his existence; yet this fundamental article utterly embarrasses every mind
that reasons. The first question of every catechism has been, and ever
will be, the most difficult to resolve. (In the year 1701, the
holy fathers of the oratory of Vendome maintained in a thesis, this
proposition--that, according to St. Thomas, the existence of God is not,
and cannot be, a subject of faith.)
17.
Can we imagine ourselves sincerely convinced of the existence of a being,
whose nature we know not; who is inaccessible to all our senses; whose
attributes, we are assured, are incomprehensible to us? To persuade me
that a being exists or can exist, I must be first told what that being is.
To induce me to believe the existence or the possibility of such a
being, it is necessary to tell me things concerning him that are not
contradictory, and do not destroy one another. In short, to fully convince
me of the existence of that being, it is necessary to tell me things that
I can understand.
18.
A thing is impossible, when it includes two ideas that mutually destroy
one another, and which can neither be conceived nor united in thought.
Conviction can be founded only upon the constant testimony of our senses,
which alone give birth to our ideas, and enable us to judge of their
agreement or disagreement. That, which exists necessarily, is that, whose
non-existence implies a contradiction. These principles, universally
acknowledged, become erroneous, when applied to the existence of a
God. Whatever has been hitherto said upon the subject, is either
unintelligible, or perfect contradiction, and must therefore appear absurd
to every rational man.
19.
All human knowledge is more or less clear. By what strange fatality have
we never been able to elucidate the science of God? The most civilized
nations, and among them the most profound thinkers, are in this respect no
more enlightened than the most savage tribes and ignorant peasants; and,
examining the subject closely, we shall find, that, by the speculations
and subtle refinements of men, the divine science has been only more and
more obscured. Every religion has hitherto been founded only upon what is
called, in logic, _begging the question_; it takes things for granted, and
then proves, by suppositions, instead of principles.
20.
Metaphysics teach us, that God is a _pure spirit_. But, is modern theology
superior to that of the savages? The savages acknowledge a _great spirit_,
for the master of the world. The savages, like all ignorant people,
attribute to _spirits_ all the effects, of which their experience cannot
discover the true causes. Ask a savage, what works your watch? He will
answer, _it is a spirit_. Ask the divines, what moves the universe? They
answer, _it is a spirit_.
21.
The savage, when he speaks of a spirit, affixes, at least, some idea to
the word; he means thereby an agent, like the air, the breeze, the breath,
that invisibly produces discernible effects. By subtilizing every thing,
the modern theologian becomes as unintelligible to himself as to others.
Ask him, what he understands by a spirit? He will answer you, that it is
an unknown substance, perfectly simple, that has no extension, that has
nothing common with matter. Indeed, is there any one, who can form the
least idea of such a substance? What then is a spirit, to speak in the
language of modern theology, but the absence of an idea? The idea of
_spirituality_ is an idea without model.
22.
Is it not more natural and intelligible to draw universal existence from
the matter, whose existence is demonstrated by all the senses, and whose
effects we experience, which we see act, move, communicate motion, and
incessantly generate, than to attribute the formation of things to an
unknown power, to a spiritual being, who cannot derive from his nature
what he has not himself, and who, by his spiritual essence, can create
neither matter nor motion? Nothing is more evident, than that the idea
they endeavour to give us, of the action of mind upon matter, represents
no object. It is an idea without model.
23.
The material _Jupiter_ of the ancients could move, compose, destroy,
and create beings, similar to himself; but the God of modern theology is
sterile. He can neither occupy any place in space, nor move matter, nor
form a visible world, nor create men or gods. The metaphysical God is fit
only to produce confusion, reveries, follies, and disputes.
24.
Since a God was indispensably requisite to men, why did they not worship
the Sun, that visible God, adored by so many nations? What being had
greater claim to the homage of men, than the day-star, who enlightens,
warms, and vivifies all beings; whose presence enlivens and regenerates
nature, whose absence seems to cast her into gloom and languor? If any
being announced to mankind, power, activity, beneficence, and duration, it
was certainly the Sun, whom they ought to have regarded as the parent of
nature, as the divinity. At least, they could not, without folly, dispute
his existence, or refuse to acknowledge his influence.
