform experiments.

Everything concurs to render the people devout; but every thing tends to prevent them from being humane, reasonable and virtuous. Religion seems to have no other object, than to stupefy the mind.

Priests have been ever at war with genius and talent, because well-informed men perceive, that superst.i.tion shackles the human mind, and would keep it in eternal infancy, occupied solely by fables and frightened by phantoms. Incapable of improvement itself, Theology opposed insurmountable barriers to the progress of true knowledge; its sole object is to keep nations and their rulers in the most profound ignorance of their duties, and of the real motives, that should incline them to do good. It obscures Morality, renders its principles arbitrary, and subjects it to the caprice of the G.o.ds or of their ministers. It converts the art of governing men into a mysterious tyranny, which is the scourge of nations. It changes princes into unjust, licentious despots, and the people into ignorant slaves, who become corrupt in order to merit the favour of their masters.

199.

By tracing the history of the human mind, we shall be easily convinced, that Theology has cautiously guarded against its progress. It began by giving out fables as sacred truth: it produced poetry, which filled the imagination of men with its puerile fictions: it entertained them with its G.o.ds and their incredible deeds. In a word, Religion has always treated men, like children, whom it lulled to sleep with tales, which its ministers would have us still regard as incontestable truths.

If the ministers of the G.o.ds have sometimes made useful discoveries, they have always been careful to give them a dogmatical tone, and envelope them in the shades of mystery. Pythagoras and Plato, in order to acquire some trifling knowledge, were obliged to court the favour of priests, to be initiated in their mysteries, and to undergo whatever trials they were pleased to impose. At this price, they were permitted to imbibe those exalted notions, still so bewitching to all those who admire only what is perfectly unintelligible. It was from Egyptian, Indian, and Chaldean priests, from the schools of these visionaries, professionally interested in bewildering human reason, that philosophy was obliged to borrow its first rudiments. Obscure and false in its principles, mixed with fictions and fables, and made only to dazzle the imagination, the progress of this philosophy was precarious, and its theories unintelligible; instead of enlightening, it blighted the mind, and diverted it from objects truly useful.

The theological speculations and mystical reveries of the ancients are still law in a great part of the philosophic world; and being adopted by modern theology, it is heresy to abandon them. They tell us "of aerial beings, of spirits, angels, demons, genii," and other phantoms, which are the object of their meditations, and serve as the basis of _metaphysics_, an abstract and futile science, which for thousands of years the greatest geniuses have vainly studied. Hypothesis, imagined by a few visionaries of Memphis and Babylon, const.i.tute even now the foundations of a science, whose obscurity makes it revered as marvellous and divine.

The first legislators were priests; the first mythologists, poets, learned men, and physicians were priests. In their hands science became sacred and was withheld from the profane. They spoke only in allegories, emblems, enigmas, and ambiguous oracles--means well calculated to excite curiosity, and above all to inspire the astonished vulgar with a holy respect for men, who when they were thought to be instructed by the G.o.ds, and capable of reading in the heavens the fate of the earth, boldly proclaimed themselves the oracles of the Deity.

200.

The religions of ancient priests have only changed form. Although our modern theologians regard their predecessors as impostors, yet they have collected many scattered fragments of their religious systems. In modern Religions we find, not only their metaphysical dogmas, which theology has merely clothed in a new dress, but also some remarkable remains of their superst.i.tious practices, their magic, and their enchantments. Christians are still commanded to respect the remaining monuments of the legislators, priests, and prophets of the Hebrew Religion, which had borrowed its strange practices from Egypt. Thus extravagancies, imagined by knaves or idolatrous visionaries, are still sacred among Christians!

