Well! are all these mysteries any more shocking to reason than a God who punishes and rewards men’s actions?  Man, according to your views, is he free or not?  In either case your God, if He has the shadow of justice, can neither punish him nor reward him.  If man is free, it is God who made him free to act or not to act; it is God, then, who is the primitive cause of all his actions; in punishing man for his faults, He would punish him for having done that which He gave him the liberty to do.  If man is not free to act otherwise than he does, would not God be the most unjust of beings to punish him for the faults which he could not help committing?  Many persons are struck with the detail of absurdities with which all religions of the world are filled; but they have not the courage to seek for the source whence these absurdities necessarily sprung.  They do not see that a God full of contradictions, of oddities, of incompatible qualities, either inflaming or nursing the imagination of men, could create but a long line of idle fancies.

CXIX.—­WE DO NOT PROVE AT ALL THE EXISTENCE OF A GOD BY SAYING THAT IN ALL AGES EVERY NATION HAS ACKNOWLEDGED SOME KIND OF DIVINITY.

They believe, to silence those who deny the existence of a God, by telling them that all men, in all ages and in all centuries, have believed in some kind of a God; that there is no people on the earth who have not believed in an invisible and powerful being, whom they made the object of their worship and of their veneration; finally, that there is no nation, no matter how benighted we may suppose it to be, that is not persuaded of the existence of some intelligence superior to human nature.  But can the belief of all men change an error into truth?  A celebrated philosopher has said with all reason:  “Neither general tradition nor the unanimous consent of all men could place any injunction upon truth.” [Bayle.] Another wise man said before him, that “an army of philosophers would not be sufficient to change the nature of error and to make it truth.” [Averroes]

There was a time when all men believed that the sun revolved around the earth, while the latter remained motionless in the center of the whole system of the universe; it is scarcely more than two hundred years since this error was refuted.  There was a time when nobody would believe in the existence of antipodes, and when they persecuted those who had the courage to sustain it; to-day no learned man dares to doubt it.  All nations of the world, except some men less credulous than others, still believe in sorcerers, ghosts, apparitions, spirits; no sensible man imagines himself obliged to adopt these follies; but the most sensible people feel obliged to believe in a universal Spirit!

CXX.—­All the gods are of A barbarous origin; all religions are antique monuments of ignorance, superstition, and ferocity; and modern religions are but ancient follies revived.