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Letters to Eugenia; Or, A Preservative Against Religious Prejudices

by baron d' Paul Henri Thiry Holbach · English · Gutenberg #31275 · 462,535 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Letters to Eugenia; Or, A Preservative Against Religious Prejudices

Author: baron d' Paul Henri Thiry Holbach

Translator: Anthony C. Middleton


        
Release date: February 14, 2010 [eBook #31275]
                Most recently updated: January 6, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS TO EUGENIA; OR, A PRESERVATIVE AGAINST RELIGIOUS PREJUDICES ***




Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net







  LETTERS TO EUGENIA;

  OR,

  A PRESERVATIVE
  AGAINST RELIGIOUS PREJUDICES.


  BY BARON D'HOLBACH,
  AUTHOR OF THE SYSTEM OF NATURE, THE SOCIAL SYSTEM,
  GOOD SENSE, CHRISTIANITY UNVEILED, ECCE HOMO,
  UNIVERSAL MORALITY, RELIGIOUS CRUELTY, &c., &c., &c.


  TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH, BY
  ANTHONY C. MIDDLETON, M. D.


                                ... "Arctis
  Religionum animos nodis exsolvere pergo."
    LUCRETII _De Rerum Natura_, lib. iv. _v._ 6, 7.


  BOSTON:
  PUBLISHED BY JOSIAH P. MENDUM,
  AT THE OFFICE OF THE BOSTON INVESTIGATOR.
  1857.




NAIGEON'S PREFACE.

1768.


For many years this work has been known under the title of _Letters to
Eugenia_. The secretive character of those, however, into whose hands
the manuscript at first fell; the singular and yet actual pleasure
that is caused generally enough in the minds of all men by the
exclusive possession of any object whatever; that kind of torpor,
servitude, and terror in which the tyrannical power of the priests
then held all minds--even those who by the superiority of their
talents ought naturally to be the least disposed to bend under the
odious yoke of the clergy,--all these circumstances united contributed
so much to stifle in its birth, if I may so express myself, this
important manuscript, that for a long time it was supposed to be lost;
so much did those who possessed it keep it carefully concealed, and so
constantly did they refuse to allow a copy to be taken. The
manuscripts, indeed, were so scarce, even in the libraries of the
curious, that the late M. De Boze, whose pleasure it was to collect
the rarest works belonging to every species of literature, could never
succeed in acquiring a copy of the _Letters to Eugenia_, and in his
time there were only three in Paris; it may have been from design,
_propter metum Judæorum_;[1] it may have been there were actually no
more known.

[1] _On account of fear of the Jews_, or, in other words, the
intolerant clergy of the despotic government.

It is not till within five or six years that MSS. of these letters
have become more common; and there is reason to believe that they are
now considerably multiplied, since the copy from which this edition is
printed has been revised and corrected by collation with six others,
that have been collected without any great difficulty. Unhappily, all
these copies swarm with faults, which corrupt the sense, and
comprehend many variations, but which also, to use the language of the
Biblical critics, have served sometimes to discover and to fix the
true reading! More often, however, they have rendered it more
uncertain than it was before what one ought to be followed--a new
proof of the multiplicity of copies, because the more numerous are the
manuscripts of a work, the more they differ from each other, as any
one may be fully convinced by consulting those of the _Letter of
Thrasybulus to Leucippus_, and the various readings of the New
Testament collected by the learned Mill, and which amount to more than
thirty thousand.

However this may be, we have spared no pains to reëstablish the text
in all its purity; and we venture to say, that, with the exception of
four or five passages, which we found corrupted in all the manuscripts
that we had an opportunity to collate, and which we have amended to
the best of our ability, the edition of these letters that we now
offer to the reader will probably conform almost exactly with the
original manuscript of the author.

With regard to the author's name and quality we can offer nothing but
conjectures. The only particulars of his life upon which there is a
general agreement are, that he lived upon terms of great intimacy with
the Marquis de la Fare, the Abbé de Chaulieu, the Abbé Terrasson,
Fontenelle, M. de Lasseré, &c. The late MM. Du Marsais and Falconnet
have often been heard to declare that these letters were composed by
some one belonging to the school of Seaux. All that we can pronounce
with certainty is the fact, that it is only necessary to read the
work to be entirely convinced the author was a man of extensive
knowledge, and one who had meditated profoundly concerning the matters
upon which he has treated. His style is clear, simple, easy, and in
which we may remark a certain urbanity, that leads us to be sure that
he was not an obscure individual, nor one to whom good company and
polished society were unfamiliar. But what especially distinguishes
this work, and which should endear it to all good and virtuous people,
is the signal honesty which pervades and characterizes it from the
very beginning to the end. It is impossible to read it without
conceiving the highest idea of the author's probity, whoever he may
have been--without desiring to have had him for a friend, to have
lived with him, and, in a word, without rendering justice to the
rectitude of his intentions, even when we do not approve of his
sentiments. The love of virtue, universal benevolence, respect to the
laws, an inviolable attachment to the duties of morality, and, in
fine, all that can contribute to render men better, is strongly
recommended in these Letters. If, on the one hand, he completely
overthrows the ruinous edifice of Christianity, it is to erect, on the
other hand, the immovable foundations of a system of morality
legitimately established upon the nature of man, upon his physical
wants, and upon his social relations--a base infinitely better and
more solid than that of religion, because sooner or later the lie is
discovered, rejected, and necessarily drags with it what served to
sustain it. On the contrary, the truth subsists eternally, and
consolidates itself as it grows old: _Opinionum commenta delet dies,
naturæ judicia confirmat_.[2]

[2] "Time effaces the comments of opinion, but it confirms the
judgments of nature."--CICERO.

The motto affixed to many of the manuscript copies of these letters
proves that the worthy man to whom we owe them did not desire to be
known as their author, and that it was neither the love of reputation,
nor the thirst of glory, nor the ambition of being distinguished by
bold opinions, which the priests, and the satellites subjected to them
by ignorance, denominate _impieties_, which guided his pen. It was
only the desire of doing good to his fellow-beings by enlightening
them, which actuated him, and the wish to uproot, so to speak,
religion itself, as being the source of all the woes which have
afflicted mankind for so many ages. This is the motto of which we
spoke:--

    "Si j'ai raison, qu'importe à qui je suis?"
      (If reason's mine, no matter who I am.)

It is a verse of Corneille, whose application is exceedingly
appropriate, and which should be upon the frontispiece of all books of
this nature.

We are unable to say any thing more certain concerning the person to
whom our author has addressed his work. It appears, however, from many
circumstances in these Letters, that she was not a supposititious
marchioness, like her of the _Worlds_ of M. de Fontenelle, and that
they have really been written to a woman as distinguished by her rank
as by her manners. Perhaps she was a lady of the school of the Temple,
or of Seaux. But these details, in reality, as well as those which
concern the name and the life of our author, the date of his birth,
that of his death, &c., are of little importance, and could only serve
to satisfy the vain curiosity of some idle readers, who avidiously
collect these kind of anecdotes, who receive from them a kind of
existence in the world, and who feel more satisfaction from being
instructed in them than from the discovery of a truth. I know that
they endeavor to justify their curiosity by saying that when a person
reads a book which creates a public sensation, and with which he is
himself much pleased, it is natural he should desire to know to whom a
grateful homage should be addressed. In this case the desire is so
much the more unreasonable because it cannot be satisfied; first,
because when death and proscription is the penalty, there has never
been and there never will be a man of letters so imprudent, and, to
speak plainly, so strangely daring, as to publish, or during his life
to allow a book to be printed, in which he tramples under foot
temples, altars, and the statues of the gods, and where he attacks
without any disguise the most consecrated religious opinions;
secondly, because it is a matter of public notoriety that all the
works of this character which have appeared for many years are the
secret testaments of numbers of great men, obliged during their lives
to conceal their light under a bushel, whose heads death has withdrawn
from the fury of persecutors, and whose cold ashes, consequently, do
not hear in the tomb either the importunate and denunciatory cries of
the superstitious, or the just eulogiums of the friends of truth;
thirdly and lastly, _because this curiosity, so unfortunately
entertained, may compromise in the most cruel manner the repose, the
fortune, and the liberty of the relatives and friends of the authors
of these bold books!_ This single consideration ought, then, to
determine those hazarders of conjectures, if they have really good
intentions, to wrap in the inmost folds of their hearts whatever
suspicions they may entertain concerning the author, however true or
false they may be, and to turn their inquiring spirits to a use more
beneficial for both themselves and others.




TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.


In 1819 an anonymous translation of the LETTERS TO EUGENIA was
published in London by Richard Carlile. This translation in some of
its parts was sufficiently complete and correct, but in others it was
at absolute variance with the original work; in other parts, also, it
was interlarded with matter not written by d'Holbach; and in others,
large portions of the original Letters were entirely omitted, as were
likewise a number of notes and the whole of the preliminary
observations, with which the volume was introduced to the public by
Naigeon, so long the intimate friend of both d'Holbach and Diderot. In
again presenting the work in an English dress, the London translation
has been made the foundation of this, but the whole has been
thoroughly revised and collated with the original. The omitted
portions have been translated and inserted in their proper places, and
though some passages of the London work, not entirely faithful to the
original, have been allowed to stand, yet the book, as it now
appears, is essentially a new one, and is the most accurate and
complete translation of the LETTERS TO EUGENIA which has ever been
made into the English language.

The work at first came anonymously from the press, and the mystery of
its authorship was sedulously maintained in the introductory
observations of Naigeon, in consequence of the danger which then
attended the issue of Infidel productions, not only in France but
throughout Christendom. The book was printed in Amsterdam, at
d'Holbach's own expense, by Marc-Michael Rey, a noble printer, to whom
the world is greatly indebted for the inestimable aid he rendered the
philosophers. But bold as he was, and then living in a country the
most free of any in the world, he dared not openly send these LETTERS
from his own press. They were issued in 1768, in two duodecimo
volumes, without any publisher's name, and with the imprint of
_London_ on the title page, in order to set those persecutors at bay
who were prowling for victims, and who sought to burn author, printer,
and book at the same pile. The prudence of the author and printer
saved _them_ from this fate; but the book had hardly reached France
before its sale was forbidden under penalty of fines and imprisonment,
and it was condemned by an act of Parliament to be burnt by the
public executioner in the streets of Paris, all of which particulars
will be narrated in the BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF BARON D'HOLBACH, which
I am now preparing for the press.

Of the excellence of the LETTERS TO EUGENIA, nothing need here be
said. The work speaks for itself, and abounds in that eloquence
peculiar to its author, and overflows with kindly sentiments of
humanity, benevolence and virtue. Like d'Holbach's other works, it is
distinguished by an ardent love of liberty, and an invincible hatred
of despotism; by an unanswerable logic, by deep thought, and by
profound ideas. The tyrant and the priest are both displayed in their
true colors; but while the author shows himself inexorable as fate
towards oppressive hierarchies and false ideas, he is tender as an
infant to the unfortunate, to those overburdened with unreasonable
impositions, to those who need consolation and guidance, and to those
searching after truth. Addressed, as the LETTERS were, to a lady
suffering from religious falsehoods and terrors, the object of the
writer is set forth in the motto from Lucretius which he placed on the
title page, and which may thus be expressed in English:--

    "Reason's pure light I seek to give the mind,
    And from Religion's fetters free mankind."

                                                A. C. M.

The name of the lady was designedly kept in secrecy, and was unknown,
except to _a very few_, till some years after d'Holbach's death. We
now know from the _Feuilles Posthumes_ of Lequinio, who had it from
Naigeon, that the _Letters_ were written several years before their
publication, for the instruction of a lady formerly distinguished at
the French Court for her graces and virtues. They were addressed to
the charming Marguerite, Marchioness de Vermandois. Her husband held
the lucrative post of farmer-general to the king, and besides
inherited large estates. He possessed excellent natural abilities, and
his mind was strengthened and adorned by culture and letters. Had his
modesty permitted him to appear as such, he would now be known as a
poet of genius and merit, for he wrote some poems and plays that were
much admired by all who were allowed to peruse them. He was married in
1763, on the day he completed his twenty-first year, to Marguerite
Justine d'Estrades, then only nineteen years of age, and whom he saw
for the first time in his life only six weeks before they became
husband and wife. Like most of the matches then made among the higher
classes in France, this was one of a purely mercenary character. The
father of the Marquis de Vermandois, and the father of Marguerite, as
a means of joining their estates, contracted their children without
deigning to consult the wishes of the parties, and obedience or
disinheritance was the only alternative. When the compact was
concluded, Marguerite was taken from the convent where for five years
she had lived as a boarder and scholar, and commenced her married life
and her course in the fashionable world at the same time. The match
was far more fortunate than such matches then generally proved to be.
Marguerite's husband was passionately attached to her, and that
attachment was returned. The Marquis was a friend of Baron d'Holbach,
and soon after his marriage introduced his wife to him. Among all the
beauties of Paris the Marchioness was one of the most lovely and
fascinating. Her features were remarkably beautiful, and the bloom and
clearness of her complexion were such as absolutely to render
necessary the old comparison of the rose and the lily to do them
justice. To these were added a voluptuous figure, agreeable manners,
the graces and vivacity of wit, and the still more enduring
attractions of good humor, purity, and benevolence. A female like her
could not but be dear to all who enjoyed her intimacy, and a strong
friendship sprang up between her and Baron d'Holbach. Greatly pleased
with him at first, Marguerite was afterwards as greatly shocked. When
their intercourse had become so familiar as to permit that frankness
and freedom of conversation which prevails among intimate friends, she
discovered that the Baron was an unbeliever in the Christian dogmas
which she had learned at the convent, where, in consequence of her
mother's death, she had been educated. She had been taught that an
Infidel was a monster in all respects, and she was astounded to find
unbelievers in men so agreeable in manners and person, and so profound
in learning, as d'Holbach, Diderot, d'Alembert, and others. She could
deny neither their goodness nor their intellectual qualities, and
while she admired the individuals she shuddered at their incredulity.
Especially did she mourn over Baron d'Holbach. He had a wife as
charming as herself, formerly the lovely Mademoiselle d'Aïne, whose
beautiful features and seductive figure presented

    "A combination, and a form, indeed,
    Where every god did seem to set his seal."

Nothing was more natural than that two such women should imbibe the
deepest tenderness for each other. But alas! the Baron's wife was
tainted with her husband's heresies; and yet in their home did the
Marchioness see all the domestic virtues exemplified, and beheld that
sweet harmony and unchangeable affection for which the d'Holbachs
were eminently distinguished among their acquaintances, and which was
remarkable from its striking contrast with the courtly and Christian
habits of the day. At a loss what to do, the Marchioness consulted her
confessor, and was advised to withdraw entirely from the society of
the Baron and his wife, unless she was willing to sacrifice all her
hopes of heaven, and to plunge headlong down to hell. Her natural good
sense and love of her friends struggled with her monastic education
and reverence for the priests. The conflict rendered her miserable;
and unable to enjoy happiness, she brooded over her wishes and her
terrors. In this state of mind she at length wrote a touching letter
to the Baron, and laid open her situation, requesting him to comfort,
console, and enlighten her. Such was the origin of the book now
presented in an English dress to the reader. It accomplished its
purpose with the Marchioness de Vermandois, and afterwards its author
concluded to publish the work, in hopes it might be equally useful to
others.

The _Letters_ were _written_ in 1764, when d'Holbach was in the
forty-second year of his age. Twelve different works he had before
written and published, and all without the affix of his name. _Eleven_
were upon mineralogy, the arts and the sciences, and _one_ only upon
theology. That _one_ had been secretly printed in 1761, at Nancy, with
the imprint of London, and was _honored_ with a parliamentary statute
condemning its publication and forbidding its sale or circulation.
Christian hatred bestowed upon it the additional honor of causing it
to be burned in the streets of Paris by the public executioner. But
the prudence of the author protected his life. He attributed the book
to a dead man, who had been known to entertain sceptical views. It was
entitled CHRISTIANITY UNVEILED, and bore on its title page the name of
BOULANGER. This was d'Holbach's first contribution to Infidel
literature, and the second similar work written by him was the LETTERS
TO EUGENIA. These were the preludes to more than a quarter of a
hundred different productions numbering among them such books as _Good
Sense_, _The System of Nature_, _Ecce Homo_, _Priests Unmasked_, &c.,
&c., all printed anonymously or pseudonymously at his own expense,
without a possibility of pecuniary advantage, and with such
extraordinary secrecy as to show that he was actuated by no desire of
literary fame. It was love of truth alone that impelled d'Holbach to
write. Brilliant, profound, eloquent and excellent as were his
writings, attracting notice as they did from the civil and religious
powers, commented upon as they were by such men as Voltaire and
Frederick the Great, admired as they were by that class who felt and
combated the evils of tyranny as well as of religion, of kings as well
as of priests,--that class who almost drew their life from the books
of him and his compeers,--he was never seduced from the rule he
originally laid down for his literary conduct.

A very few persons he was obliged to trust in order to get his
writings printed, and but for that fact Baron d'Holbach would now only
be known as a gentleman of great wealth, extensive benevolence, and
uncommon liberality, as a man of profound learning and agreeable
colloquial powers, as the bountiful friend of men of letters, as the
soother of the distressed, as the protector of the miserable, and as
the affectionate husband and father. So much of him we should have
known; but that he was the author of those books which roused
intolerant priests and corrupt magistrates, consistories and
parliaments, monarchs and philosophers, the people and their
oppressors,--that he was the Archimedes that thus moved the
world,--would not have been known had he not employed another
philosopher, by the name of Naigeon, to carry his manuscripts to
Amsterdam, and to direct their printing by Marc-Michel Rey. It was
Naigeon who carried the manuscript of the LETTERS TO EUGENIA to
Holland, together with a number of others by the same author, which
also appeared during the year 1768,--an eventful year in the history
of Infidel progress. The _Letters_ were carefully revised by d'Holbach
before they were sent to press. All the passages of a purely personal
character were omitted, some new matter was incorporated, and some
sentences were added purposely to keep the author and the lady he
addressed in impenetrable obscurity. To raise the veil from a man of
so much worth and genius, as well as to carry out his idea of doing
good, is one of the reasons which have led to the present preparation
and publication of this book.

                                                A. C. M.




CONTENTS.


  LETTER I.

  Of the Sources of Credulity, and of the Motives which should
  lead to an Examination of Religion,                           Page 1


  LETTER II.

  Of the Ideas which Religion gives us of the Divinity,             29


  LETTER III.

  An Examination of the Holy Scriptures, of the Nature of the
  Christian Religion, and of the Proofs upon which Christianity is
  founded,                                                          46


  LETTER IV.

  Of the fundamental Dogmas of the Christian Religion,              76


  LETTER V.

  Of the Immortality of the Soul, and of the Dogma of another
  Life,                                                             91


  LETTER VI.

  Of the Mysteries, Sacraments, and Religious Ceremonies of
  Christianity,                                                    120


  LETTER VII.

  Of the pious Rites, Prayers, and Austerities of Christianity,    136


  LETTER VIII.

  Of Evangelical Virtues and Christian Perfection,                 154


  LETTER IX.

  Of the Advantages contributed to Government by Religion,         184


  LETTER X.

  Of the Advantages Religion confers on those who profess it,      211


  LETTER XI.

  Of Human or Natural Morality,                                    233


  LETTER XII.

  Of the small Consequence to be attached to Men's Speculations,
  and the Indulgence which should be extended to them,             255




LETTERS TO EUGENIA.




