I There were books in which the mysteries of the sorcerers were written. have seen one of them, at the head of which was a figure of a goat very badly drawn, with a woman on her knees behind him. In France, these books were called "grimoires ;" and in other countries "the devil's alphabet." That which I saw contained only four leaves in almost illegible characters, much like those of the Shepherd's Almanack. GOD-GODS. SECTION I. THE reader cannot too carefully bear in mind that this Dictionary has not been written for the purpose of repeating what so many others have said. The knowledge of a God is not impressed upon us by the hands of nature, for then men would all have the same idea; and no idea is born with us. It Reasoning and better education would does not come to us like the perception have sufficed in Europe for the extirpa- of light, of the ground, &c., which we tion of such an extravagance; but exe-receive as soon as our eyes and our uncutions were employed instead of reason-derstandings are opened. Is it a philoing. The pretended sorcerers had their sophical idea? No; men admitted the "grimoire," and the judges had their existence of gods before there were phisorcerer's code. In 1599, the Jesuit Del{losophers. Rio, a doctor of Louvain, published his Magical Disquisitions: he affirms that all heretics are magicians, and frequently recommends that they be put to the torture. He has no doubt that the devil transforms himself into a goat, and grants his favours to all women presented to him. He quotes various juriconsults, called demonographers, who assert that Luther was the son of a woman and a goat. He assures us that at Brussels, in 1595, a woman was brought to bed of a child, of which the devil, disguised as a goat, was father; and that she was punished, but he does not inform us in what manner. Whence, then, is this idea derived ? From feeling, and from that natural logic which unfolds itself with age, even in the rudest of mankind. Astonishing effects of nature were beheld-harvests and barrenness, fair weather and storms, benefits and scourges; and the hand of a master was felt. Chiefs were necessary to govern societies; and it was needful to admit sovereigns of these new sovereigns whom human weakness had given itself-beings before whose power these men who could bear down their fellowmen might tremble. The first sovereigns in their time employed these notions to cement their power. Such were the first steps; thus every little society had its god. These notions were rude because everything was rude. It is very natural to reason by analogy. One society under a chief did not deny that the neighbour But the jurisprudence of witchcraft has been the most profoundly treated by one Boguet, "grand juge en dernier ressort" of an abbey of St. Claude in FrancheComté. He gives an account of all the executions to which he condemneding tribe should likewise have its judge, wizards and witches, and the number is very considerable. Nearly all the witches are supposed to have had commerce with the goat. or its captain; consequently it could not deny that the other should also have its god. But as it was the interest of each tribe that its captain should be the best, It has already been said, that more it was also interested in believing, and than a hundred thousand sorcerers have consequently it did believe, that its god been executed in Europe. Philosophy was the mightiest. Hence those ancient alone has at length cured men of this fables which have so long been generally abominable delusion, and has taught diffused, that the gods of one nation judges that they should not burn the in-fought against the gods of another. Hence the numerous passages in the He sane. appears to me, is, not to argue metaphy-in uncertainty. remorse. We are here not to talk, but to examine; we must judge, and our judgment is not determined by our will. I do not propose to you to believe extravagant things, in order to escape embarrassment. I do not say to you, Go to Mecca, and instruct yourself by kissing the black stone, take hold of a cow's tail, muffle yourself in a scapulary, or be imbecile and fanatical to acquire the faac-vour of the being of beings. I say to you, Continue to cultivate virtue, to be beneficent, to regard all superstition with horror, or with pity; but adore, with me, the design which is manifested in all nature, and consequently the author of that design-the primordial and final cause of all; hope with me that our monade, which reasons on the great eternal being, may be happy through that same great Hobbes says, that if, in a commonwealth, in which no God should be knowledged, any citizen were to propose one, he would have him hanged. Apparently, he meant by this strange exaggeration, a citizen who should seek to rule in the name of a god, a charlatan who would make himself a tyrant. We understand citizens, who, feeling the weakness of human nature, its perverseness, and its misery, seek some prop to support it through the languors and hor-being. There is no contradiction in this. rors of this life. You can no more demonstrate its impos{sibility than I can demonstrate mathematically that it is so. In metaphysics we scarcely reason on anything but probabilities. We are all swimming in a sea of which we have never seen the shore. Woe be to those who fight while they swim! Land who can but he that cries out to me, "You swim in vain, there is no land;" disheartens me, and deprives me of all my strength. From Job down to us, a great many men have cursed their existence; we have, therefore, perpetual need of consolation and hope. Of these your philosophy deprives us. The fable of Pandora was better; it left us hope-which you snatch from us! Philosophy, you say, furnishes no proof of happiness