25.
The theologian exclaims to us, that God wants neither hands nor arms to
act; that _he acts by his will_. But pray, who or what is that God, who
has a will, and what can be the subject of his divine will?
Are the stories of witches, ghosts, wizards, hobgoblins, etc., more absurd
and difficult to believe than the magical or impossible action of mind
upon matter? When we admit such a God, fables and reveries may claim
belief. Theologians treat men as children, whose simplicity makes them
believe all the stories they hear.
26.
To shake the existence of God, we need only to ask a theologian to
speak of him. As soon as he has said a word upon the subject, the
least reflection will convince us, that his observations are totally
incompatible with the essence he ascribes to his God. What then is God?
It is an abstract word, denoting the hidden power of nature; or it is a
mathematical point, that has neither length, breadth, nor thickness. David
Hume, speaking of theologians, has ingeniously observed, _that they have
discovered the solution of the famous problem of Archimedes--a point in
the heavens, whence they move the world_.
27.
Religion prostrates men before a being, who, without extension, is
infinite, and fills all with his immensity; a being, all-powerful, who
never executes his will; a being, sovereignly good, who creates only
disquietudes; a being, the friend of order, and in whose government all
is in confusion and disorder. What then, can we imagine, can be the God of
theology?
28.
To avoid all embarrassment, we are told, "that it is not necessary to know
what God is; that we must adore him; that we are not permitted to extend
our views to his attributes." But, before we know that we must adore a
God, must we not know certainly, that he exists? But, how can we assure
ourselves, that he exists, if we never examine whether the various
qualities, attributed to him, do really exist and agree in him? Indeed,
to adore God, is to adore only the fictions of one's own imagination, or
rather, it is to adore nothing.
29.
In view of confounding things the more, theologians have not declared what
their God is; they tell us only what he is not. By means of negations and
abstractions, they think they have composed a real and perfect being. Mind
is that, which is _not_ body. An infinite being is a being, who is _not_
finite. A perfect being is a being, who is _not_ imperfect. Indeed, is
there any one, who can form real ideas of such a mass of absence of ideas?
That, which excludes all idea, can it be any thing but nothing?
To pretend, that the divine attributes are beyond the reach of human
conception, is to grant, that God is not made for man. To assure us, that,
in God, all is infinite, is to own that there can be nothing common to him
and his creatures. If there be nothing common to God and his creatures,
God is annihilated for man, or, at least, rendered useless to him. "God,"
they say, "has made man intelligent, but he has not made him omniscient;"
hence it is inferred, that he has not been able to give him faculties
sufficiently enlarged to know his divine essence. In this case, it
is evident, that God has not been able nor willing to be known by his
creatures. By what right then would God be angry with beings, who were
naturally incapable of knowing the divine essence? God would be evidently
the most unjust and capricious of tyrants, if he should punish an Atheist
for not having known, what, by his nature, it was impossible he should
know.
30.
To the generality of men, nothing renders an argument more convincing
than fear. It is therefore, that theologians assure us, _we must take the
safest part_; that nothing is so criminal as incredulity; that God will
punish without pity every one who has the temerity to doubt his existence;
that his severity is just, since madness or perversity only can make
us deny the existence of an enraged monarch, who without mercy avenges
himself on Atheists. If we coolly examine these threatenings, we shall
find, they always suppose the thing in question. They must first prove the
existence of a God, before they assure us, it is safest to believe, and
horrible to doubt or deny his existence. They must then prove, that it is
possible and consistent, that a just God cruelly punishes men for having
been in a state of madness, that prevented their believing the existence
of a being, whom their perverted reason could not conceive. In a word,
they must prove, that an infinitely just God can infinitely punish the
invincible and natural ignorance of man with respect to the divine nature.
