Does the earth revolve around the sun?  Two centuries ago a devout philosopher would have replied that such a thought was blasphemy, because such a system could not agree with the Holy Book, which every Christian reveres as inspired by the Deity Himself.  What is the opinion to-day about it?  Notwithstanding Divine Inspiration, the Christian philosophers finally concluded to rely upon evidence rather than upon the testimony of their inspired books.

What is the hidden principle of the actions and of the motions of the human body?  It is the soul.  What is a soul?  It is a spirit.  What is a spirit?  It is a substance which has neither form, color, expansion, nor parts.  How can we conceive of such a substance?  How can it move a body?  We know nothing about it.  Have brutes souls?  The Carthusian assures you that they are machines.  But do we not see them act, feel, and think in a manner which resembles that of men?  This is a pure illusion, you say.  But why do you deprive the brutes of souls, which, without understanding it, you attribute to men?  It is that the souls of the brutes would embarrass our theologians, who, content with the power of frightening and damning the immortal souls of men, do not take the same interest in damning those of the brutes.  Such are the puerile solutions which philosophy, always guided by the leading-strings of theology, was obliged to bring forth to explain the problems of the physical and moral world.

CCIII.—­HOW THEOLOGY HAS FETTERED HUMAN MORALS AND RETARDED THE PROGRESS OF ENLIGHTENMENT, OF REASON, AND OF TRUTH.

How many subterfuges and mental gymnastics all the ancient and modern thinkers have employed, in order to avoid falling out with the ministers of the Gods, who in all ages were the true tyrants of thought!  How Descartes, Malebranche, Leibnitz, and many others have been compelled to invent hypotheses and evasions in order to reconcile their discoveries with the reveries and the blunders which religion had rendered sacred!  With what prevarications have not the greatest philosophers guarded themselves even at the risk of being absurd, inconsistent, and unintelligible whenever their ideas did not correspond with the principles of theology!  Vigilant priests were always ready to extinguish systems which could not be made to tally with their interests.  Theology in every age has been the bed of Procrustes upon which this brigand extended his victims; he cut off the limbs when they were too long, or stretched them by horses when they were shorter than the bed upon which he placed them.