If ye will have Gods, let your imagination 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. ...always remember 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.
Let us not be told, that we thus attribute 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. Nature is neither a blind cause, nor does she act by chance: all her productions are necessary, and always the effect of fixed laws.
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 heavenly 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 existence, man prefers a life of pain to annihilation, which he considers as the greatest of calamities. That notion was besides counterbalanced by the idea of divine mercy.
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, wherefore erect temples to him? If he be Lord of all, wherefore make sacrifices and offerings to him? 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 omnipotent, how can he be offended; and how can we resist him? 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 pretend 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?
In the room of suspending 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 dispute, his name, his attributes, his everlasting will, in indelible characters, and equally legible to all the inhabitants 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 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 will, according to his own whim and caprice.
Does a religious and sacerdotal education form citizens, fathers of families, husbands, just masters, faithful servants, humble subjects, pacific associates? No! It either makes peevish and morose devotees, incommodious to themselves and to others, or men without principles, who quickly sink in oblivion 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; in consequence, 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 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 civilised nations, the life of the citizen is placed in the same scales with money; that the unhappy wretch, who is perishing 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 enlightened societies, is called justice, or making the punishment commensurate with the crime.
This is the true source of moral evil. It is thus that every thing conspires to render man vicious, to give a fatal impulse 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 action to inspire man with a passion for futile or indifferent objects, which make him become 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 dangerous to him, and exhibit errour as requisite 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 conservation, 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 moderate passions, who therefore either do not desire at all, or desire very feebly, those objects with which their associates are continually inebriated.
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 reason, his justice, his wisdom and his fidelity in the fulfilling his pretended engagements, that they are willing to establish the worship 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, predestinate to happiness or to misery, who has the right of making men the playthings of his caprice, and to afflict them without reason, who could go so far as even to destroy and annihilate the universe, is he not a tyrant or a demon? 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? Would it not be a thousand times better to depend upon blind matter, upon a nature destitute of intelligence, upon chance, or upon nothing, upon a God of stone or 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 barbarous pleasure of punishing them without measure, without utility to himself, without correction to them, and without their example serving to reclaim others? A gloomy terrour must necessarily result from the idea of such a being; 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.
The sentiment of fear will necessarily prevail 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 feet; it is his rigour and his severity which they seek to disarm. In short, although they everywhere assure us that the Divinity is full of compassion, of clemency, and of goodness, it is always a malicious genius, a capricious master, a formidable demon, to whom everywhere they render servile homage, and a worship dictated by fear.
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 being, by thus bringing him forth on every trifling occasion, to solve the difficulties ignorance throws in our way? Of whatever nature 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 unquestionably 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, scrutinise 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 conceptions; to bring him on a level with frail humanity, by investing him with our qualities, 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? No! it is to fall back into the depth of Cimmerian 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 prayers: 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 convenient to our welfare, than the 'Cause of all causes' who has left us in the hands of nature.
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 assistance which they have a right to expect; 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 everywhere infest society; they would not be obliged to destroy life, in order to punish a wickedness, which is commonly ascribable to the vices of their own institutions: it would be unnecessary 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 instructed 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 unfortunates for having procured necessaries at the expense of their hardhearted fellow citizens.
If sovereigns, in order to enlighten and to render happy their dominions, were to employ only the tenth part of the vast expenditures which they lavish, and only a tithe of the pains which the employ to stupefy 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.
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 - cruelty - 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.
In Nature nothing; is mean or contemptible, and it is only pride, originating in a false idea of our superiority, which causes our contempt for some of her productions. In the eyes of Nature, however, the oyster that vegetates at the bottom of the sea is as dear and perfect as the proud biped who devours it.
Man would not appear less subjected to the laws of Nature when naked in the forest painfully seeking his sustenance, than when living in civilised society surrounded with comforts; that is to say, enriched with greater experience, 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 succession of causes and effects, which are nothing more than the development of the first impulse given him by nature.
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