HE BELIEF IN GOD IS NOTHING BUT A MECHANICAL HABITUDE OF
CHILDHOOD.

Men believe in God only upon the word of those who have no more idea of
Him than they themselves. Our nurses are our first theologians; they
talk to children of God as they talk to them of were-wolfs; they teach
them from the most tender age to join the hands mechanically. Have the
nurses clearer notions of God than the children, whom they compel to
pray to Him?

XXXII.--IT IS A PREJUDICE WHICH HAS BEEN HANDED FROM FATHER TO CHILDREN.

Religion is handed down from fathers to children as the property of a
family with the burdens. Very few people in the world would have a God
if care had not been taken to give them one. Each one receives from his
parents and his instructors the God which they themselves have received
from theirs; only, according to his own temperament, each one arranges,
modifies, and paints Him agreeably to his taste.

XXXIII.--ORIGIN OF PREJUDICES.

The brain of man is, especially in infancy, like a soft wax, ready to
receive all the impressions we wish to make on it; education furnishes
nearly all his opinions, at a period when he is incapable of judging for
himself. We believe that the ideas, true or false, which at a tender age
were forced into our heads, were received from nature at our birth; and
this persuasion is one of the greatest sources of our errors.

XXXIV.--HOW THEY TAKE ROOT AND SPREAD.

Prejudice tends to confirm in us the opinions of those who are charged
with our instruction. We believe them more skillful than we are; we
suppose them thoroughly convinced themselves of the things they teach
us. We have the greatest confidence in them. After the care they have
taken of us when we were unable to assist ourselves, we judge them
incapable of deceiving us. These are the motives which make us adopt a
thousand errors without other foundation than the dangerous word of
those who have educated us; even the being forbidden to reason upon what
they tell us, does not diminish our confidence, but contributes often to
increase our respect for their opinions.

XXXV.--MEN WOULD NEVER HAVE BELIEVED IN THE PRINCIPLES OF MODERN THEOLOGY
IF THEY HAD NOT BEEN TAUGHT AT AN AGE WHEN THEY WERE INCAPABLE OF
REASONING.

The instructors of the human race act very prudently in teaching men
their religious principles before they are able to distinguish the true
from the false, or the left hand from the right. It w