15. The object of the first legislators was to govern the people;
and the easiest method to effect it was to terrify their minds, and
to prevent the exercise of reason. They led them through winding
bye-paths, lest they might perceive the designs of their guides;
they forced them to fix their eyes in the air, for fear they should
look at their feet; they amused them on the way with idle stories;
in a word, they treated them as nurses do children, who sing lullabies,
to put them to sleep, and scold, to make them quiet.


16. The existence of a God is the basis of all religion. Few appear
to doubt his existence; yet this fundamental article utterly embarrasses
every mind that reasons. The first question of every catechism has been,
and ever will be, the most difficult to resolve. (In the year 1701,
the holy fathers of the oratory of Vendome maintained in a thesis,
this proposition--that, according to St. Thomas, the existence of God
is not, and cannot be, a subject of faith.)


17. Can we imagine ourselves sincerely convinced of the existence
of a being, whose nature we know not; who is inaccessible to all
our senses; whose attributes, we are assured, are incomprehensible
to us? To persuade me that a being exists or can exist, I must be
first told what that being is. To induce me to believe the existence
or the possibility of such a being, it is necessary to tell me things
concerning him that are not contradictory, and do not destroy one another.
In short, to fully convince me of the existence of that being, it is
necessary to tell me things that I can understand.