_Defence of the Sentiments contained in this Work.--Of Impiety.--Do
there exist Atheists?_
What has been said in the course of this work, ought sufficiently to
undeceive those who are capable of reasoning on the prejudices to which
they attached so much importance. But the most evident truths frequently
crouch under fear; are kept at bay by habit; prove abortive against
the force of enthusiasm. Nothing is more difficult to remove from its
resting place than error, especially when long prescription has given
it full possession of the human mind. It is almost unassailable when
supported by general consent; when it is propagated by education; when
it has acquired inveteracy by custom: it commonly resists every effort
to disturb it, when it is either fortified by example, maintained
by authority, nourished by the hopes, or cherished by the fears of a
people, who have learned to look upon these delusions as the most potent
remedies for their sorrows. Such are the united forces which sustain
the empire of unintelligible systems over the inhabitants of this world;
they appear to give stability to their throne; to render their power
immoveable; to make their reign as lasting as the human race.
We need not, then, be surprised at seeing the multitude cherish their
own blindness; encourage their superstitious notions; exhibit the most
sensitive fear of truth. Every where we behold mortals obstinately
attached to phantoms from which they expect their happiness;
notwithstanding these fallacies are evidently the source of all their
sorrows. Deeply smitten with the marvellous, disdaining the simple,
despising that which is easy of comprehension, but little instructed in
the ways of nature, accustomed to neglect the use of their reason, the
uninformed, from age to age, prostrate themselves before those invisible
powers which they have been taught to adore. To these they address their
most fervent prayers; implore them in their misfortunes, offer them
the fruits of their labour; they are unceasingly occupied either with
thanking their vain idols for benefits they have not received at their
bands, or else in requesting from them favors which they can never
obtain. Neither experience nor reflection can undeceive them; they do
not perceive these idols, the work of their own hands, have always been
deaf to their intreaties; they ascribe it to their own conduct; believe
them to be violently irritated: they tremble, groan out the most dismal
lamentations; sigh bitterly in their temples; strew their altars with
presents; load their priests with their largesses; it never strikes
their attention that these beings, whom they imagine so powerful, are
themselves submitted to nature; are never propitious to their wishes,
but when nature herself is favourable. It is thus that nations are the
accomplices of those who deceive them; are themselves as much opposed to
truth as those who lead them astray.
In matters of superstition, there are very few persons who do not
partake, more or less, of the opinions of the illiterate. Every man who
throws aside the received ideas, is generally considered a madman; is
looked upon as a presumptuous being, who insolently believes himself
much wiser than his associates. At the magical sound of superstition, a
sudden panic, a tremulous terror takes possession of the human species:
whenever it is attacked, society is alarmed; each individual imagines
he already sees the celestial monarch lift his avenging arm against
the country in which rebellious nature has produced a monster with
sufficient temerity to brave these sacred opinions. Even the most
moderate persons tax with folly, brand with sedition, whoever dares
combat with these imaginary systems, the rights of which good sense has
never yet examined. In consequence, the man who undertakes to tear the
bandeau of prejudice, appears an irrational being--a dangerous citizen;
his sentence is pronounced with a voice almost unanimous; the public
indignation, roused by fanaticism, stirred up by imposture, renders
it impossible for him to be heard in his defence; every one believes
himself culpable, if he does not exhibit his fury against him; if he
does not display his zeal in hunting him down; it is by such means man
seeks to gain the favor of the angry gods, whose wrath is supposed to be
provoked. Thus the individual who consults his reason, the disciple of
nature, is looked upon as a public pest; the enemy to superstition
is regarded as the enemy to the human race; he who would establish a
lasting peace amongst men, is treated as the disturber of society; the
man who would be disposed to cheer affrighted mortals by breaking those
idols, before whom prejudice has obliged them to tremble, is unanimously
proscribed as an atheist. At the bare name of atheist the superstitious
man quakes; the deist himself is alarmed; the priest enters the
judgement chair with fury glaring in his eyes; tyranny prepares his
funeral pile, the vulgar applaud the punishments which irrational,
partial laws, decree against the true friend of the human species.
