atheists can subsist." Here let us first their judgment on everything; the Epiobserve the enormous self-contradictions cureans were persuaded that the Divinity of men in disputation. Those who have could not meddle in human affairs, and been most violent in opposing the opinion in their hearts admitted no Divinity. of Bayle-those who have denied with They were convinced that the soul is not the greatest virulence the possibility of aa substance, but a faculty which is born society of atheists, are the very men who have since maintained with equal ardour that atheism is the religion of the Chinese government. and perishes with the body; consequently, they had no restraint but that of morality and honour. The Roman senators and knights were in reality atheists; for to They have most assuredly been mis-meň who neither feared nor hoped any taken concerning the government of China: they had only to read the edicts of the emperors of that vast country, and they would have seen that those edicts are sermons, in which a Supreme Being-governing, avenging, and rewarding-is continually spoken of, But, at the same time, they are no less deceived respecting the impossibility of a society of atheists; nor can I conceive how Bayle could forget a striking instance which might have rendered his cause victorious. thing from them, the gods could not exist. The Roman senate, then, in the time of Cæsar and Cicero, was in fact an assembly of atheists. That great orator, in his oration for Cluentius, says to the whole assembled senate:-"What does he lose by death? We reject all the silly fables about the infernal regions. What, then, can death take from him? Nothing, but the susceptibility of sorrow." Does not Cæsar, wishing to save the life of his friend Catiline, threatened by In what does the apparent impossibility the same Cicero, object, that to put a of a society of atheists consist? In this: criminal to death is not to punish himit is judged that men without some rethat death is nothing-that it is but the straint could not live together; that laws termination of our ills-a moment rather have no power against secret crimes; and fortunate than calamitous? Did not that it is necessary to have an avenging Cicero and the whole senate yield to this God-punishing, in this world or in the reasoning? The conquerors and legis next, such as escape human justice. The laws of Moses, it is true, did not teach the doctrine of a life to come, did not threaten with chastisements after death, nor even teach the primitive Jews the immortality of the soul; but the Jews, is more dangerous than atheism-whether far from being atheists, far from believing it is a greater crime not to believe in the that they could elude the divine venge- Divinity, than to have unworthy notions mce, were the most religious of men. of it: in this he thinks with PlutarchThey believed not only in the existence that it is better to have no opinion than a of an eternal God, but that he was always bad opinion; but, without offence to thevent among them; they trembled lest Plutarch, it was infinitely better that the their wives, their children, their posterity { Jupiter, than that they should fear nothing they should be punished in themselves, Greeks should fear Ceres, Neptune, and to the fourth generation. This was a very at all. It is clear that the sanctity of dently formed a society of men who feared lators of all the known world, then, evinothing from the gods, but were real atheists. Bayle next examines whether idolatry powerful check. But among the Gentiles, various sects had no restraint: the Sceptics doubted of will be punished, than those who think everything; the Academics suspended they may take a false oath with impunity. oaths is necessary; and that those are more to be trusted who think a false oath 21 It cannot be doubted that, in an organised { society, it is better to have even a bad religion than no religion at all. I should not wish to come in the way of an atheistical prince, whose interest it should be to have me pounded in a mortar: I am quite sure that I should be so pounded. Were I a sovereign, I would not have to do with atheistical courtiers, whose interest it was to poison me: Í should be under the necessity of taking an antidote every day. It is then absolutely necessary for princes and people, that the idea of a Supreme Being-creating, go profoundly engraven on their minds. It appears then that Bayle should rather have examined whether atheism or fanaticism is the most dangerous. Fanaticism is certainly a thousand times the most to be dreaded; for atheism inspires no sanguinary passion, but fanaticism does; atheism does not oppose crime, but fanaticism prompts to its commission. Let us suppose, with the author of the Com-verning, rewarding, and punishing-be mentarium Rerum Gallicarum, that the high-chancellor De l'Hôpital was an There are nations of atheists, says Bayle atheist he made none but wise laws; he in his Thoughts on Comets. The Cafrecommended only moderation and con- fres, the Hottentots, and many other small cord. The massacres of St. Bartholomew populations, have no god: they neither were committed by fanatics. Hobbes affirm nor deny that there is one; they passed for an atheist; yet he led a life of have never heard of him: tell them that innocence and quiet, while the fanatics of there is one, and they will easily believe his time deluged England, Scotland, and it; tell them that all is done by the naIreland, with blood. Spinosa was not ture of things, and they will believe you only an atheist he taught atheism; but just the same. To pretend that they are assuredly he had no part in the juridical { atheists, would be like saying they are assassination of Barneveldt; nor was it Anti-Cartesians. They are neither for he who tore in pieces the two brothers De Descartes nor against him; they are no Witt, and ate them off the gridiron. more than children: a child is neither atheist nor deist; he is nothing. Atheists are for the most part men of learning, bold but bewildered, who reason ill, and, unable to comprehend the creation, the origin of evil, and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis of the eternity of things and of necessity. The ambitious and the voluptuous have but little time to reason; they have other occupations than that of comparing Lucretius with Socrates. Such is the case with us and our time. From all this, what conclusion is to be drawn? That atheism is a most