mendacity, wars, contagions, bad morals, and all the
multiplied scourges which desolate the earth?

In continually directing the eyes of men toward Heaven, making them
believe that all their evils are due to Divine wrath, in furnishing them
but inefficient and futile means of lessening their troubles, it would
appear that the only object of the priests is to prevent the nations
from dreaming of the true sources of their miseries, and to perpetuate
them. The ministers of religion act like those indigent mothers, who, in
need of bread, put their hungry children to sleep by songs, or who
present them toys to make them forget the want which torments them.

Blinded from childhood by error, held by the invincible ties of opinion,
crushed by panic terrors, stupefied at the bosom of ignorance, how could
the people understand the true causes of their troubles? They think to
remedy them by invoking the gods. Alas! do they not see that it is it
the name of these gods that they are ordered to present their throat to
the sword of their pitiless tyrants, in whom they would find the most
visible cause of the evils under which they groan, and for which they
uselessly implore the assistance of Heaven? Credulous people! in your
adversities redouble your prayers, your offerings, your sacrifices;
besiege your temples, strangle countless victims, fast in sackcloth and
in ashes, drink your own tears; finally, exhaust yourselves to enrich
your gods: you will do nothing but enrich their priests; the gods of
Heaven will not be propitious to you, except when the gods of the earth
will recognize that they are men like yourselves, and will give to your
welfare the care which is your due.

CXLVIII.--HOW FATAL IT IS TO PERSUADE KINGS THAT THEY HAVE ONLY GOD TO
FEAR IF THEY INJURE THE PEOPLE.

Negligent, ambitious, and perverse princes are the real causes of public
adversities, of useless and unjust wars continually depopulating the
earth, of greedy and despotic governments, destroying the benefactions
of nature for men. The rapacity of the courts discourages agriculture,
blots out industry, causes famine, contagion, misery; Heaven is neither
cruel nor favorable to the wishes of the people; it is their haughty
chiefs, who always have a heart of brass.

It is a notion destructive to wholesome politics and to the morals of
princes, to persuade them that God alone is to be feared by them, when
they injure their subjects or when they neglect t