If everything is necessary, if errors, opinions, and ideas of men are fated, how or why can we pretend to reform them?  The errors of men are the necessary results of their ignorance; their ignorance, their obstinacy, their credulity, are the necessary results of their inexperience, of their indifference, of their lack of reflection; the same as congestion of the brain or lethargy are the natural effects of some diseases.  Truth, experience, reflection, reason, are the proper remedies to cure ignorance, fanaticism, and follies; the same as bleeding is good to soothe congestion of the brain.  But you will say, why does not truth produce this effect upon many of the sick heads?  There are some diseases which resist all remedies; it is impossible to cure obstinate patients who refuse to take the remedies which are given them; the interest of some men and the folly of others naturally oppose them to the admission of truth.  A cause produces its effect only when it is not interrupted in its action by other causes which are stronger, or which weaken the action of the first cause or render it useless.  It is entirely impossible to have the best arguments accepted by men who are strongly interested in error; who are prejudiced in its favor; who refuse to reflect; but it must necessarily be that truth undeceives the honest souls who seek it in good faith.  Truth is a cause; it produces necessarily its effect when its impulse is not interrupted by causes which suspend its effects.

LXXXIII.—­CONTINUATION.

To take away from man his free will, is, we are told, to make of him a pure machine, an automaton without liberty; there would exist in him neither merit nor virtue What is merit in man?

It is a certain manner of acting which renders him estimable in the eyes of his fellow beings.  What is virtue?  It is the disposition that causes us to do good to others.  What can there be contemptible in automatic machines capable of producing such desirable effects?  Marcus Aurelius was a very useful spring to the vast machine of the Roman Empire.  By what right will a machine despise another machine, whose springs would facilitate its own play?  Good people are springs which assist society in its tendency to happiness; wicked men are badly-formed springs, which disturb the order, the progress, and harmony of society.  If for its own interests society loves and rewards the good, she hates, despises, and removes the wicked, as useless or dangerous motors.

LXXXIV.—­GOD HIMSELF, IF THERE WAS A GOD, WOULD NOT BE FREE; HENCE THE USELESSNESS OF ALL RELIGION.