Such are the sentiments which every man must expect to excite, who shall
dare to present his fellow creatures with that truth which all appear to
be in search of, but which all either fear to find, or else mistake
what we are disposed to shew it to them. But what is this man, who is
so foully calumniated as an atheist? He is one who destroyeth chimeras
prejudicial to the human race; who endeavours to re-conduct wandering
mortals back to nature; who is desirous to place them upon the road
of experience; who is anxious that they should actively employ their
reason. He is a thinker, who, having meditated upon matter, its
energies, its properties, its modes of acting, hath no occasion to
invent ideal powers, to recur to imaginary systems, in order to explain
the phenomena of the universe--to develope the operations of nature; who
needs not creatures of the imagination, which far from making him better
understand nature, do no more than render it wholly inexplicable, an
unintelligible mass, useless to the happiness of mankind.
Thus, the only men who can have pure, simple, actual ideas of nature,
are considered either as absurd or knavish speculators. Those who
form to themselves distinct, intelligible notions of the powers of the
universe, are accused of denying the existence of this power: those
who found every thing that is operated in this world, upon determinate,
immutable laws, are accused with attributing every thing to chance; are
taxed with blindness, branded with delirium, by those very enthusiasts
themselves, whose imagination, always wandering in a vacuum, regularly
attribute the effects of nature to fictitious causes, which have no
existence but in their own heated brain; to fanciful beings of their
own creation; to chimerical powers, which they obstinately persist in
preferring to actual, demonstrable causes. No man in his proper senses
can deny the energy of nature, or the existence of a power by virtue of
which matter acts; by which it puts itself in motion; but no man can,
without renouncing his reason, attribute this power to an immaterial
substance; to a power placed out of nature; distinguished from matter;
having nothing in common with it. Is it not saying, this power does not
exist, to pretend that it resides in an unknown being, formed by an heap
of unintelligible qualities, of incompatible attributes, from
whence necessarily results a whole, impossible to have existence?
Indestructible elements, the atoms of Epicurus, of which it is said the
motion, the collision, the combination, have produced all beings,
are, unquestionably, much more tangible than the numerous theological
systems, broached in various parts of the earth. Thus, to speak
precisely, they are the partizans of imaginary theories, the advocates
of contradictory beings, the defenders of creeds, impossible to be
conceived, the contrivers of substances which the human mind
cannot embrace on any side, who are either absurd or knavish; those
enthusiasts, who offer us nothing but vague names, of which every thing
is denied, of which nothing is affirmed, are the real _Atheists_; those,
I say, who make such beings the authors of motion, the preservers of the
universe, are either blind or irrational. Are not those dreamers, who
are incapable of attaching any one positive idea to the causes of which
they unceasingly speak, true deniers? Are not those visionaries, who
make a pure nothing the source of all beings, men really groping in
the dark? Is it not the height of folly to personify abstractions, to
organize negative ideas, and then to prostrate ourselves before the
figments of our own brain?
Nevertheless, they are men of this temper who regulate the opinions
of the world; who hold up to public scorn, those who are consistent to
principle; who expose to the most infuriate vengeance, those who are
more rational than themselves. If you will but accredit those profound
dreamers, there is nothing short of madness, nothing on this side
the most complete derangement of intellect, that can reject a totally
incomprehensible motive-power in nature. Is it, then, delirium to prefer
the known to the unknown? Is it a crime to consult experience, to call
in the evidence of our senses, in the examination of that which we are
informed is the most important to be understood? Is it a horrid outrage
to address ourselves to reason; to prefer its oracles to the sublime
decisions of some sophists, who themselves acknowledge they do not
comprehend any thing of the systems they announce? Nevertheless,
according to these men, there is no crime more worthy of
punishment--there is no enterprize more dangerous to morals--no treason
more substantive against society, than to despoil these immaterial
substances, which they know nothing about, of those inconceivable
qualities which these learned doctors ascribe to them--of that equipage
with which a fanatical imagination has furnished them--of those
miraculous properties with which ignorance, fear, and imposture have
emulated each other in surrounding them: there is nothing more impious
than to call forth man's reason upon superstitious creeds; nothing more
heretical than to cheer up mortals against systems, of which the idea
alone is the source of all their sorrows; there is nothing more pious,
nothing more orthodox, than to exterminate those audacious beings who
have had sufficient temerity to attempt to break an invisible charm that
keeps the human species benumbed in error: if we are to put faith in the
asseverations of the hierarchy, to be disposed to break man's chains is
to rend asunder his most sacred bonds.
