XXXII.—­IT IS A PREJUDICE WHICH HAS BEEN HANDED FROM FATHER TO CHILDREN.

Religion is handed down from fathers to children as the property of a family with the burdens.  Very few people in the world would have a God if care had not been taken to give them one.  Each one receives from his parents and his instructors the God which they themselves have received from theirs; only, according to his own temperament, each one arranges, modifies, and paints Him agreeably to his taste.

XXXIII.—­ORIGIN OF PREJUDICES.

The brain of man is, especially in infancy, like a soft wax, ready to receive all the impressions we wish to make on it; education furnishes nearly all his opinions, at a period when he is incapable of judging for himself.  We believe that the ideas, true or false, which at a tender age were forced into our heads, were received from nature at our birth; and this persuasion is one of the greatest sources of our errors.

XXXIV.—­HOW THEY TAKE ROOT AND SPREAD.

Prejudice tends to confirm in us the opinions of those who are charged with our instruction.  We believe them more skillful than we are; we suppose them thoroughly convinced themselves of the things they teach us.  We have the greatest confidence in them.  After the care they have taken of us when we were unable to assist ourselves, we judge them incapable of deceiving us.  These are the motives which make us adopt a thousand errors without other foundation than the dangerous word of those who have educated us; even the being forbidden to reason upon what they tell us, does not diminish our confidence, but contributes often to increase our respect for their opinions.

XXXV.—­Men would never have believed in the principles of modern theology if they had not been taught at an age when they were incapable of reasoning.

The instructors of the human race act very prudently in teaching men their religious principles before they are able to distinguish the true from the false, or the left hand from the right.  It would be as difficult to tame the spirit of a man forty years old with the extravagant notions which are given us of Divinity, as to banish these notions from the head of a man who has imbibed them since his tenderest infancy.

XXXVI.—­THE WONDERS OF NATURE DO NOT PROVE THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.