LETTER I.

  Of the Sources of Credulity, and of the Motives which should lead
  to an Examination of Religion.


I am unable, Madam, to express the grievous sentiments that the
perusal of your letter produced in my bosom. Did not a rigorous duty
retain me where I am, you would see me flying to your succor. Is it,
then, true that Eugenia is miserable? Is even she tormented with
chagrin, scruples, and inquietudes? In the midst of opulence and
grandeur; assured of the tenderness and esteem of a husband who adores
you; enjoying at court the advantage, so rare, of being sincerely
beloved by every one; surrounded by friends who render sincere homage
to your talents, your knowledge, and your tastes,--how can you suffer
the pains of melancholy and sorrow? Your pure and virtuous soul can
surely know neither shame nor remorse. Always so far removed from the
weaknesses of your sex, on what account can you blush? Agreeably
occupied with your duties, refreshed with useful reading and
entertaining conversation, and having within your reach every
diversity of virtuous pleasures, how happens it that fears, distastes,
and cares come to assail a heart for which every thing should procure
contentment and peace? Alas! even if your letter had not confirmed it
but too much, from the trouble which agitates you I should have
recognized without difficulty the work of superstition. This fiend
alone possesses the power of disturbing honest souls, without calming
the passions of the corrupt; and when once she gains possession of a
heart, she has the ability to annihilate its repose forever.

Yes, Madam, for a long time I have known the dangerous effects of
religious prejudices. I was myself formerly troubled with them. Like
you I have trembled under the yoke of religion; and if a careful and
deliberate examination had not fully undeceived me, instead of now
being in a state to console you and to reassure you against yourself,
you would see me at the present moment partaking your inquietudes, and
augmenting in your mind the lugubrious ideas with which I perceive you
to be tormented. Thanks to Reason and Philosophy, an unruffled
serenity long ago irradiated my understanding, and banished the
terrors with which I was formerly agitated. What happiness for me if
the peace which I enjoy should put it in my power to break the charm
which yet binds you with the chains of prejudice?

Nevertheless, without your express orders, I should never have dared
to point out to you a mode of thinking widely different from your
own, nor to combat the dangerous opinions to which you have been
persuaded your happiness is attached. But for your request I should
have continued to enclose in my own breast opinions odious to the most
part of men accustomed to see nothing except by the eyes of judges
visibly interested in deceiving them. Now, however, a sacred duty
obliges me to speak. Eugenia, unquiet and alarmed, wishes me to
explore her heart; she needs assistance; she wishes to fix her ideas
upon an object which interests her repose and her felicity. I owe her
the truth. It would be a crime longer to preserve silence. Although my
attachment for her did not impose the necessity of responding to her
confidence, the love of truth would oblige me to make efforts to
dissipate the chimeras which render her unhappy.

I shall proceed then, Madam, to address you with the most complete
frankness. Perhaps at the first glance my ideas may appear strange;
but on examining them with still further care and attention, they will
cease to shock you. Reason, good faith, and truth cannot do otherwise
than exert great influence over such an intellect as yours. I appeal,
therefore, from your alarmed imagination to your more tranquil
judgment; I appeal from custom and prejudice to reflection and reason.
Nature has given you a gentle and sensible soul, and has imparted an
exquisitely lively imagination, and a certain admixture of melancholy
which disposes to despondent revery. It is from this peculiar mental
constitution that arise the woes that now afflict you. Your goodness,
candor, and sincerity preclude your suspecting in others either fraud
or malignity. The gentleness of your character prevents your
contradicting notions that would appear revolting if you deigned to
examine them. You have chosen rather to defer to the judgment of
others, and to subscribe to their ideas, than to consult your own
reason and rely upon your own understanding. The vivacity of your
imagination causes you to embrace with avidity the dismal delineations
which are presented to you; certain men, interested in agitating your
mind, abuse your sensibility in order to produce alarm; they cause you
to shudder at the terrible words, _death_, _judgment_, _hell_,
_punishment_, and _eternity_; they lead you to turn pale at the very
name of an inflexible _judge_, whose absolute decrees nothing can
change; you fancy that you see around you those demons whom he has
made the ministers of his vengeance upon his weak creatures; thus is
your heart filled with affright; you fear that at every instant you
may offend, without being aware of it, a capricious God, always
threatening and always enraged. In consequence of such a state of
mind, all those moments of your life which should only be productive
of contentment and peace, are constantly poisoned by inquietudes,
scruples, and panic terrors, from which a soul as pure as yours ought
to be forever exempt. The agitation into which you are thrown by these
fatal ideas suspends the exercise of your faculties; your reason is
misled by a bewildered imagination, and you are afflicted with
perplexities, with despondency, and with suspicion of yourself. In
this manner you become the dupe of those men who, addressing the
imagination and stifling reason, long since subjugated the universe,
and have actually persuaded reasonable beings that their reason is
either useless or dangerous.

Such is, Madam, the constant language of the apostles of superstition,
whose design has always been, and will always continue to be, to
destroy human reason in order to exercise their power with impunity
over mankind. Throughout the globe the perfidious ministers of
religion have been either the concealed or the declared enemies of
reason, because they always see reason opposed to their views. Every
where do they decry it, because they truly fear that it will destroy
their empire by discovering their conspiracies and the futility of
their fables. Every where upon its ruins they struggle to erect the
empire of fanaticism and imagination. To attain this end with more
certainty, they have unceasingly terrified mortals with hideous
paintings, have astonished and seduced them by marvels and mysteries,
embarrassed them by enigmas and uncertainties, surcharged them with
observances and ceremonies, filled their minds with terrors and
scruples, and fixed their eyes upon a future, which, far from
rendering them more virtuous and happy here below, has only turned
them from the path of true happiness, and destroyed it completely and
forever in their bosoms.

Such are the artifices which the ministers of religion every where
employ to enslave the earth and to retain it under the yoke. The human
race, in all countries, has become the prey of the priests. The
priests have given the name of _religion_ to systems invented by them
to subjugate men, whose imagination they had seduced, whose
understanding they had confounded, and whose reason they had
endeavored to extinguish.

It is especially in infancy that the human mind is disposed to receive
whatever impression is made upon it. Thus our priests have prudently
seized upon the youth to inspire them with ideas that they could never
impose upon adults. It is during the most tender and susceptible age
of men that the priests have familiarized the understanding of our
race with monstrous fables, with extravagant and disjointed fancies,
and with ridiculous chimeras, which, by degrees, become objects that
are respected and that are feared during life.

We need only open our eyes to see the unworthy means employed by
_sacerdotal policy_ to stifle the dawning reason of men. During their
infancy they are taught tales which are ridiculous, impertinent,
contradictory, and criminal, and to these they are enjoined to pay
respect. They are gradually impregnated with inconceivable mysteries
that are announced as sacred truths, and they are accustomed to
contemplate phantoms before which they habitually tremble. In a word,
measures are taken which are the best calculated to render those
blind who do not consult their reason, and to render those base who
constantly shudder whenever they recall the ideas with which their
priests infected their minds at an age when they were unable to guard
against such snares.

Recall to mind, Madam, the dangerous cares which were taken in the
convent where you were educated, to sow in your mind the germs of
those inquietudes that now afflict you. It was there that they began
to speak to you of fables, prodigies, mysteries, and doctrines that
you actually revere, while, if these things were announced to-day for
the first time, you would regard them as ridiculous, and as entirely
unworthy of attention. I have often witnessed your laughter at the
simplicity with which you formerly credited those tales of sorcerers
and ghosts, that, during your childhood, were related by the nuns who
had charge of your education. When you entered society where for a
long time such chimeras have been disbelieved, you were insensibly
undeceived, and at present you blush at your former credulity. Why
have you not the courage to laugh, in a similar manner, at an infinity
of other chimeras with no better foundation, which torment you even
yet, and which only appear more respectable, because you have not
dared to examine them with your own eyes, or because you see them
respected by a public who have never explored them? If my Eugenia is
enlightened and reasonable upon all other topics, why does she
renounce her understanding and her judgment whenever religion is in
question? In the mean time, at this redoubtable word her soul is
disturbed, her strength abandons her, her ordinary penetration is at
fault, her imagination wanders, she only sees through a cloud, she is
unquiet and afflicted. On the watch against reason, she dares not call
that to her assistance. She persuades herself that the best course for
her to take is to allow herself to follow the opinions of a multitude
who never examine, and who always suffer themselves to be conducted by
blind or deceitful guides.

To reëstablish peace in your mind, dear Madam, cease to despise
yourself; entertain a just confidence in your own powers of mind, and
feel no chagrin at finding yourself infected with a general and
involuntary epidemic from which it did not depend on you to escape.
The good Abbé de St. Pierre had reason when he said that _devotion was
the small pox of the soul_. I will add that it is rare the disease
does not leave its pits for life. Indeed, see how often the most
enlightened persons persist forever in the prejudices of their
infancy! These notions are so early inculcated, and so many
precautions are continually taken to render them durable, that if any
thing may reasonably surprise us, it is to see any one have the
ability to rise superior to such influences. The most sublime geniuses
are often the playthings of superstition. The heat of their
imagination sometimes only serves to lead them the farther astray, and
to attach them to opinions which would cause them to blush did they
but consult their reason. Pascal constantly imagined that he saw hell
yawning under his feet; Mallebranche was extravagantly credulous;
Hobbes had a great terror of phantoms and demons;[3] and the immortal
Newton wrote a ridiculous commentary on the vials and visions of the
Apocalypse. In a word, every thing proves that there is nothing more
difficult than to efface the notions with which we are imbued during
our infancy. The most sensible persons, and those who reason with the
most correctness upon every other matter, relapse into their infancy
whenever religion is in question.

[3] On this subject see Bayle's _Dict. Crit._, art. _Hobbes_, Rem. N.

Thus, Madam, you need not blush for a weakness which you hold in
common with almost all the world, and from which the greatest men are
not always exempt. Let your courage then revive, and fear not to
examine with perfect composure the phantoms which alarm you. In a
matter which so greatly interests your repose, consult that
enlightened reason which places you as much above the vulgar, as it
elevates the human species above the other animals. Far from being
suspicious of your own understanding and intellectual faculties, turn
your just suspicion against those men, far less enlightened and honest
than you, who, to vanquish you, only address themselves to your lively
imagination; who have the cruelty to disturb the serenity of your
soul; who, under the pretext of attaching you only to heaven, insist
that you must sunder the most tender and endearing ties; and in fine,
who oblige you to proscribe the use of that beneficent reason whose
light guides your conduct so judiciously and so safely.

Leave inquietude and remorse to those corrupt women who have cause to
reproach themselves, or who have crimes to expiate. Leave superstition
to those silly and ignorant females whose narrow minds are incapable
of reasoning or reflection. Abandon the futile and trivial ceremonies
of an objectionable devotion to those idle and peevish women, for
whom, as soon as the transient reign of their personal charms is
finished, there remains no rational relaxation to fill the void of
their days, and who seek by slander and treachery to console
themselves for the loss of pleasures which they can no longer enjoy.
Resist that inclination which seems to impel you to gloomy meditation,
solitude, and melancholy. Devotion is only suited to inert and
listless souls, while yours is formed for action. You should pursue
the course I recommend for the sake of your husband, whose happiness
depends upon you; you owe it to the children, who will soon,
undoubtedly, need all your care and all your instructions for the
guidance of their hearts and understandings; you owe it to the friends
who honor you, and who will value your society when the beauty which
now adorns your person and the voluptuousness which graces your figure
have yielded to the inroads of time; you owe it to the circle in which
you move, and to the world which has a right to your example,
possessing as you do virtues that are far more rare to persons of your
rank than devotion. In fine, you owe happiness to yourself; for,
notwithstanding the promises of religion, you will never find
happiness in those agitations into which I perceive you cast by the
lurid ideas of superstition. In this path you will only encounter
doleful chimeras, frightful phantoms, embarrassments without end,
crushing uncertainties, inexplicable enigmas, and dangerous reveries,
which are only calculated to disturb your repose, to deprive you of
happiness, and to render you incapable of occupying yourself with that
of others. It is very difficult to make those around us happy when we
are ourselves miserable and deprived of peace.

If you will even slightly make observations upon those about you, you
will find abundant proofs of what I advance. The most religious
persons are rarely the most amiable or the most social. Even the most
sincere devotion, by subjecting those who embrace it to wearisome and
crippling ceremonies, by occupying their imaginations with lugubrious
and afflicting objects, by exciting their zeal, is but little
calculated to give to devotees that equality of temper, that sweetness
of an indulgent disposition, and that amenity of character, which
constitute the greatest charms of personal intercourse. A thousand
examples might be adduced to convince you that devotees who are the
most occupied in superstitious observances to please God are not
those women who succeed best in pleasing those by whom they are
surrounded. If there seems to be occasionally an exception to this
rule, it is on the part of those who have not all the zeal and fervor
which is exacted by their religion. Devotion is either a morose and
melancholy passion, or it is a violent and obstinate enthusiasm.
Religion imposes an exclusive and entire regard upon its slaves. All
that an acceptable Christian gives to a fellow-creature is a robbery
from the Creator. A soul filled with religious fervor fears to attach
itself to things of the earth, lest it should lose sight of its
jealous God, who wishes to engross constant attention, who lays it
down as a duty to his creatures that they should sacrifice to him
their most agreeable and most innocent inclinations, and who orders
that they should render themselves miserable here below, under the
idea of pleasing him. In accordance with such principles, we generally
see devotees executing with much fidelity the duty of tormenting
themselves and disturbing the repose of others. They actually believe
they acquire great merit with the Sovereign of heaven by rendering
themselves perfectly useless, or even a scourge to the inhabitants of
the earth.

I am aware, Madam, that devotion in you does not produce effects
injurious to others; but I fear that it is only more injurious to
yourself. The goodness of your heart, the sweetness of your
disposition, and the beneficence which displays itself in all your
conduct, are all so great that even religion does not impel you to
any dangerous excesses. Nevertheless, devotion often causes strange
metamorphoses. Unquiet, agitated, miserable within yourself, it is to
be feared that your temperament will change, that your disposition
will become acrimonious, and that the vexatious ideas over which you
have so long brooded will sooner or later produce a disastrous
influence upon those who approach you. Does not experience constantly
show us that religion effects changes of this kind? What are called
_conversions_, what devotees regard as special acts of divine grace,
are very often only lamentable revolutions by which real vices and
odious qualities are substituted for amiable and useful
characteristics. By a deplorable consequence of these pretended
miracles of grace we frequently see sorrow succeed to enjoyment, a
gloomy and unhappy state to one of innocent gayety, lassitude and
chagrin to activity and hilarity, and slander, intolerance, and zeal
to indulgence and gentleness; nay, what do I say? cruelty itself to
humanity. In a word, superstition is a dangerous leaven, that is
fitted to corrupt even the most honest hearts.

Do you not see, in fact, the excesses to which fanaticism and zeal
drive the wisest and best meaning men? Princes, magistrates, and
judges become inhuman and pitiless as soon as there is a question of
the interests of religion. Men of the gentlest disposition, the most
indulgent, and the most equitable, upon every other matter, religion
transforms to ferocious beasts. The most feeling and compassionate
persons believe themselves in conscience obliged to harden their
hearts, to do violence to their better instincts, and to stifle
nature, in order to show themselves cruel to those who are denounced
as enemies to their own manner of thinking. Recall to your mind,
Madam, the cruelties of nations and governments in alternate
persecutions of Catholics or Protestants, as either happened to be in
the ascendant. Can you find reason, equity, or humanity in the
vexations, imprisonments, and exiles that in our days are inflicted
upon the Jansenists? And these last, if ever they should attain in
their turn the power requisite for persecution, would not probably
treat their adversaries with more moderation or justice. Do you not
daily see individuals who pique themselves upon their sensibility
unblushingly express the joy they would feel at the extermination of
persons to whom they believe they owe neither benevolence nor
indulgence, and whose only crime is a disdain for prejudices that the
vulgar regard as sacred, or that an erroneous and false policy
considers useful to the state? Superstition has so greatly stifled all
sense of humanity in many persons otherwise truly estimable, that they
have no compunctions at sacrificing the most enlightened men of the
nation because they could not be the most credulous or the most
submissive to the authority of the priests.

In a word, devotion is only calculated to fill the heart with a bitter
rancor, that banishes peace and harmony from society. In the matter
of religion, every one believes himself obliged to show more or less
ardor and zeal. Have I not often seen you uncertain yourself whether
you ought to sigh or smile at the self-depreciation of devotees
ridiculously inflamed by that religious vanity which grows out of
sectarian conventionalities? You also see them participating in
theological quarrels, in which, without comprehending their nature or
purport, they believe themselves conscientiously obliged to mingle. I
have a hundred times seen you astounded with their clamors, indignant
at their animosity, scandalized at their cabals, and filled with
disdain at their obstinate ignorance. Yet nothing is more natural than
these outbreaks; ignorance has always been the mother of devotion. To
be a devotee has always been synonymous to having an imbecile
confidence in priests. It is to receive all impulsions from them; it
is to think and act only according to them; it is blindly to adopt
their passions and prejudices; it is faithfully to fulfil practices
which their caprice imposes.

Eugenia is not formed to follow such guides. They would terminate by
leading her widely astray, by dazzling her vivid imagination, by
infecting her gentle and amiable disposition with a deadly poison. To
master with more certainty her understanding, they would render her
austere, intolerant, and vindictive. In a word, by the magical power
of superstition and supernatural notions, they would succeed, perhaps,
in transforming to vices those happy dispositions that nature has
given you. Believe me, Madam, you would gain nothing by such a
metamorphosis. Rather be what you really are. Extricate yourself as
soon as possible from that state of incertitude and languor, from that
alternative of despondency and trouble, in which you are immersed. If
you will only take your reason and virtue for guides, you will soon
break the fetters whose dangerous effects you have begun to feel.

Assume the courage, then, I repeat it, to examine for yourself this
religion, which, far from procuring you the happiness it promised,
will only prove an inexhaustible source of inquietudes and alarms, and
which will deprive you, sooner or later, of those rare qualities which
render you so dear to society. Your interest exacts that you should
render peace to your mind. It is your duty carefully to preserve that
sweetness of temper, that indulgence, and that cheerfulness, by which
you are so much endeared to all those who approach you. You owe
happiness to yourself, and you owe it to those who surround you. Do
not, then, abandon yourself to superstitious reveries, but collect all
the strength of your judgment to combat the chimeras which torment
your imagination. They will disappear as soon as you have considered
them with your ordinary sagacity.

Do not tell me, Madam, that your understanding is too weak to sound
the depths of theology. Do not tell me, in the language of our
priests, that the truths of religion are mysteries that we must adopt
without comprehending them, and that it is necessary to adore in
silence. By expressing themselves in this manner, do you not see they
really proscribe and condemn the very religion to which they are so
solicitous you should adhere? Whatever is supernatural is unsuited to
man, and whatever is beyond his comprehension ought not to occupy his
attention. To adore what we are not able to know, is to adore nothing.
To believe in what we cannot conceive, is to believe in nothing. To
admit without examination every thing we are directed to admit, is to
be basely and stupidly credulous. To say that religion is above
reason, is to recognize the fact that it was not made for reasonable
beings; it is to avow that those who teach it have no more ability to
fathom its depths than ourselves; it is to confess that our reverend
doctors do not themselves understand the marvels with which they daily
entertain us.

