From the same principle it is plain that any man having reached old age without faith in God will not, therefore, be deprived of God’s presence in another life if his blindness was not wilful; and I maintain that it is not always wilful.  You admit that it is so in the case of lunatics deprived by disease of their spiritual faculties, but not of their manhood, and therefore still entitled to the goodness of their Creator.  Why then should we not admit it in the case of those brought up from infancy in seclusion, those who have led the life of a savage and are without the knowledge that comes from intercourse with other men. [Footnote:  For the natural condition of the human mind and its slow development, cf. the first part of the Discours sur Inegalite.] For it is clearly impossible that such a savage could ever raise his thoughts to the knowledge of the true God.  Reason tells that man should only be punished for his wilful faults, and that invincible ignorance can never be imputed to him as a crime.  Hence it follows that in the sight of the Eternal Justice every man who would believe if he had the necessary knowledge is counted a believer, and that there will be no unbelievers to be punished except those who have closed their hearts against the truth.

Let us beware of proclaiming the truth to those who cannot as yet comprehend it, for to do so is to try to inculcate error.  It would be better to have no idea at all of the Divinity than to have mean, grotesque, harmful, and unworthy ideas; to fail to perceive the Divine is a lesser evil than to insult it.  The worthy Plutarch says, “I would rather men said, ‘There is no such person as Plutarch,’ than that they should say, ’Plutarch is unjust, envious, jealous, and such a tyrant that he demands more than can be performed.’”

The chief harm which results from the monstrous ideas of God which are instilled into the minds of children is that they last all their life long, and as men they understand no more of God than they did as children.  In Switzerland I once saw a good and pious mother who was so convinced of the truth of this maxim that she refused to teach her son religion when he was a little child for fear lest he should be satisfied with this crude teaching and neglect a better teaching when he reached the age of reason.  This child never heard the name of God pronounced except with reverence and devotion, and as soon as he attempted to say the word he was told to hold his tongue, as if the subject were too sublime and great for him.  This reticence aroused his curiosity and his self-love; he looked forward to the time when he would know this mystery so carefully hidden from him.  The less they spoke of God to him, the less he was himself permitted to speak of God, the more he thought about Him; this child beheld God everywhere.  What I should most dread as the result of this unwise affectation of mystery is this:  by over-stimulating the youth’s imagination you may turn his head, and make him at the best a fanatic rather than a believer.