The founders of religions, and the priests who maintain them, have intended to separate the nations which they indoctrinated, from other nations; they desired to separate their own flock by distinctive features; they gave to their votaries Gods inimical to other Gods as well as the forms of worship, dogmas, ceremonies, separately; they persuaded them especially that the religions of others were ungodly and abominable.  By this infamous contrivance, these ambitious impostors took exclusive possession of the minds of their votaries, rendered them unsocial, and made them consider as outcasts all those who had not the same ideas and form of worship as their own.  This is the way religion succeeded in closing the heart, and in banishing from it that affection which man ought to have for his fellow-being.  Sociability, tolerance, humanity, these first virtues of all morality are totally in compatible with religious prejudices.

CLVII.—­ABUSE OF A STATE RELIGION.

Every national religion has a tendency to make man vain, unsocial, and wicked; the first step toward humanity is to permit each one to follow peacefully the worship and the opinions which suit him.  But such a conduct can not please the ministers of religion, who wish to have the right to tyrannize over even the thoughts of men.  Blind and bigoted princes, you hate, you persecute, you devote heretics to torture, because you are persuaded that these unfortunate ones displease God.  But do you not claim that your God is full of kindness?  How can you hope to please Him by such barbarous actions which He can not help disapproving of?  Besides, who told you that their opinions displease your God?  Your priests told you!  But who guarantees that your priests are not deceived themselves or that they do not wish to deceive you?  It is these same priests!  Princes! it is upon the perilous word of your priests that you commit the most atrocious and the most unheard-of crimes, with the idea of pleasing the Deity!

CLVIII.—­RELIGION GIVES LICENSE TO THE FEROCITY OF THE PEOPLE BY

LEGITIMIZING IT, AND AUTHORIZES CRIME BY TEACHING THAT IT CAN BE USEFUL TO THE DESIGNS OF GOD.

“Never,” says Pascal, “do we do evil so thoroughly and so willingly as when we do it through a false principle of conscience.”  Nothing is more dangerous than a religion which licenses the ferocity of the people, and justifies in their eyes the blackest crimes; it puts no limits to their wickedness as soon as they believe it authorized by their God, whose interests, as they are told, can justify all their actions.  If there is a question of religion, immediately the most civilized nations become true savages, and believe everything is permitted to them.  The more cruel they are, the more agreeable they suppose themselves to be to their God, whose cause they imagine can not be sustained by too much