are born Atheists; they have no idea of God. Are they then
criminal on account of their ignorance? At what age must they begin to
believe in God? It is, you say, at the age of reason. But at what time
should this age commence? Besides, if the profoundest theologians lose
themselves in the divine nature, which they do not presume to comprehend,
what ideas must man have of him?

31.

Men believe in God only upon the word of those, who have no more idea of
him than themselves. Our nurses are our first theologians. They talk
to children of God as if he were a scarecrow; they teach them from the
earliest age to join their hands mechanically. Have nurses then more true
ideas of God than the children whom they teach to pray?

32.

Religion, like a family estate, passes, with its incumbrances, from
parents to children. Few men in the world would have a God, had not
pains been taken in infancy to give them one. Each would receive from his
parents and teachers the God whom they received from theirs; but each,
agreeably to his disposition, would arrange, modify, and paint him in his
own manner.

33.

The brain of man, especially in infancy, is like soft wax, fit to receive
every impression that is made upon it. Education furnishes him with almost
all his ideas at a time, when he is incapable of judging for himself. We
believe we have received from nature, or have brought with us at birth,
the true or false ideas, which, in a tender age, had been instilled into
our minds; and this persuasion is one of the greatest sources of errors.

34.

Prejudice contributes to cement in us the opinions of those who have been
charged with our instruction. We believe them much more experienced than
ourselves; we suppose they are fully convinced of the things which they
teach us; we have the greatest confidence in them; by the care they have
taken of us in infancy, we judge them incapable of wishing to deceive us.
These are the motives that make us adopt a thousand errors, without other
foundation than the hazardous authority of those by whom we have been
brought up. The prohibition likewise of reasoning upon what they teach us,
by no means lessens our confidence; but often contributes to increase our
respect for their opinions.

35.

Divines act very wisely in teaching men their religious principles before
they are capable of distinguishing truth from falsehood, or their left
hand from their right. It wou