CCI.—­THEOLOGY HAS ALWAYS TURNED PHILOSOPHY FROM ITS TRUE COURSE.

From the most remote period theology alone regulated the march of philosophy.  What aid has it lent it?  It changed it into an unintelligible jargon, which only had a tendency to render the clearest truth uncertain; it converted the art of reasoning into a science of words; it threw the human mind into the aerial regions of metaphysics, where it unsuccessfully occupied itself in sounding useless and dangerous abysses.  For physical and simple causes, this philosophy substituted supernatural causes, or, rather, causes truly occult; it explained difficult phenomena by agents more inconceivable than these phenomena; it filled discourse with words void of sense, incapable of giving the reason of things, better suited to obscure than to enlighten, and which seem invented but to discourage man, to guard him against the powers of his own mind, to make him distrust the principles of reason and evidence, and to surround the truth with an insurmountable barrier.

CCII.—–­THEOLOGY NEITHER EXPLAINS NOR ENLIGHTENS ANYTHING IN THE WORLD OR IN NATURE.

If we would believe the adherents of religion, nothing could be explicable in the world without it; nature would be a continual enigma; it would be impossible for man to comprehend himself.  But, at the bottom, what does this religion explain to us?  The more we examine it, the more we find that theological notions are fit but to perplex all our ideas; they change all into mysteries; they explain to us difficult things by impossible things.  Is it, then, explaining things to attribute them to unknown agencies, to invisible powers, to immaterial causes?  Is it really enlightening the human mind when, in its embarrassment, it is directed to the “depths of the treasures of Divine Wisdom,” upon which they tell us it is in vain for us to turn our bold regards?  Can the Divine Nature, which we know nothing about, make us understand man’s nature, which we find so difficult to explain?

Ask a Christian philosopher what is the origin of the world.  He will answer that God created the universe.  What is God?  We do not know anything about it.  What is it to create?  We have no idea of it!  What is the cause of pestilences, famines, wars, sterility, inundations, earthquakes?  It is God’s wrath.  What remedies can prevent these calamities?  Prayers, sacrifices, processions, offerings, ceremonies, are, we are told, the true means to disarm Celestial fury.  But why is Heaven angry?  Because men are wicked.  Why are men wicked?  Because their nature is corrupt.  What is the cause of this corruption?  It is, a theologian of enlightened Europe will reply, because the first man was seduced by the first woman to eat of an apple which his God had forbidden him to touch.  Who induced this woman to do such a folly?  The Devil.  Who created the Devil?  God!  Why did God create this Devil destined to pervert the human race?  We know nothing about it; it is a mystery hidden in the bosom of the Deity.