If we examine history, we shall find a striking resemblance among all Religions. In all parts of the earth, we see, that religious notions, periodically depress and elevate the people. The attention of man is every where engrossed, by rites often abominable, and by mysteries always formidable, which become the sole objects of meditation. The different superst.i.tions borrow, from one another, their abstract reveries and ceremonies. Religions are in general mere unintelligible rhapsodies, combined by new teachers, who use the materials of their predecessors, reserving the right of adding or retrenching whatever is not conformable to the present age. The religion of Egypt was evidently the basis of the religion of Moses, who banished the worship of idols: Moses was merely a schismatic Egyptian. Christianism is only reformed Judaism. Mahometanism is composed of Judaism, Christianity, and the ancient religion of Arabia, etc.

201.

Theology, from the remotest antiquity to the present time, has had the exclusive privilege of directing philosophy. What a.s.sistance has been derived from its labours? It changed philosophy into an unintelligible jargon, calculated to render uncertain the clearest truths; it has converted the art of reasoning into a jargon of words; it has carried the human mind into the airy regions of metaphysics, and there employed it in vainly fathoming an obscure abyss. Instead of physical and simple causes, this transformed philosophy has subst.i.tuted supernatural, or rather, _occult_ causes; it has explained phenomena difficult to be conceived by agents still more inconceivable. It has filled language with words, void of sense, incapable of accounting for things, better calculated to obscure than enlighten, and which seems invented expressly to discourage man, to guard him against the powers of his mind, to make him mistrust the principles of reason and evidence, and to raise an insurmountable barrier between him and truth.

202.

Were we to believe the partisans of Religion, nothing could be explained without it; nature would be a perpetual enigma, and man would be incapable of understanding himself. But, what does this Religion in reality explain?

The more we examine it, the more we are convinced that its theological notions are fit only to confuse our ideas; they change every thing into mystery: they explain difficult things by things that are impossible. Is it a satisfactory explanation of phenomena, to attribute them to unknown agents, to invisible powers, to immaterial causes? Does the human mind receive much light by being referred to _the depths of the treasures of divine wisdom_, to which, we are repeatedly told, it is vain to extend our rash enquiries? Can the divine nature, of which we have no conception, enable us to conceive the nature of man?

Ask a Christian, what is the origin of the world? He will answer, that G.o.d created it. What is G.o.d? He cannot tell. What is it to create? He knows not. What is the cause of pestilence, famine, wars, droughts, inundations and earthquakes? The anger of G.o.d. What remedies can be applied to these calamities? Prayers, sacrifices, processions, offerings, and ceremonies are, it is said, the true means of disarming celestial fury. But why is heaven enraged? Because men are wicked. Why are men wicked? Because their nature is corrupt. What is the cause of this corruption? It is, says the theologian, because the first man, beguiled by the first woman, ate an apple, which G.o.d had forbidden him to touch. Who beguiled this woman into such folly? The devil. Who made the devil? G.o.d. But, why did G.o.d make this devil, destined to pervert mankind? This is unknown; it is a mystery which the Deity alone is acquainted with.

It is now universally acknowledged, that the earth turns round the sun.

Centuries ago, this opinion was blasphemy, as being irreconcileable with the sacred books which every Christian reveres as inspired by the Deity himself. Notwithstanding divine revelation, astronomers now depend rather upon evidence, than upon the testimony of their inspired books.

What is the hidden principle of the motions of the human body? The soul.

What is a soul? A spirit. What is a spirit? A substance, which has neither form, nor colour, nor extension, nor parts. How can we form any idea of such a substance? How can it move a body? That is not known; it is a mystery. Have beasts souls? But, do they not act, feel, and think, in a manner very similar to man? Mere illusion! By what right do you deprive beasts of a soul, which you attribute to man, though you know nothing at all about it? Because the souls of beasts would embarra.s.s our theologians, who are satisfied with the power of terrifying and d.a.m.ning the immaterial souls of men, and are not so much interested in d.a.m.ning those of beasts.

Such are the puerile solutions, which philosophy, always in the leading strings of theology, was obliged to invent, in order to explain the problems of the physical and moral world?

203.

