their god had a bodily shape. Indeed it is very difficult, if not
impossible to prevent man from making himself the sole model of his
divinity. Montaigne says "man is not able to be other than he is, nor
imagine but after his capacity; let him take what pains he may, he will
never have a knowledge of any soul but his own." Xenophanes said, "if
the ox or the elephant understood either sculpture or painting, they
would not fail to represent the divinity under their own peculiar figure
that in this, they would have as much reason as Polyclitus or Phidias,
who gave him the human form." It was said to a very celebrated man that
"God made man after his own image;" "man has returned the compliment,"
replied the philosopher. Indeed, man generally sees in his God, nothing
but a man. Let him subtilize as he will, let him extend his own powers
as he may, let him swell his own perfections to the utmost, he will have
done nothing more than make a gigantic, exaggerated man, whom he will
render illusory by dint of heaping together incompatible qualities. He
will never see in such a god, but a being of the human species, in whom
he will strive to aggrandize the proportions, until he has formed a
being totally inconceivable. It is according to these dispositions that
he attributes intelligence, wisdom, goodness, justice, science, power,
to his divinity, because he is himself intelligent; because he has the
idea of wisdom in some beings of his own species; because he loves to
find in them ideas favourable to himself: because he esteems those who
display equity; because he has a knowledge, which he holds more
extensive in some individuals than himself; in short, because he enjoys
certain faculties which depend on his own organization. He presently
extends or exaggerates all these qualities in forming his god; the sight
of the phenomena of nature, which he feels he is himself incapable of
either producing or imitating, obliges him to make this difference
between the being he pourtrays and himself; but he knows not at what
point to stop; he fears lest he should deceive himself, if he should see