Thus, in a government where you would wish to substitute political morality for a religious education, it would become, perhaps, indispensable to guard men from receiving any ideas calculated to exalt their minds; it would be necessary to divert them from the different competitions which excite self-love and ambition; they must withdraw themselves from the habitual society of women; and it would be still more incumbent on them to abolish the use of money, that attracting and confused image of all kinds of gratifications: in short, in taking from men their religious hopes, and depriving them thus of the encouragements to virtue which the imagination gives birth to, every exertion must be tried to prevent this unruly imagination from seconding vice, and all the passions contrary to public order: it was because Telemachus was accompanied by a Divinity, that he could, without danger, visit the sumptuous court of Sesostris, and the enchanting abodes of Eucharis and Calypso. It is indeed an age the most pleasant, as well as the safest of our life, which we cannot pass without a guide; we must then, in order to pass with security through the tempestuous days of youth, have principles which command us, and not reflections to counsel us; these have not any power but in proportion to the vigour of the mind, and the mind is only formed by experience and a long conflict of opinions. Religious instructions have the peculiar advantage of seizing the imagination, and of interesting our sensibility, those two brilliant faculties of our early years: thus, then even supposing that we could establish a course of political morality, sufficiently propped by reasoning, for defending from vice men enlightened by maturity, I should still say, that a similar philosophy would not be suitable to youth, and that this armour is too heavy for them. In short, the lessons of human wisdom, which cannot govern us during the ardour of our passions, are equally insufficient, when our strength being broken by disease, we are no longer in a state to comprehend a variety of relations; instead of which, such is the pleasing emotions that accompany the language of religion, that in the successive decline of our faculties, this language still keeps pace with them. Nevertheless, if we were ever to be persuaded, that there was on earth a more certain encouragement to virtue than religion, its powers would be immediately weakened; it would not be half so interesting, nor could reign when divided; if its sentiments did not overflow, as we may say, the human heart, all its influence would vanish.