In consequence of these clamours, perpetually renovated by the disciples
of imposture, kept constantly afloat by the theologians, reiterated
by ignorance, those nations, which reason, in all ages, has sought to
undeceive, have never dared to hearken to its benevolent lessons: they
have stood aghast at the very name of physical truth. The friends of
mankind were never listened to, because they were the enemies to his
superstition--the examiners of the doctrines of his priest. Thus the
people continued to tremble; very few philosophers had the courage to
cheer them; scarcely any one dared brave public opinion; completely
inoculated by superstition, they dreaded the power of imposture,
the menaces of tyranny, which always sought to uphold themselves
by delusion. The yell of triumphant ignorance, the rant of haughty
fanaticism, at all time stifled the feeble voice of the disciple of
nature; his lessons were quickly forgotten; he was obliged to keep
silence; when he even dared to speak, it was frequently only in an
enigmatical language, perfectly unintelligible to the great mass of
mankind. How should the uninformed, who with difficulty compass the most
evident truths, those that are the most distinctly announced, be able to
comprehend the mysteries of nature, presented under half words, couched
under intricate emblems.
In contemplating the outrageous language which is excited among
theologians, by the opinions of those whom they choose to call atheists;
in looking at the punishments which at their instigation were frequently
decreed against them, should we not be authorized to conclude, that
these doctors either are not so certain as they say they are, of the
infallibility of their respective systems; or else that they do not
consider the opinions of their adversaries so absurd as they pretend?
It is always either distrust, weakness, or fear, frequently the whole
united, that render men cruel; they have no anger against those whom
they despise; they do not look upon folly as a punishable crime. We
should be content with laughing at an irrational mortal, who should deny
the existence of the sun; we should not think of punishing him, unless
we had, ourselves, taken leave of our senses. Theological fury never
proves more than the imbecility of its cause. Lucian describes Jupiter,
who disputing with Menippus, is disposed to strike him to the earth with
his thunder; upon which the philosopher says to him, "Ah! thou vexest
thyself, thou usest thy thunder! then thou art in the wrong." The
inhumanity of these men-monsters, whose profession it was to announce
chimerical systems to nations, incontestibly proves, that they alone
have an interest in the invisible powers they describe; of which they
successfully avail themselves to terrify, mortals: they are these
tyrants of the mind, however, who, but little consequent to their own
principles, undo with one hand that which they rear up with the other:
they are these profound logicians who, after having formed a deity
filled with goodness, wisdom and equity, traduce, disgrace, and
completely annihilate him, by saving he is cruel, capricious, unjust,
and despotic: this granted, these men are truly impious; decidedly
heretical.
He who knoweth not this system, cannot do it any injury, consequently
cannot be called impious. "To be impious," says Epicurus, "is not
to take away from the illiterate the gods which they have; it is to
attribute to these gods the opinions of the vulgar." To be impious is to
insult systems which we believe; it is knowingly to outrage them. To be
impious, is to admit a benevolent, just God, at the same time we preach
up persecution and carnage. To be impious, is to deceive men in the
name of a Deity, whom we make use of as a pretext for our own unworthy
passions. To be impious, is to speak falsely on the part of a God, whom
we suppose to be the enemy of falsehood. In fine, to be impious, is to
make use of the name of the Divinity in order to disturb society--to
enslave it to tyrants--to persuade man that the cause of imposture
is the cause of God; it is to impute to God those crimes which would
annihilate his divine perfections. To be impious, and irrational, at
the same time, is to make, by the aggregation of discrepant qualities, a
mere chimera of the God we adore.
