Whether there exists a God or not, whether this God has spoken or not, the moral duties of men will be always the same, so long as they are sensible beings. Have men then need of a God whom they know not, of an invisible legislator, of a mysterious religion and of chimerical fears, in order to learn that every excess evidently tends to destroy them, that to preserve health they must be temperate; that to gain the love of others it is necessary to do them good, that to do them evil is a sure means to incur their vengeance and hatred? "Before the law there was no sin." Nothing is more false than this maxim. It suffices that man is what he is, or that he is a sensible being, in order to distinguish what gives him pleasure or displeasure. It suffices that one man knows that another man is a sensible being like himself, to perceive what is useful or hurtful to him. It suffices that man needs his fellow-creature, in order to know that he must fear to excite sentiments unfavourable to himself. Thus the feeling and thinking being has only to feel and think, in order to discover what he must do for himself and others. I feel, and another feels like me; this is the foundation of all morals. 172. We can judge of the goodness of a system of Morals, only by its conformity to the nature of man. By this comparison, we have a right to reject it, if contrary to the welfare of our species. Whoever has seriously meditated Religion; whoever has carefully weighed its advantages and disadvantages, will be fully convinced, that both are injurious to the interests of Man, or directly opposite to his nature. "To arms! the cause of your God is at stake! Heaven is outraged! The faith is in danger! Impiety! blasphemy! heresy!" The magical power of these formidable words, the real value of which the people never understand, have at all times enabled priests to excite revolts, to dethrone kings, to kindle civil wars, and to lay waste. If we examine the important objects, which have produced so many ravages upon earth, it appears, that either the foolish reveries and whimsical conjectures of some theologian who did not understand himself, or else the pretensions of the clergy, have broken every social bond and deluged mankind with blood and tears. 173. The sovereigns of this world, by associating the Divinity in the government of their dominions, by proclaiming themselves his vicegerents and representatives upon earth, and by acknowledging they hold their power from him, have necessarily constituted his ministers their own rivals or masters. Is it then astonishing, that priests have often made kings feel the superiority of the Celestial Monarch? Have they not more than once convinced temporal princes, that even the greatest power is compelled to yield to the spiritual power of opinion? Nothing is more difficult than to serve two masters, especially when they are not agreed upon what they require.