Do not theologians reason very strangely? They invent phantoms, they
compose them of contradictions; they then assure us, it is safest not
to doubt the existence of these phantoms they themselves have invented.
According to this mode of reasoning, there is no absurdity, which it would
not be more safe to believe, than not to believe.
All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God. Are they then
criminal on account of their ignorance? At what age must they begin to
believe in God? It is, you say, at the age of reason. But at what time
should this age commence? Besides, if the profoundest theologians lose
themselves in the divine nature, which they do not presume to comprehend,
what ideas must man have of him?
31.
Men believe in God only upon the word of those, who have no more idea of
him than themselves. Our nurses are our first theologians. They talk
to children of God as if he were a scarecrow; they teach them from the
earliest age to join their hands mechanically. Have nurses then more true
ideas of God than the children whom they teach to pray?
32.
Religion, like a family estate, passes, with its incumbrances, from
parents to children. Few men in the world would have a God, had not
pains been taken in infancy to give them one. Each would receive from his
parents and teachers the God whom they received from theirs; but each,
agreeably to his disposition, would arrange, modify, and paint him in his
own manner.
33.
The brain of man, especially in infancy, is like soft wax, fit to receive
every impression that is made upon it. Education furnishes him with almost
all his ideas at a time, when he is incapable of judging for himself. We
believe we have received from nature, or have brought with us at birth,
the true or false ideas, which, in a tender age, had been instilled into
our minds; and this persuasion is one of the greatest sources of errors.
34.
Prejudice contributes to cement in us the opinions of those who have been
charged with our instruction. We believe them much more experienced than
ourselves; we suppose they are fully convinced of the things which they
teach us; we have the greatest confidence in them; by the care they have
taken of us in infancy, we judge them incapable of wishing to deceive us.
These are the motives that make us adopt a thousand errors, without other
foundation than the hazardous authority of those by whom we have been
brought up. The prohibition likewise of reasoning upon what they teach us,
by no means lessens our confidence; but often contributes to increase our
respect for their opinions.
35.
Divines act very wisely in teaching men their religious principles before
they are capable of distinguishing truth from falsehood, or their left
hand from their right. It would be as difficult to instill into the mind
of a man, forty years old, the extravagant notions that are given us of
the divinity, as to eradicate them from the mind of him who had imbibed
them from infancy.
36.
It is observed, that the wonders of nature are sufficient to lead us to
the existence of a God, and fully to convince us of this important truth.
But how many are there in the world who have the time, capacity, or
disposition, necessary to contemplate Nature and meditate her progress?
Men, for the most part, pay no regard to it. The peasant is not struck
with the beauty of the sun, which he sees every day. The sailor is not
surprised at the regular motion of the ocean; he will never draw from it
theological conclusions. The phenomena of nature prove the existence of a
God only to some prejudiced men, who have been early taught to behold the
finger of God in every thing whose mechanism could embarrass them. In the
wonders of nature, the unprejudiced philosopher sees nothing but the
power of nature, the permanent and various laws, the necessary effects of
different combinations of matter infinitely diversified.
37.
Is there any thing more surprising than the logic of these divines, who,
instead of confessing their ignorance of natural causes, seek beyond
nature, in imaginary regions, a cause much more unknown than that nature,
of which they can form at least some idea? To say, that God is the author
of the phenomena of nature, is it not to attribute them to an occult
cause? What is God? What is a spirit? They are causes of which we have no
idea. O wise divines! Study nature and her laws; and since you can
there discover the action of natural causes, go not to those that are
supernatural, which, far from enlightening, will only darken your ideas,
and make it utterly impossible that you should understand yourselves.
38.
