worst religion, the extravagant dogma always in some fashion proclaims
a supreme architect.--Religions and communities, accordingly,
disintegrated under the investigating process, disclose at the bottom
of the crucible, some residue of truth, others a residue of justice, a
small but precious balance, a sort of gold ingot of preserved tradition,
purified by Reason, and which little by little, freed from its alloys,
elaborated and devoted to all usage, must solely provide the substance
of religion and all threads of the social warp.

V. The Dream Of A Return To Nature.

The second stage, a return to nature.--Diderot, d'Holbach
and the materialists.--Theory of animated matter and
spontaneous organization.--The moral of animal instinct and
self-interest properly understood.

Here begins the second philosophic expedition. It consists of two
armies: the first composed of the encyclopedists, some of them skeptics
like d'Alembert, others pantheists like Diderot and Lamarck, the second
open atheists and materialists like d'Holbach, Lamettrie and Helvetius,
and later Condorcet, Lalande and Volney, all different and independent
of each other, but unanimous in regarding tradition as the common enemy.
As a result of prolonged hostilities the parties become increasingly
exasperated and feel a desire to be master of everything, to push the
adversary to the wall, to drive him out of all his positions. They
refuse to admit that Reason and tradition can occupy and defend the
same citadel together; as soon as one enters the other must depart;
henceforth one prejudice is established against another prejudice.--In
fact, Voltaire, "the patriarch, does not desire to abandon his redeeming
and avenging God;"[3313] let us tolerate in him this remnant of
superstition on account of his great services; let us nevertheless
examine this phantom in man which he regards with infantile vision. We
admit it into our minds through faith, and faith is always suspicious.
It is forged by ignorance, fear, and imagination, which are all
deceptive powers. At first it was simply the fetish of savages; in
vain have we striven to purify and aggrandize it; its origin is always
apparent; its history is that of a hereditary dream which, arising in
a rude and doting brain, prolongs itself from generation to generation,
and still lasts in the healthy and cultivated brain. Voltaire wanted
that this dream should be true because, otherwise, he c