Polytheism is an opinion that presupposes the plurality of gods. It is astonishing to what excesses idolatry has precipitated its sectarians. Read the description in M. de Meaux’s discourse on the Universal History.

The Atheists claim that religious worship rendered to men after their deaths is the prime source of idolatry and they conclude that religion is in its organ a political institution because the first men who were deified were either legislators or magistrates or other public benefactors. Thus, among the ancients, Euhemerus, nicknamed the Atheist, composed a treatise to prove that the first gods of the Greeks were men. Cicero, who saw his purpose, observed very wisely that this sentiment tends to overthrow any religion. Among the moderns, the Englishman Toland has written a brochure with the same purpose, titled O n the Origin of Idolatry & Motives for Paganism. The uniform conduct of these two writers is singular. Euhemerus claimed that his purpose was solely to expose the falseness of the popular religion of Greece, and Toland claims similarly that his purpose was only to write against the falseness of pagan idolatry, whereas the real goal of both was to destroy religion in general.

It should be admitted that this opinion on the first origin of idolatry appears plausible, but this appearance is founded only on a sophism that confuses the origin of idolatry with that of any religious cult in general. But it is not only possible but even extremely probably that the worship of what was the first and great cause of all things was anterior to worship of idols, idolatrous worship having none of the circumstances that accompany an original and primitive institution, but rather all those that accompany a depraved and corrupt institution. This is not only possible and probable, but pagan history proves, moreover, that worship rendered to men deified after their death is not the first source of idolatry.

One author whose authority has a prime place in the scholarly world, as different from Toland in heart and spirit – I mean the great Newton – in his Greek chronology appears to be of the same sentiment as he on the origin of idolatry:

One sees by this passage that this illustrious savant presumed that the worship of deified men was the primary kind of idolatry and he merely insinuates the reason: that worship of men after their death introduced the cult of statues. For the Egyptians adored first their great deceased men in their own persons, that is to say their mummies; after these were lost, consumed or destroyed, they adored them in the figures that represented them and of which the legs (in imitation of mummies) were joined together. It appears that M. Newton has given himself the change by presuming that worship of statues was inseparably united with idolatry in general, which is contrary to what Herodotus reports, that the Persians who adored celestial bodies had no statues at all to their gods, and what Dionysus of Halycarnassus tells us, that the Romans, whose gods were men deified after their death, adored them for several centuries without statues.

Like hope and fear, love and hatred are the great springs of men’s thoughts and actions, and I do not believe that any of his passions in particular, but I believe that all of them together contributed to giving birth to the idea of superior beings in the minds of the first mortals, whose brute reason had not acquired knowledge of the true God, and whose depraved customs had effaced His tradition.

These first men, still in the state of nature where they found their whole subsistence in the earth’s produce, naturally observed what advanced or retarded this produce, such that the sun that animates the world’s system was soon regarded as the eminently beneficial divinity. Thunder, lightning, storms, and tempests were regarded as the marks of its anger; each celestial orb, in particular, was envisaged in the same way, in proportion to its utility and its magnificence; this is what appears most natural on the origin of idolatry; the following reflections are going to entirely situate the subject.

One finds the vestiges of the adoration of stars among all nations. Moses Maimonides claims that this preceded the flood and he fixes the birth around the time of Enoch; this is also the sentiment of most rabbis, which assures us that this was one of the crimes God punished by the floodwaters. I will not detail their reasoning, which is combated by the Holy Fathers and by the best interpreters of the Old Testament, and I will fall into agreement with the latter that idolatry only began after the flood, but at the same time I should admit that it made such rapid and contagious progress that the origins of all the great peoples who drew their birth either from the children or grandchildren of Noah were infected with it. The Jews, outside some periods of straying, stuck to0 belief in the unity of God, under whose hand they were so particularly kept. They did not misjudge the great Worker to admire the innumerable beauties of the Work. However, it must be agreed that if the Hebrew people did not adore the stars, they at least regarded them as intelligent beings that knew themselves, that obeyed God’s order, that advanced or retarded their courses as He prescribed. Origen would go further: he suspected that the stars had the freedom to sin and repent of their faults. No doubt he, who allegorized everything, took literally the passage from Job, the heavens and the stars are not pure before God . What gross errors were born of the ignorance of Astronomy! How modern discoveries have revealed to us so many capital truths and important points!

The most ancient peoples of the north and south - the Swedes, the Arabs, the Africans - who lived a long time without being civilized, adored all the celestial bodies. M. Sale, a British author entirely versed in Arab history, reports that after long observation and experience of the changes that occur in the air, these peoples finally attributed divine power to the stars. The Chinese, Peruvians, and Mexicans appeared also to at first have adored celestial bodies; currently even the lettered Chinese, who form a particular sect, seem to make a divinity of a certain virtue widespread in the universe, and especially in the material heaven.

In a word, all of antiquity is unanimous on this point, and it teaches us that the first religious worship of creatures took celestial bodies as objectx; this was a truth so evident and so universally recognized that Critius, the famous atheist, was obliged to admit it. It can only be the force of truth that tore this admission from him, since it entirely destroys his system of the origin of religion. Here is the passage:

It would abuse the reader’s patience to accumulate quotations, but since of all countries Egypt and Greece, are those where the politics and civil economy took root more deeply and from there spread almost everywhere, they effaced the memory of the ancient idolatry by the more recent idolatry of deifying men after their death, and several modern authors have concluded that the latter kind of idolatry was the first one of all. Here I will report only two testimonies from antiquity to prove that the adoration of celestial bodies was the first kind of idolatry in these two countries as well as in all the others. Plato in his Cratylus : “It seems to be that the first men who inhabited Greece had no other gods than those that many barbarians still adore now; the sun, moon, earth, stars, heavens.” By barbarous nations, Plato means those that were civilized and those that were not, to wit, the Persians and the savages of Africa, which in Herodotus’ account also adored the stars, whose beneficent light renews all of nature.