Nature, you say, is totally inexplicable without a God. That is to say,
to explain what you understand very little, you have need of a cause which
you understand not at all. You think to elucidate what is obscure, by
doubling the obscurity; to solve difficulties, by multiplying them. O
enthusiastic philosophers! To prove the existence of a God, write complete
treatises of botany; enter into a minute detail of the parts of the human
body; launch forth into the sky, to contemplate the revolution of the
stars; then return to the earth to admire the course of waters; behold
with transport the butterflies, the insects, the polypi, and the organized
atoms, in which you think you discern the greatness of your God. All these
things will not prove the existence of God; they will prove only, that you
have not just ideas of the immense variety of matter, and of the effects,
producible by its infinitely diversified combinations, that constitute the
universe. They will prove only your ignorance of nature; that you have no
idea of her powers, when you judge her incapable of producing a multitude
of forms and beings, of which your eyes, even with the assistance of
microscopes, never discern but the smallest part. In a word, they will
prove, that, for want of knowing sensible agents, or those possible
to know, you find it shorter to have recourse to a word, expressing an
inconceivable agent.
39.
We are gravely and repeatedly told, that, _there is no effect without
a cause_; that, _the world did not make itself_. But the universe is
a cause, it is not an effect; it is not a work; it has not been made,
because it is impossible that it should have been made. The world has
always been; its existence is necessary; it is its own cause. Nature,
whose essence is visibly to act and produce, requires not, to discharge
her functions, an invisible mover, much more unknown than herself. Matter
moves by its own energy, by a necessary consequence of its heterogeneity.
The diversity of motion, or modes of mutual action, constitutes alone the
diversity of matter. We distinguish beings from one another only by the
different impressions or motions which they communicate to our organs.
40.
You see, that all is action in nature, and yet pretend that nature, by
itself, is dead and without power. You imagine, that this all, essentially
acting, needs a mover! What then is this mover? It is a spirit; a being
absolutely incomprehensible and contradictory. Acknowledge then, that
matter acts of itself, and cease to reason of your spiritual mover,
who has nothing that is requisite to put it in action. Return from
your useless excursions; enter again into a real world; keep to _second
causes_, and leave to divines their _first cause_, of which nature has no
need, to produce all the effects you observe in the world.
41.
It can be only by the diversity of impressions and effects, which bodies
make upon us, that we feel them; that we have perceptions and ideas
of them; that we distinguish one from another; that we assign them
properties. Now, to see or feel an object, the object must act upon our
organs; this object cannot act upon us, without exciting some motion in
us; it cannot excite motion in us, if it be not in motion itself. At
the instant I see an object, my eyes are struck by it; I can have no
conception of light and vision, without motion, communicated to my
eye, from the luminous, extended, coloured body. At the instant I smell
something, my sense is irritated, or put in motion, by the parts that
exhale from the odoriferous body. At the moment I hear a sound, the
tympanum of my ear is struck by the air, put in motion by a sonorous body,
which would not act if it were not in motion itself. Whence it evidently
follows, that, without motion, I can neither feel, see, distinguish,
compare, judge, nor occupy my thoughts upon any subject whatever.
We are taught, that _the essence of a thing is that from which all its
properties flow_. Now, it is evident, that all the properties of bodies,
of which we have ideas, are owing to motion, which alone informs us of
their existence, and gives us the first conceptions of them. I cannot be
informed of my own existence but by the motions I experience in myself. I
am therefore forced to conclude, that motion is as essential to matter as
extension, and that matter cannot be conceived without it.
Should any person deny, that motion is essential and necessary to matter;
they cannot, at least, help acknowledging that bodies, which seem dead and
inert, produce motion of themselves, when placed in a fit situation to
act upon one another. For instance; phosphorus, when exposed to the air,
immediately takes fire. Meal and water, when mixed, ferment. Thus dead
matter begets motion of itself. Matter has then the power of self-motion;
and nature, to act, has no need of a mover, whose pretended essence would
hinder him from acting.
42.
