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The System of Nature, Volume 2 by baron d' Paul Henri Thiry Holbach
page 21 of 423 (04%)
progenitors. These systems, so ruinous in their principles, have been
variously modified by the human mind, of which it is the essence, to
labour incessantly on unknown objects; it always, commences by attaching
to these, a very first-rate importance, which it afterwards never dares
coolly to examine.

Such was the course of man's imagination, in the successive ideas which
he either formed to himself, or which he received from his fathers, upon
the divinity. The first theology of man was grounded on fear, modelled
by ignorance: either afflicted or benefitted by the elements, he adored
these elements themselves; by a parity of reasoning, if reasoning it can
be called, he extended his reverence to every material, coarse object;
he afterwards rendered his homage to the agents he supposed presiding
over these elements; to powerful genii; to inferior genii; to heroes; to
men endowed with either great or striking qualities. Time, aided by
reflection, with here and there a slight corruscation of truth, induced
him in some places to relinquish his original ideas; he believed he
simplified the thing by lessening the number of his gods, but he
achieved nothing by this towards attaining to the truth; in recurring
from cause to cause man finished by losing sight of every thing; in this
obscurity, in this dark abyss, his mind still laboured, he formed new
chimeras, he made new gods, or rather he formed a very complex
machinery; still, as before, whenever he could not account for any
phenomenon that struck his sight, he was unwilling to ascribe it to
physical causes; and the name of his Divinity, whatever that might
happen to be, was always brought in to supply his own ignorance of
natural causes.

If a faithful account was rendered of man's ideas upon the Divinity, he
would be obliged to acknowledge, that for the most part the word _Gods_
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