reason. That reason is enlightened only by our senses. What they do
not tell us we cannot know, and it is mere folly to waste time in
conjecturing. Imagination and feeling are blind leaders of the
blind. All men who pretend to supernatural revelation or inspiration
are swindlers, and those who believe them are dupes. It may be
desirable, for political or social purposes, to have a favored
religion in the state, but freedom of opinion and of expression should
be allowed to all men, at least to all educated men; for the populace,
with their crude ideas and superstitions, may be held in slight
regard.

Voltaire's hatred was especially warm against the regular clergy.
"Religion," he says, "can still sharpen daggers. There is within the
nation a people which has no dealings with honest folk, which does not
belong to the age, which is inaccessible to the progress of reason, and
over which the atrocity of fanaticism preserves its empire, like certain
diseases which attack only the vilest populace." The best monks are the
worst, and those who sing "Pervigilium Veneris" in place of matins are
less dangerous than such as reason, preach, and plot. And in another
place he says that "a religious order should not a part of history." But
it is well to notice that Voltaire's hatred of Catholicism and of
Catholic monks is not founded on a preference for any other church. He
thinks that theocracy must have been universal among early tribes, "for
as soon as a nation has chosen a tutelary god, that god has priests.
These priests govern the spirit of the nation; they can govern only in
the name of their god, so they make him speak continually; they set
forth his oracles, and all things are done by God's express commands."
From this cause come human sacrifices and the most atrocious tyranny;
and the more divine such a government calls itself, the more abominable
it is.