interests of the
priesthood; all the virtues that it teaches have solely for an object
the church and its ministers; and these ends are always to subject the
people, to draw a profit from their toil, and to inspire them with a
blind credulity. We ought, therefore, to practise morality and virtue
without entering into these conspiracies. If the priests disapprove of
those who do not agree with them, and refuse to award any probity to
the thinkers who reject their injurious and useless notions, society,
which needs for its own sustenance real and human virtues, will not
adopt the sentiments nor espouse the quarrels of these men, visibly
leagued together against it. If the ministers of religion require
their dogmas, their mysteries, and their fanatical virtues to support
their usurped empire, the civil government has a need of reasonable
virtues, of an evident, and above all, of a pacific morality, in order
to exercise its legitimate rights. In fine, the individuals, who
compose every society, demand a morality which will render them happy
in _this_ world, without embarrassing themselves with what only
pretends to secure their felicity in an imaginary sphere, of which
they have no ideas except those received from the priests themselves.

The priests have had the art to unite their religious system with some
moral tenets which are really good. This renders their mysteries more
sacred, and lends authority to their ambiguous dogmas. By the aid of
this artifice, they have given currency to the opinion that without
religion there can be neither morality nor virtue. I hope, Madam, in
my next letter, to complete the exposure of this prejudice, and to
demonstrate, to whoever will reflect, how uncertain, abstract, and
deceitful are the notions which religion has inspired. I shall clearly
show, that they have often infected philosophers themselves; that up
to the present time, they have retarded the progress of morality; and
that they have transformed a science the most certain, plain, and
sensible to every thinking man, into a system at once doubtful and
enigmatical, and full of difficulties. I am, Madam, &c.

LETTER XI.

Of Human or Natural Morality.

By this time, Madam, you will have reflected on what I had the honor
to address to you, and perceived how impossible it is to found a
certain and invariable morality on a religion enthusiastic, ambiguous,
mysterious, and contradictory, and which never agreed with itself