guide, and common sense changed into delirium. This science is named
Theology, and this Theology is a continual insult to human reason.




III.

By frequent repetition of if, but, and perhaps, we succeed in forming an
imperfect and broken system which perplexes men's minds to the extent of
making them forget the clearest notions, and to render uncertain the
most palpable truths. By the aid of this systematic nonsense, all nature
has become an inexplicable enigma for man; the visible world has
disappeared to give place to invisible regions; reason is obliged to
give place to imagination, which can lead us only to the land of
chimeras which she herself has invented.




IV.--MAN BORN NEITHER RELIGIOUS NOR DEISTICAL.

All religious principles are founded upon the idea of a God, but it is
impossible for men to have true ideas of a being who does not act upon
any one of their senses. All our ideas are but pictures of objects which
strike us. What can the idea of God represent to us when it is evidently
an idea without an object? Is not such an idea as impossible as an
effect without a cause? An idea without a prototype, is it anything but
a chimera? Some theologians, however, assure us that the idea of God is
innate, or that men have this idea from the time of their birth. Every