what ideas can common people have?--women, mechanics, and, in short,
those who compose the mass of the human race?




XXXI.--THE BELIEF IN GOD IS NOTHING BUT A MECHANICAL HABITUDE OF
CHILDHOOD.

Men believe in God only upon the word of those who have no more idea of
Him than they themselves. Our nurses are our first theologians; they
talk to children of God as they talk to them of were-wolfs; they teach
them from the most tender age to join the hands mechanically. Have the
nurses clearer notions of God than the children, whom they compel to
pray to Him?




XXXII.--IT IS A PREJUDICE WHICH HAS BEEN HANDED FROM FATHER TO CHILDREN.

Religion is handed down from fathers to children as the property of a
family with the burdens. Very few people in the world would have a God
if care had not been taken to give them one. Each one receives from his
parents and his instructors the God which they themselves have received
from theirs; only, according to his own temperament, each one arranges,
modifies, and paints Him agreeably to his taste.