from that which is adopted by most authors; it is ordinarily supposed, that men, uncertain as to the nature of the powers, the secret influence of which they feel every moment, át first attributed these powers to animate bodies, to Fetiches, for example, and afterwards to living creatures. It could only be after they had attained a certain degree of culture and civilization, that they would rise to the adoration of beings. Afterwards, in this supposition, they adopted tutelary gods for each individual, villages, cities, and even for rivers and forests; and, after many efforts and combinations, they ended by conceiving the abstract metaphysical idea of an independent intelligence, of a God, the sole creator and master of the universe.

The order in which I have explained the progress of nations, in regard to religious ideas and sentiments, appears to me more conformable to tradition and reason. Experience teaches us, that in all ages, just ideas on the nature of the Divinity have degenerated into superstition and idolatry. The Hebrews knew Jehovah; but, notwithstanding the prohibitions of God, their inclination for idolatry was such, that they always relapsed into it. They could not abandon the great veneration they had like other nations for mountains, high places, and woods.

Since the Christian era, and the solemn proclamation of a true God, they have not been able to limit the worship to the Most High alone; they must still have secondary divinities, they still need images, relics, amulets, tutelary angels, saints, so many beings in whom they suppose a particular power, and whom they invoke in the confidence of a special protection.

In other respects, whatever hypothesis we adopt, it will always be difficult to keep clear of the obstacles, which oppose themselves to the direct proof of the advance, which nature has led mankind to make, towards his most important interests.

Whatever opinion we adopt, it still follows, that men have always instinctively recognised superior

beings, either beneficent or malicious. Under whatever form they have represented these powers, it is always the idea more or less obscure, more or less refined, of a superior being, which constitutes the basis of all creeds, and of all forms of worship, even the most absurd. Men were not long content to adore their household gods; they devoted temples and altars to them. "The first edifices," says M. Sobry," which social order demands, are temples. Men wish to assemble, to render to God a service which consoles, unites, reconciles, and improves them. It is a duty, a want, a necessity. All ages, nations, and places, are subjected to this sacred custom, as ancient as the world, as widely diffused as the human race."

Now, it is not difficult to conceive, why it is with the belief in God, and with religious worship, as it is with all the qualities and faculties, which have been given to man by means of his organization. No one has invented the propensity to physical love, the love of offspring, attachment; men will never think of seeking in the records of history, the first who gave combat to one of his fellow-men, the first who made war, and who created the spirit of domination to raise himself to the head of a tribe or nation. No one has the glory of having invented painting, music, calculation, the mechanic arts, eloquence, poetry. So there is no one, neither legislator nor conqueror, who can be quoted as the first author of a religion, before whom it can be shown, that there was not any received religion. There was one before Numa, among the Romans. Moses, whose writings are anterior to any other work we have, shows, evidently, a religion coeval with the creation. If we read his books, we shall there see a religion formed among all the nations of which he speaks, particularly among the Egyptians and Canaanites; we shall see a religion already changed and corrupted among these ancient nations. What was the golden calf, if not the symbol of Isis, and one of those monstrous divinities of Egypt, already idolatrous ?

Even in the time of Abraham, Chaldea was infected with idolatry. Religion being natural to men, it should be coeval and coexistent; and I repeat it, the idea of God is too sublime for man to attain by reasoning, if it were not inherent in his organization.

But some timorous devotees are alarmed by the assertion, that there is an innate disposition to religious ideas; because, say they, to seek within man the source of religious ideas, is to render revelation superfluous.

If God had resolved to reveal a peculiar religion, man should be made susceptible of receiving it by means of a natural disposition. Let one try all imaginable means of giving to an idiot ideas of God and religion, it is wishing to make of a brute an architect or a poet; the natural disposition, the susceptibility is wanting in both. Thus the seed of the sublime lessons of revelation had fallen upon stony ground, if man had not been rendered susceptible of profiting by the dispositions, which the Creator has given him. Revelation has guided his steps in the way, where his natural tendency to idolatry was bewildering him in darkness; it has purified and fixed the idea, which he formed to himself of God and his duties. Thus, then, the natural tendency of men to religious ideas, not only is not in opposition with revealed religion, but revelation would have been absolutely impossible, if the human race had not been prepared for it by means of its organization.

It is remarkable, that even those, who derive every religious idea from the personal intercourse of God with the first men and with Moses, make use, as by instinct, of the same expressions which Seneca and Cicero employed, to account for the universality of the belief in God. They all say, that this sentiment is engraven in the heart of all men, the most ferocious as well as the most humane.

This hypothesis explains how uniformity, in the fables relative to the existence of God and to certain

moral principles, and uniformity of rights, indicative of the same or similar principles, is found among men, in spite of partial changes introduced by different nations.

On the same supposition, it is still easy to conceive how religious ideas must have passed from generation to generation, as a heritage common to all.

As this organ coexists with other organs, likewise very active, devotion combines itself, in different ways, with the qualities or faculties, which result from them. The devout warrior, as Gustavus Adolphus, and the bloody Suwarrow, will invoke God before battle, to obtain victory from him, and will urge his soldiers to prayer. The cruel devotee, as Louis XI., Philip II., and others, will prove his pious zeal by arming the inquisition, by making auto-da-fés, and by performing with his own hands, the duties of the executioner. The devout artist, as Philip Champagne, will scrupulously avoid all that is licentious, and will represent only sacred subjects. The devout philosopher and naturalist, as Newton, Bonnet, Kleinjogg, and Clarke, will every where see in nature the finger of God, and in every thing render honor to the Creator, or even like Malebranche, will derive all our ideas from God, and will maintain, that we see God in all. The devout poet, as Milton and Klopstock, will sing the mysteries of religion.

I know a devout libertine, who pays public women by giving them prayer books. In this man the organ of devotion and that of propagation, are both greatly developed.

These combinations are infinitely various, for the organ of devotion as well as for all the rest; in health as well as in mania.

If

As all propensities may become the source of evil, so the most elevated propensity of the human race, is not altogether exempt from every inconvenience. men are limited in their capacities, they cling to objects of veneration of their own creation, and to which they attribute a supernatural power. A con

stant phenomenon, observed in all nations, proves that this tendency too often degenerates at the expense of the moral sense. Every where and in all sects of religion, men consider themselves much more obliged to fulfil the duties, they impose on themselves towards the idols of their imaginations, towards Fetiches, &c., than to meet the obligations of pure morality. A man may be on his knees before an image, be the slave of blind fanaticism, and endure penances as painful as ridiculous, while he makes no scruple of infringing the laws of society and of nature. Who has not seen that, where the ministers of religion entertain the people only with mysteries and dogmas, there intolerance, fraud, perjury, theft, murder, rape, incest, &c., are committed with deplorable indifference. One would rather lose his life, than break the vow of a certain abstinence.

The mind of the people is not sufficiently exercised to be able to embrace sentiments and ideas of a different nature. Once imbued with sterile dogmas, it is entirely devoted to them; it is more strongly impressed by them, than by precepts drawn from social life. In the first case, he supposes himself connected to omnipotent beings by mysterious and invisible forces; in the second, to human laws alone, the strict observance of which often demands a resolute self-denial and a repression of inclinations, the most dear and the most imperative. Preach up maceration, abstinences, fanaticism, mortifications, mysteries, &c., and the crowd will follow you; but exact a severe morality in action, and you will be abandoned. It costs much more to be virtuous, than to be devout.

Religious Propensity in Mania.

"Nothing is more common in hospitals," says M. Pinel, "than cases of alienation produced by too exalted a devotion, scruples carried to fatal excess, or religious terrors."