The second testimony concerns the Egyptians and it is taken from the first book of Diodurus of Sicily: “In speaking of this nation, the first men lifted their eyes to the sky, struck with fear and astonishment at the sight of the spectacle of the universe, and supposed that the Sun and the Moon were its principal gods and that they were eternal.” The reason this historian reports makes his proposition general, extends it to all nations and shows us that he believed that this kind of idolatry had been the first in every other place, not just in Egypt.

In general, the ancients believed that everything that moves by itself and in a regular manner must participate in divinity and that the internal principle by which it moves is not only uncreated but also exempt from any change. This presupposed, one sees that according to the way of thinking of the ancients, in which the stars moved themselves, people necessarily had to regard them as gods, as the authors and conservators of the universe.

For the rest, it was the sun and moon that by their brightness and their light were rendered worthy of the principal homage, by which superstitious people honored the stars. The sun was called king, master, and sovereign, and the moon queen , princess of heaven. All the other luminous globes appeared as either their subjects or their advisors, or as their guardians or their army. Holy Scripture appears to accommodate itself to this language by mentioning the militia of heaven to which people offered homage.

Theodoret, wanting to tease pagans on their worship of stars still in his time, made a sensible observation. The sovereign arbiter of nature, he says, has given his works all the perfections of which they were capable, but as he feared that man, weak and timid, would be dazzled by them, so he mixed into these same works some defects and some imperfections, so that on the one hand what is great and marvelous in the universe would attract our admiration, and on the other what is found awkward and different would remove the thought of rendering it any divine worship. Thus from some flash, or some light with which the sun and moon shine, it takes only a simple cloud to efface one at midday and to obscure the other during the loveliest night skies. Thus the earth is an inexhaustible source of treasure, feeling no old age; it renews its munificence in favor of laborious men, but from feat that they would feel tempted to adore it and offer it respect, God made it a theater of the greatest agitations, the abode of cruel sicknesses and bloody wars. Among useful animals are found venomous serpents, and among healthy plants are gathered poisonous herbs.

The sun is most particularly invoked on high places or rooftops, in the full light of day; in the same way, the moon is invoked in groves and valleys, in the shadows and at night; and it to this secret worship that we should ascribe the origin of the many indecent actions, the many crazy customs, the many impure stories, which it is astonishing that men, oth3erwise sensible and reasonable, should have been able to make on the subject of religion. But those who manage to forget themselves and who make the light of the mind cede to the quick aberration of the heart are capable of anything. This adoration of the stars relates to that of fire, as it is the noblest of the elements and a lively image of the sun. Once one saw no sacrifice or religious ceremony into which fire did not enter. The person who served to dress altars and to consume the victims burnt to the gods was treated with much respect and distinction. It was taught the he had been brought from heaven, and also on the altar of the first temple that Zoroaster had built in the city of Zix in Media. Nothing fat or impure was thrown on it; one did not even dare gaze at it, tanta gentium in rebus frivoles , cried Pliny , plerumque religio est . To impose it even more, pagan priests – always-deceitful imposters – maintained this fire secretly and made people believe it was unaltered and fed itself. The place in the world where fire was most revered was Persia. There were roofless enclosures in the walls where this was assiduously done and where subject people came at certain hours to pray. Qualified persons ruined themselves to throw precious oils and fragrant flowers there. The enclosures that still exist may be regarded as the most ancient monuments of superstition.

What bothers the Scholars about the origin of idolatry is that one has not paid enough attention to the degrees by which the idolatry of men deified after their death has supplanted the ancient and primitive idolatry of heavenly bodies. The first step toward apotheosis was to give heroes and public benefactors the name of the being that was the most esteemed and revered. Thus a king was called the sun because of it s munificence, and a queen the moon because of its beauty. This same kind of adulation still exists among Eastern nations, although to a lesser degree. These titles are today more a civil compliment than a religious compliment. To the extent that a kind of adulation progressed, the equation was inverted, and the planet was called after the name of the hero - no doubt to accustom people more easily to this new kind of adoration since they were already accustomed to that of planets. Diodoryus of Sicily, after having said that the sun and moon were the first gods of Egypt, adds that they called the sun by the name Osiris and the Moon Isis.

By this manner of introducing a new kind of idolatry, the old and the new were mixed up together. One can judge the excess of this confusion by the scholarly collection of Vossius on pagan theology, where one sees how many dark things are muddled on this point of antiquity, proposing to explain it, by the supposition that one of these two kinds of idolatry was only the symbolic idea of the other.

