IF THEY HAD NOT BEEN TAUGHT AT AN AGE WHEN THEY WERE INCAPABLE OF
REASONING.

The instructors of the human race act very prudently in teaching men
their religious principles before they are able to distinguish the true
from the false, or the left hand from the right. It would be as
difficult to tame the spirit of a man forty years old with the
extravagant notions which are given us of Divinity, as to banish these
notions from the head of a man who has imbibed them since his tenderest
infancy.




XXXVI.--THE WONDERS OF NATURE DO NOT PROVE THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.

We are assured that the wonders of nature are sufficient to a belief in
the existence of a God, and to convince us fully of this important
truth. But how many persons are there in this world who have the
leisure, the capacity, the necessary taste, to contemplate nature and to
meditate upon its progress? The majority of men pay no attention to it.
A peasant is not at all moved by the beauty of the sun, which he sees
every day. The sailor is not surprised by the regular movements of the
ocean; he will draw from them no theological inductions. The phenomena
of nature do not prove the existence of a God, except to a few
forewarned men, to whom has been shown in advance the finger of God in
all the objects whose mechanism could embarrass them. The unprejudiced
philosopher sees nothing in the wonders of nature but permanent and
invariable law; nothing but the necessary effects of different
combinations of diversified substance.