All religious nations are founded solely on authority; all the religions of the
world forbid examination and do not want one to reason; authority wants one to 
believe in God; this God is himself founded only on the authority of a few men 
who pretend to know him, and to come in his name and announce him on earth. A 
God made by man undoubtedly has need of man to make himself known to man.

Should it not, then, be for the priests, the inspired, the metaphysicians that 
should be reserved the conviction of the existence of a God, which they, 
nevertheless, say is so necessary for all mankind? But Can you find any 
harmony in the theological opinions of the different inspired ones or 
thinkers scattered over the earth? They themselves, who make a profession 
of adoring the same God, are they in Agreement? Are they content with the 
proofs that their colleagues bring of his existence? Do they subscribe 
unanimously to the ideas they present on nature, on his conduct, on the 
manner of understanding his pretended oracles? Is there a country on earth 
where the science of God is really perfect? Has this science anywhere taken 
the consistency and uniformity that we the see the science of man assume, 
even in the most futile crafts, the most despised trades. These words mind 
immateriality, creation, predestination and grace; this mass of subtle 
distinctions with which theology to everywhere filled; these so ingenious 
inventions, imagined by thinkers who have succeeded one another for so many 
centuries, have only, alas! confused things all the more, and never has man's 
most necessary science, up to this time acquired the slightest fixity. For 
thousands of years the lazy dreamers have perpetually relieved one another to 
meditate on the Divinity, to divine his secret will, to invent the proper 
hypothesis to develop this important enigma. Their slight success has not 
discouraged the theological vanity: one always speaks of God: one has his
throat cut for God: and this sublime being still remains the most unknown and
the most discussed.

All religious nations are founded solely on authority; all the religions of 
the world forbid examination and do not want one to reason; authority wants 
one to believe in God; this God is himself founded only on the authority of 
a few men who pretend to know him, and to come in his name and announce him 
on earth. A God made by man undoubtedly has need of man to make himself known 
to Man would have been too happy, if, limiting himself to the visible objects 
which interested him, he had employed, to perfect his real sciences, his laws, 
his morals, his education, one-half the efforts he has put into his researches 
on the Divinity. He would have been still wiser and still more fortunate if he
had been satisfied to let his jobless guides quarrel among themselves, 
sounding depths capable of rendering them dizzy, without himself mixing in 
their senseless disputes.s. But it is the essence of ignorance to attach 
importance to that which it does not understand. Human vanity is so 
constituted that it stiffens before difficulties. The more an object conceals 
itself from our eyes, the greater the effort we make to seize it, because it 
pricks our pride, it excites our curiosity and it appears interesting. In 
fighting for his God everyone, in fact, fights only for the interests of his 
own vanity, which, of all the passions produced by the mal-organization of 
society, is the quickest to take offense, and the most capable of committing 
the greatest follies. 

If, leaving for a moment the annoying idea that theology gives of a capricious 
God, whose partial and despotic decrees decide the fate of mankind, we wish to 
fix our eyes only on the pretended goodness, which all men, even trembling 
before this God, agree is ascribing to him, if we allow him the purpose that 
is lent him of having worked only for his own glory, of exacting the homage of
intelligent beings; of seeking only in his works the well-being of mankind; 
how reconcile these views and these dispositions with the ignorance truly 
invincible in which this God, so glorious and so good, leaves the majority of 
mankind in regard to God himself? If God wishes to be known, cherished, thanked,
why does he not show himself under his favorable features to all these 
intelligent beings by whom he wishes to be loved and adored? Why not manifest 
himself to the whole earth in an unequivocal manner, much more capable of 
convincing us than these private revelations which seem to accuse the Divinity 
of an annoying partiality for some of his creatures? The all-powerful, should 
he not heave more convincing means by which to show man than these ridiculous 
metamorphoses, these pretended incarnations, which are attested by writers so 
little in agreement among themselves? In place of so many miracles, invented 
to prove the divine mission of so many legislators revered by the different 
people of the world, the Sovereign of these spirits, could he not convince 
the human mind in an instant of the things he wished to make known to it? 
Instead of hanging the sun in the vault of the firmament, instead of 
scattering stars without order, and the constellations which fill space, 
would it not have been more in conformity with the views of a God so 
jealous of his glory and so well-intentioned for mankind, to write, in a 
manner not subject to dispute, his name, his attributes, his permanent 
wishes in ineffaceable characters, equally understandable to all the 
inhabitants of the earth? No one would then be able to doubt the existence 
of God, of his clear will, of his visible intentions. Under the eyes of 
this so terrible God no one would have the audacity to violate his commands,
no mortal would dare risk attracting his anger: finally, no man would have 
the effrontery to impose on his name or to interpret his will according to 
his own fancy.

