The God of Spinoza and the Three Impostures (Tolga Yalur, 2023) by yalurto

THE GOD OF SPINOZA AND THE THREE IMPOSTURES Edited by Tolga Yalur

Edited and translated by Tolga Yalur in 2023, from the French edition Traité des Trois Imposteurs, Moïse, Jésus-Christ, Mahomet available at Bibliothèque Nationale de France with the description: "Anticlerical work from the end of the 17th or the beginning of the 18th century, probably between 1678 and 1688, on the imposture of the founders of the three monotheistic religions. Distributed in various versions and under different titles. Original title, The Spirit of Spinoza (in 8 chapters), reworked in 1721 under the title De tribus impostoribus ou Traité des trois imposteurs (in six chapters). Publication in 1768 of a definitive form reissued from 1775 to 1796 in numerous editions L'esprit de Spinoza is accompanied by La vie de Spinoza, sometimes under the collective title La vie et l'esprit de Spinoza. Not to be confused with De tribus impostoribus, another anticlerical text in Latin, of controversial date, 16-17th centuries."

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION. Tolga Yalur, The God of Spinoza………………..4 CHAPTER I. Of the God…………………………………………………12 CHAPTER II. The human reason for conceiving an invisible being usually called God…………………………………………………………21 CHAPTER III. The meaning of the word Religion: how and why there are numerous religions……………………………………………………35 CHAPTER IV. Sensitive and obvious verities…………….………….73 CHAPTER V. Of the Soul………………………………………………...80 CHAPTER VI. Of the Spirits named Demons…………………………90

INTRODUCTION The God of Spinoza

When one rises above the individual villainy displayed, one can only pity them all, like we shall be pitied someday. Arthur Miller, The Crucible (1953)

Spinoza was an outlier of the time. Though he lived in the "freest" land in the 17th century, Netherlands, Europe was ruled by religious laws and wars under despotic-mercantilist regimes. He was more an outlier for being born in Amsterdam to a Sephardic Jewish family of Portuguese immigrants. At the age of 23, he was excommunicated from the synagogue school where he studied religion and commerce, the Jewish community and life. The excommunication he went through was terrible, because no Jew would get close to him, and not read anything he wrote. Spinoza first approached the groups that enjoyed the bourgeois opportunities offered by Netherlands; and then to the intellectuals influenced by Descartes' philosophy. He was on the move all the time, making a network where he could spread his thoughts, which gradually advanced in his work. Though he left unfinished De Emendatione Intellectus (On the Repair of the Mind, 1661), he wrote Ethics (Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata, 1661-74). He discussed the philosophy of Descartes in Principia Philosophiae Cartesianae (The Principles of Cartesian Philosophy, 1663). These books were made "public" by his friends, notably in 1677. When he died in 1677, he left behind unpublished writings, books, and letters. As is known, none of his books were published in his lifetime except his Tractatus Theologico Politicus (Theological and Political Treat, 1670), which was published anonymously. His ideas gradually spread throughout Europe, though demonized. In his article on Spinoza in the Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (1697) Pierre Bayle judged that Spinoza was a philosopher who should not be "thought about" and "remembered" for a century. In the late 18th century, Spinoza was a world of universal harmony

for the German Romantics. Spinozism was the key of the world of reason to the world of affects. Hegel thought of Spinoza as virtue with an inordinate "positivity" that does not allow anything to be "rejected". Spinoza has been reborn into the modern world in the "Italian Marxist" Toni Negri's affirmation that one cannot be a philosopher without being Spinozist, but one cannot be "modern" with him. Spinoza is briefly a revolution. This book is the excerpt of the chapters for the Three Impostures from the 1678-88 French copy of the book attributed to Spinoza, Traité des Trois Imposteurs, Moïse, Jésus-Christ, Mahomet (Treat of Three Impostures: Moses, Jesus-Christ, Mohammad). It concerns the idea of the God, the Prophets, and in the most published versions in his name, the Spirit. Spinoza uses the word “imposture” in the title for monotheistic prophets, where he does not put Judaism, Christianity and Islam into the same bag, but he concludes that their prophets were sheer charlatans, scammers of former Gods who applied to the minds, in Spinoza's terms, of vulgars, ignorants, imbeciles. He cites these religions, all of which derived from the Jewish religion, as a monopolization of the main themes from polytheistic religions, such as the corporations of the good and evil as well as Gods. In this sense, he is quite materialist though not individualist, that is, Spinoza's idea of God has a "universal" and "natural" wholeness in regards to the good and evil affects left on the minds and souls of beings. He does not distinguish humans from animals as well as from all living organisms. To him, though he later uses the cartesian notion of thought, his take on the God that is Being inclusive of all living beings is quite impressive at a time before Darwin was around.

