d on ideas inaccessible to your
senses; you consequently had no means of judging of them, and you
confessed yourselves in this respect to be only the echoes of your
fathers. Hence follows this other question: how came they to the
knowledge of your fathers, who themselves had no other means than you to
conceive them? So that, on the one hand, the succession of these ideas
being unknown, and on the other, their origin and existence being
a mystery, all the edifice of your religious opinions becomes a
complicated problem of metaphysics and history.

"Since, however, these opinions, extraordinary as they may be, must have
had some origin; since even the most abstract and fantastical ideas
have some physical model, it may be useful to recur to this origin, and
discover this model--in a word, to find out from what source the human
understanding has drawn these ideas, at present so obscure, of God,
of the soul, of all immaterial beings, which make the basis of so many
systems; to unfold the filiation which they have followed, and the
alterations which they have undergone in their transmissions and
ramifications. If, then, there are any persons present who have made a
study of these objects, let them come forward, and endeavor, in the face
of nations, to dissipate the obscurity in which their opinions have so
long remained."

CHAPTER XXII.

ORIGIN AND FILIATION OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS.

At these words, a new group, formed in an instant by men from various
standards, but not distinguished by any, came forward into the circle;
and one of them spoke in the name of the whole:

"Delegates, friends of evidence and virtue! It is not surprising that
the subject in question should be enveloped in so many clouds, since,
besides its inherent difficulties, thought itself has always been
encumbered with superadded obstacles peculiar to this study, where all
free enquiry and discussion have been interdicted by the intolerance of
every system. But now that our views are permitted to expand, we will
expose to open day, and submit to the judgment of nations, that which
unprejudiced minds, after long researches, have found to be the most
reasonable; and we do this, not with the pretension of imposing a new
creed, but with the hope of provoking new lights, and obtaining better
information.

"Doctors and instructors of nations! You know what thick darkness covers
the nature, the origin, the history of the dogmas which you teach.
Imposed b