pon the
earth. Oppressed by the double yoke of spiritual and temporal power, it
was impossible for the people to instruct themselves and to work for
their own welfare. Thus, religion, politics, and morals became
sanctuaries, into which the profane were not permitted to enter. Men had
no other morality than that which their legislators and their priests
claimed as descended from unknown empyrean regions. The human mind,
perplexed by these theological opinions, misunderstood itself, doubted
its own powers, mistrusted experience, feared truth, disdained its
reason, and left it to blindly follow authority. Man was a pure machine
in the hands of his tyrants and his priests, who alone had the right to
regulate his movements. Always treated as a slave, he had at all times
and in all places the vices and dispositions of a slave.

These are the true sources of the corruption of habits, to which
religion never opposes anything but ideal and ineffectual obstacles;
ignorance and servitude have a tendency to make men wicked and unhappy.
Science, reason, liberty, alone can reform them and render them more
happy; but everything conspires to blind them and to confirm them in
their blindness. The priests deceive them, tyrants corrupt them in order
to subjugate them more easily. Tyranny has been, and will always be, the
chief source of the depraved morals and habitual calamities of the
people. These, almost always fascinated by their religious notions or by
metaphysical fictions, instead of looking upon the natural and visible
causes of their miseries, attribute their vices to the imperfections of
their nature, and their misfortunes to the anger of their Gods; they
offer to Heaven vows, sacrifices, and presents, in order to put an end
to their misfortunes, which are really due only to the negligence, the
ignorance, and to the perversity of their guides, to the folly of their
institutions, to their foolish customs, to their false opinions, to
their unreasonable laws, and especially to their want of enlightenment.
Let the mind be filled early with true ideas; let man's reason be
cultivated; let justice govern him; and there will be no need of
opposing to his passions the powerless barrier of the fear of Gods. Men
will be good when they are well taught, well governed, chastised or
censured for the evil, and justly rewarded for the good which they have
done to their fellow-citizens. It is idle to pretend to cure mortals of
their vices if we