Abbé Pluche, in his History of Heaven , has invented a new system on the origin of idolatry. He claims that is not the admiration of the sun that made the sun adored in place of its author. Never, he says, did the spectacle of the universe corrupt men; never did it turn them from the thought of a motor being of all and from recognition of what they owed to a providence always fecund in new liberalities; far from turning them away, it reminds them of it. The symbolic writing of the Egyptians, if one believes him, by the abuse cupidity made of it, is the source of evil. All nations were empoisoned by it, receiving the characters of this writing without receiving their meaning. Another consequence of this system, just as natural, was that the ancient gods were not real men; and only the contempt of hieroglyphic figures gave birth to gods, goddesses, metamorphoses, auguries, and oracles. This is how he connects all branches of idolatry to a singe and same root, but this system is belied by the famous mysteries among pagans, where it is carefully taught that the gods were men who were deified after death. Abbé Pluche tries to prove his sentiment with Cicero’s authority, and Cicero says positively in his Tusculans that the heavens are full of humankind, and in his treatise on the nature of the gods, that the gods were powerful and illustrious men who had been deified after death. He reports that Euhemerus tells where they were buried without mentioning what is taught in the mysteries of Eleusis and Samothrace. However, despite such decisive proofs, Abbé Pluche in speaking of mysteries claims that it is not gods that must be sought in all these guises, that they are instead designed to teach us the state of the things that interest us, and that these things that interest are, according to him, only the meaning of the figures represented, reduced to the still undefined furrows of rules, to the advantages of peace, and to the justice that gives the right to hope for a better life.

But to overturn M Pluche’s system from top to bottom, I will relate decisive testimony taken from two of the great Church Fathers that prove that the hierophant in the mysteries of Egypt, where M. Pluche has placed the drama, teaches that the national gods were men who had been deified after death. The relevant feature is from the time of Alexander, when Egypt had not yet acceded to the subtle and speculative spirit of Greek philosophy. This conqueror wrote his mother that the supreme hierophant of Egyptian mysteries had disclosed to him in secret the mysterious instructions that had been given concerning the nature of the national gods. Saint Augustine and Saint Cyprian have related this curious fact of ancient history. Here is what the former says in the 8 ^th book of The City of God :

Saint Cyprian says that fear of Alexander’s power extorted from the hierophant the secret of men-gods .

These various testimonies increasingly confirm that the mysteries had been designed to cover the falseness of popular divinities so as to sustain the religion of men of good sense and to excite them to the service of their country. This ancient institution was imagined by the wisest and most able men to teach that the gods were men deified because of their good deeds toward society; nothing was more proper than the history of these good deeds to excite the zeal to heroism. On the other hand, the discovery of the real estate of these heroes on earth – that they partook of all the weaknesses of human nature - prevented the evil that could have been produced by the story of their vices and their misbehavior – a story liable to make men believe they were authorized by the gods to give in to the same excess. If one supposes with M. Pluche that all the gods come from the Egyptian alphabet, what motive is presumed among people that entrained them toward idolatry? They rushed into it, so to speak, from lightness of heart, without having determined to do so, without any of those lively and vehement passions that act on both heart and mind, which always accompany the great revolutions, which reign with universal force in the hearts of all men, and which might alone be envisaged as the cause of a universal practice. But if one presupposes, on the contrary, what all of antiquity teaches us, that people have adored their ancestors and their first kings because of the good deeds they received from them, then one cannot then conceive of a more powerful motive more capable of having led them to idolatry, in such a way that the history of humankind is reconciled with knowledge of both human nature and the effect of passions.

It is not a simple conjecture to believe that superstitious gratitude makes the inventors of useful things to society came to be regarded as gods. Eusebius, a competent judge if there ever was one, of the sentiments of antiquity, attests to this fact as notorious and certain. This bishop and scholar says that those who in the first ages of the world excelled by their wisdom, strength or valor, or who had most contributed to the common good of men or had invented or perfected the Arts, were deified even during their lifetimes or immediately after their deaths. This is what Eusebius himself depicts in one of the most ancient and most respectable histories, the Phoenician and Sanchoniate history, which gives in very exact detail the origin of the cult of heroes and which teaches us expressly that their deification took place immediately after their deaths, at a time when the memory of their good deeds was still fresh in the memory of men, and when the movement of lively and profound gratitude absorbed, so to speak, all the faculties of their souls, enflamed the hearts and minds with this love and this admiration, which M. Pope has so perfectly pictured in his Essay on Man . [1]

The first sentiments prior to idolatry were the prime cause for the passions of love and admiration that they excited in a people who were still simple and ignorant. One should not be astonished that a people of this character were given to regard as kinds of gods those who had taught men to be subject to the elements. They became the topic of their hymns, their panegyrics, and their homage; one can observe that among all nations that the men whose memory was consecrated by a religious cult are the only ones in this ancient and ignorant times whose names have not been buried in oblivion.

We have seen in later times when circumstances were similar, that men achieve divine honors with as much facility and success as the ancient heroes, like Osiris, Jupiter, or Belus; for Nature in general is uniform in its approach. It is true that people mocked the apotheoses of Alexander and Caesar, but this is because the nations in the midst of which they lived were too enlightened. It was not the same with Odin, who lived around the time of Caesar and whom the people of the north placed above all other gods. It is because people were still barbarians and savages that a similar farce was not played to applause as when the setting of the drama is before a gross and ignorant people.

Tacitus reports that it was a general custom among the northern nations to deify their great men, not in the manner of their contemporaries the Romans, solely by flattery and by intimate persuasion, but instead seriously and in good faith. This is a trait found in Ezekiel, who confirms that apotheosis often occurred during the lifetime of kings [ch 28:2, 9]. Because thine heart is lifted up, says God to the King of Tyrus, through the mouth of his prophet , thou hast said, ‘I am a God, I sit in the seat of God in the midst of the seas’, yet thou art a man and not God... Wilt thou yet say before him that slayeth thed, I am God?... But thou shalt be a man and no God. This passage indicates, it seems to me, that the subjects of the King of Tyrus rendered this prince idolatrous worship even during his life, and it is rather plausible that he became later one of the Greek Neptunes.

