s, and the first men found the universe crowded with innumerable
Gods.

"In like manner the ideas of the divinity having bad for motors the
affections of the human heart, they underwent an order of division
calculated from the sensations of pair: and pleasure, of love and
hatred: the powers of nature, the Gods, the genii, were classed into
benign and maleficent, into good and evil ones: and this constitutes the
universality of these two ideas in every system of religion.

"These ideas, analogous to the condition of their inventors, were for
a long time confused and cross. Wandering in woods, beset with wants,
destitute of resources, men in their savage state had no leisure to make
comparisons and draw conclusions. Suffering more ills than they tasted
enjoyments, their most habitual sentiment was fear, their theology
terror, their worship was confined to certain modes of salutation,
of offerings which they presented to beings whom they supposed to be
ferocious and greedy like themselves. In their state of equality and
independence, no one took upon him the office of mediator with Gods
as insubordinate and poor as himself. No one having any superfluity
to dispose of, there existed no parasite under the name of priest, nor
tribute under the name of victim, nor empire under the name of
altar; their dogmas and morality, jumbled together, were only
self-preservation; and their religion, an arbitrary idea without
influence on the mutual relations existing between men, was but a vain
homage paid to the visible powers of nature.

"Such was the first and necessary origin of every idea of the
divinity...."

"In reality, when the vulgar heard others talk of a new heaven and
another world, they gave a body to these fictions; they erected on it
a solid stage and real scenes; and their notions of geography and
astronomy served to strengthen, if they did not give rise to the delusion.

"On the one hand, the Phoenician navigators, those who passed the
pillars of Hercules to fetch the pewter of Thule and the amber of the
Baltic, related that at the extremity of the world, the boundaries of
the ocean (the Mediterranean,) where the sun sets to the countries of
Asia, there were Fortunate Islands, the abode of an everlasting spring;
and at a farther distance, hyperborean regions, placed under the earth
(relatively to the tropics,) where reigned an eternal night. From
those stories, badly understood, and no doubt confusedly related, the