pernicious monster in those who govern; that it is the same in the men of their cabinet, since it may extend itself from the cabinet to those in office; that, although less to be dreaded than fanaticism, it is almost always fatal to virtue. And especially, let it be added, that there are fewer atheists now than ever-since philosophers It was otherwise with the Roman have become persuaded that there is no senate, which was composed almost en-vegetative being without a germ, no germ tirely of theoretical and practical atheists; {without a design, &c., and that the corn that is, believing neither in Providence { in our fields does not spring from rottennor in a future state; this senate was an ness. assembly of philosophers, men of plea- Unphilosophical geometricians have resure, and ambitious men, who were all jected final causes, but true philosophers very dangerous, and who ruined the com-admit them; and, as it is elsewhere obmonwealth. Under the emperors, Epi- } served, a catechist announces God to chilcureanism prevailed. The atheists of the dren, and Newton demonstrates them to senate had been factious in the times of the wise. Sylla and of Cæsar; in those of Augustus If there be atheists, who are to blame? and Tiberius, they were atheistical slaves. {who but the mercenary tyrants of our souls, who, white disgusting us with their kravery, urge some weak spirits to deny the God whom such monsters dishonour? How often have the people's bloodsuckers forced overburdened citizens to revolt against the king! the Divinity, when his only announcers disputed on his nature. Nearly all the first Fathers of the Church made God corporeal; and others, after them, giving him no extent, lodged him in a part of heaven. According to some, he had cre to others, he had created Time itself. Some gave him a son like to himself; others would not grant that the son was like to the father. It was also disputed in what way a third person proceeded from the other two. Men who have fattened on our sub-ated the world in Time; while, according stance, cry out to us :-Be persuaded that an ass spoke; believe that a fish swallowed a man, and threw him up three days after, safe and sound, on the shore: doubt; not that the God of the universe ordered one Jewish prophet to eat excrement; and another to buy two prostitutes, and It was agitated whether the son had have bastards by them:-such are the been, while on earth, composed of two words put into the mouth of the God of persons. So that the question undesignpurity and truth! Believe a hundrededly became, whether there were five perthings either visibly abominable or mathe-sons in the Divinity-three in heaven, matically impossible: otherwise the God and two for Jesus Christ upon earth; or of Mercy will burn you in hell-fire, not four persons, reckoning Christ upon earth only for millions of millions of ages, but as only one; or three persons, considerfor all eternity, whether you have a bodying Christ only as God. There were disor have not a body. putes about his mother, his descent into These brutal absurdities are revolting hell and into limbo; the manner in which to rash and weak minds, as well as to firm the body of the God-man was eaten, and and wise ones. They say-Our teachers the blood of the God-man was drunk; on represent God to us as the most insensate grace; on the saints, and a thousand other and barbarous of all beings; therefore, matters. When the confidants of the there is no God. But they ought to say, Divinity were seen so much at variance Our teachers represent God as furious among themselves, anathematising one and ridiculous, therefore God is the re-another from age to age, but all agreeing verse of what they describe him; he is as wise and good as they say he is foolish and wicked. Thus do the wise decide. But, if a fanatic hears them, he denounces them to a magistrate-a sort of priest's officer, which officer has them burned alive, thinking that he is therein imitating and avenging the Divine Majesty which he insults. ATHEIST. SECTION I. THERE were once many atheists among the Christians; they are now much fewer. It at first appears to be a paradox, but examination proves it to be a truth, that theology often threw men's minds into atheism, until philosophy at length drew them out of it. It must indeed have been pardonable to doubt of in an immoderate thirst for riches and grandeur-while on the other hand were beheld the prodigious number of crimes and miseries which afflicted the earth, and of which many were caused by the very disputes of these teachers of souls-it must be confessed that it was allowable for rational men to doubt the existence of a being so strangely announced, and for men of sense to imagine that a God, who I could of his own free will make so many beings miserable, did not exist. Suppose, for example, a natural philosopher of the fifteenth century, reading these words in St. Thomas's Dream :"Virtus cœli, loco spermatis, sufficit cum elementis et putrefactione ad generationem animalium imperfectorum :"-" The virtue of heaven instead of seed, is sufficient, with the elements and putrefaction, for the generation of imperfect animals." Our philosopher would reason thus :—if corruption suffices with the elements to produce unformed animals, it would appear that a little more corruption, with a little more heat, would also produce animals more complete. The virtue of heaven is here no other than the virtue of nature. I shall then think with Epicurus and St. Thomas, that men may have sprung from the slime of the earth and the rays of the sun; a noble origin, too, for beings so wretched and so wicked. Why should I admit a creating God, presented to me under so many contradictory and revolting aspects? But at length physics arose, and with them philosophy. Then it was clearly discovered that the mud of the Nile produced not a single insect, nor a single ear of corn, and men were found to acknowledge throughout, germs, relations, means, and an astonishing correspondence among all beings. The particles of light have been followed, which, go from the sun to enlighten the globe and the ring of Saturn, at the distance of three hundred millions of leagues; then, coming to the earth, form two opposite angles in the eye of the minutest insect, and paint all nature on its retina. A philosopher was given { to the world, who discovered the simple and sublime laws by which the celestial globes move in the immensity of space. } Thus