Under the pretext of explaining antiquity, M. Pluche overturns and destroys it entirely. His chimera is that all civil and religious customs of antiquity came from agriculture, and that the gods and goddesses themselves came from this fertile harvest. But if there are two facts in antiquity upon which even skepticism is ashamed - in its moments of sincerity and good sense – to cast doubt, it is that this idolatrous cult of celestial bodies had its first foundation in the sensible and visible influence that they had on sublunary bodies, and that the tutelary gods of pagan passions were men deified after death, and for whom their good deeds toward humankind or toward their fellow citizens had procured divine honors. Who could believe that these two facts might be denied by a person who claims knowledge of antiquity, and who proposes to explain it? But neither men nor gods can hold out against a system. M. Pluche assures us that all that is illusion, that antiquity had no knowledge of this matter, that the heavenly bodies were not adored because of their influence, that Osiris, Isis, Jupiter, Pluto, Neptune, Mercury – even demi-god heroes like Hercules and Minos – never existed, that the so-called gods were only letters in an ancient alphabet, simple figures that served to give instructions to the Egyptian laborer. Its hieroglyphs are almost entirely confined to agriculture and the use of calendars, which presumes that they were not designed originally to represent the thoughts of men on subjects they were thought to knock about, and that the care of these famous personages of antiquity who established affirmed and governed societies, were absorbed by agriculture, nor were they concerned with any other idea. Agriculture, in a word, is the principal and fundamental basis of this system of antiquity; all the rest is inserted only as scenic ornament. This system, which one may regard as the overflowing of a fertile imagination, is itself like the ancient overflowing of the Nile that covered the most fertile lands of Egypt, and which, heated and fermented by the powerful rays of the sun, produced men and monsters. The gods of M. Abbé Pluche appear to arise from the furrows, as was once said they came from the Tagus.

But how does he prove the correctness of the principle upon which he founds his system and the truth of the consequences that he deduces from it? He proves them alternating one and the other, this principle by the consequence, and that consequence by the principle. Each time he wants to prove that a hieroglyph that was taken for the real figure of a god is only an agricultural symbol, he presumes that it cannot be the real figure of a god because the gods never existed; he concludes from this that it is a symbol; he is pleased to say that it was a symbol of agriculture, and when he wants to prove that the gods never existed, then he presupposes that hieroglyphs that were taken for the real figure of a god were only an agricultural symbol.

In general, one can say against M. Pluche’s system that it is absurd to suppose that the Egyptians used hieroglyphs only for things concerning farm labor. It is quite natural to believe that since the mind that had not yet invented the signs that serve to represent sounds and not things, legislators and magistrates would have been obliged to draw upon this source, that is to say, to resort to hieroglyphs to express themselves to the eyes of people on matters relative to religious cult, to the government of society, to the history of heroes, to the arts and sciences. The kind of expression was extremely imperfect and the subject of infinite misunderstandings; always, for lack of real images, they were obliged to use symbolic images. Often the symbol was substituted for the idea and thus after using the figures of animals and vegetables to express the attributes of gods and heroes, they substituted for these gods and heroes the same animals and vegetables. It was believed that the gods who animated them were hidden under the figures; they were adored. This progress is apparent in the example of Osiris and Apis.

From what was merely the origin of a single branch of idolatry, M. Pluche has tried to make the origin of all idolatry. Images borrowed from the diversity of visible objects that are on earth and in the skies, are unable to avoid having some relation with the productions of agriculture, where they are in all times the effects of the fecundity of the earth and the influence of the stars. From this relation M. Pluche has concluded that it must explain the hieroglyphs relative to agriculture and what is found about the gods, government, and history have become in his mind an instrument or an instruction on labor. He uses the monuments of antiquity to destroy it, like Father Hardouin used medals to overturn history. His conjectures have taken the place of facts, imagination has degraded the truth; and I daresay that it would not be difficult, as a consequence of the same principles, to prove that the gods of Egypt, instead of coming from agriculture, came from this nation’s games, their festivals, their combats, their way of hunting, fishing, and even their cuisine, if you want, and that Oriental languages would not fail to furnish etymologies to support these various sentiments.

Idolatry having deified men, it was quite natural that it would communicate to its gods the faults of men. This is just what happened. The gods of paganism were thus men in all respects, except they were more powerful than men. Men enjoyed the secret pleasure of seeing retraced in such respectable models the image of their own passions, and of having as mischief-makers and accomplices in their debauches the same gods that they adored. Under the name of false divinities, it was in effect their own thoughts, pleasures and fantasies that they were adoring. They adored Venus because they let themselves be dominated by sensual love, and they loved its power. They erected altars to Bacchus, the most cheerful of all the gods, because they abandoned themselves and sacrificed, so to speak, to the joy of the sweetest and most inebriating senses as wine. The mania of deifying went so far that even cities were deified; Rome was considered a goddess.

Polytheism considered in itself is also contrary to reason and to the phenomena of the universe. Once one has admitted the existence of an infinitely perfect nature, it is easy to understand that it is unique and that no being can equal it. If our reason can rise as high as this principle, there exists one such nature; hence there is only a single god . If there could be three or four of these natures, then there could be not only ten million but also infinity, for one could find no reason for one certain number rather than another. As the binary number encloses a superfluity that shocks our reason, order demands a reduction to unity. If each of these matters were sovereign and perfect, it would need only itself to enjoy infinite felicity; the society of others would therefore be of no use, and thus our reason could not suffer any plurality. This is one of its axioms, that nature does nothing in vain and so it is in vain that several causes are used for an effect that a smaller number of causes could produce just as conveniently. The maxim that was called the reason of nominals because it served to remove from the schools of philosophy an infinity of superfluous excrescences and entities – the maxim, I say, that one should not multiply beings without necessity is a principle that no philosophical sect has rejected. It ruins polytheism utterly.

