ow its first rudiments. Obscure or
false in its principles, mingled with fictions and fables, solely made
to seduce imagination, this philosophy progressed but waveringly, and
instead of enlightening the mind, it blinded it, and turned it away from
useful objects. The theological speculations and mystical reveries of
the ancients have, even in our days, the making of the law in a great
part of the philosophical world. Adopted by modern theology, we can
scarcely deviate from them without heresy; they entertain us with aerial
beings, with spirits, angels, demons, genii, and other phantoms, which
are the object of the meditations of our most profound thinkers, and
which serve as a basis to metaphysics, an abstract and futile science,
upon which the greatest geniuses have vainly exercised themselves for
thousands of years. Thus hypotheses, invented by a few visionists of
Memphis and of Babylon, continue to be the basis of a science revered
for the obscurity which makes it pass as marvelous and Divine. The first
legislators of nations were priests; the first mythologists and poets
were priests; the first philosophers were priests; the first physicians
were priests. In their hands science became a sacred thing, prohibited
to the profane; they spoke only by allegories, emblems, enigmas, and
ambiguous oracles--means well-suited to excite curiosity, to put to work
the imagination, and especially to inspire in the ignorant man a holy
respect for those whom he believed instructed by Heaven, capable of
reading the destinies of earth, and who boldly pretended to be the
organs of Divinity.

CC.--ALL RELIGIONS, ANCIENT AND MODERN, HAVE MUTUALLY BORROWED THEIR
ABSTRACT REVERIES AND THEIR RIDICULOUS PRACTICES.

The religions of these ancient priests have disappeared, or, rather,
they have changed their form. Although our modern theologians regard the
ancient priests as impostors, they have taken care to gather up the
scattered fragments of their religious systems, the whole of which does
not exist any longer for us; we will find in our modern religions, not
only the metaphysical dogmas which theology has but dressed in another
form, but we still find remarkable remains of their superstitious
practices, of their theurgy, of their magic, of their enchantments.

Christians are still commanded to regard with respect the monuments of
the legislators, the priests, and the prophets of the Hebrew religion,
which, according to appearance