If the truths of religion were, as they assure us, necessary to all
men, they would be clear and intelligible to all men. If the dogmas
which this religion teaches were as important as it is asserted, they
would not only be within the comprehension of the doctors who preach
them, but of all those who hear their lessons. Is it not strange that
the very persons whose profession it is to furnish themselves with
religions knowledge, in order to impart it to others, should recognize
their own dogmas as beyond their own understanding, and that they
should obstinately inculcate to the people what they acknowledge they
do not comprehend themselves? Should we have much confidence in a
physician, who, after confessing that he was utterly ignorant of his
art, should nevertheless boast of the excellence of his remedies?
This, however, is the constant practice of our spiritual quacks. By a
strange fatality, the most sensible people consent to be the dupes of
these empirics who are perpetually obliged to avow their own profound
ignorance.

But if the mysteries of religion are incomprehensible for even those
who inculcate it,--if among those who profess it there is no one who
knows precisely what he believes, or who can give an account of either
his conduct or belief,--this is not so in regard to the difficulties
with which we oppose this religion. These objections are simple,
within the comprehension of all persons of ordinary ability, and
capable of convincing every man who, renouncing the prejudices of his
infancy, will deign to consult the good sense that nature has bestowed
upon all beings of the human race.

For a long period of time, subtle theologians have, without
relaxation, been occupied in warding off the attacks of the
incredulous, and in repairing the breaches made in the ruinous edifice
of religion by adversaries who combated under the flag of reason. In
all times there have been people who felt the futility of the titles
upon which the priests have arrogated the right of enslaving the
understandings of men, and of subjugating and despoiling nations.
Notwithstanding all the efforts of the interested and frequently
hypocritical men who have taken up the defence of religion, from which
they and their confederates alone are profited, these apologists have
never been able to vindicate successfully their _divine_ system
against the attacks of incredulity. Without cessation they have
replied to the objections which have been made, but never have they
refuted or annihilated them. Almost in every instance the defenders of
Christianity have been sustained by oppressive laws on the part of the
government; and it has only been by injuries, by declamations, by
punishments and persecutions, that they have replied to the
allegations of reason. It is in this manner that they have apparently
remained masters of the field of battle which their adversaries could
not openly contest. Yet, in spite of the disadvantages of a combat so
unequal, and although the partisans of religion were accoutred with
every possible weapon, and could show themselves openly, in accordance
with _law_, while their adversaries had no arms but those of reason,
and could not appear personally but at the peril of fines,
imprisonment, torture, and death, and were restricted from bringing
all their arsenal into service, yet they have inflicted profound,
immedicable, and incurable wounds upon superstition. Still, if we
believe the mercenaries of religion, the excellence of their system
makes it absolutely invulnerable to every blow which can be inflicted
upon it; and they pretend they have a thousand times in a victorious
manner answered the objections which are continually renewed against
them. In spite of this great security, we see them excessively alarmed
every time a new combatant presents himself, and the latter may well
and successfully use the most common objections, and those which have
most frequently been urged, since it is evident that up to the present
moment the arguments have never been obviated or opposed with
satisfactory replies. To convince you, Madam, of what I here advance,
you need only compare the most simple and ordinary difficulties which
good sense opposes to religion, with the pretended solutions that have
been given. You will perceive that the difficulties, evident even to
the capacities of a child, have never been removed by divines the most
practised in dialectics. You will find in their replies only subtle
distinctions, metaphysical subterfuges, unintelligible verbiage, which
can never be the language of truth, and which demonstrates the
embarrassment, the impotence, and the bad faith of those who are
interested by their position in sustaining a desperate cause. In a
word, the difficulties which have been urged against religion are
clear, and within the comprehension of every one, while the answers
which have been given are obscure, entangled, and far from
satisfactory, even to persons most versed in such jargon, and plainly
indicating that the authors of these replies do not themselves
understand what they say.

If you consult the clergy, they will not fail to set forth the
antiquity of their doctrine, which has always maintained itself,
notwithstanding the continual attacks of the Heretics, the Mecreans,
and the Impious generally, and also in spite of the persecutions of
the Pagans. You have, Madam, too much good sense not to perceive at
once that the antiquity of an opinion proves nothing in its favor. If
antiquity was a proof of truth, Christianity must yield to Judaism,
and that in its turn to the religion of the Egyptians and Chaldeans,
or, in other words, to the idolatry which was greatly anterior to
Moses. For thousands of years it was universally believed that the sun
revolved round the earth, which remained immovable; and yet it is not
the less true that the sun is fixed, and the earth moves around that.
Besides, it is evident that the Christianity of to-day is not what it
formerly was. The continual attacks that this religion has suffered
from heretics, commencing with its earliest history, proves that there
never could have existed any harmony between the partisans of a
pretended divine system, which offended all rules of consistency and
logic in its very first principles. Some parts of this celestial
system were always denied by devotees who admitted other parts. If
infidels have often attacked religion without apparent effect, it is
because the best reasons become useless against the blindness of a
superstition sustained by the public authority, or against the torrent
of opinion and custom which sways the minds of most men. With regard
to the persecutions which the church suffered on the part of the
pagans, he is but slightly acquainted with the effects of fanaticism
and religious obstinacy who does not perceive that tyranny is
calculated to excite and extend what it persecutes most violently.

You are not formed to be the dupe of names and authorities. The
defenders of the popular superstition will endeavor to overwhelm you
by the multiplied testimony of many illustrious and learned men, who
not only admitted the Christian religion, but who were also its most
zealous supporters. They will adduce holy divines, great philosophers,
powerful reasoners, fathers of the church, and learned interpreters,
who have successively advocated the system. I will not contest the
understanding of the learned men who are cited, which, however, was
often faulty, but will content myself with repeating that frequently
the greatest geniuses are not more clear sighted in matters of
religion than the people themselves. They did not examine the
religious opinions they taught; it may be because they regarded them
as sacred, or it may be because they never went back to first
principles, which they would have found altogether unsound, if they
had considered them without prejudice. It may also have happened
because they were interested in defending a cause with which their own
position was allied. Thus their testimony is exceptionable, and their
authority carries no great weight.

With regard to the interpreters and commentators, who for so many
ages have painfully toiled to elucidate the divine laws, to explain
the sacred books, and to fix the dogmas of Christianity, their very
labors ought to inspire us with suspicion concerning a religion which
is founded upon such books and which preaches such dogmas. They prove
that works emanating from the Supreme Being are obscure,
unintelligible, and need human assistance in order to be understood by
those to whom the Divinity wished to reveal his will. The laws of a
wise God would be simple and clear. Defective laws alone need
interpreters.

It is not, then, Madam, upon these interpreters that you should rely;
it is upon yourself; it is your own reason that you should consult. It
is _your_ happiness, it is _your_ repose, that is in question; and
these objects are too serious to allow their decision to be delegated
to any others than yourself. If religion is as important as we are
assured, it undoubtedly merits the greatest attention. If it is upon
this religion that depends the happiness of men both in this world and
in another, there is no subject which interests us so strongly, and
which consequently demands a more thorough, careful, and considerate
examination. Can there be any thing, then, more strange than the
conduct of the great majority of men? Entirely convinced of the
necessity and importance of religion, they still never give themselves
the trouble to examine it thoroughly; they follow it in a spirit of
routine and from habit; they never give any reason for its dogmas;
they revere it, they submit to it, and they groan under its weight,
without ever inquiring wherefore. In fine, they rely upon others to
examine it; and they whose judgment they so blindly receive are
precisely those persons upon whose opinions they should look with the
most suspicion. The priests arrogate the possession of judging
exclusively and without appeal of a system evidently invented for
their own utility. And what is the language of these priests? Visibly
interested in maintaining the received opinions, they exhibit them as
necessary to the public good, as useful and consoling for us all, as
intimately connected with morality, as indispensable to society, and,
in a word, as of the very greatest importance. After having thus
prepossessed our minds, they next prohibit our examining the things so
important to be known. What must be thought of such conduct? You can
only conclude that they desire to deceive you, that they fear
examination only because religion cannot sustain it, and that they
dread reason because it is able to unveil the incalculably dangerous
projects of the priesthood against the human race.

For these reasons, Madam, as I cannot too often repeat, examine for
yourself; make use of your own understanding; seek the truth in the
sincerity of your heart; reduce prejudice to silence; throw off the
base servitude of custom; be suspicious of imagination; and with these
precautions, in good faith with yourself, you can weigh with an
impartial hand the various opinions concerning religion. From
whatever source an opinion may come, acquiesce only in that which
shall be convincing to your understanding, satisfactory to your heart,
conformable to a healthy morality, and approved by virtue. Reject with
disdain whatever shocks your reason, and repulse with horror those
notions so criminal and injurious to morality which religion endeavors
to palm off for supernatural and divine virtues.

What do I say? Amiable and wise Eugenia, examine rigorously the ideas
that, by your own desire, I shall hereafter present you. Let not your
confidence in me, or your deference to my weak understanding, blind
you in regard to my opinions. I submit them to your judgment. Discuss
them, combat them, and never give them your assent until you are
convinced that in them you recognize the truth. My sentiments are
neither divine oracles nor theological opinions which it is not
permitted to canvass. If what I say is true, adopt my ideas. If I am
deceived, point out my errors, and I am ready to recognize them and to
subscribe my own condemnation. It will be very pleasant, Madam, to
learn truths of you which, up to the present time, I have vainly
sought in the writings of our divines. If I have at this moment any
advantage over you, it is due entirely to that tranquillity which I
enjoy, and of which at present you are unhappily deprived. The
agitations of your mind, the inquietudes of your body, and the
attacks of an exacting and ceremonious devotion, with which your soul
is perplexed, prevent you, for the moment, from seeing things coolly,
and hinder you from making use of your own understanding; but I have
no doubt that soon your intellect, strengthened by reason against vain
chimeras, will regain its natural vigor and the superiority which
belongs to it. In awaiting this moment that I foresee and so much
desire, I shall esteem myself extremely happy if my reflections shall
contribute to render you that tranquillity of spirit so necessary to
judge wisely of things, and without which there can be no true
happiness.

I perceive, Madam, though rather tardily, the length of this letter;
but I hope you will pardon it, as well as my frankness. They will at
least prove the lively interest I take in your painful situation, the
sincere desire I feel to bring it to a termination, and the strong
inclination which actuates me to restore you to your accustomed
serenity. Less pressing motives would never have been sufficient to
make me break silence. Your own positive orders were necessary to lead
me to speak of objects which, once thoroughly examined, give no
uneasiness to a healthy mind. It has been a law with me never to
explain myself upon the subject of religion. Experience has often
convinced me that the most useless of enterprises is to seek to
undeceive a prejudiced mind. I was very far from believing that I
ought ever to write upon these subjects. You alone, Madam, had the
power to conquer my indolence, and to impel me to change my
resolution. Eugenia afflicted, tormented with scruples, and ready to
plunge herself into gloomy austerities and superstitions, calculated
to render her unamiable to others, without contributing happiness to
herself, honored me with her confidence, and requested counsel of her
friend. She exacted that I should speak. "It is enough," I said; "let
me write for Eugenia; let me endeavor to restore the repose she has
lost; let me labor with ardor for her upon whose happiness that of so
many others is dependent."

Such, Madam, are the motives which induce me to take my pen in hand.
In looking forward to the time when you will be undeceived, I shall
dare at least to flatter myself that you will not regard me with the
same eyes with which priests and devotees look upon every one who has
the temerity to contradict their ideas. To believe them, every man who
declares himself against religion is a bad citizen, a madman armed to
justify his passions, a perturbator of the public repose, and an enemy
of his fellow-citizens, that cannot be punished with too much rigor.
My conduct is known to you; and the confidence with which you honor me
is sufficient for my apology. It is for you alone that I write. It is
to dissipate the clouds that obscure your mental horizon that I
communicate reflections which, but for reasons so pressing, I should
have always enclosed in my own bosom. If by chance they shall
hereafter fall into other hands than yours, and be found of some
utility, I shall felicitate myself for having contributed to the
establishment of happiness by leading back to reason minds which had
wandered from it, by making truth to be felt and known, and by
unmasking impostures which have caused so many misfortunes upon the
earth.

In a word, I submit my reasoning to your judgment, I confide fully in
your discretion, and I allow myself to conclude that my ideas, after
you are disabused of the vain terrors with which you are now
oppressed, will fully convince you that this religion, which is
exhibited to men as a concern the most important, the most true, the
most interesting, and the most useful, is only a tissue of
absurdities, is calculated to confound reason, to disturb the
understanding, and can be advantageous to none save those who make use
of it to govern the human race. I shall acknowledge myself in the
wrong if I do not prove, in the clearest manner, that religion is
false, useless, and dangerous, and that morality, in its stead, should
occupy the spirits and animate the souls of all men.

I shall enter more particularly into the subject in my next letter. I
shall go back to first principles, and in the course of this
correspondence I flatter myself I shall completely demonstrate that
these objects, which theology endeavors to render intricate, and to
envelop with clouds, in order to make them more respectable and
sacred, are not only entirely susceptible of being understood by you,
but that they are likewise within the comprehension of every one who
possesses even an ordinary share of good sense. If my frankness shall
appear too undisguised, I beg you to consider, Madam, that it is
necessary I should address you explicitly and clearly. I now consider
it my duty to administer an energetic and prompt remedy for the malady
with which I perceive you to be attacked. Besides, I venture to hope
that in a short time you will feel gratified that I have shown you the
truth in all its integrity and brilliancy. You will pardon me for
having dissipated the unreal and yet harassing phantoms which infested
your mind. But let my success be what it may, my efforts to confer
tranquillity upon you will at least be evidences of the interest I
take in your happiness, of my zeal to serve you, and of the respect
with which I am your sincere and attached friend.




LETTER II.

  Of the Ideas which Religion gives us of the Divinity.


Every religion is a system of opinions and conduct founded upon the
notions, true or false, that we entertain of the Divinity. To judge of
the truth of any system, it is requisite to examine its principles, to
see if they accord, and to satisfy ourselves whether all its parts
lend a mutual support to each other. A religion, to be _true_, should
give us _true_ ideas of God; and it is by our reason alone that we are
able to decide whether what theology asserts concerning this being and
his attributes is true or otherwise. Truth for men is only conformity
to reason; and thus the same reason which the clergy proscribe is, in
the last resort, our only means of judging the system that religion
proposes for our assent. That God can only be the true God who is most
conformable to our reason, and the true worship can be no other than
that which reason approves.

Religion is only important in accordance with the advantages it
bestows upon mankind. The best religion must be that which procures
its disciples the most real, the most extensive, and the most durable
advantages. A false religion must necessarily bestow upon those who
practise it only a false, chimerical, and transient utility. Reason
must be the judge whether the benefits derived are real or imaginary.
Thus, as we constantly see, it belongs to reason to decide whether a
religion, a mode of worship, or a system of conduct is advantageous or
injurious to the human race.

It is in accordance with these incontestable principles that I shall
examine the religion of the Christians. I shall commence by analyzing
the ideas which their system gives us of the Divinity, which it boasts
of presenting to us in a more perfect manner than all other religions
in the world. I shall examine whether these ideas accord with each
other, whether the dogmas taught by this religion are conformable to
those fundamental principles which are every where acknowledged,
whether they are consonant with them, and whether the conduct which
Christianity prescribes answers to the notions which itself gives us
of the Divinity. I shall conclude the inquiry by investigating the
advantages that the Christian religion procures the human
race--advantages, according to its partisans, that infinitely surpass
those which result from all the other religions of the earth.

The Christian religion, as the basis of its belief, sets forth an only
God, which it defines as a pure spirit, as an eternal intelligence, as
independent and immutable, who has infinite power, who is the cause of
all things, who foresees all things, who fills immensity, who created
from nothing the world and all it encloses, and who preserves and
governs it according to the laws of his infinite wisdom, and the
perfections of his infinite goodness and justice, which are all so
evident in his works.

Such are the ideas that Christianity gives us of the Divinity. Let us
now see whether they accord with the other notions presented to us by
this religious system, and which it pretends were revealed by God
himself; or, in other words, that these truths were received directly
from the Deity, who concealed them from the remainder of mankind, and
deprived them of a knowledge of his essence. Thus the Christian
religion is founded upon a special revelation. And to whom was the
revelation made? At first to Abraham, and then to his posterity. The
God of the universe, then, the Father of all men, was only willing to
be known to the descendants of a Chaldean, who for a long series of
years were the exclusive possessors of the knowledge of the true God.
By an effect of his special kindness, the Jewish people was for a long
time the only race favored with a revelation equally necessary for all
men. This was the only people which understood the relations between
man and the Supreme Being. All other nations wandered in darkness, or
possessed no ideas of the Sovereign of nature but such as were crude,
ridiculous, or criminal.

Thus, at the very first step, do we not see that Christianity impairs
the goodness and justice of its God? A revelation to a particular
people only announces a partial God, who favors a portion of his
children, to the prejudice of all the others; who consults only his
caprice, and not real merit; who, incapable of conferring happiness
upon all men, shows his tenderness solely to some individuals, who
have, however, no titles upon his consideration not possessed by the
others. What would you say of a father who, placed at the head of a
numerous family, had no eyes but for a single one of his children, and
who never allowed himself to be seen by any of them except that
favored one? What would you say if he was displeased with the rest for
not being acquainted with his features, notwithstanding he would never
allow them to approach his person? Would you not accuse such a father
of caprice, cruelty, folly, and a want of reason, if he visited with
his anger the children whom he had himself excluded from his presence?
Would you not impute to him an injustice of which none but the most
brutal of our species could be guilty if he actually punished them for
not having executed orders which he was never pleased to give them?

Conclude, then, with me, Madam, that the revelation of a religion to
only a single tribe or nation sets forth a God neither good,
impartial, nor equitable, but an unjust and capricious tyrant, who,
though he may show kindness and preference to some of his creatures,
at any rate acts with the greatest cruelty towards all the others.
This admitted, revelation does not prove the goodness, but the caprice
and partiality of the God that religion represents to us as full of
sagacity, benevolence, and equity, and that it describes as the common
father of all the inhabitants of the earth. If the interest and
self-love of those whom he favors makes them admire the profound views
of a God because he has loaded them with benefits to the prejudice of
their brethren, he must appear very unjust, on the other hand, to all
those who are the victims of his partiality. A hateful pride alone
could induce a few persons to believe that they were, to the exclusion
of all others, the cherished children of Providence. Blinded by their
vanity, they do not perceive that it is to give the lie to universal
and infinite goodness to suppose that God was capable of favoring with
his preference some men or nations, to the exclusion of others. All
ought to be equal in his eyes if it is true they are all equally the
work of his hands.

It is, nevertheless, upon partial revelations that are founded all the
religions of the world. In the same manner that every individual
believes himself the most important being in the universe, every
nation entertains the idea that it ought to enjoy the peculiar
tenderness of the Sovereign of nature, to the exclusion of all the
others. If the inhabitants of Hindostan imagine that it was for them
alone that Brama spoke, the Jews and the Christians have persuaded
themselves that it was only for them that the world was created, and
that it is solely for them that God was revealed.

But let us suppose for a moment that God has really made himself
known. How could a pure spirit render himself sensible? What form did
he take? Of what material organs did he make use in order to speak?
How can an infinite Being communicate with those which are finite? I
may be assured that, to accommodate himself to the weakness of his
creatures, he made use of the agency of some chosen men to announce
his wishes to all the rest, and that he filled these agents with his
spirit, and spoke by their mouths. But can we possibly conceive that
an infinite Being could unite himself with the finite nature of man?
How can I be certain that he who professes to be inspired by the
Divinity does not promulgate his own reveries or impostures as the
oracles of heaven? What means have I of recognizing whether God really
speaks by his voice? The immediate reply will be, that God, to give
weight to the declarations of those whom he has chosen to be his
interpreters, endowed them with a portion of his own omnipotence, and
that they wrought miracles to prove their divine mission.

