youth, and in a vigor always new,"[40] they accused Socrates of being an
atheist. Descartes, the great geometrician who proclaimed the existence
of God more certain than any theorem of geometry, has been denounced as
an atheist. When men began to forsake the temples of idols in order to
worship the unknown God who had just manifested Himself to the world,
the Christians were accused of atheism because they refused to bow down
to wood and stone. Such abuses might dispose one to renounce the use of
the word. Besides, when a word has been for a long time the signal of
persecution and the forerunner of death, one hesitates to employ it. In
an age when atheists were burned, generous minds would use their best
efforts to prove that men suspected of atheism had not denied God,
because they would not have been understood had they attempted to
say--"They have denied God perhaps, but that is no reason for killing
them." Thence arose the sophistical apologies for certain doctrines,
apologies made with a good intention, but which trouble the sincerity of
history. These are the brands of servitude, which must disappear where
liberty prevails. We are able now to call things by their proper names,
for there exist no longer for atheism either stakes or prisons. In
affirming that certain writers, some of whom are just now the favorites
of fame, are shaking the foundations of all religion, one exposes no
one to severities which have disappeared from our manners, one only
exposes oneself to the being taxed with intolerance and fanaticism. But
candor is here a duty. If this duty were not fulfilled, liberty of
thought would no longer be anything else than liberty of negation; and,
while truth was oppressed, error alone would be set free.

Let us settle clearly the terms of this discussion. It is often asserted
that an atheist does not exist. Does this mean that the lips which deny
God, always in some way contradict themselves? Does it mean that every
soul bears witness to God, perhaps unconsciously to itself, either by a