t the sun shines, that the whole is
greater than any one of its parts, that Justice is a benefaction, that
we must be benevolent to deserve the love of men, that injustice and
cruelty are incompatible with goodness. Do they agree in the same way if
they speak of God? All that they think or say of Him is immediately
contradicted by the effects which they wish to attribute to Him. Tell
several artists to paint a chimera, each of them will form different
ideas of it, and will paint it differently; you will find no resemblance
in the features each of them will have given to a portrait whose model
exists nowhere. In painting God, do any of the theologians of the world
represent Him otherwise than as a great chimera, upon whose features
they never agree, each one arranging it according to his style, which
has its origin but in his own brain? There are no two individuals in the
world who have or can have the same ideas of their God.

CXXIII.--SKEPTICISM IN THE MATTER OF RELIGION, CAN BE THE EFFECT OF BUT A
SUPERFICIAL EXAMINATION OF THEOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES.

Perhaps it would be more truthful to say, that all men are either
skeptics or atheists, than to pretend that they are firmly convinced of
the existence of a God. How can we be assured of the existence of a
being whom we never have been able to examine, of whom it is impossible
to form any permanent idea, whose different effects upon ourselves
prevent us from forming an invariable judgment, of whom no idea can be
uniform in two different brains? How can we claim to be completely
persuaded of the existence of a being to whom we are constantly obliged
to attribute a conduct opposed co the ideas which we had tried to form
of it? Is it possible firmly to believe what we can not conceive? In
believing thus, are we not adhering to the opinions of others without
having one of our own? The priests regulate the belief of the vulgar;
but do not these priests themselves acknowledge that God is
incomprehensible to them? Let us conclude, then, that the conviction of
the existence of a God is not as general as it is affirmed to be.

To be a skeptic, is to lack the motives necessary to establish a
judgment. In view of the proofs which seem to establish, and of the
arguments which combat the existence of a God, some persons prefer to
doubt and to suspend their judgment; but at the bottom, this uncertainty
is the result of an insufficient examination. Is it, then, possible to
doubt e