I therefore inquire, What is a miracle? I am told that it is an
operation contrary to the laws of nature, which God himself has fixed;
to which I reply, that, according to the ideas I have formed of the
divine wisdom, it appears to me impossible that an immutable God can
change the wise laws which he himself has established. I thence
conclude that miracles are impossible, seeing they are incompatible
with our ideas of the wisdom and immutability of the Creator of the
universe. Besides, these miracles would be useless to God. If he be
omnipotent, can he not modify the minds of his creatures according to
his own will?

To convince and to persuade them, he has only to will that they shall
be convinced and persuaded. He has only to tell them things that are
clear and sensible, things that may be demonstrated; and to evidence
of such a kind they will not fail to give their assent. To do this, he
will have no need either of miracles or interpreters; truth alone is
sufficient to win mankind.

Supposing, nevertheless, the utility and possibility of these
miracles, how shall I ascertain whether the wonderful operation which
I see performed by the interpreter of the Deity be conformable or
contrary to the laws of nature? Am I acquainted with all these laws?
May not he who speaks to me in the name of the Lord execute by natural
means, though to me unknown, those works which appear altogether
extraordinary? How shall I assure myself that he does not deceive me?
Does not my ignorance of the secrets and shifts of his art expose me
to be the dupe of an able impostor, who might make use of the name of
God to inspire me with respect, and to screen his deception? Thus his
pretended miracles ought to make me suspect him, even though I were a
witness of them; but how would the case stand, were these miracles
said to have been performed some thousands of years before my
existence? I shall be told that they were attested by a multitude of
witnesses; but if I cannot trust to myself when a miracle is
performing, how shall I have confidence in others, who may be either
more ignorant or more stupid than myself, or who perhaps thought
themselves interested in supporting by their testimony tales entirely
destitute of reality?

If, on the contrary, I admit these miracles, what do they prove to me?
Will they furnish me with a belief that God has made use of his
omnipotence to convince me of things which are in direct opposition
to the ideas I have formed of his essence, his nature, and his divine
perfections? If I be persuaded that God is immutable, a miracle will
not force me to believe that he is subject to change. If I be
convinced that God is just and good, a miracle will never be
sufficient to persuade me that he is unjust and wicked. If I possess
an idea of his wisdom, all the miracles in the world would not
persuade me that God would act like a madman. Shall I be told that he
would consent to perform miracles that destroy his divinity, or that
are proper only to erase from the minds of men the ideas which they
ought to entertain of his infinite perfections? This, however, is what
would happen were God himself to perform, or to grant the power of
performing, miracles in favor of a particular revelation. He would, in
that case, derange the course of nature, to teach the world that he is
capricious, partial, unjust, and cruel; he would make use of his
omnipotence purposely to convince us that his goodness was
insufficient for the welfare of his creatures; he would make a vain
parade of his power, to hide his inability to convince mankind by a
single act of his will. In short, he would interfere with the eternal
and immutable laws of nature, to show us that he is subject to change,
and to announce to mankind some important news, which they had
hitherto been destitute of, notwithstanding all his goodness.

Thus, under whatever point of view we regard revelation, by whatever
miracles we may suppose it attested, it will always be in
contradiction to the ideas we have of the Deity. They will show us
that he acts in an unjust and an arbitrary manner, consulting only his
own whims in the favors he bestows, and continually changing his
conduct; that he was unable to communicate all at once to mankind the
knowledge necessary to their existence, and to give them that degree
of perfection of which their natures were susceptible. Hence, Madam,
you may see that the supposition of a revelation can never be
reconciled with the infinite goodness, justice, omnipotence, and
immutability of the Sovereign of the universe.

They will not fail to tell you that the Creator of all things, the
independent Monarch of nature is the master of his favors; that he
owes nothing to his creatures; that he can dispose of them as he
pleases, without any injustice, and without their having any right of
complaint; that man is incapable of sounding the profundity of his
decrees; and that his justice is not the justice of men. But all these
answers, which divines have continually in their mouths, serve only to
accelerate the destruction of those sublime ideas which they have
given us of the Deity. The result appears to be, that God conducts
himself according to the maxims of a fantastic sovereign, who,
satisfied in having rewarded some of his favorites, thinks himself
justified in neglecting the rest of his subjects, and to leave them
groaning in the most deplorable misery.

You must acknowledge, Madam, it is not on such a model that we can
form a powerful, equitable, and beneficent God, whose omnipotence
ought to enable him to procure happiness to all his subjects, without
fear of exhausting the treasures of his goodness.

If we are told that divine justice bears no resemblance to the justice
of men, I reply, that in this case we are not authorized to say that
God is _just_; seeing that by justice it is not possible for us to
conceive any thing except a similar quality to that called justice by
the beings of our own species. If divine justice bears no resemblance
to human justice,--if, on the contrary, this justice resembles what we
call injustice,--then all our ideas confound themselves, and we know
not either what we mean or what we say when we affirm that God is
just. According to human ideas, (which are, however, the only ones
that men are possessed of,) justice will always exclude caprice and
partiality; and never can we prevent ourselves from regarding as
iniquitous and vicious a sovereign who, being both able and willing to
occupy himself with the happiness of his subjects, should plunge the
greatest number of them into misfortune, and reserve his kindness for
those to whom his whims have given the preference.

With respect to telling us that _God owes nothing to his creatures_,
such an atrocious principle is destructive of every idea of justice
and goodness, and tends visibly to sap the foundation of all religion.
A God that is just and good owes happiness to every being to whom he
has given existence; he ceases to be just and good if he produce them
only to render them miserable; and he would be destitute of both
wisdom and reason were he to give them birth only to be the victims of
his caprice. What should we think of a father bringing children into
the world for the sole purpose of putting their eyes out and
tormenting them at his ease?

On the other hand, all religions are entirely founded upon the
reciprocal engagements which are supposed to exist between God and his
creatures. If God owes nothing to the latter, if he is not under an
obligation to fulfil his engagements to them when they have fulfilled
theirs to him, of what use is religion? What motives can men have to
offer their homage and worship to the Divinity? Why should they feel
much desire to love or serve a master who can absolve himself of all
duty towards those who entered his service with an expectation of the
recompense promised under such circumstances?

It is easy to see that the destructive ideas of divine justice which
are inculcated are only founded upon a fatal prejudice prevalent among
the generality of men, leading them to suppose that unlimited power
must inevitably exempt its possessor from an accordance with the laws
of equity; that force can confer the right of committing bad actions;
and that no one could properly demand an account of his conduct of a
man sufficiently powerful to carry out all his caprices. These ideas
are evidently borrowed from the conduct of tyrants, who no sooner
find themselves possessed of absolute power than they cease to
recognize any other rules than their own fantasies, and imagine that
justice has no claims upon potentates like them.

It is upon this frightful model that theologians have formed that God
whom they, notwithstanding, assert to be a just being, while, if the
conduct they attribute to him was true, we should be constrained to
regard him as the most unjust of tyrants, as the most partial of
fathers, as the most fantastic of princes, and, in a word, as a being
the most to be feared and the least worthy of love that the
imagination could devise. We are informed that the God who created all
men has been unwilling to be known except to a very small number of
them, and that while this favored portion exclusively enjoyed the
benefits of his kindness, all the others were objects of his anger,
and were only created by him to be left in blindness for the very
purpose of punishing them in the most cruel manner. We see these
pernicious characteristics of the Divinity penetrating the entire
economy of the Christian religion; we find them in the books which are
pretended to be inspired, and we discover them in the dogmas of
predestination and grace. In a word, every thing in religion announces
a despotic God, whom his disciples vainly attempt to represent to us
as just, while all that they declare of him only proves his injustice,
his tyrannical caprices, his extravagances, so frequently cruel, and
his partiality, so pernicious to the greater portion of the human
race. When we exclaim against conduct which, in the eyes of all
reasonable men, must appear so excessively capricious, it is expected
that our mouths will be closed by the assertion that God is
omnipotent, that it is for him to determine how he will bestow
benefits, and that he is under no obligations to any of his creatures.
His apologists end by endeavoring to intimidate us with the frightful
and iniquitous punishments that he reserves for those who are so
audacious as to murmur.

It is easy to perceive the futility of these arguments. Power, I do
contend, can never confer the right of violating equity. Let a
sovereign be as powerful as he may, he is not on that account less
blamable when in rewards and punishments he follows only his caprice.
It is true, we may fear him, we may flatter him, we may pay him
servile homage; but never shall we love him sincerely; never shall we
serve him faithfully; never shall we look up to him as the model of
justice and goodness. If those who receive his kindness believe him to
be just and good, those who are the objects of his folly and rigor
cannot prevent themselves from detesting his monstrous iniquity in
their hearts.

If we be told that we are only as worms of earth relatively to God, or
that we are only like a vase in the hands of a potter, I reply in this
case, that there can neither be connection nor moral duty between the
creature and his Creator; and I shall hence conclude that religion is
useless, seeing that a worm of earth can owe nothing to a man who
crushes it, and that the vase can owe nothing to the potter that has
formed it. In the supposition that man is only a worm or an earthen
vessel in the eyes of the Deity, he would be incapable either of
serving him, glorifying him, honoring him, or offending him. We are,
however, continually told that man is capable of merit and demerit in
the sight of his God, whom he is ordered to love, serve, and worship.
We are likewise assured that it was man alone whom the Deity had in
view in all his works; that it is for him alone the universe was
created; for him alone that the course of nature was so often
deranged; and, in short, it was with a view of being honored,
cherished, and glorified by man that God has revealed himself to us.
According to the principles of the Christian religion, God does not
cease, for a single instant, his occupations for man, this _worm of
earth_, this _earthen vessel_, which he has formed. Nay, more: man is
sufficiently powerful to influence the honor, the felicity, and the
glory of his God; it rests with man to please him or to irritate him,
to deserve his favor or his hatred, to appease him or to kindle his
wrath.

Do you not perceive, Madam, the striking contradictions of those
principles which, nevertheless, form the basis of all revealed
religions? Indeed, we cannot find one of them that is not erected on
the reciprocal influence between God and man, and between man and God.
Our own species, which are annihilated (if I may use the expression)
every time that it becomes necessary to whitewash the Deity from some
reproachful stain of injustice and partiality,--these miserable
beings, to whom it is pretended that God owes nothing, and who, we are
assured, are unnecessary to him for his own felicity,--the human race,
which is nothing in his eyes, becomes all at once the principal
performer on the stage of nature. We find that mankind are necessary
to support the glory of their Creator; we see them become the sole
objects of his care; we behold in them the power to gladden or afflict
him; we see them meriting his favor and provoking his wrath. According
to these contradictory notions concerning the God of the universe, the
source of all felicity, is he not really the most wretched of beings?
We behold him perpetually exposed to the insults of men, who offend
him by their thoughts, their words, their actions, and their neglect
of duty. They incommode him, they irritate him, by the capriciousness
of their minds, by their actions, their desires, and even by their
ignorance. If we admit those Christian principles which suppose that
the greater portion of the human race excites the fury of the Eternal,
and that very few of them live in a manner conformable to his views,
will it not necessarily result therefrom, that in the immense crowd of
beings whom God has created for his glory, only a very small number of
them glorify and please him; while all the rest are occupied in vexing
him, exciting his wrath, troubling his felicity, deranging the order
that he loves, frustrating his designs, and forcing him to change his
immutable intentions?

You are, undoubtedly, surprised at the contradictions to be
encountered at the very first step we take in examining this religion;
and I take upon myself to predict that your embarrassment will
increase as you proceed therein. If you coolly examine the ideas
presented to us in the revelation common both to Jews and Christians,
and contained in the books which they tell us are _sacred_, you will
find that the Deity who speaks is always in contradiction with
himself; that he becomes his own destroyer, and is perpetually
occupied in undoing what he has just done, and in repairing his own
workmanship, to which, in the first instance, he was incapable of
giving that degree of perfection he wished it to possess. He is never
satisfied with his own works, and cannot, in spite of his omnipotence,
bring the human race to the point of perfection he intended. The books
containing the revelation, on which Christianity is founded, every
where display to us a God of goodness in the commission of wickedness;
an omnipotent God, whose projects unceasingly miscarry; an immutable
God, changing his maxims and his conduct; an omniscient God,
continually deceived unawares; a resolute God, yet repenting of his
most important actions; a God of wisdom, whose arrangements never
attain success. He is a great God, who occupies himself with the most
puerile trifles; an all-sufficient God, yet subject to jealousy; a
powerful God, yet suspicious, vindictive, and cruel; and a just God,
yet permitting and prescribing the most atrocious iniquities. In a
word, he is a perfect God, yet displaying at the same time such
imperfections and vices that the most despicable of men would blush to
resemble him.

Behold, Madam, the God whom this religion orders you to adore _in
spirit and in truth_. I reserve for another letter an analysis of the
holy books which you are taught to respect as the oracles of heaven. I
now perceive for the first time that I have perhaps made too long a
dissertation; and I doubt not you have already perceived that a system
built on a basis possessing so little solidity as that of the God whom
his devotees raise with one hand and destroy with the other, can have
no stability attached to it, and can only be regarded as a long tissue
of errors and contradictions.

                                                I am, &c.




LETTER III.

  An Examination of the Holy Scriptures, of the Nature of the
  Christian Religion, and of the Proofs upon which Christianity is
  founded.


You have seen, Madam, in my preceding letter, the incompatible and
contradictory ideas which this religion gives us of the Deity. You
will have seen that the revelation which is announced to us, instead
of being the offspring of his goodness and tenderness for the human
race, is really only a proof of injustice and partiality, of which a
God who is equally just and good would be entirely incapable. Let us
now examine whether the ideas suggested to us by these books,
containing the divine oracles, are more rational, more consistent, or
more conformable to the divine perfections. Let us see whether the
statements related in the Bible, whether the commands prescribed to us
in the name of God himself, are really worthy of God, and display to
us the characters of infinite wisdom, goodness, power, and justice.

These inspired books go back to the origin of the world. Moses, the
confidant, the interpreter, the historian of the Deity, makes us (if
we may use such an expression) witnesses of the formation of the
universe. He tells us that the Eternal, tired of his inaction, one
fine day took it into his head to create a world that was necessary to
his glory. To effect this, he forms matter out of nothing; a pure
spirit produces a substance which has no affinity to himself; although
this God fills all space with his immensity, yet still he found room
enough in it to admit the universe, as well as all the material bodies
contained therein.

These, at least, are the ideas which divines wish us to form
respecting the creation, if such a thing were possible as that of
possessing a clear idea of a pure spirit producing matter. But this
discussion is throwing us into metaphysical researches, which I wish
to avoid. It will be sufficient to you that you may console yourself
for not being able to comprehend it, seeing that the most profound
thinkers, who talk about the creation or the eduction of the world
from nothing, have no ideas on the subject more precise than those
which you form to yourself. As soon, Madam, as you take the trouble to
reflect thereon, you will find that divines, instead of explaining
things, have done nothing but invent words, in order to render them
dubious, and to confound all our natural conceptions.

I will not, however, tire you by a fastidious display of the blunders
which fill the narrative of Moses, which they announce to us as being
dictated by the Deity. If we read it with a little attention, we shall
perceive in every page philosophical and astronomical errors,
unpardonable in an inspired author, and such as we should consider
ridiculous in any man, who, in the most superficial manner, should
have studied and contemplated nature.

You will find, for example, light created before the sun, although
this star is visibly the source of light which communicates itself to
our globe. You will find the evening and the morning established
before the formation of this same sun, whose presence alone produces
day, whose absence produces night, and whose different aspects
constitute morning and evening. You will there find that the moon is
spoken of as a body possessing its own light, in a similar manner as
the sun possesses it, although this planet is a dark body, and
receives its light from the sun. These ignorant blunders are
sufficient to show you that the Deity who revealed himself to Moses
was quite unacquainted with the nature of those substances which he
had created out of nothing, and that you at present possess more
information respecting them than was once possessed by the Creator of
the world.

I am not ignorant that our divines have an answer always ready to
those difficulties which would attack their divine science, and place
their knowledge far below that of Galileo, Descartes, Newton, and even
below that of young people who have scarcely studied the first
elements of natural philosophy. They will tell us that God, in order
to render himself intelligible to the savage and ignorant Jews, spoke
in conformity to their imperfect notions, in the false and incorrect
language of the vulgar. We must not be imposed upon by this solution,
which our doctors regard as triumphant, and which they so frequently
employ when it becomes necessary to justify the Bible against the
ignorance and vulgarities contained therein. We answer them, that a
God who knows every thing, and can perform every thing, might by a
single word have rectified the false notions of the people he wished
to enlighten, and enabled them to know the nature of bodies more
perfectly than the most able men who have since appeared. If it be
replied that revelation is not intended to render men learned, but to
make them pious, I answer that revelation was not sent to establish
false notions; that it would be unworthy of God to borrow the language
of falsehood and ignorance; that the knowledge of nature, so far from
being an injury to piety, is, by the avowal of divines, the most
proper study to display the greatness of God. They tell us that
religion would be unmovable, were it conformable to true knowledge;
that we should have no objections to make to the recital of Moses, nor
to the philosophy of the Holy Scriptures, if we found nothing but what
was continually confirmed by experience, astronomy, and the
demonstrations of geometry.

To maintain a contrary opinion, and to say that God is pleased in
confounding the knowledge of men and in rendering it useless, is to
pretend that he is pleased with making us ignorant and changeable, and
that he condemns the progress of the human mind, although we ought to
suppose him the author of it. To pretend that God was obliged in the
Scriptures to conform himself to the language of men, is to pretend
that he withdrew his assistance from those he wished to enlighten, and
that he was unable of rendering them susceptible of comprehending the
language of truth. This is an observation not to be lost sight of in
the examination of revelation, where we find in each page that God
expresses himself in a manner quite unworthy of the Deity. Could not
an omnipotent God, instead of degrading himself, instead of
condescending to speak the language of ignorance, so far enlighten
them as to make them understand a language more true, more noble, and
more conformable to the ideas which are given us of the Deity? An
experienced master by degrees enables his scholars to understand what
he wishes to teach them, and a God ought to be able to communicate to
them immediately all the knowledge he intended to give them.

However, according to Genesis, God, after creating the world, produced
man from the dust of the earth. In the mean while we are assured that
he created him _in his own image_; but what was the image of God? How
could man, who is at least partly material, represent a pure spirit,
which excludes all matter?

How could his imperfect mind be formed on the model of a mind
possessing all perfection, like that which we suppose in the Creator
of the universe? What resemblance, what proportion, what affinity
could there be between a finite mind united to a body, and the
infinite spirit of the Creator? These, doubtless, are great
difficulties; hitherto it has been thought impossible to decide them;
and they will probably for a long time employ the minds of those who
strive to understand the incomprehensible meaning of a book which God
provided for our instruction.

But why did God create man? Because he wished to people the universe
with intelligent beings, who would render him homage, who should
witness his wonders, who should glorify him, who should meditate and
contemplate his works, and merit his favors by their submission to his
laws.

