Men being thus imbued with the ridiculous opinion that every thing which they behold is created for themselves, have made it a point of religion to engross every thing, and to judge of its value by the profit which it brings. Accordingly they have invented notions which do them service in explaining the nature of things, and enable them to judge of good and evil, order and disorder, heat and cold, beauty and ugliness, &c. which are by no means what they imagine. Because they are able to frame their ideas in this way, they think that they are in a position to judge of praise and blame; of good and evil. They call that good which respects their divine worship, and turns to their own profit; and that which does neither the one nor the other they denominate evil; and because the ignorant are incapable of judging, and have no conception of any thing save through the medium of their imagination, which they mistake for judgment, they tell us that nothing can be learned from nature, and forthwith invent a particular arrangement of the world. In short they think that matters are ill or well constituted according to the facility or the difficulty which they have in conceiving of them when presented to them through the medium of their senses. People are best pleased with what gives least fatigue to the brain. These individuals have wisely resolved to prefer order to confusion, as if order were any thing else than a pure fiction of the imagination. Thus to say that the Deity has made every thing with order, is to pretend that it is in favour of the human imagination that he has created the world in a manner the most easy for it to form a conception of;—or, which is the same thing, that they know with certainty all the relations and all the designs of whatever exists; an assertion too absurd to merit any serious refutation.
§ 8.
With respect to their other opinions, they are purely the result of this same imagination, having no basis in reality, and being only different modifications of which that faculty is susceptible. Thus, when the impressions made upon the nervous system through the medium of the eyes are agreeable, they pronounce that the objects viewed are beautiful. Smells are good or bad; tastes are sweet or bitter, things touched are hard or soft, according as the sensation produced is unpleasant or otherwise—as scents, and tastes, and contact, and sounds affect the system. Following up these ideas, men have believed that the Deity is pleased with melody, while others have believed that all the movements of the celestial bodies were one harmonious concert; a proof, that these men are persuaded that things are really such as they conceive them to be, or that the world is entirely ideal.—It is not to be wondered at therefore, if we scarcely ever meet with two individuals of the same opinion: indeed some make it their boast to doubt of every thing; for, although all men have a similar bodily conformation, and resemble each other in many respects, there are still as many respects in which they differ. Accordingly it must follow, that what pleases this party displeases that; and what appears good to one man appears evil to another.—We must conclude therefore, that their various opinions must be attributed to their different organizations and the diversity of their co-existences—that reason has little connection with them; and in short, that their conceptions of the material world are the decided results of imagination.
§ 9.
It is therefore evident, that all the reasonings which the generality of mankind are accustomed to employ when they set themselves to explain what nature is, are only their own modes of imagining that which is most uncalculated to make good their own position. They give names to their ideas, as if they existed in any other quarter than in their own prejudiced brain; but instead of calling them mere chimeras, they designate them Beings. There is extremely little difficulty in refuting the arguments grounded on such opinions.
If it is true, as they advance, that the universe is nothing more than an emanation from, or simply a necessary consequence to, the Divine nature, whence spring those imperfections and defaults which we perceive in it? This objection is easily answered. It is impossible for men to judge of the perfection or imperfection of any Being, without a thorough knowledge of his nature and essence[2], and it is a strange abuse of terms to assert that any thing is more or less perfect according as it pleases or displeases, or as it is useful or noxious to human nature. To terminate the argument with those who demand why God has not created all men good and happy, it is sufficient to state that every thing is necessarily what it is; and that, in nature there is no imperfection, since all flows from the necessity of things.