of man’s morals, than the imaginary principles of Divine and theological morals?  Would ordinary men have as much trouble in understanding the simple notions of their duties, as in charging their memories with mysteries, unintelligible words, and obscure definitions which are impossible for them to understand?  How much time and trouble is lost in trying to teach men things which are of no use to them.  What resources for the public benefit, for encouraging the progress of the sciences and the advancement of knowledge, for the education of youth, are presented to well-meaning sovereigns through so many monasteries, which, in a great number of countries devour the people’s substance without an equivalent.  But superstition, jealous of its exclusive empire, seems to have formed but useless beings.  What advantage could not be drawn from a multitude of cenobites of both sexes whom we see in so many countries, and who are so well paid to do nothing.  Instead of occupying them with sterile contemplations, with mechanical prayers, with monotonous practices; instead of burdening them with fasts and austerities, let there be excited among them a salutary emulation that would inspire them to seek the means of serving usefully the world, which their fatal vows oblige them to renounce.  Instead of filling the youthful minds of their pupils with fables, dogmas, and puerilities, why not invite or oblige the priests to teach them true things, and so make of them citizens useful to their country?  The way in which men are brought up makes them useful but to the clergy, who blind them, and to the tyrants, who plunder them.

CXCII.—­THE RETRACTION OF AN UNBELIEVER AT THE HOUR OF DEATH, PROVES NOTHING AGAINST INCREDULITY.

The adherents of credulity often accuse the unbelievers of bad faith because they sometimes waver in their principles, changing opinions during sickness, and retracting them at the hour of death.  When the body is diseased, the faculty of reasoning is generally disturbed also.  The infirm and decrepit man, in approaching his end, sometimes perceives himself that reason is leaving him, he feels that prejudice returns.  There are diseases which have a tendency to lessen courage, to make pusillanimous, and to enfeeble the brain; there are others which, in destroying the body, do not affect the reason.  However, an unbeliever who retracts in sickness, is not more rare or more extraordinary than a devotionist who permits himself, while in health, to neglect the duties that his religion prescribes for him in the most formal manner.

Cleomenes, King of Sparta, having shown little respect for the Gods during his reign, became superstitious in his last days; with the view of interesting Heaven in his favor, he called around him a multitude of sacrificing priests.  One of his friends expressing his surprise, Cleomenes said:  “What are you astonished at?  I am no longer what I was, and not being the same, I can not think in the same way.”