the work of the universe, now that it is better known, bespeaks a workman; and so many never-varying laws, announce a lawgiver. Sound philosophy, therefore, has destroyed atheism, to which obscure theology furnished weapons of defence. the effect of this eternal motion and change alone. Take six dice, and it is 46,655 to one that you do not throw six times six; but still there is that one chance in 46,656. So, in the infinity of ages, any one of the infinite number of combinations, as that of the present arrangement of the universe, is not impossible. Minds, otherwise rational, have been misled by these arguments; but they have not considered that there is infinity against them, and that there certainly is not infinity against the existence of God. They should moreover consider, that it everything were changing, the smallest things could not remain unchanged, as they have so long done. They have at least no reason to advance, why new species are not formed every day. On the contrary, it is very probable that a powerful hand, superior to these continual changes, keeps all species within_the bounds it has prescribed them. Thus the philosopher, who acknowledges a God, has a number of probabilities on his side, while the atheist has only doubts. It is evident that in morals it is much better to acknowledge a God than not to admit one. It is certainly the interest of all men that there should be a Divinity to punish what human justice cannot repress; but it is also clear that it were better to acknowledge no God than to worship a barbarous one, and offer him human victims, as so many nations have done. We have one striking example, which places this truth beyond a doubt. The But one resource was left for the small Jews, under Moses, had no idea of the number of difficult minds, which, being immortality of the soul, nor of a future more forcibly struck by the pretended in-state. Their lawgiver announced to them, justices of a Supreme Being than by his wisdom, were obstinate in denying this first mover. Nature has existed from all eternity; everything in nature is in motion, therefore every thing in it continually changes. And if everything is for ever changing, all possible combinations must take place; therefore the present combinations of all things may have been from God, only rewards and punishments purely temporal; they therefore had only this life to provide for. Moses commands the Levites to kill twenty-three thousand of their brethren, for having had a golden or gilded calf. On another occasion, twenty-four thousand of them are massacred for having had commerce with the young women of the country; and twelve thousand are struck dead, because some few of them had wished to support the ark, which was near falling. It may, with perfect reverence for the decrees of Providence, be ahirmed, humanly speaking, that it would Lave been much better for these fifty-nine thousand men, who believed in no future state, to have been absolute atheists and have lived, than to have been massacred ta the name of the God whom they acknowledged. established in society. It is much more agreeable to pass our lives among them than among the superstitious and fanatical. I do, it is true, expect more justice from one who believes in a God than from one who has no such belief; but from the superstitious I look only for bitterness and persecution. Atheism and fanaticism are two monsters, which may tear society in pieces: but the atheist preserves his reason, which checks his propensity to mischief, while the fanatic is under the influence of a madness which is constantly urging him on. SECTION II. In England, as everywhere else, there have been, and there still are, many atheists by principle; for there are none but young inexperienced preachers, very ill It is quite certain that atheism is not taught in the schools of the learned of China; but many of those learned men are atheists, for they are indifferent philosophers. Now it would undoubtedly be better to live with them at Pekin, enjoying the mildness of their manners and their laws, than to be at Goa, liable to groan in irons, in the prisons of the In-informed of what passes in the world, quisition, until brought out in a brimstone-coloured garment, variegated with devils, to perish in the flames. who affirm that there cannot be atheists. I have known some in France, who were very good natural philosophers; and have, I own, been very much surprised that men, who could so ably develope the secret springs of nature, should obstinately refuse to acknowledge the hand which so evidently puts those springs in action. It appears to me that one of the prin{ciples which lead them to materialism is, that they believe in the plenitude and infinity of the universe and the eternity of matter. It must be this which misleads them; for almost all the Newtonians whom I have met with, admit the void and the termination of matter, and consequently admit a God. They who have maintained that a society of atheists may exist, have then been right; for it is laws that form society; and these atheists, being moreover philosophers, may lead a very wise and very happy life under the shade of those laws. They will certainly live in society more easily than superstitious fanatics. People one town with Epicureans such as Simonides, Protagoras, Des Barreaux, Spinosa; and another with Jansenists and Molinists;-in which do you think there will be the most quarrels and tumults? Atheism, considering it only with relation to this life, would be very dangerous among a ferocious people; and Indeed, if matter be infinite, as so false ideas of the Divinity would be no many philosophers, even including Desless pernicious. Most of the great men cartes, pretend, it has of itself one of the of this world live as if they were atheists.attributes of the Supreme Being: if a Every man who has lived with his eyes open, knows that the knowledge of a God, his presence, and his justice, have not the slightest influence over the wars, the treaties, the objects of ambition, interest or pleasure, in the pursuit of which they are wholly occupied. Yet we do hot see that they grossly violate the rules void be impossible, matter exists of necessity, it has existed from all eternity. With these principles, therefore, we may dispense with God, creating, modifying, and preserving matter. I am aware that Descartes, and most of the schools which have believed in the plenum, and the infinity of matter, have |