made
himself known only by the ravages, disputes, and follies, he has caused.

Savage and furious nations, perpetually at war, adore, under divers names,
some God, conformable to their ideas, that is to say, cruel, carnivorous,
selfish, blood-thirsty. We find, in all the religions, "a God of armies,"
a "jealous God," an "avenging God," a "destroying God," a "God," who
is pleased with carnage, and whom his worshippers consider it a duty to
serve. Lambs, bulls, children, men, and women, are sacrificed to him.
Zealous servants of this barbarous God think themselves obliged even to
offer up themselves as a sacrifice to him. Madmen may everywhere be seen,
who, after meditating upon their terrible God, imagine that to please him
they must inflict on themselves, the most exquisite torments. The gloomy
ideas formed of the deity, far from consoling them, have every where
disquieted their minds, and prejudiced follies destructive to happiness.

How could the human mind progress, while tormented with frightful
phantoms, and guided by men, interested in perpetuating its ignorance and
fears? Man has been forced to vegetate in his primitive stupidity: he has
been taught stories about invisible powers upon whom his happiness was
supposed to depend. Occupied solely by his fears, and by unintelligible
reveries, he has always been at the mercy of priests, who have reserved to
themselves the right of thinking for him, and of directing his actions.

Thus, man has remained a slave without courage, fearing to reason, and
unable to extricate himself from the labyrinth, in which he has been
wandering. He believes himself forced under the yoke of his gods, known
to him only by the fabulous accounts given by his ministers, who, after
binding each unhappy mortal in the chains of prejudice, remain his
masters, or else abandon him defenceless to the absolute power of tyrants,
no less terrible than the gods, of whom they are the representatives.

Oppressed by the double yoke of spiritual and temporal power, it has been
impossible for the people to be happy. Religion became sacred, and men
have had no other Morality, than what their legislators and priests
brought from the unknown regions of heaven. The human mind, confused
by theological opinions, ceased to know its own powers, mistrusted
experience, feared truth and disdained reason, in order to follow
authority. Man has been a mere machine in the hands of tyrants and
priests. Always treated as a