Polytheism is no less contrary to phenomena than to reason, since we see no disorder in the world, nor any confusion in its parts that might lead us to suspect that there are several independent divinities to which it is subject. Yet this is what would happen if polytheism took place. M. Bayle proves perfectly well that pagan religion was a principle of anarchy. In effect, with these gods that it spread everywhere and with which it filled the sky and the earth, the sea and the air, being subject to the same passions as man, war was unfailing among them. They were more powerful and more able than men: too bad for the world. Ambition never causes so many ravages as when it is seconded by a great power and a great mind.

Disorder soon began within the divine family. Titan, the oldest son of the first of the gods, was deprived of the succession by the intrigues of his sisters, who had won over their mother and got him to cede his right to Saturn his younger brother, such that a cabal of women troubled the natural law from the first generation. Saturn devoured his male children to keep his word to Titan, but his wife tricked him and nourished in secret three of his sons. Titan having discovered this household, resolved to use this insult to make war on Saturn; he defeated him and shut up in a black prison Saturn and his wife. Jupiter son of Saturn, supported the war and freed his father and mother; and then Titan and his sons, put in irons, were shut in the Tartarus, which was the same prison where Saturn and his wife had been chained. Saturn owed his freedom to his son but was not grateful. An oracle had predicted that Jupiter would dethrone him, he tried to pre vent this prediction. But Jupiter go wind of the enterprise and overthrew the throne, put him in chains, and sent him down into the Tartarus. He punished him as Saturn had his own father. The blood that flowed from Saturn’s wound on this occasion fell on the earth and produced giants, who tried to depose Jupiter. The combat was fierce and the outcome doubtful for a long time. Finally victory was declared for Jupiter.

These are the principle divine wars that the Pagans mention. They are so remote from the plausible, not continuing this history of these series of rebellions, which were frequent, they did lead to gigantomachy. Nothing more offends plausibility than that they supposed the other gods conspired against Jupiter, and that by leagues and counter-leagues they tried to aggrandize themselves or else were exposed to usurpers. The natural and inevitable result of the character given these gods, that they more often quarreled and more frequently undertook to seize each other’s states, was that men did not quarrel or form similar enterprises. This story goes a long way, as you see. Only Juno, as she is represented, knew better how to trim the efforts of her husband Jupiter than he knew how to execute. She was jealous, proud, and excessively vindictive - and she saw herself betrayed every day by her husband. What tumults she excited! What plots she formed against such an unfaithful spouse! He withdrew from a war that she had incited against him and from a second conspiracy of hers. What disorder she caused in the world to take revenge on her rivals and to get rid of those who displeased her! There is nothing more plausible in the Aenead than the character that she plays there; a character so pernicious that she could call from hell a fury to inspire martial rage in people who were thinking only of peace. Remember that there were other goddesses. It took only that to put trouble among the gods and make inevitable the machinations and intrigues, plots and quarrels. A fine mind (Chevalier Temple) has well described them as wars of anarchy, whose bad fruits ripened too early or too late, and sometimes toppled the most flourishing societies. History is full of these sorts of things. Here then is how I reason. Despite all the precautions that were taken in states, despite the various forms of government that were successively introduced, they were never able to remove the seeds of anarchy nor prevent its raising its head from time to time. Sedition, civil wars, and revolutions are frequent in all states, although more or less in some than in others. Why is that? Because men are subject to mad passions. They are envious of each other. Avarice, ambition, voluptuousness, and vengeance possess them. Those who ought to command perform badly. Those who ought to obey, sometimes perform still worse. Limits are put on to royal authority, and this is the means of inspiring the envy to reach despotic power. In a word, some people abuse authority, and other people abuse liberty. Since the gods were subject to the same passions as men, it was therefore necessary to have wars among them, and the wars would have to be even more devastating in that the gods surpassed men in spirit and in power; wars that shook even the center of the sea and the earth, air and skies, wars that would make anarchy, trouble, and confusion in all bodies of the universe. But since this anarchy did not come, this is a sign that there was no war among the gods; at the same time, it is proof that the gods did not exist, for if they had existed, they could never have been in accord. I would not want another reason than that to convince me of the falsity of pagan religion.

If Polytheism is so absurd in itself and also so contrary at to phenomena, you will ask me perhaps what the wisest among the Pagans were thinking of. I would like to satisfy you on this. Once there were three classes of gods, arranged with much skill: the poetical , the political, and the philosophical . This division was made by the great pontiff Scevola, who found himself at the head of all the ministries of superstition, and could not be mistaken. The poetical gods seemed abandoned to the vulgarity that spread fictions. The political ones served in delicate events when downcast people’s courage had to be lifted and managed with dexterity to give them new force. The philosophical gods offered nothing noble, pure or suitable to the small number of honest people who among the pagans knew how to think. These latter recognized only a single God who governed the universe by the ministry of genies or demons, whom they called subaltern divinities . M. Bayle claims that no pagan philosopher had knowledge of the unity of God, for all those who seemed to recognize this truth, reduced to the sole divinity of the sun all the other gods of paganism, or else they never accepted another god than the universe itself, than Nature, than the soul of the world. One easily understands (if you pay attention) that unity cannot suit either the sun or the world or the world’s soul. This is visible with respect to the sun and the world for they are composed of several portions of matter that are really distinct from each other; it would be no less absurd to maintain that a vessel is only a single being or an elephant is only a single entity, than to assert it of the world, either considering it as a simple machine or considering it as an animal. Any machine, any animal is essentially a composite of various pieces. The soul of the world is also composed of different parts. What animates a tree is not at all the same thing as animates a dog. Nobody has better described than Virgil the dogma of the soul of the world, which he takes for God.

