e them a sort of want we cannot
dispense with: our mode of thinking is formed, and familiar to us; our
mind is accustomed to engage itself with certain classes of objects;
and our imagination fancies that it wanders in chaos when it is not
fed with those chimeras to which it had been long accustomed. Phantoms
the most horrible are even clear to it; objects the most familiar to
it, if viewed with the calm eye of reason, are disagreeable and
revolting.

Religion, or rather its superstitions, in consequence of the
marvellous and bizarre notions it engenders, gives the mind continual
exercise; and its votaries fancy they are doomed to a dangerous
inaction when they are suddenly deprived of the objects on which their
imagination exerted its powers. Yet is this exercise so much the more
necessary as the imagination is by far the most lively faculty of the
mind. Hence, without doubt, it becomes necessary men should replace
stale fooleries by those which are novel. This is, moreover, the true
reason why devotion so often affords consolation in great disgraces,
gives diversion for chagrin, and replaces the strongest passions, when
they have been quenched by excess of pleasure and dissipation. The
marvellous arguments, chimeras multiply as religion furnishes activity
and occupation to the fancy; habit renders them familiar, and even
necessary; terrors themselves even minister food to the imagination;
and religion, the religion of priestcraft, is full of terrors. Active
and unquiet spirits continually require this nourishment; the
imagination requires to be alternately alarmed and consoled; and there
are thousands who cannot accustom themselves to tranquillity and the
sobriety of reason. Many persons also require phantoms to make them
religious, and they find these succors in the dogmas of priestcraft.

These reflections will serve to explain to you the continual
variations to which many persons are subject, especially on the
subject of religion. Sensible, like barometers, you behold them
wavering without ceasing; their imagination floats, and is never
fixed; so often as you find them freely given up to the blackness of
superstition, so often may you behold them the slaves of pernicious
prejudices. Whenever they tremble at the feet of their priests, then
are their necks under the yoke. Even people of spirit and
understanding in other affairs are not altogether exempt from these
variations of mental religious temperament; but the