Here we behold man becoming necessary to the dignity of his God, who
without him would live without being glorified, who would receive no
homage, and who would be the melancholy Sovereign of an empire without
subjects--a condition not suited to his vanity. I think it useless to
remark to you what little conformity we find between those ideas and
such as are given us of a self-sufficient being, who, without the
assistance of any other, is supremely happy. All the characters in
which the Bible portrays the Deity are always borrowed from man, or
from a proud monarch; and we every where find that instead of having
made man after his own image, it is man that has always made God after
the image of himself, that has conferred on him his own way of
thinking, his own virtues, and his own vices.

But did this man whom the Deity has created for his glory faithfully
fulfil the wishes of his Creator? This subject that he has just
acquired--will he be obedient? will he render homage to his power?
will he execute his will? He has done nothing of the kind. Scarcely is
he created when he becomes rebellious to the orders of his Sovereign;
he eats a forbidden fruit which God has placed in his way in order to
tempt him, and by this act draws the divine wrath not only on himself,
but on all his posterity. Thus it is that he annihilates at one blow
the great projects of the Omnipotent, who had no sooner made man for
his glory than he becomes offended with that conduct which he ought to
have foreseen.

Here he finds himself obliged to change his projects with regard to
mankind; he becomes their enemy, and condemns them and the whole of
the race (who had not yet the power of sinning) to innumerable
penalties, to cruel calamities, and to death! What do I say? To
punishments which death itself shall not terminate! Thus God, who
wished to be glorified, is not glorified; he seems to have created man
only to offend him, that he might afterwards punish the offender.

In this recital, which is founded on the Bible, can you recognize,
Madam, an omnipotent God, whose orders are always accomplished, and
whose projects are all necessarily executed? In a God who tempts us,
or who permits us to be tempted, do you behold a being of beneficence
and sincerity? In a God who punishes the being he has tempted, or
subjected to temptation, do you perceive any equity? In a God who
extends his vengeance even to those who have not sinned, do you behold
any shadow of justice? In a God who is irritated at what he knew must
necessarily happen, can you imagine any foresight? In the rigorous
punishments by which this God is destined to avenge himself of his
feeble creatures, both in this world and the next, can you perceive
the least appearance of goodness?

It is, however, this history, or rather this fable, on which is
founded the whole edifice of the Christian religion.

If the first man had not been disobedient, the human race had not been
the object of the divine wrath, and would have had no need of a
Redeemer. If this God, who knows all things, foresees all things, and
possesses all power, had prevented or foreseen the fault of Adam, it
would not have been necessary for God to sacrifice his own innocent
Son to appease his fury. Mankind, for whom he created the universe,
would then have been always happy; they would not have incurred the
displeasure of that Deity who demanded their adoration. In a word, if
this apple had not been imprudently eaten by Adam and his spouse,
mankind would not have suffered so much misery, man would have enjoyed
without interruption the immortal happiness to which God had destined
him, and the views of Providence towards his creatures would not have
been frustrated.

It would be useless to make reflections on notions so whimsical, so
contrary to the wisdom, the power, and the justice of the Deity. It is
doing quite enough to compare the different objects which the Bible
presents to us, to perceive their inutility, absurdities, and
contradictions. We there see, continually, a wise God conducting
himself like a madman. He defeats his own projects that he may
afterwards repair them, repents of what he has done, acts as if he had
foreseen nothing, and is forced to permit proceedings which his
omnipotence could not prevent. In the writings revealed by this God,
he appears occupied only in blackening his own character, degrading
himself, vilifying himself, even in the eyes of men whom he would
excite to worship him and pay him homage; overturning and confounding
the minds of those whom he had designed to enlighten. What has just
been said might suffice to undeceive us with respect to a book which
would pass better as being intended to destroy the idea of a Deity,
than as one containing the oracles dictated and revealed by him.
Nothing but a heap of absurdities could possibly result from
principles so false and irrational; nevertheless, let us take another
glance at the principal objects which this divine work continually
offers to our consideration. Let us pass on to the Deluge. The holy
books tell us, that in spite of the will of the Almighty, the whole
human race, who had already been punished by infirmities, accidents,
and death, continued to give themselves up to the most unaccountable
depravity. God becomes irritated, and repents having created them.
Doubtless he could not have foreseen this depravity; yet, rather than
change the wicked disposition of their hearts, which he holds in his
own hands, he performs the most surprising, the most impossible of
miracles. He at once drowns all the inhabitants, with the exception of
some favorites, whom he destines to re-people the earth with a chosen
race, that will render themselves more agreeable to their God. But
does the Almighty succeed in this new project? The chosen race, saved
from the waters of the deluge, on the wreck of the earth's
destruction, begin again to offend the Sovereign of nature, abandon
themselves to new crimes, give themselves up to idolatry, and
forgetting the recent effects of celestial vengeance, seem intent only
on provoking heaven by their wickedness. In order to provide a remedy,
God chooses for his favorite the idolater Abraham. To him he discovers
himself; he orders him to renounce the worship of his fathers, and
embrace a new religion. To guarantee this covenant, the Sovereign of
nature prescribes a melancholy, ridiculous, and whimsical ceremony, to
the observance of which a God of wisdom attaches his favors. The
posterity of this chosen man are consequently to enjoy, for
everlasting, the greatest advantages; they will always be the most
partial objects of tenderness, with the Almighty; they will be happier
than all other nations, whom the Deity will abandon to occupy himself
only for them.

These solemn promises, however, have not prevented the race of Abraham
from becoming the slaves of a vile nation, that was detested by the
Eternal; his dear friends experienced the most cruel treatment on the
part of the Egyptians. God could not guarantee them from the
misfortune that had befallen them; but in order to free them again, he
raised up to them a liberator, a chief, who performed the most
astonishing miracles. At the voice of Moses all nature is confounded;
God employs him to declare his will; yet he who could create and
annihilate the world could not subdue Pharaoh. The obstinacy of this
prince defeats, in ten successive trials, the divine omnipotence, of
which Moses is the depositary. After having vainly attempted to
overcome a monarch whose heart God had been pleased to harden, God has
recourse to the most ordinary method of rescuing his people; he tells
them to run off, after having first counselled them to rob the
Egyptians. The fugitives are pursued; but God, who protects these
robbers, orders the sea to swallow up the miserable people who had the
temerity to run after their property.

The Deity would, doubtless, have reason to be satisfied with the
conduct of a people that he had just delivered by such a great number
of miracles. Alas! neither Moses nor the Almighty could succeed in
persuading this obstinate people to abandon the false gods of that
country where they had been so miserable; they preferred them to the
living God who had just saved them. All the miracles which the Eternal
was daily performing in favor of Israel could not overcome their
stubbornness, which was still more inconceivable and wonderful than
the greatest miracles. These wonders, which are now extolled as
convincing proofs of the divine mission of Moses, were by the
confession of this same Moses, who has himself transmitted us the
accounts, incapable of convincing the people who were witnesses of
them, and never produced the good effects which the Deity proposed to
himself in performing them.

The credulity, the obstinacy, the continual depravity of the Jews,
Madam, are the most indubitable proofs of the falsity of the miracles
of Moses, as well as those of all his successors, to whom the
Scriptures attribute a supernatural power. If, in the face of these
facts, it be pretended that these miracles are attested, we shall be
compelled, at least, to agree that, according to the Bible account,
they have been entirely useless, that the Deity has been constantly
baffled in all his projects, and that he could never make of the
Hebrews a people submissive to his will.

We find, however, God continues obstinately employed to render his
people worthy of him; he does not lose sight of them for a moment; he
sacrifices whole nations to them, and sanctions their rapine,
violence, treason, murder, and usurpation. In a word, he permits them
to do any thing to obtain his ends. He is continually sending them
chiefs, prophets, and wonderful men, who try in vain to bring them to
their duty. The whole history of the Old Testament displays nothing
but the vain efforts of God to vanquish the obstinacy of his people.
To succeed in this, he employs kindnesses, miracles, and severity.
Sometimes he delivers up to them whole nations, to be hated, pillaged,
and exterminated; at other times he permits these same nations to
exercise over his favorite people the greatest of cruelties. He
delivers them into the hands of their enemies, who are likewise the
enemies of God himself. Idolatrous nations become masters of the Jews,
who are left to feel the insults, the contempt, and the most
unheard-of severities, and are sometimes compelled to sacrifice to
idols, and to violate the law of their God. The race of Abraham
becomes the prey of impious nations. The Assyrians, Persians, Greeks,
and Romans make them successively undergo the most cruel treatment and
suffer the most bloody outrages, and God even permits his temple to be
polluted in order to punish the Jews.

To terminate, at length, the troubles of his cherished people, the
pure Spirit that created the universe sends his own Son. It is said
that he had already been announced by his prophets, though this was
certainly done in a manner admirably adapted to prevent his being
known on his arrival. This Son of God becomes a man through his
kindness for the Jews, whom he came to liberate, to enlighten, and to
render the most happy of mortals. Being clothed with divine
omnipotence, he performs the most astonishing miracles, which do not,
however, convince the Jews. He can do every thing but convert them.
Instead of converting and liberating the Jews, he is himself
compelled, notwithstanding all his miracles, to undergo the most
infamous of punishments, and to terminate his life like a common
malefactor. God is condemned to death by the people he came to save.
The Eternal hardened and blinded those among whom he sent his own
Son; he did not foresee that this Son would be rejected. What do I
say? He managed matters in such a way as not to be recognized, and
took such steps that his favorite people derived no benefit from the
coming of the Messiah. In a word, the Deity seems to have taken the
greatest care that his projects, so favorable to the Jews, should be
nullified and rendered unprofitable!

When we expostulate against a conduct so strange and so unworthy of
the Deity, we are told it was necessary for every thing to take place
in such a manner, for the accomplishment of prophecies which had
announced that the Messiah should be disowned, rejected, and put to
death. But why did God, who knows all, and who foresaw the fate of his
dear Son, form the project of sending him among the Jews, to whom he
must have known that his mission would be useless? Would it not have
been easier neither to announce him nor send him? Would it not have
been more conformable to divine omnipotence to spare himself the
trouble of so many miracles, so many prophecies, so much useless
labor, so much wrath, and so many sufferings to his own Son, by giving
at once to the human race that degree of perfection he intended for
them?

We are told it was necessary that the Deity should have a victim; that
to repair the fault of the first man, no expedient would be sufficient
but the death of another God; that the only God of the universe could
not be appeased but by the blood of his own Son. I reply, in the first
place, that God had only to prevent the first man from committing a
fault; that this would have spared him much chagrin and sorrow, and
saved the life of his dear Son. I reply, likewise, that man is
incapable of offending God unless God either permitted it or consented
to it. I shall not examine how it is possible for God to have a Son,
who, being as much a God as himself, can be subject to death. I reply,
also, that it is impossible to perceive such a grave fault and sin in
taking an apple, and that we can find very little proportion between
the crime committed against the Deity by eating an apple and his Son's
death.

I know well enough I shall be told that these are all mysteries; but
I, in my turn, shall reply, that mysteries are imposing words,
imagined by men who know not how to get themselves out of the
labyrinth into which their false reasonings and senseless principles
have once plunged them.

Be this as it may, we are assured that the Messiah, or the deliverer
of the Jews, had been clearly predicted and described by the
prophecies contained in the Old Testament. In this case, I demand why
the Jews have disowned this wonderful man, this God whom God sent to
them. They answer me, that the incredulity of the Jews was likewise
predicted, and that divers inspired writers had announced the death of
the Son of God. To which I reply, that a sensible God ought not to
have sent him under such circumstances, that an omnipotent God ought
to have adopted measures more efficacious and certain to bring his
people into the way in which he wished them to go. If he wished not to
convert and liberate the Jews, it was quite useless to send his Son
among them, and thereby expose him to a death that was both certain
and foreseen.

They will not fail to tell me, that in the end the divine patience
became tired of the excesses of the Jews; that the immutable God, who
had sworn an eternal alliance with the race of Abraham, wished at
length to break the treaty, which he had, however, assured them should
last forever. It is pretended that God had determined to reject the
Hebrew nation, in order to adopt the Gentiles, whom he had hated and
despised nearly four thousand years. I reply, that this discourse is
very little conformable to the ideas we ought to have of a God who
_changes not_, whose mercy is _infinite_, and whose goodness is
_inexhaustible_. I shall tell them, that in this case the Messiah
announced by the Jewish prophets was destined for the Jews, and that
he ought to have been their liberator, instead of destroying their
worship and their religion. If it be possible to unravel any thing in
these obscure, enigmatical, and symbolical oracles of the prophets of
Judea, as we find them in the Bible,--if there be any means of
guessing the meaning of the obscure riddles, which have been decorated
with the pompous name of prophecies, we shall perceive that the
inspired writers, when they are in a good humor, always promised the
Jews a man that will redress their grievances, restore the kingdom of
Judah, and not one that should destroy the religion of Moses. If it
were for the Gentiles that the Messiah should come, he is no longer
the Messiah promised to the Jews and announced by their prophets. If
Jesus be the Messiah of the Jews, he could not be the destroyer of
their nation.

Should I be told that Jesus himself declared that he came to fulfil
the law of Moses, and not to abolish it, I ask why Christians do not
observe the law of the Jews?

Thus, in whatever light we regard Jesus Christ, we perceive that he
could not be the man whom the prophets have predicted, since it is
evident that he came only to destroy the religion of the Jews, which,
though instituted by God himself, had nevertheless become disagreeable
to him. If this inconstant God, who was wearied with the worship of
the Jews, had at length repented of his injustice towards the
Gentiles, it was to them that he ought to have sent his Son. By acting
in this way he would at least have saved his old friends from a
frightful _deicide_, which he forced them to commit, because they were
not able to recognize the God he sent amongst them. Besides, the Jews
were very pardonable in not acknowledging their expected Messiah in an
artisan of Galilee, who was destitute of all the characteristics which
the prophets had related, and during whose lifetime his
fellow-citizens were neither liberated nor happy.

We are told that he performed miracles. He healed the sick, caused the
lame to walk, gave sight to the blind, and raised the dead. At length
he accomplished his own resurrection. It might be so believed; yet he
has visibly failed in that miracle for which alone he came upon earth.
He was never able either to persuade or to convert the Jews, who
witnessed all the daily wonders that he performed. Notwithstanding
those prodigies, they placed him ignominiously on the cross. In spite
of his divine power, he was incapable of escaping punishment. He
wished to die, to render the Jews culpable, and to have the pleasure
of rising again the third day, in order to confound the ingratitude
and obstinacy of his fellow-citizens. What is the result? Did his
fellow-citizens concede to this great miracle, and have they at length
acknowledged him? Far from it; they never saw him. The Son of God, who
arose from the dead in secrecy, showed himself only to his adherents.
They alone pretend to have conversed with him; they alone have
furnished us with the particulars of his life and miracles; and yet by
such suspicious testimony they wish to convince us of the divinity of
his mission eighteen hundred years after the event, although he could
not convince his contemporaries, the Jews.

We are then told that many Jews have been converted to Jesus Christ;
that after his death many others were converted; that the witnesses
of the life and miracles of the Son of God have sealed their testimony
with their blood; that men will not die to attest falsehood; that by a
visible effect of the divine power, the people of a great part of the
earth have adopted Christianity, and still persist in the belief of
this divine religion.

In all this I perceive nothing like a miracle. I see nothing but what
is conformable to the ordinary progress of the human mind. An
enthusiast, a dexterous impostor, a crafty juggler, can easily find
adherents in a stupid, ignorant, and superstitious populace. These
followers, captivated by counsels, or seduced by promises, consent to
quit a painful and laborious life, to follow a man who gives them to
understand that he will make them _fishers of men_; that is to say, he
will enable them to subsist by his cunning tricks, at the expense of
the multitude who are always credulous. The juggler, with the
assistance of his remedies, can perform cures which seem miraculous to
ignorant spectators. These simple creatures immediately regard him as
a supernatural being. He adopts this opinion himself, and confirms the
high notions which his partisans have formed respecting him. He feels
himself interested in maintaining this opinion among his sectaries,
and finds out the secret of exciting their enthusiasm. To accomplish
this point, our empiric becomes a preacher; he makes use of riddles,
obscure sentences, and parables to the multitude, that always admire
what they do not understand. To render himself more agreeable to the
people, he declaims among poor, ignorant, foolish men, against the
rich, the great, the learned; but above all, against the _priests_,
who in all ages have been _avaricious_, _imperious_, _uncharitable_,
and _burdensome_ to the people. If these discourses be eagerly
received among the vulgar, who are always morose, envious, and
jealous, they displease all those who see themselves the objects of
the invective and satire of the popular preacher.

They consequently wish to check his progress, they lay snares for him,
they seek to surprise him in a fault, in order that they may unmask
him and have their revenge. By dint of imposture, he outwits them;
yet, in consequence of his miracles and illusions, he at length
discovers himself. He is then seized and punished, and none of his
adherents abide by him, except a few idiots, that nothing can
undeceive; none but partisans, accustomed to lead with him a life of
idleness; none but dexterous knaves, who wish to continue their
impositions on the public, by deceptions similar to those of their old
master, by obscure, unconnected, confused, and fanatical harangues,
and by declamations against _magistrates_ and _priests_. These, who
have the power in their own hands, finish by persecuting them,
imprisoning them, flogging them, chastising them, and putting them to
death. Poor wretches, habituated to poverty, undergo all these
sufferings with a fortitude which we frequently meet with in
malefactors. In some we find their courage fortified by the zeal of
fanaticism. This fortitude surprises, agitates, excites pity, and
irritates the spectators against those who torment men whose constancy
makes them looked upon as being innocent, who, it is supposed, may
possibly be right, and for whom compassion likewise interests itself.
It is thus that enthusiasm is propagated, and that persecution always
augments the number of the partisans of those who are persecuted.

I shall leave to you, Madam, the trouble of applying the history of
our juggler, and his adherents, to that of the founder, the apostles,
and the martyrs of the Christian religion.

With whatever art they have written the life of Jesus Christ, which we
hold only from his apostles, or their disciples, it furnishes a
sufficiency of materials on which to found our conjectures. I shall
only observe to you, that the Jewish nation was remarkable for its
credulity; that the companions of Jesus were chosen from among the
dregs of the people; that Jesus always gave a preference to the
populace, with whom he wished, undoubtedly, to form a rampart against
the _priests_; and that, at last, Jesus was seized immediately after
the most splendid of his miracles. We see him put to death immediately
after the resurrection of Lazarus, which, even according to the gospel
account, bears the most evident characters of fraud, which are visible
to every one who examines it without prejudice.

I imagine, Madam, that what I have just stated will suffice to show
you what opinion you ought to entertain respecting the founder of
Christianity and his first sectaries. These have been either dupes or
fanatics, who permitted themselves to be seduced by deceptions, and by
discourses conformable to their desires, or by dexterous impostors,
who knew how to make the best of the tricks of their old master, to
whom they have become such able successors. In this way did they
establish a religion which enabled them to live at the people's
expense, and which still maintains in abundance those we pay, at such
a high rate, for transmitting from father to son the fables, visions,
and wonders which were born and nursed in Judea. The propagation of
the Christian faith, and the constancy of their martyrs, have nothing
surprising in them. The people flock after all those that show them
wonders, and receive without reasoning on it every thing that is told
them. They transmit to their children the tales they have heard
related, and by degrees these opinions are adopted by kings, by the
great, and even by the learned.

