I defy you to show me a single philosopher, from Zoroaster down to Locke, that has ever stirred up a sedition; that has ever been concerned in an attempt against the life of a king; that has ever disturbed society; and, unfortunately, I will find you a thousand votaries of superstition, from Ehud down to Kosinski, stained with the blood of kings and with that of nations. Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy extinguishes them. Perhaps these poor philosophers are not devoted enough to the Holy Virgin; but they are so to God, to reason, and to humanity. Poles! if you are not philosophers, at least do not cut one another's throats. Frenchmen! be gay, and cease to quarrel. Spaniards! let the words "inquisition" and "holy brotherhood" be no longer uttered among you. Turks, who have enslaved Greece--monks, who have brutalized her--disappear ye from the face of the earth. SECTION IV. _Drawn from Cicero, Seneca, and Plutarch._ Nearly all that goes farther than the adoration of a supreme being, and the submission of the heart to his eternal orders, is superstition. The forgiveness of crimes, which is attached to certain ceremonies, is a very dangerous one. _Et nigras mactant pecudes, et manibu', divis,_ _Inferias mittunt._ --LUCRETIUS, b. iii, 52-53. _O faciles nimium, qui tristia crimina cœdis,_ _Fluminea tolli posse putatis aqua!_ --OVID, _Fasti_ ii, 45-46. You think that God will forget your homicide, if you bathe in a river, if you immolate a black sheep, and a few words are pronounced over you. A second homicide then will be forgiven you at the same price, and so of a third; and a hundred murders will cost you only a hundred black sheep and a hundred ablutions. Ye miserable mortals, do better; but let there be no murders, and no offerings of black sheep. What an infamous idea, to imagine that a priest of Isis and Cybele, by playing cymbals and castanets, will reconcile you to the Divinity. And what then is this priest of Cybele, this vagrant eunuch, who lives on your weakness, and sets himself up as a mediator between heaven and you? What patent has he received from God? He receives money from you for muttering words; and you think that the Being of Beings ratifies the utterance of this charlatan! There are innocent superstitions; you dance on festival days, in honor of Diana or Pomona, or some one of the secular divinities of which your calendar is full; be it so. Dancing is very agreeable; it is useful to the body; it exhilarates the mind; it does no harm to any one; but do not imagine that Pomona and Vertumnus are much pleased at your having jumped in honor of them, and that they may punish you for having failed to jump. There are no Pomona and Vertumnus but the gardener's spade and hoe. Do not be so imbecile as to believe that your garden will be hailed upon, if you have missed dancing the _pyrrhic_ or the _cordax_.