invincible ignorance in which they are kept in this respect, far from
discouraging them, does but excite their curiosity; instead of putting
them on guard against their imagination, this ignorance makes them
positive, dogmatic, imperious, and causes them to quarrel with all those
who oppose doubts to the reveries which their brains have brought forth.
What perplexity, when we attempt to solve an unsolvable problem! Anxious
meditations upon an object impossible to grasp, and which, however, is
supposed to be very important to him, can but put a man into bad humor,
and produce in his brain dangerous transports. When interest, vanity,
and ambition are joined to such a morose disposition, society
necessarily becomes troubled. This is why so many nations have often
become the theaters of extravagances caused by nonsensical visionists,
who, publishing their shallow speculations for the eternal truth, have
kindled the enthusiasm of princes and of people, and have prepared them
for opinions which they represented as essential to the glory of
divinity and to the happiness of empires. We have seen, a thousand
times, in all parts of our globe, infuriated fanatics slaughtering each
other, lighting the funeral piles, committing without scruple, as a
matter of duty, the greatest crimes. Why? To maintain or to propagate
the impertinent conjectures of enthusiasts, or to sanction the knaveries
of impostors on account of a being who exists only in their imagination,
and who is known only by the ravages, the disputes, and the follies
which he has caused upon the earth.

Originally, savage nations, ferocious, perpetually at war, adored, under
various names, some God conformed to their ideas; that is to say, cruel,
carnivorous, selfish, greedy of blood. We find in all the religions of
the earth a God of armies, a jealous God, an avenging God, an
exterminating God, a God who enjoys carnage and whose worshipers make it
a duty to serve him to his taste. Lambs, bulls, children, men, heretics,