Spinoza's use of the terms idea and spirit are, no matter how he gets close to the materialism of the 19th century philosophy, such as Marxian thought of the spirit, affective. If Spinoza unpacked religions and prophets as charlatans who sold spirits to the spiritless imbeciles, commoners or vulgars, it was Marx who added that the substance that these three impostures have been selling is opium. Unlike Marx, Spinoza does not leave the hold of the God. Natheless, his God is no longer monotheistic. I would rather argue that Spinoza, in his dispersed thoughts in the book, begins with the monotheistic idea of the God and ends up with the idea of a God as one big universal consciousness, but he obviously lacks scientific evidence. Spinoza's division of religions through prophets is more interesting. He distinguishes Christianity from Judaism through the simple fact that the commoners of the time needed to see the God. Human mind was still not that capable of conceiving a Being, the very term he uses, which is invisible but everywhere. To Spinoza, the "idiot" question to ask after millennia of visible forms of Gods would be: How is that possible? The answer was meant to be Christianity and corporeal depictions, the images of the affective ideas of The God and the Spirit. So Spinoza's distinction of the lingual idea of God and its imaginary reflection on the human mind is a revolution. He is very well poignant of the fact that the affective feminine was prevalent in Judaism with the Mosaic consciousness inscribed on Laws. Instead of the Father in Christianity whose image is let to be depicted, in Judaism that's Mother though the God is genderless in the latter and Islam. Spinoza, however, does not reference the gendered ideas of the God. To him, what is the verity is God. What is false are Prophets and

Religions. As I mentioned, the idea of the God ends up being a universal, ecological, astronomical God as Being whose appearances are everywhere. He relies heavily on these imagined traces of the God, which later became a founding notion in Pantheism. Spinoza's version of the soul is what the religions are there for, and it seems to be connected to a notion of corpora where a lot of things swirl in a way as to be materialized in it. As far as language is concerned, Spinoza gives a grand number of examples from pre-monotheistic and monotheistic scriptures to illustrate the efficaciousness of language in the mind and-or the soul. He might as well have ventured into this issue in Ethics. In report to the imaginary, that is to say, to the corporeal, it is more manifest. He pokes fun at the birth of Jesus to a Virgin as if that's playing the God as the Verity, though he does not say explicitly but implies that Jesus was the God himself with the apparition of the Holy Spirit, which he disintegrates later in the book. Spinoza obviously laughs at Moses having a troublemaker Goddess-wife that were to be a subject in Sigmund Freud's theory a few centuries later, such as the Uncanny (1919) for the mother-tongue and fatherland (in German) and the Moses and Monotheism (1939) for the advance of the monotheist religion in the evolution of the human psyche. As for Mohammed, Spinoza's allegory is limited to who should play the God and what should be the image of the God's messenger in the fight between Mohammedans and Corais, tribal conflicts to put simply. Obviously, Spinoza did not hear that the conversion of the Hagia Sophia from being a church into a mosque was a complex after the Quran was translated into Latin by the French Pierre le Vénérable with a red fishy image of Mohammad.

Maybe Jacques Lacan did a few centuries later: "The symptom presents itself as a small fish whose voracious break only closes to make sense under the tooth. Then, one of two things: either the symptom makes it grow and multiply (“Marry and multiply” said the God, which is something strong: he, the God knows what a multiplication is. Not this abundance of the little fish) – or else, it fades away." (Lacan, J. L’École Freudienne, 1975) What interests Spinoza in the big three religions as scammers is first and foremost the God as Verity, because he finds it regressive imagining a humanlike corpora of the God as in Christianity, or playing the God's messenger as in Judaism and Islam. Spinoza's notion of the universe introduces the Being as the God. As for the Verity, it is a universe for it to transgress in comparison to the singular. The notion of the universe introduces the pantheistic idea of God as the Verity. What might be interesting for this book is the psychoanalytic theory, a revolution that was meant to be in the following centuries, where the human psyche could be approached through a Spinozist view. Though Spinoza's notion of image divides the idea of the God in monotheism into two, a Spinozist division of the themes in this book is therefore threefold: imagination, language, and verity. These three terms inform the basic registrations of reality in psychoanalytic theory, and Spinoza takes into account how reality, not verity, has been fictionalized through tales and lies in the words and scriptures of what he occasionally calls Legislators, the Impostures. The word he uses passim in the book for this fictionalization is "illusion".

The triple illusion of reality is based upon the sign, more or less demonstrating the equivalence of these three in a hole that is the symptom, what is strictly unthinkable. The symptom is what would at least be a departure, what would make a hole in the register of language. And that hole is diagnosed in grand detail by Spinoza in his detailed analysis of the term Spirit, which had been called Demons as Spectral apparitions at the time. And it would make it possible to question what the Spirit as the symptomatic hole is about the threefold reality that conveys a sense. This sense is there only to be lessened to the function that supports the human unconscious in psychoanalytic theory, the function that is structured as language. The equivocation of this function is the use of language, if not that sensitive but affective in the uses of such terms as Devil, Satan, Hell. Affective sense adds the lingual dimension to the Imaginary, everything that is represented for the human being who cannot grasp the corpora as a whole. Symptom, in Spinoza's view, is the Spectra of the Verity. The cure of psychoanalysis is to fade away the symptom, to forget. How to fade away the Verity of the Spirit, the Spectra of the Verity? It depends on whether the Spirit wants to return. That might be why Spinoza uses the term Spectra not singularly. The sense of the Spirit, natheless, is not its multiplication or extinction, but the Verity.