In fact, even while admitting the existence of the theological God, and the 
reality of his so discordant attributes which they impute to him, one can 
conclude nothing to authorize the conduct or the cult which one is prescribed 
to render him. Theology is truly the sieve of the Danaides. By dint of 
contradictory qualities and hazarded assertions it has, that is to say, so 
handicapped its God that it has made it impossible for him to act. If he is 
infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely 
wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why 
warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, 
why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the 
creatures that he has, filled with weaknesses? If grace does everything for 
them, what reason would he have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, 
how offend him, how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at 
the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If he is 
immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees? If he 
is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? IF HE HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS 
THE UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED? If the knowledge of a God is the most necessary,
why is it not the most evident and the clearest. -- Systeme de la Nature. 
London, 1781.

The enlightened and benevolent Pliny thus Publicly professes himself an 
atheist, -- Quapropter effigiem Del formamque quaerere imbecillitatis humanae 
reor. Quisquis est Deus (si modo est alius) et quacunque in parte, totus est 
gensus, totus est visus, totus auditus, totus animae, totus animi, 
totus sul. ... Imperfectae vero in homine naturae praecipua solatia, 
ne deum quidem omnia. Namque nec sibi protest mortem consciscere, si velit, 
quod homini dedit optimum in tantis vitae poenis; nee mortales aeternitate 
donare, aut revocare defunctos; nec facere ut qui vixit non vixerit, qui 
honores gessit non gesserit, nullumque habere In praeteritum ius praeterquam 
oblivionts, atque (ut. facetis quoque argumentis societas haec cum, deo 
compuletur) ut bis dena viginti non sint, et multa similiter efficere non 
posse. -- Per quaedeclaratur haud dubie naturae potentiam id quoque ease 
quod Deum vocamus. -- Plin. Nat. Hist. cap. de Deo.

The consistent Newtonian is necessarily an atheist. See Sir W. Drummond's 
Academical Questions, chap. iii. -- Sir W. seems to consider the atheism to 
which it leads as a sufficient presumption of the falsehood of the system of 
gravitation; but surely it is more consistent with the good faith of 
philosophy to admit a deduction from facts than an hypothesis incapable of 
proof, although it might militate, with the obstinate preconceptions of the 
mob. Had this author, instead of inveighing against the guilt and absurdity 
of atheism, demonstrated its falsehood, his conduct would have, been more 
suited to the modesty of the skeptic and the toleration of the philosopher. 

Omnia enim per Dei potentiam facta aunt: imo quia naturae potentia nulla est 
nisi ipsa Dei potentia. Certum est nos eatenus Dei potentiam non intelligere, 
quatenus causas naturales ignoramus; adeoque stulte ad eandem Dei potentism 
recurritur, quando rei alicuius causam naturalem, sive est, ipsam Dei 
potentiam ignoramusd -- Spinoza, Tract. Theologico-Pol. chap 1. P. 14.