to come. No-but you have no demonstration of the contrary. There may be in us an indestructible monade which feels and thinks, without our knowing anything at all of how that monade is made. Reason is not absolutely op- You yourself own, in some passages posed to this idea, though reason alone of your work, that the belief in a God does not prove it. Has not this opinion has withheld some men on the brink of a prodigious advantage over yours? crime; for me, this acknowledgment is Mine is useful to mankind, yours is enough. If this opinion had prevented baneful; say of it what you will, it may but ten assassinations, but ten calumnies, encourage a Nero, an Alexander VI. or but ten iniquitous judgments on the a Cartouche. Mine may restrain them.earth, I hold that the whole earth ought Marcus Antoninus and Epictetus be- to embrace it. What is the object of our dispute? To console our unhappy existence. Who consoles it-You, or I? lieved that their monade, of whatever Religion, you say, has produced thoukind it was, would be united to the mo-sands of crimes-say, rather, superstinade of the great being; and they were tion, which unhappily reigns over this the most virtuous of men. globe; it is the most cruel enemy of the pure adoration due to the Supreme Being. In the state of doubt in which we both are, I do not say to you with Pascal, "chuse the safest." There is no safety Let us detest this monster which has constantly been tearing the bosom of its mother; they who combat it are benefactors to mankind: it is a serpent enclosing religion in its folds, its head must be bruised, without wounding the parent whom it infects and devours. You fear, "that, by adoring God, men would soon again become superstitious and fanatical." But is it not to be feared that, in denying him, they would abandon themselves to the most atrocious passions, and the most frightful crimes? Between these two extremes is there not a very rational mean? Where is the safe track between these two rocks? It is God, and wise laws. You affirm, that it is but one step from adoration to superstition: but there is an infinity to well-constituted minds, and these are now very numerous: they are at the head of nations; they influence public manners, and, year by year, the fanaticism that overspread the earth is receding in its detestable usurpations. I shall say a few words more in answer to what you say in page 223. "If it be presumed that there are relations between man and this incredible being, then altars must be raised and presents must be made to him, &c.; if no conception be formed of this being, then the matter must be referred to priests, who provided that this priest is not a Le Tellier, putting the whole kingdom in combustion by rogueries worthy of the pillory, nor a Warburton, violating the laws of society, making public the private papers of a member of parliament in order to ruin him, and calumniating whosoever is not of his opinion. The latter cases are rare. The sacerdotal state is a curb which forces to good behaviour. A stupid priest excites contempt; a bad priest inspires horror; a good priest, mild, pious, without superstitition, charitable, tolerant, is one who ought to be cherished and revered. You dread abuses -so do I. Let us unite to prevent them; but let us not condemn the usage when it is useful to society, when it is not perverted by fanaticism, or by fraudulent wickedness. I have one very important thing to tell you. I am persuaded that you are in a great error, but I am equally convinced that you are honest in your selfdelusion. You would have men virtuous even without a God, although you have unfortunately said that “so soon as vice renders man happy, he must love vice" -a frightful proposition, which your friends should have prevailed on you to erase. Everywhere else you inspire "&c. &c. &c. A great evil to be probity. This philosophical dispute will sure, to assemble in the harvest season, only be between you and a few philosoand thank God for the bread that he has phers scattered over Europe; the rest of given us! Who says you should make the earth will not even hear of it. The presents to God? The idea is ridiculous! people do not read us. If some theoloBut where is the harm of employing agian were to seek to persecute us, he citizen, called an elder' or 'priest,' to would be impudent as well as wicked; render thanks to the divinity in the name he would but serve to confirm you, and of the other citizens?-provided the to make new atheists. priest is not a Gregory VII. trampling on the heads of kings, nor an Alexander VI. polluting by incest his daughter, the offspring of a rape, and, by the aid of his bastard son, poisoning and assassinating almost all the neighbouring princes: provided that, in a parish, this priest is not a knave, picking the pockets of the penitents he confesses, and using the money to seduce the girls he catechises; You are wrong: but the Greeks did not persecute Epicurus; the Romans did not persecute Lucretius. You are wrong: but your genius and your virtue must be respected, while you are refuted with all possible strength. In my opinion, the finest homage that can be rendered to God is, to stand forward in his defence without anger; as the most unworthy portrait that can be drawn of him is. to paint him vindictive { and furious. He is truth itself; and truth is without passion. To be a disciple of God is, to announce him as of a mild heart and of an unalterable mind. most ancient and most extensive empires in the world, these examples are sufficient for my cause-and my cause is that of all mankind. I do not believe that there is in all Europe one statesman, one man at all I think, with you, that fanaticism is a monster a thousand times more danger-versed in the affairs