Tolga Yalur

CHAPTER I Of the God.

Despite the importance of the verity for humans, very few enjoy the advantage of knowing it. Some are incapable of looking for the verity for themselves, others do not want to take the trouble. We shouldn't be astonished if the world is replete with vain and ridiculous opinions. Nothing is more capable of giving lessons than ignorance; the only source of the false ideas of the Divinity, of the Soul, of the Spirits and of almost all other objects which make up Religion. Their usage has prevailed, and we are content with the prejudices of birth. We rely on the most essential things for those who are interested to make it their law to stubbornly sustain given opinions, who do not dare destroy them for fear of self-destruction.

Why there is no remedy for the Evil is that after having established the false ideas of the God, we immediately encourage people to believe in these ideas without examination. On the contrary, we leave the aversion of the God to the Philosophers or the true Scientists, for fear that the reason they teach would point out the errors in which God is immersed. The proponents of this nonsense have been so triumphant that it is dangerous to oppose them. It matters too much to these impostures that people are ignorant to allow them to be disillusioned. Thus we are forced to disguise the verity, or to sacrifice ourselves to the rage of false Scientists, or of low and interested souls.

If people could understand the chasm that ignorance throws them into, they would soon shake off the yoke of their indignant conductors, because it is possible to let reason act without discovering the verity. These impostures felt this so well that to prevent the good effects that it would infallibly produce, they decided to paint it as a monster who is incapable of inspiring any good affect. Although they blame it in general on those who are unreasonable, they would nevertheless be very sad if the verity was heard. Therefore, we see these sworn enemies of common sense constantly falling into continual contradictions. It is difficult to know what they are claiming. If it is true that the right reason is the only light that man must follow, and if the people are not as incapable of reasoning as we try to persuade them, those who seek to instruct them must strive to correct his false reasoning and destroy his prejudices. Then we will see their eyes open gradually and their minds become convinced of this verity, that God is not what they ordinarily imagine.

To overcome this, there is no need for high speculation or to penetrate into the secrets of nature. We only need common sense to judge that God is neither angry nor jealous; that justice and mercy are false titles attributed to it; and that what the Prophets and the Apostles [Caliphs] have said about it teaches us neither its nature nor its essence. Indeed, speaking without pretense and telling the thing as it is, must we not agree that these Doctors were neither more skillful nor better educated than the rest; and that, far from it, what they say about God is so rude that thou have to be a completely commoner to believe it? Although the thing is quite obvious in itself, we will make it still more sensible by examining if there is any appearance that the Prophets and Apostles were otherwise conformed to humans.

Everyone agrees on the birth and the ordinary functions of life, which had nothing that distinguished them from the rest of humans. They were fathered by men, they are born by women, and they would maintain their lives in the same way as we do. As for the spirit, we want God to animate that of the Prophets much more than others. God communicated to humans in this very particular way: we believe in this in good faith as if the thing was proven. Without considering that all humans are alike, and that they all have the same origin, we claim that prophets were of an extraordinary temper; and chosen by the Divinity to announce his oracles. But, apart from the fact that they had neither more intelligence than the vulgar, nor more perfect understanding, what do we see in their writings which obliges us to need a high opinion of them? The greater part of what they said is so obscure that one cannot hear anything, in such a poor order that it is easy to see that prophets did not understand themselves. They were nothing but ignorant deceptions. What gave rise to the opinion that was conceived of Moses, Jesus and Mohammad was the boldness they had in boasting that they immediately received from God everything they announced to the people. An absurd and ridiculous belief since they themselves admit that God only spoke to them in dreams. There is nothing more natural than dreams, consequently, one must be very shameless, very vain and very foolish, to say that God speaks this way. Whoever believes in it must be very credulous and very foolish to mistake dreams for divine oracles. Suppose for a moment that God made himself heard to someone by dreams, by visions, or by any

other means that we wish to imagine, no one is obliged to believe in the word of someone subject to error, and even to lies and imposture. We also see that in the ancient Law there was not nearly as much esteem for the Prophets as we have today. When we were tired of their chatter, which often only tended to sow revolt and distract the people from obedience, we silenced them with various tortures. Jesus Christ himself did not escape the just punishment he deserved; unlike Moses, he did not have an army following him to defend his opinions. Add to this, the Prophets were so accustomed to contradicting each other that there was not in four hundred a single true one.* Moreover, it is certain that the aim of their Prophecies, as well as of the laws of the most famous legislators, was to perpetuate their memory, by making the people believe that they were conferring with God. The finest politicians have always used it in this way, although this ruse has not always triumphed for those who, like Moses, did not have the means to provide for their safety. * In the first book of Law, chap. 22, V. 6, Ahab, king of Israel, cites 400 false prophets for their prophecies.

