more harm to the world, than a
Louis XI., a Philip II., a Richelieu, who all united Religion with crime?
Nothing is more rare, than atheistical princes; nothing more common, than
tyrants and ministers, who are very wicked and very religious.

180.

A man of reflection cannot be incapable of his duties, of discovering
the relations subsisting between men, of meditating his own nature, of
discerning his own wants, propensities, and desires, and of perceiving
what he owes to beings, who are necessary to his happiness. These
reflections naturally lead him to a knowledge of the Morality most
essential to social beings. Dangerous passions seldom fall to the lot of
a man who loves to commune with himself, to study, and to investigate the
principles of things. The strongest passion of such a man will be to know
truth, and his ambition to teach it to others. Philosophy cultivates the
mind. On the score of morals and honesty, has not he who reflects and
reasons, evidently an advantage over him, who makes it a principle never
to reason?

If ignorance is useful to priests, and to the oppressors of mankind, it is
fatal to society. Man, void of knowledge, does not enjoy reason; without
reason and knowledge, he is a savage, liable to commit crimes. Morality,
or the science of duties, is acquired only by the study of Man, and of
what is relative to Man. He, who does not reflect, is unacquainted with
true Morality, and walks with precarious steps, in the path of virtue. The
less men reason, the more wicked they are. Savages, princes, nobles,
and the dregs of the people, are commonly the worst of men, because they
reason the least. The devout man seldom reflects, and rarely reasons. He
fears all enquiry, scrupulously follows authority, and often, through an
error of conscience, makes it a sacred duty to commit evil. The Atheist
reasons: he consults experience, which he prefers to prejudice. If he
reasons justly, his conscience is enlightened; he finds more real motives
to do good than the bigot whose only motives are his fallacies, and who
never listens to reason. Are not the motives of the Atheist sufficiently
powerful to counteract his passions? Is he blind enough to be unmindful
of his true interest, which ought to restrain him? But he will be neither
worse nor better, than the numerous believers, who, notwithstanding
Religion and its sublime precepts, follow a conduct which Religion
condemns. Is a credulous assassin less to b