As for the martyrs, their constancy has nothing supernatural in it.
The first Christians, as well as all new sectaries, were treated, by
the Jews and pagans, as disturbers of the public peace. They were
already sufficiently intoxicated with the fanaticism with which their
religion inspired them, and were persuaded that God held himself in
readiness to crown them, and to receive them into his eternal
dwelling. In a word, seeing the heavens opened, and being convinced
that the end of the world was approaching, it is not surprising that
they had courage to set punishment at defiance, to endure it with
constancy, and to despise death. To these motives, founded on their
religious opinions, many others were added, which are always of such a
nature as to operate strongly upon the minds of men. Those who, as
Christians, were imprisoned and ill-treated on account of their faith,
were visited, consoled, encouraged, honored, and loaded with
kindnesses by their brethren, who took care of and succored them
during their detention, and who almost adored them after their death.
Those, on the other hand, who displayed weakness, were despised and
detested, and when they gave way to repentance, they were compelled to
undergo a rigorous penitence, which lasted as long as they lived. Thus
were the most powerful motives united to inspire the martyrs with
courage; and this courage has nothing more supernatural about it than
that which determines us daily to encounter the most perilous dangers,
through the fear of dishonoring ourselves in the eyes of our
fellow-citizens. Cowardice would expose us to infamy all the rest of
our days. There is nothing miraculous in the constancy of a man to
whom an offer is made, on the one hand, of eternal happiness and the
highest honors, and who, on the other hand, sees himself menaced with
hatred, contempt, and the most lasting regret.

You perceive, then, Madam, that nothing can be easier than to
overthrow the proofs by which Christian doctors establish the
revelation which they pretend is so well authenticated. Miracles,
martyrs, and prophecies prove nothing.

Were all the wonders true that are related in the Old and New
Testament, they would afford no proof in favor of divine omnipotence,
but, on the contrary, would prove the inability under which the Deity
has continually labored, of convincing mankind of the truths he wished
to announce to them. On the other hand, supposing these miracles to
have produced all the effects which the Deity had a right to expect
from them, we have no longer any reason to believe them, except on the
tradition and recitals of others, which are often suspicious, faulty,
and exaggerated. The miracles of Moses are attested only by Moses, or
by Jewish writers interested in making them believed by the people
they wished to govern. The miracles of Jesus are attested only by his
disciples, who sought to obtain adherents, in relating to a credulous
people prodigies to which they pretended to have been witnesses, or
which some of them, perhaps, believed they had really seen. All those
who deceive mankind are not always cheats; they are frequently
deceived by those who are knaves in reality. Besides, I believe I have
sufficiently proved, that miracles are repugnant to the essence of an
immutable God, as well as to his wisdom, which will not permit him to
alter the wise laws he has himself established. In short, miracles are
useless, since those related in Scripture have not produced the
effects which God expected from them.

The proof of the Christian religion taken from prophecy has no better
foundation. Whoever will examine without prejudice these oracles
pretended to be divine will find only an ambiguous, unintelligible,
absurd, and unconnected jargon, entirely unworthy of a God who
intended to display his prescience, and to instruct his people with
regard to future events. There does not exist in the Holy Scriptures a
single prophecy sufficiently precise to be literally applied to Jesus
Christ. To convince yourself of this truth, ask the most learned of
our doctors which are the formal prophecies wherein they have the
happiness to discover the Messiah. You will then perceive that it is
only by the aid of forced explanations, figures, parables, and
mystical interpretations, by which they are enabled to bring forward
any thing sensible and applicable to the _god-made-man_ whom they tell
us to adore. It would seem as if the Deity had made predictions only
that we might understand nothing about them.

In these equivocal oracles, whose meaning it is impossible to
penetrate, we find nothing but the language of intoxication,
fanaticism, and delirium. When we fancy we have found something
intelligible, it is easy to perceive that the prophets intended to
speak of events that took place in their own age, or of personages who
had preceded them. It is thus that our doctors apply gratuitously to
Christ prophecies or rather narratives of what happened respecting
David, Solomon, Cyrus, &c.

We imagine we see the chastisement of the Jewish people announced in
recitals where it is evident the only matter in question was the
Babylonish captivity. In this event, so long prior to Jesus Christ,
they have imagined finding a prediction of the dispersion of the Jews,
supposed to be a visible punishment for their _deicide_, and which
they now wish to pass off as an indubitable proof of the truth of
Christianity.

It is not, then, astonishing that the ancient and modern Jews do not
see in the prophets what our doctors teach us, and what they
themselves imagine they have seen. Jesus himself has not been more
happy in his predictions than his predecessors. In the gospel he
announces to his disciples in the most formal manner the destruction
of the world and the last judgment, as events that were at hand, and
which must take place before the existing generation had passed away.
Yet the world still endures, and appears in no danger of finishing. It
is true, our doctors pretend that, in the prediction of Jesus Christ,
he spoke of the ruin of Jerusalem by Vespasian and Titus; but none but
those who have not read the gospel would submit to such a change, or
satisfy themselves with such an evasion. Besides, in adopting it we
must confess at least that the Son of God himself was unable to
prophesy with greater precision than his obscure predecessors.

Indeed, at every page of these sacred books, which we are assured were
inspired by God himself, this God seems to have made a revelation only
to conceal himself. He does not speak but to be misunderstood. He
announces his oracles in such a way only that we can neither
comprehend them nor make any application of them. He performs miracles
only to make unbelievers. He manifests himself to mankind only to
stupefy their judgment and bewilder the reason he has bestowed on
them. The Bible continually represents God to us as a seducer, an
enticer, a suspicious tyrant, who knows not what kind of conduct to
observe with respect to his subjects; who amuses himself by laying
snares for his creatures, and who tries them that he may have the
pleasure of inflicting a punishment for yielding to his temptations.
This God is occupied only in building to destroy, in demolishing to
rebuild. Like a child disgusted with its playthings, he is continually
undoing what he has done, and breaking what was the object of his
desires. We find no foresight, no constancy, no consistency in his
conduct; no connection, no clearness in his discourses. When he
performs any thing, he sometimes approves what he has done, and at
other times repents of it. He irritates and vexes himself with what he
has permitted to be done, and, in spite of his infinite power, he
suffers man to offend him, and consents to let Satan, his creature,
derange all his projects. In a word, the revelations of the Christians
and Jews seem to have been imagined only to render uncertain and to
annihilate the qualities attributed to the Deity, and which are
declared to constitute his essence. The whole Scripture, the entire
system of the Christian religion, appears to be founded only on the
incapability of God, who was unable to render the human race as wise,
as good, and as happy as he wished them. The death of his innocent
Son, who was immolated to his vengeance, is entirely useless for the
most numerous portion of the earth's inhabitants; almost the whole
human race, in spite of the continual efforts of the Deity, continue
to offend him, to frustrate his designs, resist his will, and to
persevere in their wickedness.

It is on notions so fatal, so contradictory, and so unworthy of a God
who is just, wise, and good, of a God that is rational, independent,
immutable, and omnipotent, on whom the Christian religion is founded,
and which religion is said to be established forever by God, who,
nevertheless, became disgusted with the religion of the Jews, with
whom he had made and sworn an eternal covenant.

Time must prove whether God be more constant and faithful in
fulfilling his engagements with the Christians than he has been to
fulfil those he made with Abraham and his posterity. I confess, Madam,
that his past conduct alarms me as to what he may finally perform. If
he himself acknowledged by the mouth of Ezekiel that the laws he had
given to the Jews _were not good_, he may very possibly, some day or
other, find fault with those which he has given to Christians.

Our priests themselves seem to partake of my suspicions, and to fear
that God will be wearied of that protection which he has so long
granted to his church. The inquietudes which they evince, the efforts
which they make to hinder the civilization of the world, the
persecutions which they raise against all those who contradict them,
seem to prove that they mistrust the promises of Jesus Christ, and
that they are not certainly convinced of the eternal durability of a
religion which does not appear to them divine, but because it gives
them the right to command like gods over their fellow-citizens. They
would undoubtedly consider the destruction of their empire a very
grievous thing; but yet if the sovereigns of the earth and their
people should once grow weary of the sacerdotal yoke, we may be sure
the Sovereign of heaven would not require a longer time to become
equally disgusted.

However this may be, Madam, I venture to hope the perusal of this
letter will fully undeceive you of a blind veneration for books which
are called _divine_, although they appear as if invented to degrade
and destroy the God who is asserted to be their author. My first
letter, I feel confident, enabled you to perceive that the dogmas
established by these same books, or subsequently fabricated to justify
the ideas thus given of God, are not less contrary to all notions of a
Deity infinitely perfect. A system which in the outset is based upon
false principles can never become any thing else than a mass of
falsehoods.

                                                I am, &c.




LETTER IV.

  Of the fundamental Dogmas of the Christian Religion.


You are aware, Madam, that our theological doctors pretend these
revealed books, which I summarily examined in my preceding letter, do
not include a single word that was not inspired by the Spirit of God.
What I have already said to you is sufficient to show that in setting
out with this supposition, the Divinity has formed a work the most
shapeless, imperfect, contradictory, and unintelligible which ever
existed; a work, in a word, of which any man of sense would blush with
shame to be the author. If any prophecy hath verified itself for the
Christians, it is that of Isaiah, which saith, "Hearing ye shall hear,
but shall not understand." But in this case we reply that it was
sufficiently useless to speak not to be comprehended; to reveal _that_
which cannot be comprehended is to reveal _nothing_.

We need not, then, be surprised if the Christians, notwithstanding the
revelation of which they assure us they have been the favorites, have
no precise ideas either of the Divinity, or of his will, or the way in
which his oracles are to be interpreted. The book from which they
should be able to do so serves only to confound the simplest notions,
to throw them into the greatest incertitude, and create eternal
disputations. If it was the project of the Divinity, it would,
without doubt, be attended with perfect success. The teachers of
Christianity never agree on the manner in which they are to understand
the truths that God has given himself the trouble to reveal; all the
efforts which they have employed to this time have not yet been
capable of making any thing clear, and the dogmas which they have
successively invented have been insufficient to justify to the
understanding of one man of good sense the conduct of an infinitely
perfect Being.

Hence, many among them, perceiving the inconveniences which would
result from the reading of the holy books, have carefully kept them
out of the hands of the vulgar and illiterate; for they plainly
foresaw that if they were read by such they would necessarily bring on
themselves reproach, since it would never fail that every honest man
of good sense would discover in those books only a crowd of
absurdities. Thus the oracles of God are not even made for those for
whom they are addressed; it is requisite to be initiated in the
mysteries of a priesthood, to have the privilege of discerning in the
holy writings the light which the Divinity destined to all his dear
children. But are the theologians themselves able to make plain the
difficulties which the sacred books present in every page? By
meditating on the mysteries which they contain, have they given us
ideas more plain of the intentions of the Divinity? No; without doubt
they explain one mystery by citing another; they scatter new
obscurities on previous obscurities; rarely do they agree among
themselves; and when by chance their opinions coincide, _we_ are not
more enlightened, nor is our judgment more convinced; on the other
hand, our reason is the more confounded.

If they do agree on some point, it is only to tell us that human
reason, of which God is the author, is depraved; but what is the
purport of this coincidence in their opinions, if it be not to tax the
Deity with imbecility, injustice, and malignity? For why should God,
in creating a reasonable being, not have given him an understanding
which nothing could corrupt? They reply to us by saying "that the
reason of man is necessarily limited; that perfection could not be the
portion of a _creature_; that the designs of God are not like those of
man." But, in this case, why should the Divinity be offended by the
necessary imperfections which he discovers in his creatures? How can a
just God require that our mind must admit what it was not made to
comprehend? Can he who is above our reason be understood by us, whose
reason is so limited? If God be infinite, how can a finite creature
reason respecting him? If the mysteries and hidden designs of the
Divinity are of such a nature as not to be comprehended by man, what
good can we derive from their investigation? Had God designed that we
should occupy our thoughts with his purposes, would he not have given
us an understanding proportionate to the things he wished us to
penetrate?

You see, then, Madam, that in depressing our reason, in supposing it
corrupted, our priests, at the same time, annihilate even the
necessity of religion, which cannot be either useful or important to
us, if above our comprehension. They do more in supposing human reason
depraved; they accuse God of injustice, in requiring that our reason
should conceive what cannot be conceived. They accuse him of
imbecility in not rendering this reason more perfect. In a word, in
degrading man they degrade God, and rob him of those attributes which
compose his essence. Would you call him a just and good parent, who,
wishing that his children should walk by an obscure route, filled with
difficulties, would only give them for their conduct a light too weak
to find their way, and to avoid the continual dangers by which they
are surrounded? Should you consider that the father had adequately
provided for their security by giving them in writing unintelligible
instructions, which they could not decipher by the weak light he had
given them?

Our spiritual directors will not fail to tell us that the corruption
of reason and the weakness of the human understanding are the
consequences of sin. But why has man become sinful? How has the good
God permitted his dear children, for whom he created the universe, and
of whom he exacts obedience, to offend him, and thereby extinguish,
or, at least, weaken the light he had given them? On the other hand,
the reason of Adam ought to be, without doubt, completely perfect
before his fall. In this case, why did it not prevent that fall and
its consequences? Was the reason of Adam corrupted even beforehand by
incurring the wrath of his God? Was it depraved before he had done any
thing to deprave it?

To justify this strange conduct of Providence, to clear him from
passing as the author of sin, to save him the ridicule of being the
cause or the accomplice of offences which he did against himself, the
theologians have imagined a _being_ subordinate to the divine power.
It is the secondary being they make the author of all the evil which
is committed in the universe. In the impossibility of reconciling the
continual disorders of which the world is the theatre with the
purposes of a Deity replete with goodness, the Creator and Preserver
of the universe, who delights in order, and who seeks only the
happiness of his creatures, they have trumped up a destructive genius,
imbued with wickedness, who conspires to render men miserable, and to
overthrow the beneficent views of the Eternal. This bad and perverse
being they call _Satan_, the _Devil_, the _Evil One_; and we see him
play a great game in all the religions of the world, the founders of
which have found in the impotence of Deity the sources of both good
and evil. By the aid of this imaginary being they have been enabled to
resolve all their difficulties; yet they could not foresee that this
invention, which went to annihilate or abridge the power of Deity, was
a system filled with palpable contradictions, and that if the Devil
were really the author of sin, it would be he, in all justice, who
ought to undergo all its punishment.

If God is the author of all, it is he who created the Devil; if the
Devil is wicked, if he strives to counteract the projects of the
Divinity, it is the Divinity who has allowed the overthrow of his
projects, or who has not had sufficient authority to prevent the Devil
from exercising his power. If God had wished that the Devil should not
have existed, the Devil would not have existed. God could annihilate
him at one word, or, at least, God could change his disposition if
injurious to us, and contrary to the projects of a beneficent
Providence. Since, then, the Devil does exist, and does such
marvellous things as are attributed to him, we are compelled to
conclude that the Divinity has found it good that he should exist and
agitate, as he does, all his works by a perpetual interruption and
perversion of his designs.

Thus, Madam, the invention of the Devil does not remedy the evil; on
the contrary, it but entangles the priests more and more. By placing
to Satan's account all the evil which he commits in the world, they
exculpate the Deity of nothing; all the power with which they have
supposed the Devil invested is taken from that assigned to the
Divinity; and you know very well that according to the notions of the
Christian religion, the Devil has more adherents than God himself;
they are always stirring their fellow-creatures up to revolt against
God; without ceasing, in despite of God, Satan leads them into
perdition, except one man only, who refused to follow him, and who
found grace in the eyes of the Lord. You are not ignorant that the
millions that follow the standard of Beelzebub are to be plunged with
him into eternal misery.

But then has Satan himself incurred the disgrace of the All-powerful?
By what forfeit has he merited becoming the eternal object of the
anger of that God who created him? The Christian religion will explain
all. It informs us that the Devil was in his origin an angel; that is
to say, a pure spirit, full of perfections, created by the Divinity to
occupy a distinguishing situation in the celestial court, destined,
like the other ministers of the Eternal, to receive his orders, and to
enjoy perpetual blessedness. But he lost himself through ambition; his
pride blinded him, and he dared to revolt against his Creator; he
engaged other spirits, as pure as himself, in the same senseless
enterprise; in consequence of his rashness, he was hurled headlong out
of heaven, his miserable adherents were involved in his fall, and,
having been hardened by the divine pleasure in their foolish
dispositions, they have no other occupation assigned them in the
universe than to tempt mankind, and endeavor to augment the number of
the enemies of God, and the victims of his wrath.

It is by the assistance of this fable that the Christian doctors
perceive the fall of Adam, prepared by the Almighty himself anterior
to the creation of the world. Was it necessary that the Divinity
should entertain a great desire that man might sin, since he would
thereby have an opportunity of providing the means of making him
sinful? In effect, it was the Devil who, in process of time, covered
with the skin of a serpent, solicited the mother of the human race to
disobey God, and involve her husband in her rebellion. But the
difficulty is not removed by these inventions. If Satan, in the time
he was an angel, lived in innocence, and merited the good will of his
Maker, how came God to suffer him to entertain ideas of pride,
ambition, and rebellion? How came this angel of light so blind as not
to see the folly of such an enterprise? Did he not know that his
Creator was all-powerful? Who was it that tempted Satan? What reason
had the Divinity for selecting him to be the object of his fury, the
destroyer of his projects, the enemy of his power? If pride be a sin,
if the idea itself of rebellion is the greatest of crimes, _sin was,
then, anterior to sin_, and Lucifer offended God, even in his state of
purity; for, in fine, a being pure, innocent, agreeable to his God,
who had all the perfections of which a creature could be susceptible,
ought to be exempt from ambition, pride, and folly. We ought, also, to
say as much for our first parent, who, notwithstanding his wisdom, his
innocence, and the knowledge infused into him by God himself, could
not prevent himself from falling into the temptation of a demon.

Hence, in every shift, the priests invariably make God the author of
sin. It was God who tempted Lucifer before the creation of the world;
Lucifer, in his turn, became the tempter of man and the cause of all
the evil our race suffers. It appears, therefore, that God created
both angels and men to give them an opportunity of sinning.

It is easy to perceive the absurdity of this system, to save which the
theologians have invented another still more absurd, that it might
become the foundation of all their religious revelations, and by means
of which they idly imagine they can fully justify the divine
providence. The system of truth supposes the _free will_ of man--that
he is his own master, capable of doing good or ill, and of directing
his own plans. At the words _free will_, I already perceive, Madam,
that you tremble, and doubtless anticipate a metaphysical
dissertation. Rest assured of the contrary; for I flatter myself that
the question will be simplified and rendered clear, I shall not merely
say for you, but for all your sex who are not resolved to be wilfully
blind.

To say that man is a free agent is to detract from the power of the
Supreme Being; it is to pretend that God is not the master of his own
will; it is to advance that a weak creature can, when it pleases him,
revolt against his Creator, derange his projects, disturb the order
which he loves, render his labors useless, afflict him with chagrin,
cause him sorrow, act with effect against him, and arouse his anger
and his passions. Thus, at the first glance, you perceive that this
principle gives rise to a crowd of absurdities. If God is the friend
of order, every thing performed by his creatures would necessarily
conduce to the maintenance of this order, because otherwise the divine
will would fail to have its effect. If God has plans, they must of
necessity be always executed; if man can afflict his God, man is the
master of this God's happiness, and the league he has formed with the
Devil is potent enough to thwart the plans of the Divinity. In a word,
if man is free to sin, God is no longer Omnipotent.