That said, let us examine the Prophets' little idea of the God. If they are to be believed, God is a purely corporeal being; Michael sees him sitting; Daniel, dressed in white and in the form of an old man; Ezekiel sees it as fire. Enough for the Old Testament. As for the New, the Disciples of Jesus Christ imagine seeing it in the form of a pigeon, the Apostles in that of tongues of fire, and Saint Paul as a light which dazzles and blinds him. As for the contradiction of their feelings, Samuel (a) believed that God never repented of what he resolved; rather, Jeremiah (b) tells that God repents of his counsels. Joel (c) tells that he only repents of the evil he has done to humans: Jeremiah says that he does not repent of it. Genesis (d) teaches that the human is the master of sin, and that it is up to humans to do good, whereas Saint Paul (e) assures that humans have no control on the lust without God's particular grace. Such are the false and contradictory ideas that these so-called inspired people give of the God, without considering that these ideas represent Divinity as a sensitive, material being and subject to all human passions. After this, natheless, we are told that God has nothing in common with matter, and that it is an incomprehensible being to humans. I would very much like to know how all this can fit together, if it is right to believe in the so visible, so hearable, and so unreasonable contradictions. If we must finally report to the human witnessing that is rude enough to imagine, notwithstanding the sermons of Moses, it is that a Calf was God! Natheless, without dwelling on the reveries of a people raised in

servitude and absurdity, ignorance has produced the belief in all the impostures and errors which reign among us today. (a) Cap. 15 vs. 2. & 9. (b) Cap. 18 vs. 10. (c) Cap 2. vs. 13. (d) Cap. 4. vs. 7. (e) Rom. 15. 9. vs. 10.

CHAPTER II The human reason for conceiving an invisible being usually called God.

Those who ignore physical causes have a natural fear which emerges from worry and doubt whether there exists a Being or power to harm or preserve. Hence their inclination to feign invisible causes, which are only Ghosts of their imagination, which they invoke in adversity and which they praise in prosperity. They make Gods out of them in the end, and this illusional fear of invisible powers is the source of the Religions, each forming their own fear. The religions that contained and arrested people by similar reveries kept this seed of religion, made it a law and eventually, by the terrors of the future, reduced the people to blind obedience.

Humans believed that the source of the Gods was their similarity to humans. They did all things like humans to some end. Therefore, believers unanimously say and believe that God has done nothing except for humans, and conversely that nothing has been done except for God. This prejudice is general. When we reflect on its influence on the morals and opinions of humans, we clearly see that Gods took occasion there to form false ideas the of good and evil, of the merit and demerit, of the honor and shame, of the order and confusion, of the beauty and deformity, and other such things.

Everyone must stay assured that all humans are born into a profound ignorance, and that the only natural thing is to look for what is useful and advantageous. Hence: (1) we believe that it is enough to be free to feel for oneself that one can want and wish without being at all concerned about the causes which dispose one to want and wish, because one does not know them; (2) as humans do nothing except to an end of their preference, and their only aim is to know the final causes of their actions, and they imagine that after that they no longer have any subject of doubt, and as they find within themselves and outside themselves several means of achieving what they propose, seeing that they have, for example, a sun to enlighten them, etc., they concluded that there is nothing in nature which is not made for them, and which they cannot enjoy and dispose of; but as humans knew that it is not they who made all these things, they believed themselves well founded in imagining a supreme being as author of everything, in a word, they thought that everything that exists was the work of one or more Deities. On the other hand, humans judged for themselves the nature of the Gods that humans have admitted being unknown to them. They imagined that these unknown Gods were susceptible to the same passions as humans; and as the inclinations of humans are different, they worshiped a Divinity according to their mood, with the view of attracting its blessing and thereby making it serve all nature to their desires.

This is the way that prejudice has changed into superstition. It has gotten embedded in such a way that the rudest people believed themselves capable of penetrating into the final causes, as if they had a complete knowledge. Hence, instead of illustrating that nature does nothing in vain, they believed that God and nature thought like humans. Experience having made it known that an infinite number of calamities disturb the sweetness of life, such as storms, earthquakes, diseases, hunger, thirst, etc., all these evils were attributed to the heavenly wrath. The Divinity was believed to be irritated against the offenses of humans, who were unable to remove a similar illusion from their heads, nor to disabuse themselves of these prejudices by the daily examples which show that goods and evils have always been common to the well and the bad. This error emerges from the fact that it was easier to remain in their natural ignorance than to abolish a prejudice received for centuries and to establish something possible.

This prejudice led them to another, which is to believe that God's judgments were incomprehensible. For this reason the knowledge of the verity was beyond the powers of the human spirit; the error where we would still be, if mathematics, physics and some other sciences had not destroyed it.