On the other hand, to be pious, is to serve our country with fidelity;
it is to be useful to our fellow creatures; to labour to the welfare of
society. Every one can put in his claim to this piety, according to his
faculties; he who meditates can render himself useful, when he has the
courage to announce truth--to attack error--to battle those prejudices
which everywhere oppose themselves to the happiness of mankind; it is to
be truly useful, it is even a duty, to wrest from the hands of mortals
those homicidal weapons which wretched fanatics so profusely distribute
among them; it is highly praiseworthy to deprive imposture of its
influence; it is loving our neighbour as ourself to despoil tyranny of
its fatal empire over opinion, which at all times it so successfully
employs to elevate knaves at the expence of public happiness; to erect
its power upon the ruins of liberty; to establish unruly passions upon
the wreck of public security. To be truly pious, is religiously to
observe the wholesome laws of nature; to follow up faithfully those
duties which she prescribes to us; in short, to be pious is to be
humane, equitable, benevolent: it is to respect the rights of mankind.
To be pious and rational at the same time, is to reject those reveries
which would be competent to make us mistake the sober counsels of
reason.
Thus, whatever fanaticism, whatever imposture may say, he who denieth
the solidity of systems which have no other foundation than an alarmed
imagination; he who rejecteth creeds continually in contradiction with
themselves; he who banisheth from his heart, doctrines perpetually
wrestling with nature, always in hostility with reason, ever at war
with the happiness of man; he, I repeat, who undeceiveth himself on
such dangerous chimeras, when his conduct shall not deviate from those
invariable rules which sound morality dictates, which nature approves,
which reason prescribes, may be fairly reputed pious, honest, and
virtuous. Because a man refuseth to admit contradictory systems, as well
as the obscure oracles, which are issued in the name of the gods, does
it then follow, that such a man refuses to acknowledge the evident,
the demonstrable laws of nature, upon which he depends, of which he in
obliged to fulfil the necessary duties, under pain of being punished in
this world; whatever he may be in the in the next? It is true, that if
virtue could by any chance consist in an ignominious renunciation of
reason, in a destructive fanaticism, in useless customs, the atheist,
as he is called, could not pass for a virtuous being: but if virtue
actually consists in doing to society all the good of which we are
capable, this miscalled atheist may fairly lay claim to its practice:
his courageous, tender soul, will not be found guilty, for hurling his
legitimate indignation against prejudices, fatal to the happiness of the
human species.
Let us listen, however, to the imputations which the theologians lay
upon those men they falsely denominate atheists; let us coolly, without
any peevish humour, examine the calumnies which they vomit forth against
them: it appears to them that atheism, (as they call differing in
opinion from themselves,) is the highest degree of delirium that can
assail the human mind; the greatest stretch of perversity that can
infect the human heart; interested in blackening their adversaries, they
make incredulity the undeniable offspring of folly; the absolute effect
of crime. "We do not," say they to us, "see those men fall into the
horrors of atheism, who have reason to hope the future state will be for
them a state of happiness." In short, according to these metaphysical
doctors, it is the interest of their passions which makes them seek to
doubt systems, at whose tribunals they are accountable for the abuses
of this life; it is the fear of punishment which is alone known to
atheists; they are unceasingly repeating the words of a Hebrew prophet,
who pretends that nothing but folly makes men deny these systems;
perhaps, however, if he had suppressed his negation, he would have
more closely aproximated the truth. Doctor Bentley, in his _Folly of
Atheism_, has let loose the whole Billingsgate of theological spleen,
which he has scattered about with all the venom of the most filthy
reptiles: if he and other expounders are to be believed, "nothing is
blacker than the heart of an atheist; nothing is more false than his
mind. Atheism," according to them, "can only be the offspring of a
tortured conscience, that seeks to disengage itself from the cause of
its trouble. We have a right", says Derham, "to look upon an atheist
as a monster among rational beings; as one of those extraordinary
productions which we hardly ever meet with in the whole human species;
and who, opposing himself to all other men, revolts not only against
reason and human nature, but against the Divinity himself."