In reply, we are told that God, without detriment to his Omnipotence,
might make man a free agent, and that this liberty is a benefit by
which God places man in a situation where he may merit the heavenly
bounty; but, on the other hand, this liberty likewise exposes him to
encounter God's hatred, to offend him, and to be overwhelmed by
infinite sufferings. From this I conclude that this liberty is _not_ a
benefit, and that it evidently is inconsistent with divine goodness.
This goodness would be more real if men had always sufficient
resolution to do what is pleasing to God, conformably to order, and
conducive to the happiness of their fellow-creatures. If men, in
virtue of their liberty, do things contrary to the will of God, God,
who is supposed to have the prescience of foreseeing all, ought to
have taken measures to prevent men from abusing their liberty; if he
foresaw they would sin, he ought to have given them the means of
avoiding it; if he could not prevent them from doing ill, he has
consented to the ill they have done; if he has consented, he should
not be offended; if he is offended, or if he punish them for the evil
they have done with his permission, he is unjust and cruel; if he
suffer them to rush on to their destruction, he is bound afterwards to
take them to himself; and he cannot with reason find fault with them
for the abuse of their liberty, in being deceived or seduced by the
objects which he himself had placed in their way to seduce them, to
tempt them, and to determine their wills to do evil.[4]

[4] See what Bayle says, _Dict. Crit._, art. _Origène_, Rem. E., art.
_Pauliciens_, Rem. E., F., M., and tom. iij. of the _Réponses aux
Questions d'un Provincial_.

What would you say of a father who should give to his children, in the
infancy of age, and when they were without experience, the liberty of
satisfying their disordered appetites, till they should convince
themselves of their evil tendency? Would not such a parent be in the
right to feel uneasy at the abuse which they should make of their
liberty which he had given them? Would it not be accounted malice in
this parent, who should have foreseen what was to happen, not to have
furnished his children with the capacity of directing their own
conduct so as to avoid the evils they might be assailed with? Would it
not show in him the height of madness were he to punish them for the
evil which he had done, and the chagrin which they occasioned him?
Would it not be to himself that we should ascribe the sottishness and
wickedness of his children?

You see, then, the points of view under which this system of men's
free will shows us the Deity. This free will becomes a present the
most dangerous, since it puts man in the condition of doing evil that
is truly frightful. We may thence conclude that this system, far from
justifying God, makes him capable of malice, imprudence, and
injustice. But this is to overturn all our ideas of a being perfectly,
nay, infinitely wise and good, consenting to punish his creatures for
sins which he gave them the power of committing, or, which is the
same, suffering the Devil to inspire them with evil. All the
subtilties of theology have really only a tendency to destroy the very
notions itself inculcates concerning the Divinity. This theology is
evidently the tub of the Danaides.

It is a fact, however, that our theologians have imagined expedients
to support their ruinous suppositions. You have often heard mention
made of _predestination_ and _grace_--terrible words, which constantly
excite disputes among us, for which reason would be forced to blush if
Christians did not make it a duty to renounce reason, and which
contests are attended with consequences very dangerous to society. But
let not this surprise you; these false and obscure principles have
even among the theologians produced dissensions; and their quarrels
would be indifferent if they did not attach more importance to them
than they really deserve.

But to proceed. The system of predestination supposes that God, in his
eternal secrets, has resolved that some men should be elected, and,
being thus his favorites, receive special grace. By this grace they
are supposed to be made agreeable to God, and meet for eternal
happiness. But then an infinite number of others are destined to
perdition, and receive not the grace necessary to eternal salvation.
These contradictory and opposite propositions make it pretty evident
that the system is absurd. It makes God, a being infinitely perfect
and good, a partial tyrant, who has created a vast number of human
beings to be the sport of his caprice and the victims of his
vengeance. It supposes that God will punish his creatures for not
having received that grace which he did not deign to give them; it
presents this God to us under traits so revolting that the theologians
are forced to avow that the whole is a profound mystery, into which
the human mind cannot penetrate. But if man is not made to lift his
inquisitive eye on this frightful mystery, that is to say, on this
astonishing absurdity, which our teachers have idly endeavored to
square to their views of Deity, or to reconcile the atrocious
injustice of their God with his infinite goodness, by what right do
they wish us to adore this mystery which they would compel us to
believe, and to subscribe to an opinion that saps the divine goodness
to its very foundation? How do they reason upon a dogma, and quarrel
with acrimony about a system of which even themselves can comprehend
nothing?

The more you examine religion, the more occasion you will have to be
convinced that those things which our divines call _mysteries_ are
nothing else but the difficulties with which they are themselves
embarrassed, when they are unable to avoid the absurdities into which
their own false principles necessarily involve them. Nevertheless,
this word is not enough to impose upon us; the reverend doctors do not
themselves understand the things about which they incessantly speak.
They invent words from an inability to explain things, and they give
the name of _mysteries_ to what they comprehend no better than
ourselves.

All the religions in the world are founded upon predestination, and
all the pretended revelations among men, as has been already pointed
out to you, inculcate this odious dogma, which makes Providence an
unjust mother-in-law, who shows a blind preference for some of her
children to the prejudice of all the others. They make God a tyrant,
who punishes the inevitable faults to which he has impelled them, or
into which he has allowed them to be seduced. This dogma, which served
as the foundation of Paganism, is now the grand pivot of the Christian
religion, whose God should excite no less hatred than the most wicked
divinities of idolatrous people. With such notions, is it not
astonishing that this God should appear, to those who meditate on his
attributes, an object sufficiently terrible to agitate the
imagination, and to lead some to indulge in dangerous follies?

The dogma of another life serves also to exculpate the Deity from
these apparent injustices or aberrations, with which he might
naturally be accused. It is pretended that it has pleased him to
distinguish his friends on earth, seeing he has amply provided for
their future happiness in an abode prepared for their souls. But, as I
believe I have already hinted, these proofs that God makes some good,
and leaves others wicked, either evince injustice on his part, at
least temporary, or they contradict his omnipotence. If God can do all
things, if he is privy to all the thoughts and actions of men, what
need has he of any proofs? If he has resolved to give them grace
necessary to save them, has he not assured them they will not perish?
If he is unjust and cruel, this God is not immutable, and belies his
character; at least for a time he derogates from the perfections which
we should expect to find in him. What would you think of a king, who,
during a particular time, would discover to his favorites traits the
most frightful, in order that they might incur his disgrace, and who
should afterwards insist on their believing him a very good and
amiable man, to obtain his favor again? Would not such a prince be
pronounced wicked, fanciful, and tyrannical? Nevertheless, this
supposed prince might be pardoned by some, if for his own interest,
and the better to assure himself of the attachment of his friends, he
might give them some smiles of his favor. It is not so God, who knows
all, who can do all, who has nothing to fear from the dispositions of
his creatures. From all these reasonings, we may see that the Deity,
whom the priests have conjured up, plays a great game, very
ridiculous, very unjust, on the supposition that he tries his
servants, and that he allows them to suffer in this world, to prepare
them for another. The theologians have not failed to discover motives
in this conduct of God which they can as readily justify; but these
pretended motives are borrowed from the omnipotence of this being, by
his absolute power over his creatures, to whom he is not obliged to
render an account of his actions; but especially in this theology,
which professes to justify God, do we not see it make him a despot and
tyrant more hateful than any of his creatures?

                                                I am, &c.




LETTER V.

  Of the Immortality of the Soul, and of the Dogma of another Life.


We, have now, Madam, come to the examination of the dogma of a future
life, in which it is supposed that the Divinity, after causing men to
pass through the temptations, the trials, and the difficulties of
this life, for the purpose of satisfying himself whether they are
worthy of his love or his hatred, will bestow the recompenses or
inflict the chastisements which they deserved. This dogma, which is
one of the capital points of the Christian religion, is founded on a
great many hypotheses or suppositions, which we have already glanced
at, and which we have shown to be absurd and incompatible with the
notions which the same religion gives us of the Deity. In effect, it
supposes us capable of offending or pleasing the Author of Nature, of
influencing his humor, or exciting his passions; afflicting,
tormenting, resisting, and thwarting the plans of Deity. It supposes,
moreover, the free-will of man--a system which we have seen
incompatible with the goodness, justice, and omnipotence of the Deity.
It supposes, further, that God has occasion of proving his creatures,
and making them, if I may so speak, pass a novitiate to know what they
are worth when he shall square accounts with them. It supposes in God,
who has created men for happiness only, the inability to put, by one
grand effort, all men in the road, whence they may infallibly arrive
at permanent felicity. It supposes that man will survive himself, or
that the same being, after death, will continue to think, to feel, and
act as he did in this life. In a word, it supposes the immortality of
the soul--an opinion unknown to the Jewish lawgiver, who is totally
silent on this topic to the people to whom God had manifested himself;
an opinion which even in the time of Jesus Christ one sect at
Jerusalem admitted, while another sect rejected; an opinion about
which the Messiah, who came to instruct them, deigned to fix the ideas
of those who might deceive themselves in this respect; an opinion
which appears to have been engendered in Egypt, or in India, anterior
to the Jewish religion, but which was unknown among the Hebrews till
they took occasion to instruct themselves in the Pagan philosophy of
the Greeks, and doctrines of Plato.

Whatever might be the origin of this doctrine, it was eagerly adopted
by the Christians, who judged it very convenient to their system of
religion, all the parts of which are founded on the marvellous, and
which made it a crime to admit any truths agreeable to reason and
common sense. Thus, without going back to the inventors of this
inconceivable dogma, let us examine dispassionately what this opinion
really is; let us endeavor to penetrate to the principles on which it
is supported; let us adopt it, if we shall find it an idea conformable
to reason; let us reject it, if it shall appear destitute of proof,
and at variance with common sense, even though it had been received as
an established truth in all antiquity, though it may have been adopted
by many millions of mankind.

Those who maintain the opinion of the soul's immortality, regard
it--that is, the soul--as a being distinct from the body, as a
substance, or essence, totally different from the corporeal frame, and
they designate it by the name of _spirit_. If we ask them what a
spirit is, they tell us it is not matter; and if we ask them what they
understand by that which is not matter, which is the only thing of
which we cannot form an idea, they tell us it is a spirit. In general,
it is easy to see that men the most savage, as well as the most subtle
thinkers, make use of the word _spirit_ to designate all the causes of
which they cannot form clear notions; hence the word spirit hath been
used to designate a being of which none can form any idea.

Notwithstanding, the divines pretend that this unknown being, entirely
different from the body, of a substance which has nothing conformable
with itself, is, nevertheless, capable of setting the body in motion;
and this, doubtless, is a mystery very inconceivable. We have noticed
the alliance between this spiritual substance and the material body,
whose functions it regulates. As the divines have supposed that matter
could neither think, nor will, nor perceive, they have believed that
it might conceive much better those operations attributed to a being
of which they had ideas less clear than they can form of matter. In
consequence, they have imagined many gratuitous suppositions to
explain the union of the soul with the body. In fine, in the
impossibility of overcoming the insurmountable barriers which oppose
them, the priests have made man twofold, by supposing that he contains
something distinct from himself; they have cut through all
difficulties by saying that this union is a great mystery, which man
cannot understand; and they have everlasting recourse to the
omnipotence of God, to his supreme will, to the miracles which he has
always wrought; and those last are never-failing, final resources,
which the theologians reserve for every case wherein they can find no
other mode of escaping gracefully from the argument of their
adversaries.

You see, then, to what we reduce all the jargon of the metaphysicians,
all the profound reveries which for so many ages have been so
industriously hawked about in defence of the soul of man; an
immaterial substance, of which no living being can form an idea; a
spirit, that is to say, a being totally different from any thing we
know. All the theological verbiage ends here, by telling us, in a
round of pompous terms,--fooleries that impose on the ignorant,--that
we do not know what essence the soul is of; but we call it a spirit
because of its nature, and because we feel ourselves agitated by some
unknown agent; we cannot comprehend the mechanism of the soul; yet can
we feel ourselves moved, as it were, by an effect of the power of God,
whose essence is far removed from ours, and more concealed from us
than the human soul itself. By the aid of this language, from which
you cannot possibly learn any thing, you will be as wise, Madam, as
all the theologians in the world.

If you would desire to form ideas the most precise of yourself, banish
from you the prejudices of a vain theology, which only consists in
repeating words without attaching any new ideas to them, and which
are insufficient to distinguish the soul from the body, which appear
only capable of multiplying beings without reason, of rendering more
incomprehensible and more obscure, notions less distinct than we
already have of ourselves. These notions should be at least the most
simple and the most exact, if we consult our nature, experience, and
reason. They prove that man knows nothing but by his material sensible
organs, that he sees only by his eyes, that he feels by his touch,
that he hears by his ears; and that when either of these organs is
actually deranged, or has been previously wanting, or imperfect, man
can have none of the ideas that organ is capable of furnishing him
with,--neither thoughts, memory, reflection, judgment, desire, nor
will. Experience shows us that corporeal and material beings are alone
capable of being moved and acted upon, and that without those organs
we have enumerated the soul thinks not, feels not, wills not, nor is
moved. Every thing shows us that the soul undergoes always the same
vicissitudes as the body; it grows to maturity, gains strength,
becomes weak, and puts on old age, like the body; in fine, every thing
we can understand of it goes to prove that it perishes with the body.
It is indeed folly to pretend that man will feel when he has no organs
appropriate for that sentiment; that he will see and hear without eyes
or ears; that he will have ideas without having senses to receive
impressions from physical objects, or to give rise to perceptions in
his understanding; in fine, that he will enjoy or suffer when he has
no longer either nerves or sensibility.

Thus every thing conspires to prove that the soul is the same thing as
the body, viewed relatively to some of its functions, which are more
obscure than others. Every thing serves to convince us that without
the body the soul is nothing, and that all the operations which are
attributed to the soul cannot be exercised any longer when the body is
destroyed. Our body is a machine, which, so long as we live, is
susceptible of producing the effects which have been designated under
different names, one from another; sentiment is one of these effects,
thought is another, reflection a third. This last passes sometimes by
other names, and our brain appears to be the seat of all our organs;
it is that which is the most susceptible. This organic machine once
destroyed or deranged, is no longer capable of producing the same
effects, or of exercising the same functions. It is with our body as
it is with a watch which indicates the hours, and which goes not if
the spring or a pinion be broken.

Cease, Eugenia, cease to torment yourself about the fate which shall
attend you when death will have separated you from all that is dear on
earth. After the dissolution of this life, the soul shall cease to
exist; those devouring flames with which you have been threatened by
the priests will have no effect upon the soul, which can neither be
susceptible then of pleasures nor pains, of agreeable or sorrowful
ideas, of lively or doleful reflections.

It is only by means of the bodily organs that we feel, think, and are
merry or sad, happy or miserable; this body once reduced to dust, we
will have neither perceptions nor sensations, and, by consequence,
neither memory nor ideas; the dispersed particles will no longer have
the same qualities they possessed when united; nor will they any
longer conspire to produce the same effects. In a word, the body being
destroyed, the soul, which is merely a result of all the parts of the
body in action, will cease to be what it is; it will be reduced to
nothing with the life's breath.

Our teachers pretend to understand the soul well; they profess to be
able to distinguish it from the body; in short, they can do nothing
without it; and therefore, to keep up the farce, they have been
compelled to admit the ridiculous dogma of the Persians, known by the
name of the _resurrection_. This system supposes that the particles of
the body which have been scattered at death will be collected at the
last day, to be replaced in their primitive condition. But that this
strange phenomenon may take place, it is necessary that the particles
of our destroyed bodies, of which some, have been converted into
earth, others have passed into plants, others into animals, some of
one species, others of another, even of our own; it is requisite, I
say, that these particles, of which some have been mixed with the
waters of the deep, others have been carried on the wings of the wind,
and which have successively belonged to many different men, should be
reunited to reproduce the individual to whom they formerly belonged.
If you cannot get over this impossibility, the theologians will
explain it to you by saying, very briefly, "Ah! it is a profound
mystery, which we cannot comprehend." They will inform you that the
resurrection is a miracle, a supernatural effect, which is to result
from the divine power. It is thus they overcome all the difficulties
which the good sense of a few opposes to their rhapsodies.

If, perchance, Madam, you do not wish to remain content with these
sublime reasons, against which your good sense will naturally revolt,
the clergy will endeavor to seduce your imagination by vague pictures
of the ineffable delights which will be enjoyed in Paradise by the
souls and bodies of those who have adopted their reveries; they will
aver that you cannot refuse to believe them upon their mere word
without encountering the eternal indignation of a God of pity; and
they will attempt to alarm your fancy by frightful delineations of the
cruel torments which a God of goodness has prepared for the greater
number of his creatures.

But if you consider the thing coolly, you will perceive the futility
of their flattering promises and of their puny threatenings, which are
uttered merely to catch the unwary. You may easily discover that if it
could be true that man shall survive himself, God, in recompensing
him, would only recompense himself for the grace which he had granted;
and when he punished him, he punished him for not receiving the grace
which he had hardened him against receiving. This line of conduct, so
cruel and barbarous, appears equally unworthy of a wise God as it is
of a being perfectly good.

If your mind, proof against the terrors with which the Christian
religion penetrates its sectaries, is capable of contemplating these
frightful circumstances, which it is imagined will accompany the
carefully-invented punishments which God has destined for the victims
of his vengeance, you will find that they are impossible, and totally
incompatible with the ideas which they themselves have put forth of
the Divinity. In a word, you will perceive that the chastisements of
another life are but a crowd of chimeras, invented to disturb human
reason, to subjugate it beneath the feet of imposture, to annihilate
forever the repose of slaves whom the priesthood would inthrall and
retain under its yoke.

In short, Eugenia, the priests would make you believe that these
torments will be horrible,--a thing which accords not with our ideas
of God's goodness; they tell you they will be eternal,--a thing which
accords not with our ideas of the justice of God, who, one would very
naturally suppose, will proportion chastisements to faults, and who,
by consequence, will not punish without end the beings whose actions
are bounded by time. They tell us that the offences against God are
infinite, and, by consequence, that the Divinity, without doing
violence to his justice, may avenge himself as God, that is to say,
avenge himself to infinity. In this case I shall say that this God is
not good; that he is vindictive, a character which always announces
fear and weakness. In fine, I shall say that among the imperfect
beings who compose the human species, there is not, perhaps, a single
one who, without some advantage to himself, without personal fear, in
a word, without folly, would consent to punish everlastingly the
wretch who might have the misfortune to offend him, but who no longer
had either the ability or the inclination to commit another offence.
Caligula found, at least, some little amusement to forsake for a time
the cares of government, and enjoy the spectacle of punishment which
he inflicted on those unfortunate men whom he had an interest in
destroying. But what advantage can it be to God to heap on the damned
everlasting torments? Will this amuse him? Will their frightful
punishments correct their faults? Can these examples of the divine
severity be of any service to those on earth, who witness not their
friends in hell? Will it not be the most astonishing of all the
miracles of Deity to make the bodies of the damned invulnerable, to
resist, through the ceaseless ages of eternity, the frightful torments
destined for them?

