To oppose the passions and present interests of men the obscure notions of a metaphysical, inconceivable God,—the incredible punishments of another life,—or the pleasures of the heaven, of which nobody has the least idea,—is not this combating realities with fictions? Men have never any but confused ideas of their God: they see him only in clouds. They never think of him when they are desirous to do evil: whenever ambition, fortune, or pleasure allures them, God's threatenings and promises are forgotten. In the things of this life, there is a degree of certainty, which the most lively faith cannot give to the things of another life.

Every religion was originally a curb invented by legislators, who wished to establish their authority over the minds of rude nations. Like nurses who frighten children to oblige them to be quiet, the ambitious used the name of the gods to frighten savages; and had recourse to terror in order to make them support quietly the yoke they wished to impose. Are then the bugbears of infancy made for riper age? At the age of maturity, no man longer believes them, or if he does, they excite little emotion in him, and never alter his conduct.