We shall simply reply to all these calumnies by saying, it is for the
reader to judge if the system which these men call atheism, be as absurd
as these profound speculators (who are perpetually in dispute on the
uninformed, ill organized, contradictory, whimsical productions of their
own brain) would have it believed to be! It is true, perhaps, that the
system of naturalism hitherto has not been developed in all its extent:
unprejudiced persons however, will, at least, be enabled to know whether
the author has reasoned well or ill; whether or not he has attempted to
disguise the most important difficulties; distinctly to see if he has
been disingenuous; they will be competent to observe if, like unto the
enemies of human reason, he has recourse to subterfuges, to sophisms, to
subtle discriminations, which ought always to make it suspected of those
who use them, either that they do not understand or else that they
fear the truth. It belongs then to candour, it is the province of
disinterestedness, it is the duty of reason to judge, if the natural
principles which have been here ushered to the world be destitute of
foundation; it is to these upright jurisconsults that a disciple of
nature submits his opinions: he has a right to except against the
judgment of enthusiasm; he has the prescription to enter his caveat
against the decision of presumptuous ignorance; above all, he is
entitled to challenge the verdict of interested knavery. Those persons
who are accustomed to think, will, at least find reasons to doubt many
of those marvellous notions, which appear as incontestable truths only
to those, who have never assayed them by the standard of good sense.
We agree with Derham, that atheists are rare; but then we also say,
that superstition has so disfigured nature, so entangled her
rights--enthusiasm has so dazzled the human mind-terror has so disturbed
the heart of man--imposture has so bewildered his imagination--tyranny
has so enslaved his thoughts: in fine, error, ignorance, and delirium
have so perplexed and confused the clearest ideas, that nothing is
more uncommon than to find men who have sufficient courage to undeceive
themselves on notions which every thing conspires to identify with their
very existence. Indeed, many theologians in despite of those bitter
invectives with which they attempt to overwhelm the men they choose
to call atheists, appear frequently to have doubted whether any ever
existed in the world. Tertullian, who, according to modern systems,
would be ranked as an atheist, because he admitted a corporeal God,
says, "Christianity has dissipated the ignorance in which the Pagans
were immersed respecting the divine essence, and there is not an artizan
among the Christians who does not see God, and who does not know him."
This uncertainty of the theologic professors was, unquestionably,
founded upon those absurd ideas, which they ascribe to their
adversaries, whom they have unceasingly accused with attributing every
thing to chance--to blind causes--to dead, inert matter, incapable of
self-action. We have, I think, sufficiently justified the partizans
of nature against these ridiculous accusations; we have throughout the
whole proved, and we repeat it, that chance is a word devoid of sense,
which as well as all other unintelligible words, announces nothing but
ignorance of actual causes. We have demonstrated that matter is not
dead; that nature, essentially active and self-existent, has sufficient
energy to produce all the beings which she contains--all the phenomena
we behold. We have, throughout, made it evident that this cause is much
more tangible, more easy of comprehension, than the inconceivable theory
to which theology assigns these stupendous effects. We have represented,
that the incomprehensibility of natural effects was not a sufficient
reason for assigning to them a system still more incomprehensible than
any of those of which, at least, we have a slight knowledge. In fine, if
the incomprehensibility of a system does not authorize the denial of
its existence, it is at least certain that the incompatibility of the
attributes with which it is clothed, authorizes the assertion, that
those which unite them cannot be any thing more than chimeras, of which
the existence is impossible.