You see, then, Madam, that the ideas which the priests give us of hell
make of God a being infinitely more insensible, more wicked and cruel
than the most barbarous of men. They add to all this that it will be
the Devil and the apostate angels, that is to say, the enemies of
God, whom he will employ as the ministers of his implacable vengeance.
These wicked spirits, then, will execute the commands which this
severe judge will pronounce against men at the last judgment. For you
must know, Madam, that a God who knows all will at some future time
take an account of what he already knows. So, then, not content with
judging men at death, he will assemble the whole human race with great
pomp at the last or general judgment, in which he will confirm his
sentence in the view of the whole human race, assembled to receive
their doom. Thus on the wreck of the world will he pronounce a
definitive judgment, from which there will be no appeal. But, in
attending this memorable judgment, what will become of the souls of
men, separated from their bodies, which have not yet been
resuscitated? The souls of the just will go directly to enjoy the
blessings of Paradise; but what is to become of the immense crowd of
souls imbued with faults or crimes, and on whom the infallible
parsons, who are so well instructed in what is passing in another
world, cannot speak with certainty as to their fate? According to some
of these wiseacres, God will place the souls of such as are not wholly
displeasing to him in a place of punishment, where, by rigorous
torments, they shall have the merit of expiating the faults with which
they may stand chargeable at death. According to this fine system, so
profitable to our spiritual guides, God has found it the most simple
method to build a fiery furnace for the special purpose of tormenting
a certain proportion of souls who have not been sufficiently purified
at death to enter Paradise, but who, after leaving them some years
united with the body, and giving them time necessary to arrive at that
amendment of life by which they may become partakers of the supreme
felicity of heaven, ordains that they shall expiate their offences in
torment. It is on this ridiculous notion that our priests have
bottomed the doctrine of _purgatory_, which every good Catholic is
obliged to believe for the benefit of the priests, who reserve to
themselves, as is very reasonable, the power of compelling by their
prayers a just and immutable God to relax in his sternness, and
liberate the captive souls, which he had only condemned to undergo
this purgation in order that they might be made meet for the joys of
Paradise.

With respect to the Protestants, who are, as every one knows, heretics
and impious, you will observe that they pretend not to those lucrative
views of the Roman doctors. On the contrary, they think that, at the
instant of death, every man is irrevocably judged; that he goes
directly to glory or into a place of punishment, to suffer the award
of evil by the enduring of punishments for which God had eternally
prepared both the sufferer and his torments! Even before the reunion
of soul and body at the final judgment, they fancy that the soul of
the wicked (which, on the principle of all souls being _spirits_,
must be the same in essence as the soul of the elect,) will, though
deprived of those organs by which it felt, and thought, and acted, be
capable of undergoing the agency or action of a fire! It is true that
some Protestant theologians tell us that the fire of hell is a
spiritual fire, and, by consequence, very different from the material
fire vomited out of Vesuvius, and Ætna, and Hecla. Nor ought we to
doubt that these informed doctors of the Protestant faith know very
well what they say, and that they have as precise and clear ideas of a
spiritual fire as they have of the ineffable joys of Paradise, which
may be as spiritual as the punishment of the damned in hell.

Such are, Madam, in a few words, the absurdities, not less revolting
than ridiculous, which the dogmas of a future life and of the
immortality of the soul have engendered in the minds of men. Such are
the phantoms which have been invented and propagated, to seduce and
alarm mortals, to excite their hopes and their fears; such the
illusions that so powerfully operate on weak and feeling beings. But
as melancholy ideas have more effect upon the imagination than those
which are agreeable, the priests have always insisted more forcibly on
what men have to fear on the part of a terrible God than on what they
have to hope from the mercy of a forgiving Deity, full of goodness.
Princes the most wicked are infinitely more respected than those who
are famed for indulgence and humanity. The priests have had the art
to throw us into uncertainty and mistrust by the twofold character
which they have given the Divinity. If they promise us salvation, they
tell us that we must work it out for ourselves, "with fear and
trembling." It is thus that they have contrived to inspire the minds
of the most honest men with dismay and doubt, repeating without
ceasing that time only must disclose who are worthy of the divine
love, or who are to be the objects of the divine wrath. Terror has
been and always will be the most certain means of corrupting and
enslaving the mind of man.

They will tell us, doubtless, that the terrors which religion inspires
are salutary terrors; that the dogma of another life is a bridle
sufficiently powerful to prevent the commission of crimes and restrain
men within the path of duty. To undeceive one's self of this maxim, so
often thundered in our ears, and so generally adopted on the authority
of the priests, we have only to open our eyes. Nevertheless, we see
some Christians thoroughly persuaded of another life, who,
notwithstanding, conduct themselves as if they had nothing to fear on
the part of a God of vengeance, nor any thing to hope from a God of
mercy. When any of these are engaged in some great project, at all
times they are tempted by some strong passion or by some bad habit,
they shut their eyes on another life, they see not the enraged judge,
they suffer themselves to sin, and when it is committed, they comfort
themselves by saying, that God is good. Besides, they console
themselves by the same contradictory religion which shows them also
this same God, whom it represents so susceptible of wrath, as full of
mercy, bestowing his grace on all those who are sensible of their
evils and repent. In a word, I see none whom the fears of hell will
restrain when passion or interest solicit obedience. The very priests
who make so many efforts to convince us of their dogmas too often
evince more wickedness of conduct than we find in those who have never
heard one word about another life. Those who from infancy have been
taught these terrifying lessons are neither less debauched, nor less
proud, nor less passionate, nor less unjust, nor less avaricious than
others who have lived and died ignorant of Christian purgatory and
Paradise. In fine, the dogma of another life has little or no
influence on them; it annihilates none of their passions; it is a
bridle merely with some few timid souls, who, without its knowledge,
would never have the hardihood to be guilty of any great excesses.
This dogma is very fit to disturb the quiet of some honest, timorous
persons, and the credulous, whose imagination it inflames, without
ever staying the hand of great rogues, without imposing on them more
than the decency of civilization and a specious morality of life,
restrained chiefly by the coercion of public laws.

In short, to sum all up in one thought, I behold a religion gloomy and
formidable to make impressions very lively, very deep, and very
dangerous on a mind such as yours, although it makes but very
momentary impressions on the minds of such as are hardened in crime,
or whose dissipation destroys constantly the effects of its threats.
More lively affected than others by your principles, you have been but
too often and too seriously occupied for your happiness by gloomy and
harassing objects, which have powerfully affected your sensible
imagination, though the same phantoms that have pursued you have been
altogether banished from the mind of those who have had neither your
virtues, your understanding, nor your sensibility.

According to his principles, a Christian must always live in fear; he
can never know with certainty whether he pleases or displeases God;
the least movement of pride or of covetousness, the least desire, will
suffice to merit the divine anger, and lose in one moment the fruits
of years of devotion. It is not surprising that, with these frightful
principles before them, many Christians should endeavor to find in
solitude employment for their lugubrious reflections, where they may
avoid the occasions that solicit them to do wrong, and embrace such
means as are most likely, according to their notions of the likelihood
of the thing, to expiate the faults which they fancy might incur the
eternal vengeance of God.

Thus the dark notions of a future life leave those only in peace who
think slightly upon it; and they are very disconsolate to all those
whose temperament determines them to contemplate it. They are but the
atrocious ideas, however, which the priests study to give us of the
Deity, and by which they have compelled so many worthy people to throw
themselves into the arms of incredulity. If some libertines, incapable
of reasoning, abjure a religion troublesome to their passions, or
which abridges their pleasures, there are very many who have maturely
examined it, that have been disgusted with it, because they could not
consent to live in the fears it engendered, nor to nourish the despair
it created. They have then abjured this religion, fit only to fill the
soul with inquietudes, that they might find in the bosom of reason the
repose which it insures to good sense.

Times of the greatest crimes are always times of the greatest
ignorance. It is in these times, or usually so, that the greatest
noise is made about religion. Men then follow mechanically, and
without examination, the tenets which their priests impose on them,
without ever diving to the bottom of their doctrines. In proportion as
mankind become enlightened, great crimes become more rare, the manners
of men are more polished, the sciences are cultivated, and the
religion which they have coolly and carefully examined loses sensibly
its credit. It is thus that we see so many incredulous people in the
bosom of society become more agreeable and complacent now than
formerly, when it depended on the caprice of a priest to involve them
in troubles, and to invite the people to crimes in the hope of thereby
meriting heaven.

Religion is consoling only to those who have no embarrassment about
it; the indefinite and vague recompense which it promises, without
giving ideas of it, is made to deceive those who make no reflections
on the impatient, variable, false, and cruel character which this
religion gives of its God. But how can it make any promises on the
part of a God whom it represents as a tempter, a seducer--who appears,
moreover, to take pleasure in laying the most dangerous snares for his
weak creatures? How can it reckon on the favors of a God full of
caprice, who it alternately informs us is replete with tenderness or
with hatred? By what right does it hold out to us the rewards of a
despotic and tyrannical God, who does or does not choose men for
happiness, and who consults only his own fantasy to destine some of
his creatures to bliss and others to perdition? Nothing, doubtless,
but the blindest enthusiasm could induce mortals to place confidence
in such a God as the priests have feigned; it is to folly alone we
must attribute the love some well-meaning people profess to the God of
the parsons; it is matchless extravagance alone that could prevail on
men to reckon on the unknown rewards which are promised them by this
religion, at the same time that it assures us that God is the author
of grace, but that we have no right to expect any thing from him.

In a word, Madam, the notions of another life, far from consoling, are
fit only to imbitter all the sweets of the present life. After the sad
and gloomy ideas which Christianity, always at variance with itself,
presents us with of its God, it then affirms, that we are much more
likely to incur his terrible chastisements, than possessed of power by
which we may merit ineffable rewards; and it proceeds to inform us,
that God will give grace to whomsoever he pleases, yet it remains with
themselves whether they escape damnation; and a life the most spotless
cannot warrant them to presume that they are worthy of his favor. In
good truth, would not total annihilation be preferable to such beings,
rather than falling into the hands of a Deity so hard-hearted? Would
not every man of sense prefer the idea of complete annihilation to
that of a future existence, in order to be the sport of the eternal
caprice of a Deity, so cruel as to damn and torment, without end, the
unfortunate beings whom he created so weak, that he might punish them
for faults inseparable from their nature? If God is good, as we are
assured, notwithstanding the cruelties of which the priests suppose
him capable, is it not more consonant to all our ideas of a being
perfectly good, to believe that he did not create them to sport with
them in a state of eternal damnation, which they had not the power of
choosing, or of rejecting and shunning? Has not God treated the beasts
of the field more favorably than he has treated man, since he has
exempted them from sin, and by consequence has not exposed them to
suffer an eternal unhappiness?

The dogma of the immortality of the soul, or of a future life,
presents nothing consoling in the Christian religion. On the contrary,
it is calculated expressly to fill the heart of the Christian,
following out his principles, with bitterness and continual alarm. I
appeal to yourself, Madam, whether these sublime notions have any
thing consoling in them? Whenever this uncertain idea has presented
itself to your mind, has it not filled you with a cold and secret
horror? Has the consciousness of a life so virtuous and so spotless as
yours, secured you against those fears which are inspired by the idea
of a being jealous, severe, capricious, whose eternal disgrace the
least fault is sure of incurring, and in whose eyes the smallest
weakness, or freedom the most involuntary, is sufficient to cancel
years of strict observance of all the rules of religion?

I know very well what you will advance to support yourself in your
prejudices. The ministers of religion possess the secret of tempering
the alarms which they have the art to excite. They strive to inspire
confidence in those minds which they discover accessible to fear. They
balance, thus, one passion against another. They hold in suspense the
minds of their slaves, in the apprehension that too much confidence
would only render them less pliable, or that despair would force them
to throw off the yoke. To persons terribly frightened about their
state after death, they speak only of the hopes which we may entertain
of the goodness of God. To those who have too much confidence, they
preach up the terrors of the Lord, and the judgments of a severe God.
By this chicanery they contrive to subject or retain under their yoke
all those who are weak enough to be led by the contradictory doctrines
of these blind guides.

They tell you, besides, that the sentiment of the immortality of the
soul is inherent in man; that the soul is consumed by boundless
desires, and that since there is nothing on this earth capable of
satisfying it, these are indubitable proofs that it is destined to
subsist eternally. In a word, that as we naturally desire to exist
always, we may naturally conclude that we shall always exist. But what
think you, Madam, of such reasonings? To what do they lead? Do we
desire the continuation of this existence, because it may be blessed
and happy, or because we know not what may become of us? But we cannot
desire a miserable existence, or, at least, one in which it is more
than probable we may be miserable rather than happy. If, as the
Christian religion so often repeats, the number of the elect is very
small, and salvation very difficult, the number of the reprobate very
great, and damnation very easily obtained, who is he who would desire
to exist always with so evident a risk of being eternally damned?
Would it not have been better for us not to have been born, than to
have been compelled against our nature to play a game so fraught with
peril? Does not annihilation itself present to us an idea preferable
to that of an existence which may very easily lead us to eternal
tortures? Suffer me, Madam, to appeal to yourself. If, before you had
come into this world, you had had your choice of being born, or of not
seeing the light of this fair sun, and you could have been made to
comprehend, but for one moment, the hundred thousandth part of the
risks you run to be eternally unhappy, would you not have determined
never to enjoy life?

It is an easy matter, then, to perceive the proofs on which the
priests pretend to found this dogma of the immortality of the soul and
a future life. The desire which we might have of it could only be
founded on the hope of enjoying eternal happiness. But does religion
give us this assurance? Yes, say the clergy, if you submit faithfully
to the rules it prescribes. But to conform one's self to these rules,
is it not necessary to have grace from Heaven? And, are we then sure
we shall obtain that grace, or if we do, merit Heaven? Do the priests
not repeat to us, without ceasing, that God is the author of grace,
and that he only gives it to a small number of the elect? Do they not
daily tell us that, except one man, who rendered himself worthy of
this eternal happiness, there are millions going the high road to
damnation? This being admitted, every Christian, who reasons, would be
a fool to desire a future existence which he has so many motives to
fear, or to reckon on a happiness which every thing conspires to show
him is as uncertain, as difficult to be obtained, as it is
unequivocally dependent on the fantasies of a capricious Deity, who
sports with the misfortunes of his creatures.

Under every point of view in which we regard the dogma of the soul's
immortality, we are compelled to consider it as a chimera invented by
men who have realized their wishes, or who have not been able to
justify Providence from the transitory injustices of this world. This
dogma was received with avidity, because it flattered the desires, and
especially the vanity of man, who arrogated to himself a superiority
above all the beings that enjoy existence, and which he would pass by
and reduce to mere clay; who believed himself the favorite of God,
without ever taxing his attention with this other fact--that God makes
him every instant experience vicissitudes, calamities, and trials, as
all sentient natures experience; that God made him, in fine, to
undergo death, or dissolution, which is an invariable law that all
that exists must find verified. This haughty creature, who fancies
himself a privileged being, alone agreeable to his Maker, does not
perceive that there are stages in his life when his existence is more
uncertain and much more weak than that of the other animals, or even
of some inanimate things. Man is unwilling to admit that he possesses
not the strength of the lion, nor the swiftness of the stag, nor the
durability of an oak, nor the solidity of marble or metal. He believes
himself the greatest favorite, the most sublime, the most noble; he
believes himself superior to all other animals because he possesses
the faculties of thinking, judging, and reasoning. But his thoughts
only render him more wretched than all the animals whom he supposes
deprived of this faculty, or who, at least, he believes, do not enjoy
it in the same degree with himself. Do not the faculties of thinking,
of remembering, of foresight, too often render him unhappy by the very
idea of the past, the present, and the future? Do not his passions
drive him to excesses unknown to the other animals? Are his judgments
always reasonable and wise? Is reason so largely developed in the
great mass of men that the priests should interdict its use as
dangerous? Are mankind sufficiently advanced in knowledge to be able
to overcome the prejudices and chimeras which render them unhappy
during the greatest part of their lives? In fine, have the beasts some
species of religious impressions, which inspire continual terrors in
their breast, making them look upon some awful event, which imbitters
their softest pleasures, which enjoins them to torment themselves, and
which threatens them with eternal damnation? No!

In truth, Madam, if you weigh in an equitable balance the pretended
advantages of man above the other animals, you will soon see how
evanescent is this fictitious superiority which he has arrogated to
himself. We find that all the productions of nature are submitted to
the same laws; that all beings are only born to die; they produce
their like to destroy themselves; that all sentient beings are
compelled to undergo pleasures and pains; they appear and they
disappear; they are and they cease to be; they evince under one form
that they will quit it to produce another. Such are the continual
vicissitudes to which every thing that exists is evidently subjected,
and from which man is not exempt, any more than the other beings and
productions that he appropriates to his use as _lord of the creation_.
Even our globe itself undergoes change; the seas change their place;
the mountains are gathered in heaps or levelled into plains; every
thing that breathes is destroyed at last, and man alone pretends to an
eternal duration.

It is unnecessary to tell me that we degrade man when we compare him
with the beasts, deprived of souls and intelligence; this is no
levelling doctrine, but one which places him exactly where nature
places him, but from which his puerile vanity has unfortunately driven
him. All beings are equals; under various and different forms they act
differently; they are governed in their appetites and passions by laws
which are invariably the same for all of the same species; every thing
which is composed of parts will be dissolved; every thing which has
life must part with it at death; all men are equally compelled to
submit to this fate; they are equal at death, although during life
their power, their talents, and especially their virtues, establish a
marked difference, which, though real, is only momentary. What will
they be after death? They will be exactly what they were ten years
before they were born.

Banish, then, Eugenia, from your mind forever the terrors which death
has hitherto filled you with. It is for the wretched a safe haven
against the misfortunes of this life. If it appears a cruel
alternative to those who enjoy the good things of this world, why do
they not console themselves with the idea of what they do actually
enjoy? Let them call reason to their aid; it will calm the inquietudes
of their imagination, but too greatly alarmed; it will disperse the
clouds which religion spreads over their minds; it will teach them
that this death, so terrible in apprehension, is really nothing, and
that it will neither be accompanied with remembrance of past pleasures
nor of sorrow now no more.

Live, then, happy and tranquil, amiable Eugenia! Preserve carefully an
existence so interesting and so necessary to all those with whom you
live. Allow not your health to be injured, nor trouble your quiet with
melancholy ideas. Without being teased by the prospect of an event
which has no right to disturb your repose, cultivate virtue, which has
always been your favorite, so necessary to your internal peace, and
which has rendered you so dear to all those who have the happiness of
being your friends. Let your rank, your credit, your riches, your
talents be employed to make others happy, to support the oppressed, to
succor the unfortunate, to dry up the tears of those whom you may have
an opportunity of comforting! Let your mind be occupied about such
agreeable and profitable employments as are likely to please you!
Call in the aid of your reason to dissipate the phantoms which alarm
you, to efface the prejudices which you have imbibed in early life! In
a word, comfort yourself, and remember that in practising virtue, as
you do, you cannot become an object of hatred to God, who, if he has
reserved in eternity rigorous punishments for the social virtues, will
be the strangest, the most cruel, and the most insensible of beings!

You demand of me, perhaps, "In destroying the idea of another world,
what is to become of the remorse, those chastisements so useful to
mankind, and so well calculated to restrain them within the bounds of
propriety?" I reply, that remorse will always subsist as long as we
shall be capable of feeling its pangs, even when we cease to fear the
distant and uncertain vengeance of the Divinity. In the commission of
crimes, in allowing one's self to be the sport of passion, in injuring
our species, in refusing to do them good, in stifling pity, every man
whose reason is not totally deranged perceives clearly that he will
render himself odious to others, that he ought to fear their enmity.
He will blush, then, if he thinks he has rendered himself hateful and
detestable in their eyes. He knows the continual need he has of their
esteem and assistance. Experience proves to him that vices the most
concealed are injurious to himself. He lives in perpetual fear lest
some mishap should unfold his weaknesses and secret faults. It is from
all these ideas 

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