§ 5.
These originators of Religion, viz. Hope and Fear, aided by the different opinions and passions of men, have given rise to a vast number of phantastical creeds, which have been the cause of so much mischief and of so many revolutions among the nations.
The honor and the revenues attached to the priesthood, or to the ministers of the Gods, have encouraged the ambition and avarice of cunning men who knew how to profit by the stupidity of the vulgar, whom they have got so much entangled in their snares that they have led them insensibly into the habit of loving a lie and hating the truth.
§ 6.
A system of falsehood being established, ambitious men, intoxicated with the pleasure of being elevated above their fellow mortals, attempted to add to their reputation by feigning that they were the friends of those invisible Beings whom the common people so much feared. The better to succeed in this every one represented them after his fashion, and they all took the liberty of multiplying them to an extent almost incredible.
§ 7.
The rude unformed matter of the world was called the God Chaos. In the same way they deified the Heavens, the Earth, the Sea, Fire, the Winds and Planets. The same honor was conferred on men and women; birds, reptiles, the crocodile, the calf, the dog, the lamb, the serpent and the swine, in fact, all sorts of plants and animals were worshipped. Every river, every fountain, bore the name of some deity; every house had its lares and penates, and every man his genius—all was filled above and below the earth with Gods, Spirits, Shadows, and Demons. Neither was it enough to feign divinities in every imaginable place. They outrage in the same way, Time, the Day, the Night, Victory, Strife, Honor, Virtue, Health, and Sickness. They invented these Divinities that they might represent them as ready to take vengeance on those who would not be brought up in temples and at altars. Lastly, they took to worshipping their own Genii; some invoked theirs under the name of the Muses, while others, under that of Fortune, worshipped their own ignorance. Some sanctioned their licentiousness under the name of Cupid, their wrath under that of the Furies, their natural parts under the name of Priapus; in one word there was nothing to which they did not give the name of a God or a Demon.