vidence? Sensible people deride, and with reason, an absolute
pyrrhonism, and even consider it impossible. A man who could doubt his
own existence, or that of the sun, would appear very ridiculous, or
would be suspected of reasoning in bad faith. Is it less extravagant to
have uncertainties about the non-existence of an evidently impossible
being? Is it more absurd to doubt of one's own existence, than to
hesitate upon the impossibility of a being whose qualities destroy each
other? Do we find more probabilities for believing in a spiritual being
than for believing in the existence of a stick without two ends? Is the
notion of an infinitely good and powerful being who permits an infinity
of evils, less absurd or less impossible than that of a square triangle?

Let us conclude, then, that religious skepticism can be but the effect
of a superficial examination of theological principles, which are in a
perpetual contradiction of the clearest and best demonstrated
principles! To doubt is to deliberate upon the judgment which we should
pass. Skepticism is but a state of indecision which results from a
superficial examination of subjects. Is it possible to be skeptical in
the matter of religion when we design to return to its principles, and
look closely into the idea of the God who serves as its foundation?
Doubt arises ordinarily from laziness, weakness, indifference, or
incapacity. To doubt, for many people, is to dread the trouble of
examining things to which one attaches but little interest. Although
religion is presented to men as the most important thing for them in
this world as well as in the other, skepticism and doubt on this subject
can be for the mind but a disagreeable state, and offers but a
comfortable cushion. No man who has not the courage to contemplate
without prejudice the God upon whom every religion is founded, can know
what religion to accept; he does not know what to believe and what not
to believe, to accept or to reject, what to hope or fear; finally, he is
incompetent to judge for himself.

Indifference upon religion can not be confounded with skepticism; this
indifference itself is founded upon the assurance or upon the
probability which we find in believing that religion is not made to
interest us. The persuasion which we have that a thing which is
presented to us as very important, is not so, or is but indifferent,
supposes a sufficient examination of the thing, without which it would
be im