e unfortunate victims of
His eternal fury. Those who find the idea of another life so flattering
and so sweet, have they then forgotten that this other life, according
to them, is to be accompanied by torments for the majority of mortals?
Is not the idea of total annihilation infinitely preferable to the idea
of an eternal existence accompanied with suffering and gnashing of
teeth? The fear of ceasing to exist, is it more afflicting than the
thought of having not always been? The fear of ceasing to be is but an
evil for the imagination, which alone brought forth the dogma of another
life.

You say, O Christian philosophers, that the idea of a happier life is
delightful; we agree; there is no one who would not desire a more
agreeable and a more durable existence than the one we enjoy here below.
But, if Paradise is tempting, you will admit, also, that hell is
frightful. It is very difficult to merit heaven, and very easy to gain
hell. Do you not say that one straight and narrow path leads to the
happy regions, and that a broad road leads to the regions of the
unhappy? Do you not constantly tell us that the number of the chosen
ones is very small, and that of the damned is very large? Do we not
need, in order to be saved, such grace as your God grants to but few?
Well! I tell you that these ideas are by no means consoling; I prefer to
be annihilated at once rather than to burn forever; I will tell you that
the fate of beasts appears to me more desirable than the fate of the
damned; I will tell you that the belief which delivers me from
overwhelming fears in this world, appears to me more desirable than the
uncertainty in which I am left through belief in a God who, master of
His favors, gives them but to His favorites, and who permits all the
others to render themselves worthy of eternal punishments. It can be but
blind enthusiasm or folly that can prefer a system which evidently
encourages improbable conjectures, accompanied by uncertainty and
desolating fear.

CIX.--ALL RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLES ARE IMAGINARY. INNATE SENSE IS BUT THE
EFFECT OF A ROOTED HABIT. GOD IS AN IDLE FANCY, AND THE QUALITIES WHICH
ARE LAVISHED UPON HIM DESTROY EACH OTHER.

All religious principles are a thing of imagination, in which experience
and reason have nothing to do. We find much difficulty in conquering
them, because imagination, when once occupied in creating chimeras which
astonish or excite it, is incapable of reasoning. He who co