One sees clearly that divinity is divided into as many parts as there are beasts and men. This spirit, this understanding, according to Virgil, that is spread among the whole mass of matter, could it be composed of fewer parts than matter? Must these not be in the air the portions of its substance numerically distinct from the portions which are in the water? Hence the philosophers who seem to have taught the unity of God have been more polytheistic than the people. They do not know what they are saying if they believe they are saying that unity belongs to God. It cannot suit Him, according to their dogma, unless in the manner it suits the Ocean, a nation, a city, a palace, and an army. The god they recognize as an amassing of an infinity of parts, and if they were homogeneous, then each would be a god or none of them were. But if none of them were, the whole could not be a god. Therefore they must admit an infinity of gods, or at least a greater number than there were in the poem by Hesiod, or in any other liturgy. If they were heterogeneous, one falls into the same result, for each must participate in the divine nature and essence of the soul of the world. It could not participate in it without being a god, since the essence of things is not susceptible of more or less. You have it entirely or not at all. Hence there are as many gods as parts in the universe. If the nature of God had not been communicated to some of these parts, how could it be communicated to some others? And what bizarre and monstrous composite would be a soul composed of parts that are not living and animated, and living and animated parts? It would be even more monstrous to say that one portion of god was not a god, and that nevertheless all portions compose a god, for in that case, the divine being would be the result of an assemblage of several non-divine pieces. It would have been made of nothing, just as if extension were composed of mathematical points.

If you turn to wherever you wish, you will never find in the systems of ancient philosophers the unity of God; it would always be a collective unity. Try to say without ever naming “the army” that some battalions did this, or without ever articulating “regiments”, “battalions,” that the army did that, and you will likewise notice a multitude of actors. If there were only a single God, according to them, it is in the same way as there is only one Roman people, or that, according to Aristotle, there is only one primary matter. See in Saint Augustine the confusion to which Varro’s doctrine is reduced. He believed that God was nothing but the soul of the world. He is led to see that it is a division of God into several things, and the reduction of several things into a single God. Lactance has also shown the ridiculous aspect of the Stoical sentiment, which was almost the same as Varro’s. Spinoza is in the same labyrinth. He maintains that there is one substance and he calls it God . He seems to accept only one God, but deep down he accepts an infinity without knowing so. One will never understand that the unity of substance to which he reduces the universe, is anything other than a collective unity, or that the formal unity of the Logicians only exists ideally in our minds. There are among pagan philosophers some passages that seem to give more orthodox grounds for the unity of God, but most of the time these are only pompous gibberish; analyze it well and the result will always be a multitude of gods. One is only perfectly unitary inasmuch as one recognizes a perfectly simple intelligence, totally distinguished from matter and from the form of the world, producer of all things and truly spiritual. If one affirms that, then one believes that there is only one God; but if one does not affirm it, one whistles in vain at all the gods of paganism and testifies to the horror of the multitude of gods, and one actually will admit infinity of them. This is precisely the case with all the ancient philosophers – whom we have proved, moreover, had no tint of real spirituality.

If M. Bayle were content to say that by reasoning consequentially, one would never be persuaded that the unity of God was compatible with the nature of God as accepted by the ancient philosophers, then I would second his opinion. It seems to me that what they say about the unity of God does not follow from their doctrine on the nature of this Being. I am even speaking of the doctrine of the first Church Fathers, which put a kind of materialism into God. Of course this well-penetrated doctrine leads exactly from consequence to consequence, it was the sponge of any religion. M. Bayle’s reasoning, which I brought in as an objection, is quite evident proof. But like opinions inconsequentially and quite impertinently drawn from a hypothesis, do not enter less easily into minds unless they necessarily emanate from a sound principle, so it must be agreed that pagan philosophers truly recognized the unity of God, although it does not follow from their doctrine on the nature of a Supreme Being. There were no pagan philosophers who insisted more on the dogma of Providence than the Stoics. They believed, though, that God was corporal. Thus they joined together the corporal nature with the intelligence suffused everywhere. But unity properly speaking is not more difficult to reconcile with such a nature as with Providence, or rather they are both equally incapable of being combined with it. How many modern philosophers in the steps of M. Locke, imagine that their soul is material? Are they thereby less persuaded of its veritably unity? The idea of the unity of God is so natural and so conforming to correct reason, that they introduced it into their system however discordant it was with this idea. They approached orthodoxy by these inconsequentialities, for it is certain that if they had well followed their point – I mean to say if they were regularly attached to the results of their principle – they would have spoken of God less nobly than they did. All the systems of the ancient philosophers on the nature of God led to irreligion; even if all philosophers did not fall into this abyss, they are still liable for a lack of exactitude in their reasoning. They took a detour, attracted by the ideas that nature had imprinted on their minds and that study of morality nourished and fortified.

One of the greatest minds of ancient Rome examined the opinions of philosophers on the nature of the divine. He disputed for and against with much attention. What did he conclude? In the end, he found himself an atheist (or close to it) or at least he avoided this great change only because he had more deference for the authority for his ancestors than for his philosophical lights.

