bout it. Have brutes souls? The Carthusian assures you
that they are machines. But do we not see them act, feel, and think in a
manner which resembles that of men? This is a pure illusion, you say.
But why do you deprive the brutes of souls, which, without understanding
it, you attribute to men? It is that the souls of the brutes would
embarrass our theologians, who, content with the power of frightening
and damning the immortal souls of men, do not take the same interest in
damning those of the brutes. Such are the puerile solutions which
philosophy, always guided by the leading-strings of theology, was
obliged to bring forth to explain the problems of the physical and moral
world.

CCIII.--HOW THEOLOGY HAS FETTERED HUMAN MORALS AND RETARDED THE PROGRESS
OF ENLIGHTENMENT, OF REASON, AND OF TRUTH.

How many subterfuges and mental gymnastics all the ancient and modern
thinkers have employed, in order to avoid falling out with the ministers
of the Gods, who in all ages were the true tyrants of thought! How
Descartes, Malebranche, Leibnitz, and many others have been compelled to
invent hypotheses and evasions in order to reconcile their discoveries
with the reveries and the blunders which religion had rendered sacred!
With what prevarications have not the greatest philosophers guarded
themselves even at the risk of being absurd, inconsistent, and
unintelligible whenever their ideas did not correspond with the
principles of theology! Vigilant priests were always ready to extinguish
systems which could not be made to tally with their interests. Theology
in every age has been the bed of Procrustes upon which this brigand
extended his victims; he cut off the limbs when they were too long, or
stretched them by horses when they were shorter than the bed upon which
he placed them.

What sensible man who has a love for science, and is interested in the
welfare of humanity, can reflect without sorrow and pain upon the loss
of so many profound, laborious, and subtle heads, who, for many
centuries, have foolishly exhausted themselves upon idle fancies that
proved to be injurious to our race? What light could have been thrown
into the minds of many famous thinkers, if, instead of occupying
themselves with a useless theology, and its impertinent disputes, they
had turned their attention upon intelligible and truly important
objects. Half of the efforts that it cost the genius that was able to
forge their religious opinions, ha