IV.—­MAN BORN NEITHER RELIGIOUS NOR DEISTICAL.

All religious principles are founded upon the idea of a God, but it is impossible for men to have true ideas of a being who does not act upon any one of their senses.  All our ideas are but pictures of objects which strike us.  What can the idea of God represent to us when it is evidently an idea without an object?  Is not such an idea as impossible as an effect without a cause?  An idea without a prototype, is it anything but a chimera?  Some theologians, however, assure us that the idea of God is innate, or that men have this idea from the time of their birth.  Every principle is a judgment; all judgment is the effect of experience; experience is not acquired but by the exercise of the senses:  from which it follows that religious principles are drawn from nothing, and are not innate.

V.—­IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO BELIEVE IN A GOD, AND THE MOST REASONABLE THING IS NOT TO THINK OF HIM.

No religious system can be founded otherwise than upon the nature of God and of men, and upon the relations they bear to each other.  But, in order to judge of the reality of these relations, we must have some idea of the Divine nature.  But everybody tells us that the essence of God is incomprehensible to man; at the same time they do not hesitate to assign attributes to this incomprehensible God, and assure us that man can not dispense with a knowledge of this God so impossible to conceive of.  The most important thing for men is that which is the most impossible for them to comprehend.  If God is incomprehensible to man, it would seem rational never to think of Him at all; but religion concludes that man is criminal if he ceases for a moment to revere Him.

VI.—­RELIGION IS FOUNDED UPON CREDULITY.

We are told that Divine qualities are not of a nature to be grasped by limited minds.  The natural consequence of this principle ought to be that the Divine qualities are not made to employ limited minds; but religion assures us that limited minds should never lose sight of this inconceivable being, whose qualities can not be grasped by them:  from which we see that religion is the art of occupying limited minds with that which is impossible for them to comprehend.

VII.—­EVERY RELIGION IS AN ABSURDITY.

Religion unites man with God or puts them in communication; but do you say that God is infinite?  If God is infinite, no finite being can have communication or any relation with Him.  Where there are no relations, there can be no union, no correspondence, no duties.  If there are no duties between man and his God, there exists no religion for man.  Thus by saying that God is infinite, you annihilate, from that moment, all religion for man, who is a finite being.  The idea of infinity is for us in idea without model, without prototype, without object.