But one thing cannot be pardoned among the ancient philosophers who recognized a single God: satisfied with not having fallen into error, they regarded it as one of their obligations to maintain the other gods. The sage, states the philosopher-orator, should maintain all the externals of the religion that he finds established and he should inviolably keep the brilliant and sacred ceremonies that his ancestors practiced. Someone who considers the beauty of the universe, who examines the arrangement of celestial bodies, will see that nothing has changed the ancient things and he should adore the Supreme Being in secret. In that consisted the whole religion of the pagans, men of spirit. They recognized a God whom they regarded as filling the world with his grandeur, his immensity. But they retained the principle uses of the countries where they lived, fearing above all disturbing the peace for a furious zeal, or by too much attachment to their individual opinions. Seneca insists on this in a sensible way. When we bow before this crowd of divinities that old superstition has piled on each other, he says, we give this homage to custom and not to religion. We want thereby to contain people and not depreciate ourselves shamefully.

Following some philosophers, all of poetic polytheism , everything among the Greek divinities - everything in the details of their genealogies, families, domains, loves, and adventures - is nothing other than physics expressed in a certain tone and agreeably turned out. Thus Jupiter is only ethereal matter and Juno the liquid mass of our atmosphere. Apollo is the sun and Diana in the moon. To be brief, all the gods are just physical elements and bodies; Nature is shared among them, or rather they are all just different parts of the various effects of Nature.

It must be agreed that this first institution of the gods is a rather constant fact of history, at least if taken in general. We know that at the origin of paganism, physics had not been formed into a science and so left writers in a great desert about the basis of things; to remedy this, they borrowed the help of allusions and fables, a genre of writing that favored the propensities and the infancy, as it were, of readers - as Cicero said. But this very fact - the defense of paganism when Christianity was rising upon its ruins and debris - was the strongest demonstration against it. 1) If the gods were only portions of the universe, it remained evident that the universe took the place of its author and that even a blind man would discern to creatures the adoration due only to the Creator. 2) Even if the gods were not originally just personified elements, did this symbolic theology not become an occasion for scandal and impious error? Whatever the physical origin of the word Jupiter, was there not significance in the use of the proper name of a God, father of other gods? When people read in the poets that Jupiter struck Juno, his wife and his sister, did they really conceive that it was a matter of the collision of elements? Did they resort to allusions for the meaning of other fables, in which they saw a clear meaning that at first sight fixed their belief? Where was the poet who learned to distinguish these allegorical images from the simplicity of the writing? Where were the poets who could represent the same God under quite different and sometimes contradictory emblems? So it was impossible for ignorant common people to grasp amidst these variations any fixed point of allegory that determined its meaning, and hence there remained only a scandalous system where tricked reason offered morality only deceptive examples.

Whatever role idolatry took, whether regarding its gods as elements that it had personified, or regarded them as men whom it had deified for the deeds they had showered on humans, it is still true to say that idolatry’s basis was brutal ignorance and complete depravation of human sense. Moreover, the Poets spent for its sake all that they possessed in the way of mind, delicacy, and grace and that they strove to use the liveliest colors to depict vices and crimes that would have been decried if not for the finery they lent it to cover up deformity, absurdity, and infamy.

We know that the wisest of philosopher condemned unreservedly these profane fictions, so manifestly injurious to divinity.

Even reason in the midst of the thickest shadows cannot hide from these rays of truth, since it is impossible for men to abolish the idea of the unique, holy, and perfect Being that drew him from nothingness.

But if the fables with which people were appeased were, as Plato admits, so injurious to divinity and at the same time so harmful to the purity of morals, why did he not work to disillusion them by inspiring a healthy idea of divinity? Why, in concert with other philosophers, did he still foment his error? Here Plato is imagining that polytheism was so strongly rooted, that it was impossible to destroy it without putting all of society into combustion: “It is very difficult to know the father, the sovereign arbiter of this universe, but if you have the good fortune to know him, keep yourself from speaking of him to the people.”

Philosophers as well as Legislators agreed with this principle that the truth was little suited to be communicated to men. It was believed without any repugnance that they had to be deceived, or at least exposed to adroitly veiled things. Hence, says Strabo, the use of fables is so widespread, that people feign and imagined by a kind of political duty, Jupiter’s thunder, Pallas’ shield, Neptune’s trident, the torches and serpents of the avenging Furies – and these traditions are all piled upon each other, which have formed ancient theology, with a view to intimidating those who were led more by fear than by reason, too feeble, alas, the minds of corrupted men. Seneca says that the Jupiter of the people was one who was armed with thunder and whose statue was seen in the middle of the Capitol, but that the real Jupiter, that of the Philosophers, is an invisible Being, universal soul and spirit, master and conserver of all things, the case of causes, from whom nature borrows her force, and so to speak, his life. Varro, the most savant of Romans, in a fragment of his treatise on religions, quoted by St. Augustine, says that there are certain truths that are not suitable to be made known too generally, for the good of the state; and other things that it is useful to make the people believe although they are false, and that it is for this reason that the Greeks generally hid their mysteries. Whatever system one embraces, the people have to be seduced, and they themselves want to be seduced. Orpheus in speaking of God says ‘I do not see him, for there is a cloud around him that hides him from me.’

Another reason that brings Legislators not to alert people’s mind to the errors with which they are imbued is that they had themselves contributed to the establishment or propagation of polytheism , in protesting inspirations and in making use religious opinions however false: people were alerted only to inspire them to a greater veneration for the laws. Polytheism was entirely corrupted by the Poets who invented or published scandalous stories of the gods and heroes; histories which the prudence of legislators would want to hide from people’s knowledge, which more than any other thing contributed to make polytheism dangerous for the state, as it is easy to be convinced by the passage form Plato I quoted above. Finding people given to a religion that was made for pleasure, to a religion whose entertainments, festivals, spectacles, and finally very license were part of the cult, finding them enchanted by such a religion, they were forced to adopt deep-rooted prejudices. They believed that it was not in their power to destroy it and substitute a better one. All they could do was to establish with more firmness the body of religion, and for this purpose they employed a great number of pompous ceremonies. In the course of time, the genius of religion followed that of civil government and thus it purified itself, as in Rome, or it became more and more corrupted, as in Syria. If the legislators had instituted a new religion, as they instituted new laws, one would have found in some of these religions some institutions that were less removed from the purity of the natural religion. The imperfection of these religions is proof that they were found already established and that they were not the inventors of them.

