STENCE OF A GOD IS NOT NECESSARY TO
MORALITY.

We are constantly told that without a God, there can be no moral
obligation; that it is necessary for men and for the sovereigns
themselves to have a lawgiver sufficiently powerful to compel them to be
moral; moral obligation implies a law; but this law arises from the
eternal and necessary relations of things among themselves, which have
nothing in common with the existence of a God. The rules which govern
men's conduct spring from their own nature, which they are supposed to
know, and not from the Divine nature, of which they have no conception;
these rules compel us to render ourselves estimable or contemptible,
amiable or hateful, worthy of reward or of punishments, happy or
unhappy, according to the extent to which we observe them. The law that
compels man not to harm himself, is inherent in the nature of a sensible
being, who, no matter how he came into this world, or what can be his
fate in another, is compelled by his very nature to seek his welfare and
to shun evil, to love pleasure and to fear pain. The law which compels a
man not to harm others and to do good, is inherent in the nature of
sensible beings living in society, who, by their nature, are compelled
to despise those who do them no good, and to detest those who oppose
their happiness. Whether there exists a God or not, whether this God has
spoken or not, men's moral duties will always be the same so long as
they possess their own nature; that is to say, so long as they are
sensible beings. Do men need a God whom they do not know, or an
invisible lawgiver, or a mysterious religion, or chimerical fears in
order to comprehend that all excess tends ultimately to destroy them,
and that in order to preserve themselves they must abstain from it; that
in order to be loved by others, they must do good; that doing evil is a
sure means of incurring their hatred and vengeance? "Before the law
there was no sin." Nothing is more false than this maxim. It is enough
for a man to be what he is, to be a sensible being in order to
distinguish that which pleases or displeases him. It is enough that a
man knows that another man is a sensible being like himself, in order
for him to know what is useful or injurious to him. It is enough that
man needs his fellow-creature, in order that he should fear that he
might produce unfavorable impressions upon him. Thus a sentient and
thinking being needs but to feel and to think, in orde