How many evasions have been used, both in ancient and modern times, in order to avoid an engagement with the ministers of the G.o.ds, who have ever been the tyrants of thought? How many hypotheses and shifts were such men as Descartes, Mallebranche, and Leibnitz, forced to invent, in order to reconcile their discoveries with the fables and mistakes which Religion had consecrated! In what guarded phrases have the greatest philosophers expressed themselves, even at the risk of being absurd, inconsistent, or unintelligible, whenever their ideas did not accord with the principles of theology! Priests have been always attentive to extinguish systems which opposed their interest. Theology was ever the bed of Procrustes, to be adapted to which, the limbs of travellers, if too long were cut off, and if too short were lengthened.

Can any sensible man, delighted with the sciences and attached to the welfare of his fellow-creatures, reflect, without vexation and anguish, how many profound, laborious, and subtle brains have been for ages foolishly occupied in the study of absurdities? What a treasure of knowledge might have been diffused by many celebrated thinkers, if instead of engaging in the impertinent disputes of vain theology, they had devoted their attention to intelligible objects really important to mankind? Half the efforts which religious opinions have cost genius, and half the wealth which frivolous forms of worship have cost nations would have sufficed to instruct them perfectly in morality, politics, natural philosophy, medicine, agriculture, etc. Superst.i.tion generally absorbs the attention, admiration, and treasures of the people; their Religion costs them very dear; but they have neither knowledge, virtue, nor happiness, for their money.

204.

Some ancient and modern philosophers have been bold enough to a.s.sume experience and reason for their guides, and to shake off the chains of superst.i.tion. Democritus, Epicurus, and other Greeks presumed to tear away the veil of prejudice, and to deliver philosophy from theological shackles. But their systems, too simple, too sensible, and too free from the marvellous, for imaginations enamoured with chimeras, were obliged to yield to the fabulous conjectures of such men as Plato and Socrates. Among the moderns, Hobbes, Spinosa, Bayle, etc., have followed the steps of Epicurus; but their doctrine has found very few followers, in a world, still intoxicated with fables, to listen to reason.

In every age, it has been dangerous to depart from prejudices. Discoveries of every kind have been prohibited. All that enlightened men could do, was to speak ambiguously, hence they often confounded falsehood with truth.

Several had a _double doctrine_, one public and the other secret; the key of the latter being lost, their true sentiments, have often become unintelligible and consequently useless.

How could modern philosophers, who, under pain of cruel persecution, were commanded to renounce reason, and to subject it to faith, that is, to the authority of priests; how, I say, could men, thus bound, give free scope to their genius, improve reason, and accelerate the progress of the human mind? It was with fear and trembling that even the greatest men obtained a glimpse of truth; rarely had they the courage to announce it; and those, who did, were terribly punished. With Religion, it has ever been unlawful to think, or to combat the prejudices of which man is every where the victim and the dupe.

205.

Every man, sufficiently intrepid to announce truths to the world, is sure of incurring the hatred of the ministers of Religion, who loudly call to their aid secular powers; and want the a.s.sistance of laws to support both their arguments and their G.o.ds. Their clamours expose too evidently the weakness of their cause.

"None call for aid but those who feel distressed."

In Religion, man is not permitted to err. In general, those who err are pitied, and some kindness is shewn to persons who discover new truths; but, when Religion is thought to be interested either in the errors or the discoveries, a holy zeal is kindled, the populace become frantic, and nations are in an uproar.

Can any thing be more afflicting, than to see public and private felicity depending upon a futile system, which is dest.i.tute if principles, founded only on a distempered imagination, and incapable of presenting any thing but words void of sense? In what consists the so much boasted utility of a Religion, which n.o.body can comprehend, which continually torments those who are weak enough to meddle with it, which is incapable of rendering men better, and which often makes them consider it meritorious to be unjust and wicked? Is there a folly more deplorable, and more justly to be combated, than that, which far from doing any service to the human race, only makes them blind, delirious, and miserable, by depriving them of Truth, the sole cure for their wretchedness.