Thou do not need to be a scientist to show that nature has no end, and that all final causes are nothing but human fictions. It is enough to show that this doctrine takes away the perfections attributed to the God. If God acts for an end, whether for himself or for some other, he desires what has no point. There is a time at which God does not have the object for which he acts but the wish to have it; which makes an indigent God. But so as not to omit anything that can support the reasoning of those who hold the opposite opinion; suppose for example, that a pot falls down from a building on a person and kills him, it is necessary, say our ignorant people, that this pot fell on purpose to kill this person, and this could only happen because God wanted it. If thou say that the wind caused this fall in the time of this poor unfortunate passing, they will ask thou why it was precisely at this moment that the wind was shaking the pot. Tell that the man was going for a supper with one of his friends who asked him for one, they will want to know why this friend had asked him for a supper at that time rather than at another. They will ask thou an infinite number of bizarre questions to shuffle back and forth from cause to cause and make thou admit that the sole will of God, which is the asylum of the ignorant, is the primary cause of the fall of this pot. Likewise, when they see the structure of the human body, they fall into admiration. Due to the fact that they are ignorant of the causes of the effects which appear so marvelous to them, they conclude that it is a

supernatural effect, in which the causes known to humans can have no share. Hence, who wants to examine the works of creation in depth, and penetrate into their natural causes like a true scholar, without enslaving himself to the prejudices formed by ignorance, passes for an ungodly person, and, if otherwise, is soon decried by malice of those whom the vulgar recognizes as the interpreters of nature and the gods. These mercenary souls know very well that ignorance, which keeps the people surprised, is what makes them subsist and conserves their credit.

Having convinced themselves with the idea that whatever they see is created for them, humans made it a ridiculous point of Religion to apply everything to themselves and to judge things for their benefits. On this, humans formed the notions that served to explain the nature of things, to judge the good and evil, the order and disorder, the heat and cold, the beauty and beast, etc., which deep down are not what they imagine: masters of forming their ideas in this way, they flattered themselves to be free; they believed they had the right to decide on the praise and blame, the good and evil. They called good that which fits into their benefit and that which concerns divine worship, and evil, on the contrary, that which fits neither one nor the other. Ignorants are not capable of judging anything, and have no idea of things except through imagination, which they take for judgment. Therefore, they say that humans know nothing in nature, and imagine a particular order in the world. Eventually, they believe things to be well or badly ordered, according to whether they find it easy or difficult to imagine, when meaning represents them. Since humans are happy to stop at what exhausts the brain the least, we convince ourselves that we are well found in preferring order to confusion; as if order was something other than a pure effect of human imagination. Hence, to say that God created everything in order is to pretend that it was in favor of the human imagination that he created the world, in the most easily conceived way. The assertion that we know for certain the reports and ends of everything that exists is very absurd and deserves a serious refutation.

As for the other notions, they are an outturn of the same imagination, which have nothing real. They are only different affections or modes of which this faculty of imagination is susceptible. For example, we say that an object is beautiful when its move leaves an impression on the nerves through the eyes, which are pleasant to the senses. Smells are good or bad, flavors sweet or bitter, what is touched hard or soft, sounds harsh or sounds that strike or penetrate the senses. According to these ideas, people believe that God pleases in melody, while others believe that the celestial movements were a harmonious concert: which marks well that everyone is convinced that things are as God imagines them to be, or that the world is purely imaginary. It is therefore not surprising that there are barely two of the same opinion and that there are even some who praise doubting everything: for, although humans have the same body and they are all similar in much respect, they nevertheless differ in quite a few others. Hence what seems good to one becomes evil to another, that which pleases one displeases another. From here onwards, it is easy to conclude that affects differ due to the organization and diversity of co-existences where reasoning plays little part, and that notions of things of the world are nothing more than an outturn of the imagination.

Therefore, it is obvious that the reasons which commoners are accustomed to using when they apply to explain nature are nothing but ways of imagining, which cannot show anything less than what they claim. We give names to these ideas, as if they existed elsewhere than in a prejudiced brain. We should call them illusions, not beings. With regard to arguments based upon these notions, nothing is easier than to refute them. For example: If it were true, we are told, that the universe was a flow and a necessary

continuation

divine nature,

where would the

imperfections and defects that we notice there come from? This objection can be refuted without difficulty. We cannot judge the perfection and imperfection of a being unless we know its essence and nature, and it is a strange mistake to believe that a thing is more or less perfect according to whether it pleases or displeases, and whether it is useful or harmful to human nature. To refute the objection of why God did not create all humans good and happy, it is enough to say that everything is necessarily what it is, and that in nature there is nothing imperfect, since everything evolves from necessity.

