unishments of another
life,--or the pleasures of the heaven, of which nobody has the least
idea,--is not this combating realities with fictions? Men have never any
but confused ideas of their God: they see him only in clouds. They
never think of him when they are desirous to do evil: whenever ambition,
fortune, or pleasure allures them, God's threatenings and promises are
forgotten. In the things of this life, there is a degree of certainty,
which the most lively faith cannot give to the things of another life.

Every religion was originally a curb invented by legislators, who wished
to establish their authority over the minds of rude nations. Like nurses
who frighten children to oblige them to be quiet, the ambitious used the
name of the gods to frighten savages; and had recourse to terror in order
to make them support quietly the yoke they wished to impose. Are then the
bugbears of infancy made for riper age? At the age of maturity, no man
longer believes them, or if he does, they excite little emotion in him,
and never alter his conduct.

142.

Almost every man fears what he sees much more than what he does not see;
he fears the judgments of men of which he feels the effects, more than
the judgments of God of whom he has only fluctuating ideas. The desire
of pleasing the world, the force of custom, the fear of ridicule, and
of censure, have more force than all religious opinions. Does not the
soldier, through fear of disgrace, daily expose his life in battle, even
at the risk of incurring eternal damnation?

The most religious persons have often more respect for a varlet, than for
God. A man who firmly believes, that God sees every thing, and that he is
omniscient and omnipresent, will be guilty, when alone, of actions,
which he would never do in presence of the meanest of mortals. Those,
who pretend to be the most fully convinced of the existence of God, every
moment act as if they believed the contrary.

143.

"Let us, at least," it will be said, "cherish the idea of a God, which
alone may serve as a barrier to the passions of kings." But, can we
sincerely admire the wonderful effects, which the fear of this God
generally produces upon the minds of princes, who are called his images?
What idea shall we form of the original, if we judge of it by the copies!

Sovereigns, it is true, call themselves the representatives of God, his
vicegerents upon earth. But does the fear of a master, more powerful