oncludes that in
order to travel with more safety, he should travel alone; renounce the
pleasures which he meets and deprive himself of the amusements which
could console him for the fatigues and the weariness of the road. A
stoical and morose philosophy sometimes gives us counsels as senseless
as religion; but a more rational philosophy inspires us to strew flowers
on life's pathway; to dispel melancholy and panic terrors; to link our
interests with those of our traveling companions; to divert ourselves by
gaiety and honest pleasures from the pains and the crosses to which we
are so often exposed. We are made to feel, that in order to travel
pleasantly, we should abstain from that which could become injurious to
ourselves, and to avoid with great care that which could make us odious
to our associates.

CLXXVIII.--AN ATHEIST HAS MORE MOTIVES FOR ACTING UPRIGHTLY, MORE

CONSCIENCE, THAN A RELIGIOUS PERSON.

It is asked what motives has an atheist for doing right. He can have the
motive of pleasing himself and his fellow-creatures; of living happily
and tranquilly; of making himself loved and respected by men, whose
existence and whose dispositions are better known than those of a being
impossible to understand. Can he who fears not the Gods, fear anything?
He can fear men, their contempt, their disrespect, and the punishments
which the laws inflict; finally, he can fear himself; he can be afraid
of the remorse that all those experience whose conscience reproaches
them for having deserved the hatred of their fellow-beings. Conscience
is the inward testimony which we render to ourselves for having acted in
such a manner as to deserve the esteem or the censure of those with whom
we associate. This conscience is based upon the knowledge which we have
of men, and of the sentiments which our actions must awaken in them. A
religious person's conscience persuades him that he has pleased or
displeased his God, of whom he has no idea, and whose obscure and
doubtful intentions are explained to him only by suspicious men, who
know no more of the essence of Divinity than he does, and who do not
agree upon what can please or displease God. In a word, the conscience
of a credulous man is guided by men whose own conscience is in error, or
whose interest extinguishes intelligence.

Can an atheist have conscience? What are his motives for abstaining from
secret vices and crimes of which other men are ignorant, and which