oire religieuse_, 1857. The
author has manifested better sentiments in 1859, in the preface to his
_Essais de morale et de critique._

[36] _De Legibus_, ii. 7.

[37]

Dors-tu content, Voltaire, et ton hideux sourire
Voltige-t-il encor sur tes os decharnes?

[38] Hume, Essay VIII. On liberty and necessity. [Not having access to
the original, I re-translate the French translation.--TR.]

[39] Vacherot, _La metaphysique et la science_. Preface, p. xxix.

LECTURE III.

_THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM._

(At Geneva, 24th Nov. 1863.--At Lausanne, 18th Jan. 1864.)

GENTLEMEN,

The subject of the present Lecture will be--The revival of Atheism. And
I do not employ the word 'atheism'--a term which has been so greatly
abused--without mature reflection. When Socrates opposed the idea of the
holy God to the impure idols of paganism; when he dethroned Jupiter and
his train in order to celebrate "the supreme God, who made and who
guides the world, who maintains the works of creation in the flower of
youth, and in a vigor always new,"[40] they accused Socrates of being an
atheist. Descartes, the great geometrician who proclaimed the existence
of God more certain than any theorem of geometry, has been denounced as
an atheist. When men began to forsake the temples of idols in order to
worship the unknown God who had just manifested Himself to the world,
the Christians were accused of atheism because they refused to bow down
to wood and stone. Such abuses might dispose one to renounce the use of
the word. Besides, when a word has been for a long time the signal of
persecution and the forerunner of death, one hesitates to employ it. In
an age when atheists were burned, generous minds would use their best
efforts to prove that men suspected of atheism had not denied God,
because they would not have been understood had they attempted to
say--"They have denied God perhaps, but that is no reason for killing
them." Thence arose the sophistical apologies for certain doctrines,
apologies made with a good intention, but which trouble the sincerity of
history. These are the brands of servitude, which must disappear where
liberty prevails. We are able now to call things by their proper names,
for there exist no longer for atheism either stakes or prisons. In
affirming that certain writers, some of whom are just now the favorites
of fame, are shaking the foundations of all religion, one exposes no
one to severities which have