superstition, that he reared the _altars of a Jupiter, the temples of an
Apollo_.

If the ignorance of nature gave birth to such a variety of gods, the
knowledge of this nature is calculated to destroy them. As soon as man
becomes enlightened, his powers augment, his resources increase in a
ratio with his knowledge; the sciences, the protecting arts, industrious
application, furnish him assistance; experience encourages his progress,
truth procures for him the means of resisting the efforts of many
causes, which cease to alarm him as soon as he obtains a correct
knowledge of them. In a word, his terrors dissipate in proportion as his
mind becomes enlightened, because his trepidation is ever commensurate
with his ignorance, and furnishes this great lesson, that _man,
instructed by truth, ceases to be superstitious_.





CHAP. II.

_Of Mythology, and Theology_.


The elements of nature were, as we have shewn, the first divinities of
man; he has generally commenced with adoring material beings; each
individual, as we have already said, as may be still seen in savage
nations, made to himself a particular god, of some physical object,
which he supposed to be the cause of those events, in which he was
himself interested; he never wandered to seek out of visible nature, the