That said, if we ask what is that, the God? I respond that this word represents the universal Being in which, as in Saint Paul's saying, we have life, movement, and being. This notion has nothing that is unworthy of God; because, if everything is God, everything necessarily follows from its essence. It absolutely must be such as what it contains, since it is incomprehensible that entirely material beings are maintained and contained in a being which is not. This opinion is not a new point. Tertullian, one of the most knowledgeable men that Christians have ever had, declared against Appelles that what is not corpora is nothing, and against Praxeas that all substance is corpora.* This doctrine, natheless, was not condemned in the first Councils. * "Quis autem negabit Deum esse corpus, etsi deus spiritus? spiritus etiam corporis sui generis, in suâ effigie". Tertullian. adv. Pray. Cap. 7.

These ideas are clear, simple and the only ones that a good spirit is able to form of the God. Natheless, there are few who are content with such simplicity. The vulgar people accustomed to the flatteries of the senses demand a God who resembles the Kings of the earth. The ritual, the great splendor which envelops the kings, blinds them in such a way that it removes the idea of a God that approximately resembles to kings. It replaces the expectation of going to heaven with the increases in the number of celestial courtiers, enjoying the same pleasures that one tastes in the Court of Kings; which deprives humans of the only consolation which prevents them from despairing in the miseries of life. It is said that there must be a just and vengeful God who penalizes and rewards: we want a God susceptible of all human passions; we assign feet, hands, eyes and ears to the God, and yet, we do not want a God constituted in this way to have anything material. It is said that the human is the God's masterpiece and even his image, but we do not want the copy to be the same as the original. Finally, the God of the people today is subject to a lot more forms than the Jupiter of the Pagans. What is the weirdest is that the more these notions contradict each other and disturb common sense, the more the vulgar revere them, because they stubbornly believe what the Prophets said about them, though these visionaries were not among the Hebrews as were the augurs and soothsayers among the Pagans. We consult the Bible, as if God and nature explained themselves in a particular way. Although this book is only a few fragments brought together at various times, collected by various

people and published by the consent of the Rabbis, who decided, according to their admission of what should be approved or rejected, that the book confirms or opposes the Law of Moses. Such is the malice and stupidity of humans. They spend their lives quibbling and persist in respecting a book where there is hardly more order than in the Alcoran of Mohammad. A book, I say, that no one understands. It is so obscure and poorly designed that it only serves to foment divisions. Jews and Christians love to consult this grimoire than to listen to what the natural Law that God, that is to say Nature, the principle of all things, has written in the hearts of humans. All other laws are nothing but human fictions and pure illusions brought to light, not by the Demons or evil Spirits, who never existed except in idea, but by politics of Princes and Priests. The former wanted to give more weight to their authority, and the latter wanted to enrich themselves by spouting an infinite number of illusions that they sell dearly to the ignorant. All the other laws which triumphed that of Moses, I mean the laws of the Christians, are only based on this Bible of which the original is not found, which contains supernatural and impossible things, which speaks of rewards and penalties for good or bad actions but which are only for the other life. Lest the deceit be discovered, no one having ever returned from it. Hence, the people, always floating between expectation and fear, are held back in their duty by their opinion that God only created humans to make them eternally happy or unhappy. This is what led to an infinite number of Religions.

CHAPTER III The meaning of the word Religion: how and why there are numerous religions.

Before the word Religion was introduced into the world, we just had to follow natural law, that is to say, to conform to the right reason. Humans were attached to the connection of this sole instinct, which united them in such a way that divisions were rare. Natheless, as soon as fear had made humans suspect that there were Gods and invisible Powers, they raised altars to these imaginary beings, and, shaking off the yoke of nature and reason.

Through vain ceremonies and a

superstitious cult, they connected themselves to the vain ghosts of imagination. This is where the word Religion which makes so much noise in the world derives from. Having admitted invisible almighty Powers over them, humans adored these useful powers. Moreover, they imagined that nature was subordinate to these Powers. From then on, they imagined nature as a dead mass, or as a slave who only acted according to the orders of these Powers. The moment when this false idea had struck their minds, humans had nothing but contempt for nature, and respect for these pretentious beings, whom they declared their Gods. This led to the ignorance into which people were immersed. However deep it may be, an ignorance from which true scholars could draw themselves out, if their zeal was not crossed by those who lead these blind, and who only live thanks to their impostures. Although there is very little appearance of triumph in this enterprise, we must not leave the verity. Even if it is only in consideration of those who caution themselves from the symptoms of this evil, one

needs a wealthy soul to tell things as they are. The verity, whatever its nature, can never harm. Whereas error, however innocent and however useful it may appear, must necessarily have very disastrous effects in the long run.

