2. As to the second difficulty, it consists in saying that God being susceptible of neither benefits nor injuries, it is not quite clear what acts we could perform in his behalf. But the question is precisely to know whether we only owe duties to beings susceptible of benefits and injuries. We have, for example, to perform duties of justice, love, respect toward the dead, although we can do them neither good nor harm, since they are dead; and although we have reason to think that the dead still exist under another form, the duties we still owe them, are independent of this consideration, and notwithstanding the doubt of the immortality of souls, or their relations with the living, these duties still subsist: those souls might be so happy, and in conditions so different from those of our earthly life, that they might have become wholly indifferent to such, at least to harm. A historian, for instance, would not be justified in slandering his heroes under the pretext that, not believing in the immortality of the soul, he knew he could do them no harm. Man, even in this life, can, through patience and gentleness, so rise above all insults as to become wholly insensible to them: which fact, however, does not imply that the insults done him are innocent. The same man might be so modest as to feel no need of any homage, which would make it no less a duty of justice on the part of others to render him all the homage that is due him. Wholly inward feelings, not evidenced by any outward act whatsoever, cannot in reality do their object any good or harm; yet no one will question their being duties. It may then be seen that duty is not regulated by the good or evil which may outwardly be done, but by the order of things which requires that every being be loved and respected according to his merit. Now, from this standpoint, there can be no doubt that God, who is supreme perfection and the principle of all order and justice, is the legitimate object of the highest respect and the profoundest love. It may be said, perhaps, that these sentiments toward the Creator are rather duties we owe ourselves than God, for it is for our own sakes that we are bound to give to our sensibility and affection the highest object they can have. Since the perfection and the dignity of the soul are enhanced by religion, it is our duty to be religious. Fénélon is quite right when he says that "the man who knows and loves God is more _worthy_ of him than he who lives without him." Is it not the same as to say that religion rendering man more like God, and bringing him nearer to him, man owes it to himself to rise above himself through piety and the love of God?