Whence comes man? What is his origin? Did the first man spring, ready
formed, from the dust of the earth? Man appears, like all other beings, a
production of nature. Whence came the first stones, the first trees, the
first lions, the first elephants, the first ants, the first acorns? We
are incessantly told to acknowledge and revere the hand of God, of an
infinitely wise, intelligent and powerful maker, in so wonderful a work as
the human machine. I readily confess, that the human machine appears to me
surprising. But as man exists in nature, I am not authorized to say that
his formation, is above the power of nature. But I can much less conceive
of this formation, when to explain it, I am told, that a pure spirit, who
has neither eyes, feet, hands, head, lungs, mouth nor breath, made man by
taking a little clay, and breathing upon it.
We laugh at the savage inhabitants of Paraguay, for calling themselves
the descendants of the moon. The divines of Europe call themselves the
descendants, or the creation, of a pure spirit. Is this pretension any
more rational? Man is intelligent; thence it is inferred, that he can be
the work only of an intelligent being, and not of a nature, which is void
of intelligence. Although nothing is more rare, than to see man make use
of this intelligence, of which he seems so proud, I will grant that he is
intelligent, that his wants develop this faculty, that society especially
contributes to cultivate it. But I see nothing in the human machine, and
in the intelligence with which it is endued, that announces very precisely
the infinite intelligence of the maker to whom it is ascribed. I see that
this admirable machine is liable to be deranged; I see, that his wonderful
intelligence is then disordered, and sometimes totally disappears; I
infer, that human intelligence depends upon a certain disposition of the
material organs of the body, and that we cannot infer the intelligence of
God, any more from the intelligence of man, than from his materiality. All
that we can infer from it, is, that God is material. The intelligence of
man no more proves the intelligence of God, than the malice of man proves
the malice of that God, who is the pretended maker of man. In spite of all
the arguments of divines, God will always be a cause contradicted by its
effects, or of which it is impossible to judge by its works. We shall
always see evil, imperfection and folly result from such a cause, that is
said to be full of goodness, perfection and wisdom.
43.
"What?" you will say, "is intelligent man, is the universe, and all it
contains, the effect of _chance_?" No; I repeat it, _the universe is not
an effect_; it is the cause of all effects; every being it contains is
the necessary effect of this cause, which sometimes shews us its manner of
acting, but generally conceals its operations. Men use the word _chance_
to hide their ignorance of true causes, which, though not understood, act
not less according to certain laws. There is no effect without a cause.
Nature is a word, used to denote the immense assemblage of beings, various
matter, infinite combinations, and diversified motions, that we behold.
All bodies, organized or unorganized, are necessary effects of certain
causes. Nothing in nature can happen by chance. Every thing is subject
to fixed laws. These laws are only the necessary connection of certain
effects with their causes. One atom of matter cannot meet another _by
chance_; this meeting is the effect of permanent laws, which cause every
being necessarily to act as it does, and hinder it from acting otherwise,
in given circumstances. To talk of the _fortuitous concourse of atoms_, or
to attribute some effects to chance, is merely saying that we are ignorant
of the laws, by which bodies act, meet, combine, or separate.
Those, who are unacquainted with nature, the properties of beings, and
the effects which must necessarily result from the concurrence of certain
causes, think, that every thing takes place by chance. It is not chance,
that has placed the sun in the centre of our planetary system; it is by
its own essence, that the substance, of which it is composed, must occupy
that place, and thence be diffused.
44.
The worshippers of a God find, in the order of the universe, an invincible
proof of the existence of an intelligent and wise being, who governs it.
But this order is nothing but a series of movements necessarily produced
by causes or circumstances, which are sometimes favourable, and sometimes
hurtful to us: we approve of some, and complain of others.
Nature uniformly follows the same round; that is, the same causes produce
the same effects, as long as their action is not disturbed by other
causes, which force them to produce different effects. When the operation
of causes, whose effects we experience, is interrupted by causes, which,
though unknown, are not the less natural and necessary, we are confounded;
we cry out, _a miracle!_ and attribute it to a cause much more unknown,
than any of those acting before our eyes.