The fear which made the Gods also made Religion. Since humans got into their heads the idea that there were invisible Agents who were the cause of their good or bad fortune, they renounced common sense, morality, and

reason. They took their illusions for numerous

divinities who took care of their conduct. After therefore having forged Gods for themselves, humans wanted to know what their nature was, imagining that they must be of the same substance as the soul. They believed soul to resemble the ghosts which appear in the mirror or during sleep, and they believed that their Gods were real substances but so tenuous and so subtle that, to distinguish them from Bodies, they called them Spirits. Although these bodies and spirits are one and the same thing, and only differ more or less, being Spirit is incorporeal and incomprehensible. The reason is that every Spirit has its own form, and that it is enclosed in some place, that is to say, that it has limits, and that, consequently, it has a corpora, however subtle one may suppose.* * See the passage of Tertullien, cité plus haut. Hobbes, Léviathan, Cap. 12, pag. 55, 56, 57.

The Ignorants, that is to say, the majority of humans, fixed the nature of the substance of their Gods in this way. They also tried to understand by what means these invisible Agents made their effects. Because of their ignorance, they couldn't overcome it. They believed in their own conjectures; blindly judged the future by the past; as if one could reasonably conclude from the fact that a thing once happened in such and such a way will happen and must happen constantly, in the same way. Especially when the circumstances and all the causes which necessarily influence human events and actions, and which determine their nature and actuality, are diverse. They therefore considered the past and omened well or evil for the future, depending on whether the same enterprise had previously triumphed well or evil. This is how Phormion, having defeated the Lacedaemonians in the battle of Naupactus, the Athenians, after his death, elected another General of the same name. Because of the triumph of the armies of Scipio Africanus over Hannibal, the Romans sent another Scipio to the same Province against Caesar, which failed either for the Athenians or the Romans. Hence, several nations, after two or three experiences, attached their good or bad fortunes to places, objects and names; others used certain words which they call enchantments and believe them to be so efficient that they imagine by their means making the trees speak, making a man or a God from a piece of bread, and metamorphosing everything that appear.

The empire of the invisible Powers being therefore established, humans at first only revealed them as their Sovereigns; that is to say, by signs of submission and respect, such as gifts, prayers, etc. I say first , because nature does not learn to use Blood Sacrifices in this encounter: they were only instituted for the subsistence of the Sacrificers and Ministers intended for the service of these imaginary Gods.

This germ of Religion (I mean hope and fear), fertilized by the diverse human passions and opinions, has produced this grand number of bizarre beliefs which are the causes of a lot of evils and a lot of revolutions that are occurring in the States. The honors and the grand revenues which were attached to the Priesthood, or to the Ministries of the Gods, flattered the ambition and the avarice of these cunning humans who knew how to take advantage of stupidity. These have fallen so well into their traps that they have gradually made a habit of praising lies and hating the verity.

The lie being established, and the ambitious loving the sweetness of being elevated above their peers, they tried to gain a reputation by pretending to be the friends of the invisible Gods that the vulgar feared. To be more triumphant, everyone painted them in their own way and took the license to multiply them to the point that they were found at every step.

The formless matter of the world was called the God Chaos. They also made one God for the Sky, the Earth, the Sea, the Fire, the Winds and the Planets. The same honor was given to men and women; the birds, the reptiles, the crocodile, the calf, the dog, the lamb, the snake and the swine, in a word all animal and plant kinds were worshiped. Each river, each fountain had the name of a God, each house had its own, each human had a genius. Eventually, both above and below the earth, everything was full of Gods, Spirits, Shadows and Demons. It was not enough yet to feign Divinities in every imaginable place. Humans thought they were offending the weather, the day, the night, concord, love, peace, victory, contention, rust, honor, virtue, fever and health. I mean we thought we were doing an outrage to such Divinities, who we thought were always ready to fall on our heads if we had not made temples and altars for them. Then, it was decided to adore their genius, which some invoked under the name of Muses; others, under the name of Fortune, worshiped their own ignorance. Humans sanctified their debaucheries under the name of Cupid, their anger under that of Furies, their natural parts under the name of Priapus; in a word, there was nothing to which they did not give the name of a God or a Demon.* * Hobbes ubi suprà de homine. Cap. 12, p. 58.

The founders of religions decided to maintain the basis of their impostures, the human ignorance, by the adoration of images thought to be dwelt by Gods. This caused a fall of holy things, gold and Benefits on the Priests, because they were intended for the use of sacred ministers and no one had the temerity or audacity to claim or even touch them. To better deceive the People, the Priests proposed Prophets, Diviners, Inspired Ones capable of penetrating the future, admired of having commerce with Gods. and as it is natural to want to know one's destiny, these impostures were careful not to omit a circumstance so advantageous. Some settled at Delos, others at Delphi and elsewhere, where, through ambiguous oracles, they responded to the demands. Women were there. Romans had recourse to the Books of the Sybils. Mads were considered inspired. Necromancers feigned to have a familiar intercourse with the dead. Others claimed to know the future through the flight of birds or through the entrails of the beasts. The eyes, the hands, the face, an extraordinary object, everything seemed to be a good or evil omen. When we have found the secret of its existence, ignorance obtains the advantages of whatever impression we want.