This granted, we shall be competent to fix the sense that ought to be
attached to the name of atheist; which, notwithstanding, the theologians
lavish on all those who deviate in any thing from their opinions. If,
by atheist, be designated a man who denieth the existence of a power
inherent in matter, without which we cannot conceive nature, and if it
be to this power that the name of God is given, then there do not exist
any atheists, and the word under which they are denominated would only
announce fools. But if by atheists be understood men without enthusiasm;
who are guided by experience; who follow the evidence of their senses;
who see nothing in nature but what they actually find to have existence,
or that which they are capacitated to know; who neither do, nor can
perceive any thing but matter essentially active, moveable, diversely
combined, in the full enjoyment of various properties, capable of
producing all the beings who display themselves to our visual faculties,
if by atheists be understood natural philosophers, who are convinced
that without recurring to chimerical causes, they can explain every
thing, simply by the laws of motion; by the relation subsisting between
beings; by their affinities; by their analogies; by their aptitude to
attraction; by their repulsive powers; by their proportions; by their
combinations; by their decomposition: if by atheists be meant these
persons who do not understand what _Pneumatology_ is, who do
not perceive the necessity of spiritualizing, or of rendering
incomprehensible, those corporeal, sensible, natural causes, which
they see act uniformly; who do not find it requisite to separate the
motive-power from the universe; who do not see, that to ascribe
this power to an immaterial substance, to that whose essence is from
thenceforth totally inconceivable, is a means of becoming more familiar
with it: if by atheists are to be pourtrayed those men who ingenuously
admit that their mind can neither receive nor reconcile the union of the
negative attributes and the theological abstractions, with the human
and moral qualities which are given to the Divinity; or those men who
pretend that from such an incompatible alliance, there could only result
an imaginary being; seeing that a pure spirit is destitute of the organs
necessary to exercise the qualities, to give play to the faculties of
human nature: if by atheists are described those men who reject systems,
whose odious and discrepant qualities are solely calculated to disturb
the human species--to plunge it into very prejudicial follies: if,
I repeat it, thinkers of this description are those who are called
atheists, it is not possible to doubt their existence; and their number
would be considerable, if the light of sound natural philosophy was more
generally diffused; if the torch of reason burnt more distinctly; or
if it was not obscured by the theological bushel: from thence, however,
they would be considered neither as irrational; nor as furious beings,
but as men devoid of prejudice, of whose opinions, or if they prefer it,
whose ignorance, would be much more useful to the human race, than those
ideal sciences, those vain hypotheses, which for so many ages have been
the actual causes of all man's tribulation.
Doctor Cudworth, in his _Intellectual System_, reckons four species of
atheists among the ancients.
First.--The disciples of Anaximander, called _Hylopathians_, who
attributed every thing to matter destitute of feeling. His doctrine was,
that men were born of earth united with water, and vivified by the
beams of the sun; his crime seems to have been, that he made the first
geographical maps and sun-dials; declared the earth moveable and of a
cylindrical form.
Secondly.--The _Atomists_, or the disciples of Democritus, who attribute
every thing, to the concurrence of atoms. His crime was, having first
taught that the milky way was occasioned by the confused light from a
multitude of stars.
Thirdly.--The _Stoics_, or the disciples of Zeno, who admitted a blind
nature acting after certain laws. His crime appears to be, that he
practised virtue with unwearied perseverance, and taught that this
quality alone would render mankind happy.
Fourthly.--The _Hylozoists_, or the disciples of Strato, who attributed
life to matter. His crime consisted in being one of the most acute
natural philosophers of his day, enjoying high favour with Ptolemy
Philadelphus, an intelligent prince, whose preceptor be was.
If, however, by atheists, are meant those men, who are obliged to avow,
that they have not one idea of the system they adore, or which they
announce to others; who cannot give any satisfactory account, either
of the nature or of the essence of their immaterial substances; who
can never agree amongst themselves on the proofs which they adduce in
support of their System; on the qualities or on the modes of action
of their incorporeities, which by dint of negations they render a mere
nothing; who either prostrate themselves, or cause others to bow
down, before the absurd fictions of their own delirium: if, I say,
by atheists, be denominated men of this stamp, we shall be under the
necessity of allowing, that the world is filled with them: we shall even
be obliged to place in this number some of the most active theologians,
who are unceasingly reasoning upon that Which they do not understand;
who are eternally disputing upon points which they cannot demonstrate;
who by their contradictions very efficaciously undermine their own
systems; who annihilate all their own assertions of perfection, by the
numberless imperfections with which they clothe them; who rebel against
their gods by the atrocious character under which they depict them. In
short, we shall be able to consider as true atheists, those credulous,
weak persons, who upon hearsay and from tradition, bend the knee before
idols, of whom they have no other ideas, than those which are furnished
them by their spiritual guides, who themselves acknowledge that they
comprehend nothing about the matter.
