of the one and the pains of the other being annexed to a mere repetition of words. He had observed the sublime and primitive idea of the Divinity disfigured by the fantastical imaginations of men; and, finding that in order to believe in God it was necessary to give up that understanding he hath bestowed on us, he held in the same disdain as well the sacred object of our idle reveries as those idle reveries themselves. Without knowing any thing of natural causes, or giving himself any trouble to investigate them, he remained in a condition of the most stupid ignorance, mixed with profound contempt for those who pre tended to greater knowledge than his own.
A neglect of all religious duties leads to a neglect of all moral obligations.[1] The heart of this young vagabond had already made a great progress from one toward the other. Not that he was constitutionally vicious; but misfortune and incredulity, having stifled by degrees the propensities of his natural disposition , were hurrying him on to ruin, adding to the manners of a beggar the principles of an atheist.[2]
- ↑ The Confucian doctrine of “doing unto others as ye would that others should do unto you,” has often been defined as the basis of true morality; and St. James (chap. 1, v. 27) says that “pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father, is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” According to these definitions there seems to be a perfect harmony between religion and morality—between religious duties and moral obligations. But when religion, unfortunately, degenerates into sectarianism—when, forgetting the blessed charity and unspotted purity of St. James, it prompts atrocities like the massacre on St. Bartholomew's eve , or the burning of heretics at the stake, it cannot be considered by any stretch of the imagination as being allied to morality.—E.
- ↑ This phrase “the principles of an atheist,” is probably used in this connection as a mere figure of speech; for it seems positively certain that at no period of his life could Rousseau have been considered as an atheist. He believed in a creator of the universe—a being distinct from and superior to matter—which is deism; and not in the materialistic view that nature comprises all things, because a whole is greater than any of its parts,—which is the doctrine of atheism.—E.