The ambitious, who have always been grand masters in the art of deception, followed this route when they gave laws. To force the People to submit voluntarily, the ambitious convinced them that they have been sent these laws by a God or a Goddess. Divinities may have had various multitudes. What were worshiped and called as Pagans had no general system of Religion. Each Republic, each State, each City and each individual had their own rites and thought of the Divinity according to their own imagination. Natheless, more deceitful legislators than the firsts arose gradually, who used more studied and surer means by creating laws, cults, and ceremonies calculated for the fanaticism they established. Among a grand number, Asia saw the birth of three who distinguished themselves as much by the laws and cults that they instituted, as by their idea of Divinity and by how to make this idea accepted and their laws sacred. Moses was the oldest. Jesus Christ came afterwards, and abolished the previous laws to substantiate his. Mohammad appeared last on the scene, and took from both Religions what he needed to compose his own and then declared himself the enemy of both. We have to see the characters of these three legislators, examine their conducts. From there, we would judge which are the best founded, those who revere them as divines, or those who treat them as deceivers and impostures.

10 Of Moses

According to Justin Martyr, the famous Moses was a great Magician's* grandson, with all the advantages that made him what he became. He made himself leader of the Hebrews. Everyone knows that they were a nation of Shepherds, whom King Pharaoh Osiris I admitted in his country in consideration of the services he had received from one of them at the time of a great famine: He gave them some lands in the east of Egypt, in a region fertile in pastures and suitable for feeding herds. For nearly two hundred years, they multiplied considerably. Being considered foreigners there, they were not obliged to serve in the armies. Because of the privileges that Osiris had granted, several natives of the country joined them, some Arabic groups joined them, because they were of the same race. Eventually, they rose so astonishingly that they were no longer able to hold out in the region of Goshen. They spread throughout Egypt and gave Pharaoh a just reason to fear that they were capable of some dangerous undertakings in case Egypt was attacked (as happened then quite often) by the Ethiopians, its assiduous enemies. Hence, a reason for the State obliged this Prince to take away their privileges and to seek means to weaken and disenfranchise them. The Pharaoh, replacing Memnon, followed his plan with regard to the Hebrews. Wanting to perpetuate his memory by constructing the Pyramids and building the city of Thebes, he condemned Hebrews to

work with bricks, for which their lands fit very well. During this servitude the famous Moses was born; the same year that the King ordered that all the male children of the Hebrews be thrown into the Nile, seeing that there was no surer way to destroy this tribe of foreigners. Hence, Moses was exposed to perish by the waters in a basket coated with bitumen, which his mother placed in the reeds on the banks of the river. As chance would have it, Pharaoh’s daughter Thermutis was taking a walk in the banks, and having heard the cries of this child, the natural female compassion inspired her with the desire to save him. Following the death of Thermutis presented Moses to the Pharaoh and replaced him following his death. She gave Moses such an education that could be given to a son of the queen of a nation then the most learned and polite in the universe. In a word, saying that 'he was educated in all the sciences of the Egyptians' says it all, presenting Moses as the greatest politician, the most learned naturalist and the most famous Magician of his time. Besides, obviously he was admitted into the order of Priests in Egypt, who were what the Druids were in Gaul. Those who do not know what the government of Egypt was then will perhaps not be sorry to learn that its famous Dynasties ended, and the whole country dependent on a single sovereign, it was then divided into several countries which did not have too great an extent. The Governors of these countries were named Monarchs, usually from the powerful order of Priests who owned nearly a third of Egypt. The king appointed these Monarchies. If we are to believe the authors who wrote about Moses, by comparing what they wrote with what Moses himself wrote, we will conclude that he was the Monarch of Goshen, and he owed his elevation to Thermutis, to whom he also owed his life. This is what Moses was like in Egypt,

where he had the time and means to study the morals of the Egyptians and those of his nation, their dominant passions, their inclinations; knowledge which he later used to excite the revolution, whose driving force was him. Following Thermutis' death, her heir renewed the persecution against the Hebrews. Having fallen from favor, Moses was concerned of not being able to legitimize some of the homicides he committed; so he decided to flee. He retired to Arabia Petraea, which borders on Egypt. Chance led him to a chief of some tribe in the country. He served there and with the talents that his master thought, he married one of his daughters. Here, Moses noticed that was such a bad Jew and that he knew so little of the formidable God that he imagined subsequently, that he married an idolater and that he did not even circumscribe his children. In the deserts of Arabia, while tending the flocks of his father-in-law and his brother-in-law, Moses imagined a revenge for the injustice that the King of Egypt had done to him, by carrying the disorder and sedition in the hearts of its States. He flattered himself that he could easily triumph, both because of his talents and because of the disposition in which he found his nation, already irritated against the government by the mistreatment they were subjected to. From the history Moses left about this revolution, or at least from what the author of the Books attributed to Moses left us, it appears that Jethro, his father-in-law, was in the plot, as well as his brother Aaron and his sister Marie, who had remained in Egypt and with whom Moses had surely maintained a correspondence.