What has been said amply proves that the theologians themselves have not
always known the sense they could affix to the word atheist; they have
vaguely attacked, in an indistinct manner, calumniated with it, those
persons whose sentiments and principles were opposed to their own.
Indeed, we find that these sublime professors, always infatuated with
their own particular opinions, have frequently been extremely lavish in
their accusations of atheism, against all those whom they felt a
desire to injure; whose characters it was their pleasure to paint in
unfavourable colours; whose doctrines they wished to blacken; whose
systems they sought to render odious: they were certain of alarming
the illiterate, of rousing the antipathies of the silly, by a loose
imputation, or by a word, to which ignorance attaches the idea of
horror, merely because it is unacquainted with its true sense. In
consequence of this policy, it has been no uncommon spectacle to see the
partizans of the same sect, the adorers of the same gods, reciprocally
treat each other as atheists, in the fervour of their theological
quarrels; to be an atheist, in this sense, is not to have, in every
point, exactly the same opinions as those with whom we dispute, either
on superstitious or religious subjects. In all times the uninformed
have considered those as atheists, who did not think upon the Divinity
precisely in the same manner as the guides whom they were accustomed
to follow. Socrates, the adorer of a unique God, was no more than an
atheist in the eyes of the Athenian people.
Still more, as we have already observed, those persons have frequently
been accused of atheism, who have taken the greatest pains to establish
the existence of the gods, but who have not produced satisfactory
proofs: when their enemies wished to take advantage of them, it was easy
to make them pass for atheists, who had wickedly betrayed their cause,
by defending it too feebly. The theologians have frequently been very
highly incensed against those who believed they had discovered the most
forcible proof of the existence of their gods, because they were obliged
to discover that their adversaries could make very contrary inductions
from their propositions; they did not perceive that it was next to
impossible not to lay themselves open to attack, in establishing
principles visibly founded upon that which each man sees variously.
Thus Paschal says, "I have examined if this God, of whom all the world
speaks, might not have left some marks of himself. I look every where,
and every where I see nothing but obscurity. Nature offers one nothing,
that may not be a matter of doubt and inquietude. If I saw nothing in
nature which indicated a Divinity, I should determine with myself, to
believe nothing about it. If every where I saw the sign of a creator, I
should repose myself in peace, in the belief of one. But seeing too
much to deny, and too little to assure me of his existence, I am in a
situation that I lament, and in which I have an hundred times wished,
that if a God doth sustain nature, he would give unequivocal marks of
it, and that if the signs which he hath given be deceitful, that he
would suppress them entirely; that he said all or nothing, to the end
that I might see which side I ought to follow."
In a word, those who have most vigorously taken up the cause of the
theological systems, have been taxed with atheism and irreligion; the
most zealous partizans have been looked upon as deserters, have been
contemplated as traitors; the most orthodox theologians have not been
able to guarantee themselves from this reproach; they have mutually
bespatered each other; prodigally lavished, with malignant reciprocity,
the most abusive terms: nearly all have, without doubt, merited these
invectives, if in the term atheist be included those men who have
not any idea of their various systems, that does not destroy itself,
whenever they are willing to submit it to the touchstone of reason. From
whence we may conclude, without subjecting ourselves to the reproach of
being hasty, that error will not stand the test of investigation; that
it will not pass the ordeal of comparison; that it is in its hues a
perfect chamelion; that consequently it can never do more than lead to
the most absurd deductions: that the most ingenious systems, when they
have their foundations in hallucination, crumble like dust under the
rude band of the assayer; that the most sublimated doctrines, when they
lack the substantive quality of rectitude, evaporate under the scrutiny
of the sturdy examiner, who tries them in the crucible; that it is
not by levelling abusive language against those who investigate
sophisticated theories, they will either be purged of their absurdities,
acquire solidity, or find an establishment to give them perpetuity; that
moral obliquities, can never be made rectilinear by the mere application
of unintelligible terms, or by the inconsiderate jumble of discrepant
properties, however gaudy the assemblage: in short, that the only
criterion of truth is, _that it is ever consistent with itself_.