In one word, and to conclude, if God were an illusion, why could not virtue be an illusion also? In order that I may believe in the dignity and excellence of my soul and that of other men, I must believe in a supreme principle of dignity and excellence. Nothing comes from nothing. If there is no being to love me and my fellow-men, why should I be held to love them? If the world is not good, if it was not created for good, if good is not its origin and end, what have I to do here in this world, and what care I for that swarm of ants of which I am a part? Let them get along as well as they can! Why should I take so much trouble to so little purpose? Take any intelligent man, a friend of civil and political liberty, and ready to suffer anything to procure these to his country, as long as he believes the thing possible, both wisdom and virtue will command him to devote himself wholly to it. But let experience prove to him that it is a chimera, that his fellow-citizens are either too great cowards or too vicious to be worthy and capable of the good he wishes to secure to them; suppose he sees all around him nothing but cupidity, servility, unbridled and abominable passions; suppose, finally, that he becomes convinced that liberty among men, or at least among the people he lives with, is an illusion, do you think he could, do you even think he should, continue wasting his faculties in an impossible enterprise? Once more, I can forget myself, and I ought; and I should leave to internal justice or divine goodness the care to watch over my destinies; but that which I cannot forget, that which cannot leave me indifferent, is the reign of justice on earth. I must be able to say: _Let Thy kingdom come!_ How can I co-operate with the Divine Idea if there is no God, who, in creating us for the furthering of his kingdom, made it, at the same time, possible for us? And how any I to believe that out of that great void whereto atheism reduces us, there can come a reign of wills holy and just, bound to each other by the laws of respect and love? Kant, the great stoic, without borrowing from theology, has more strongly than any other, described the necessity of this reign of law; but he fully understood that this abstract and ideal order of things would remain but a pure conception, if there were not conjoined with it what he justly calls "the practical, the moral faith" in the existence of God. =171. Religious rights.=--_Religious duties_ imply _religious rights_: for if it is a duty to honor the Creator, it is also a right. Even those who do not admit obligations toward God, ought to respect in those who do admit them, their liberty to do so. The right of having a religion, and practicing it, is what is called _liberty of conscience_.