ON LIFE

Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an 
astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of 
our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its transient 
modifications, but it is itself the great miracle. What are changes of 
empires, the wreck of dynasties, with the opinions which support them; what 
is the birth and the extinction of religious and of political systems, to 
life? What are the revolutions of the globe which we inhabit, and the 
operations of the elements of which it is composed, compared with life? What 
is the universe of stars, and suns, of which this inhabited earth is one, and 
their motions, and their destiny, compared with life? Life, the great miracle, 
we admire not because it is so miraculous. It is well that we are thus 
shielded by the familiarity of what is at once so certain and so unfathomable, 
from an astonishment which would otherwise absorb and overawe the functions 
of that which is its object.

If any artist, I do not say had executed, but had merely conceived in his mind 
the system of the sun, and the stars, and planets, they not existing, and had 
painted to us in words, or upon canvas, the spectacle now afforded by the 
nightly cope of heaven, and illustrated it by the wisdom of astronomy, great 
would be our admiration. Or had he imagined the scenery of this earth, the 
mountains, the seas, and the rivers; the grass, and the flowers, and the 
variety of the forms and masses of the leaves of the woods, and the colors 
which attend the setting and the rising sun, and the hues of the atmosphere, 
turbid or serene, these things not before existing, truly we should have been 
astonished, and it would not have been a vain boast to have said of such a 
man, "Non merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio ed il Poeta." But how these 
things are looked on with little wonder, and to be conscious of them with 
intense delight is esteemed to be the distinguishing mark of a refined and 
extraordinary person. The multitude of men care not for them. It is thus 
with Life -- that which includes all.

What is life? Thoughts and feelings arise, with or without, our will, and we 
employ words to express them. We are born, and our birth is unremembered, and 
our infancy remembered but in fragments; we live on, and in living we lose the 
apprehension of life. How vain is it to think that words can penetrate the 
mystery of our being! Rightly used they may make evident our ignorance to 
ourselves; and this is much. For what are we? Whence do we come? and whither 
do we go? Is birth the commencement, is death the conclusion of our being? 
What is birth and death?

The most refined abstractions of logic conduct to a view of life, which, though
startling to the apprehension, is, in fact, that which the habitual sense of 
its repeated combinations has extinguished in us. It strips, as it were, the 
painted curtain from this scene of things. I confess that I am one of those 
who am unable to refuse my assent to the conclusion of those philosophers who 
assert that nothing exists but as it is perceived.

It is a decision against which all our persuasions struggle, and we must be 
long convicted before we can be convinced that the solid universe of external 
things is "such stuff as dreams are made of." The shocking absurdities of the 
popular philosophy of mind and matter, its fatal consequences in morals, and 
their violent dogmatism concerning the source of all things, had early 
conducted me to materialism. This materialism is a seducing system to young 
and superficial minds. It allows its disciples to talk, and dispenses them 
from thinking. But I was discontented with such a view of things as it 
afforded; man is a being of high aspirations, "looking both before and after,
" whose "thoughts wander through eternity," disclaiming alliance with 
transience and decay: incapable of imagining to himself annihilation; 
existing but in the future and the past; being, not what he is, but what he 
has been and all be. Whatever may be his true and final destination, there 
is a spirit within him at enmity with nothingness and dissolution. This is 
the character of all life and being. Each is at once the center and the
circumference; the point to which all things are referred, and the line in 
which all things are contained. Such contemplations as these, materialism 
and the popular philosophy of mind and matter alike they are only consistent 
with the intellectual system.

It is absurd to enter into a long recapitulation of arguments sufficiently 
familiar to those inquiring minds, whom alone a writer on abstruse subjects 
can be conceived to address. Perhaps the most clear and vigorous statement 
of the intellectual system is to be found in Sir William Drummond's Academical
Questions. After such an exposition, it would be idle to translate into other 
words what could only lose its energy and fitness by the change. Examined point
by point, and word by word, the most discriminating intellects have been able 
to discern no train of thoughts in the process of reasoning, which does not 
conduct inevitably to the conclusion which has been stated. 