of the world, who ous than philosophical atheism. Spinosa did not commit a single bad action. Châtel and Ravaillac, both devotees, assassinated Henry IV. has not the most profound contempt for the legends with which we have been inundated, even more than we now are with pamphlets. If religion no longer The atheist of the closet is almost gives birth to civil wars, it is to philosoalways a quiet philosopher; while the phy alone that we are indebted, theolofanatic is always turbulent: but the court gical disputes beginning to be regarded atheist, the atheistical prince, might be in much the same manner as the quarrels the scourge of mankind. Borgia and his of Punch and Joan at the fair. An like have done almost as much harm as usurpation, alike odious and ridiculous, the fanatics of Munster and of the Ce-founded upon fraud on one side, and vennes. I say the fanatics on both stupidity on the other, is every instant sides. The misfortune is that atheists undermined by reason, which is estaof the closet make atheists of the court.blishing its reign. The bull "In canâ It was Chiron who brought up Achilles: he fed him with lion's marrow. Achilles will one day drag Hector's body round the walls of Troy, and immolate twelve captives to his vengeance. God keep us from an abominable priest who should hew a king in pieces with his sacrificing knife; as also from him who, with a helmet on his head and a cuirass on his back, at the age of seventy, should dare to sign with his three bloody fingers the ridiculous excommunication of a king of France! and from.... and from . . . . But also, may God preserve us from a choleric and barbarous despot, who, not believing in a God, should be his own God, who should render himself unworthy of his sacred trust by trampling on the duties which that trust imposes, who should remorselessly sacrifice to his passions, his friends, his relatives, his servants, and his people. These two tigers, the one shorn, the other crowned, are equally to be feared. By what means shall we muzzle them?.... If the idea of a God has made a Titus or a Trajan, an Antonine or an Aurelius, and those great Chinese emperors, whose memory is so dear to the second of the Domini"-that masterpiece of insolence a SECTION VI. In the reign of Arcadius, Logomachos, theologue of Contantinople, went into Scythia and stopped at the foot of Mount Caucasus in the fruitful plains of Zephirim, on the borders of Colchis. The good old man Dondindac was in his great hall between his large sheepfold and his extensive barn; he was on his knees with his wife, his five sons and five daughters, his kinsmen and servants; and all were singing the praises of God, after a light repast.-"What art thou doing, idolater?" said Logomachos to him. "I am not an idolater," said Dondindac. "Thou must be an idolater," said Logomachos, "for thou art not a Greek. Come, tell me what thou wast singing in thy barbarous Scythian jargon?" "All tongues are alike to the ears of God," answered the Scythian; "we were singing his praises."-"Very extraordinary!" returned the theologue; "a Scythian family praying to God without having been instructed by us!" He soon entered into conversation with the Scythian Dondindac; for the theologue knew a little Scythian, and the other a little Greek. This conversation has been found in a manuscript preserved in the library of Constantinople. LOGOMACHOS. Let us see if thou knowest thy catechism. Why dost thou pray to God? DONDINDAC. DON DINDAC. I know not... just as you please. LOGOMACHOS. Ignoramus!-Can he cause that which has not been to have been, or that a stick shall not have two ends? Does he see the future as future, or as present? How does he draw being from nothing, and how reduce being to nothing? DONDINDAC. I have never examined these things. LOGOMACHOS. What a stupid fellow! Well, I must Because it is just to adore the Supreme come nearer to thy level . .. .. Tell me, Being, from whom we have every-friend, dost thou think that matter can thing. LOGOMACHOS. Very fair for a barbarian. But what dost thou ask of him? DONDINDAC. I thank him for the blessings I enjoy, and even for the trials which he sends me; but I am careful to ask nothing of him; for he knows our wants better than we do; besides, I should be afraid of asking for fair weather while my neighbour was asking for rain. LOGOMACHOS. Ah! I thought he would say some nonsense or other. Let us begin further back. Barbarian, who told thee that there is a God? DONDINDAC. All nature tells me. LOGOMACHOS. That is not enough. What idea hast thou of God. DONDINDAC. The idea of my Creator; my master, who will reward me if I do good, and punish me if I do evil. LOGOMACHOS. Trifles! trash! Let us come to some essentials. Is God infinite secundum quid, or according to essence? DONDINDAC. I don't understand you. LOGOMACHOS. Brute beast! Is God in one place, or ip every place? be eternal? DONDINDAC. What matters it to me whether it exists from all eternity or not? I do not exist from all eternity. God must still be my master. He has given me the nature of justice; it is my duty to follow it: I seek not to be a philosopher; I wish to be a man. LOGOMACHOS. One has a great deal of trouble with these blockheads. Let us proceed step by step. What is God? DONDIN DAC. My sovereign, my judge, my father. LOGOMACHOS. That is not what I ask. What is his nature. DONDINDAC. To be mighty and good. LOGOMACHOS. But is he corporeal or spiritual? DONDINDAC. How should I know that? LOGOMACHOS. What: dost thou not know what a spirit is? DONDINDAC. Not in the least. Of what service would that knowledge be to me? Should I be more just? Should I be a better husband, a better father, a better master, or a better citizen? LOGOMACHOS. Thou must absolutely be taught what |