What follows from the admission? It establishes no new truth, it gives us no 
additional insight into our hidden nature, neither its action nor itself: 
Philosophy, impatient as it may be to build, has much work yet remaining as 
pioneer for the overgrowth of ages. it makes one step towards this object; 
it destroys error, and the roots of error. It leaves, what it is too often the 
duty of the reformer in political and ethical questions to leave, a vacancy. 
It reduces the mind to that freedom in which it would have acted, but for 
the misuse of words and signs, the instruments of its own creation. By 
signs, I would be understood in a wide sense, including what is properly 
meant by that term, and what I peculiarly mean. In this latter sense, 
almost all familiar objects are signs, standing, not for themselves, but 
for others, in their capacity of suggesting one thought which shall lead 
to a train of thoughts. Our whole life is thus an education of error. 

Let us recollect our sensations as children. What a distinct and intense 
apprehension had we of the world and of ourselves! Many of the Circumstances 
of social life were then important to us which are now no longer so. But that 
is not the point of comparison on which I mean to insist. We less habitually 
distinguished all that we saw and felt, from ourselves. They seemed, as it 
were, to constitute one mass. There are some persons who, in this respect, 
are always children. Those who are subject to the state called reverie, feel 
as if their nature were dissolved into the surrounding universe, or as if the 
surrounding universe were absorbed into their being. They are conscious of no 
distinction. And these are states which precede, or accompany, or follow an 
unusually intense and vivid apprehension of life. As men grow up this power 
commonly decays, and they become mechanical and habitual agents. Thus feelings
and then reasoning are the combined result of a multitude of entangled 
thoughts, and of a series of what are called impressions, planted by 
reiteration.

The view of life presented by the most refined deductions of the intellectual 
philosophy, to that of unity. Nothing exists but as it is perceived. The 
difference is merely nominal between those two classes of thought which are 
distinguished by the names of ideas and of external objects. Pursuing the 
same thread of reasoning, the existence of distinct individual minds, similar 
to that which is employed in now questioning its own nature, is likewise found
to be a delusion. The words, I, you, they, are not signs of any actual 
difference subsisting between the assemblage of thoughts thus indicated, but 
are merely marks employed to denote the different modifications of the one 
mind.

Let it not be supposed that this doctrine conducts the monstrous presumption 
that I, the person who now write and think, am that one mind. I am but a 
portion of it. The words I, and you, and they are grammatical devices invented
simply for arrangement, and totally devoid of the intense and exclusive sense 
usually attached to them. It is difficult to find terms adequate to express so 
subtle a conception as that to which the Intellectual Philosophy has conducted 
us. We are on that verge where words abandon us, and what wonder if we grow 
dizzy to look down the dark abyss of how little we know!

The relations of things remain unchanged, by whatever system. By the word 
things is to be understood any object of thought, that is, any thought upon 
which any other thought is employed, with an apprehension of distinction. The 
relations of these remain unchanged; and such is the material of our knowledge.

What is the cause of life? That is, how was it produced, or what agencies 
distinct from life have acted or act upon life? All recorded generations of 
mankind have wearily busied themselves in inventing answers to this question; 
and the result has been -- Religion. Yet that the basis of all things cannot 
be, as the popular philosophy alleges, mind, is sufficiently evident. Mind, 
as far as we have any experience of its properties -- and beyond that 
experience how vain is argument! -- cannot create, it can only perceive. It 
is said also to be the cause. But cause is only a word expressing a certain 
state of the human mind with regard to the manner in which two thoughts are 
apprehended to be related to each other. If anyone desires to know how 
unsatisfactorily the popular philosophy employs itself upon this great 
question, they need only impartially reflect upon the manner in which 
thoughts develop themselves in their minds. It is infinitely improbable 
that the cause of mind, that is, of existence, is similar to mind. 
END****************************************************************************