One can say that neither the Philosophers nor the Legislators recognized this essential truth: that the true and the useful are inseparable. Therefore both have often missed their goal. The former neglected utility and fell into the most absurd opinions on the nature of God and the soul; the latter were not scrupulous enough about the truth and contributed much to the propagation of Polytheism, which tends naturally to the destruction of society. It was even the need to remedy this evil that made them establish the sacred mysteries with so much success and one can say that they were indeed proper for producing this effect. In Paganism the example of vicious and corrupt gods had a strong influence on manners. They did that - and I, puny mortal, I would not do it? (Terence, Eunuchus , Act III, scene 5). Euripides puts the same argument in the mouthd of several of his characters in various places in his tragedies.

This is what is alleged for justification when one wants to abandon oneself to unregulated passions and give free rein to vast desires. In the mysteries they weakened this powerful stimulus; this is what they did by cutting the root of evil. They revealed to those initiates who were judged capable the error that was common among men; they told them that Jupiter, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and all the licentious divinities were only men like others, who during their lives had been subject to the same passion and same vices as the rest of mortals, that having in various respects been the benefactors of humankind, posterity had deified them out of gratitude and had indiscreetly canonized their vices along with their virtues. Moreover, one should not believe that the doctrine taught in the mysteries of a supreme cause, author of all things, destroyed tutelary divinities or rather the local patrons. They were simply considered as beings of a second order, inferior to God but superior to man, and placed by the prime being to preside over the various parts of the universe. What the doctrine of the great mysteries destroyed was vulgar polytheism, or the adoration of men deified after death.

The unity of God was thus established in the great mysteries on the ruins of polytheism, for in the small ones they had had not yet unmasked the errors of polytheism, but only strongly inculcated the dogma of Providence - this is not a simple conjecture. The Egyptian mystagogues taught in their secret ceremonies the dogma of the unity of God, as L. Ladworth, an English scholar, has proved. The Greeks and Asiatics borrowed their mysteries from the Egyptians, from which one can conclude very probably that they taught the same dogma. Pythagoras recognized that it was from the Orphic mysteries celebrated in Thrace that he learned of the unity of the first universal cause. Cicero is also outspoken:

One might if necessary cite a crowd of witnesses to confirm this truth.

If there remained some clouds, they would soon be dissipated by what is said of the unity of God in the hymn chanted by the hierophant, who appeared in the guise of the creator. After having opened the mysteries and sung the theology of idols, he then reversed everything he had said and introduced the truth by beginning thus:

Before finishing this article, it is à propos to cite an objection that M. Bayle makes on the subject of polytheism, which he claims to be at least as pernicious to society as atheism. He bases this on the fact that this religion, scarcely linked in all its parts, does not require good morals. And on what front, he said, could it require them? Everything was full of crimes, various iniquities that were blamed on the assembly of the gods. Their example accustomed people to evil, even their worship paved the way to evil. If one goes back to the source of paganism, one will see that it merely promised men physical goods, like startling ceremonies, sacrifices, decorations suitable to make temples and altars respected, games and spectacles for passions difficult to correct, or rather to retain within just limits (for the passions are never entirely corrected). It left them extensive freedom, without constraining them in any way, without ever going right to the heart. In a word, pagan religion was a kind of bank, where in exchange for temporal offerings, the gods rendered pleasures and voluptuous satisfactions.

To respond to this o9bjection, it must be remarked that in paganism there were two sorts of religion, the religion of individuals and the religion of society. Individual religion was inferior to that of the state and quite different. Over each of these religions there resided a particular Providence. That of religion of individuals did not always punish vice, nor always reward virtue in this world below, an idea that necessarily involved that of the dogma of punishment and rewards in another life. Providence, which directed society, was on the contrary equal or uniform in its conduct, dispensing temporal goods and evil, according to the way in which society behaved toward the gods. Thereby religion was part of civil government. People did not deliberate over anything, nor was anything executed without consulting the oracle. The prodigies and presages were as common as the edicts of magistrates, They were regarded as dispersed by Providence for the public good; they were either declaration in favor of the gods or denunciation of punishment they were on the verge of inflicting.

All that did not concern individuals considered as such. It if were a matter of accepting an augury, or getting around a presage, rendering thanks to the gods, or appeasing their anger, the method that was constantly followed was to reestablish some ancient ceremony or to institute new ones, but the reformation of morals w3as never part of the state’s propitiation. The singularity and evidence of this fact so strongly struck M. Bayle that in maintaining that this public part of pagan religion was the whole, he concluded with excessive haste that pagan religion did not instruct people on virtue but only on the external worship of the gods and he drew from this an argument to support his favorite paradox in favor of atheism. The vast and profound knowledge that he had of antiquity did not, as it happens, guarantee error and it must be admitted that he was partially entrained by several passages in the Church Fathers in their declamations against the vices of paganism. Although it is evident that this public part of pagan religion has no relation with the practice of virtue and the purity of morals, one could not claim the same thing of the other part of religion, of which each individual was the subject. The dogma of punishment and rewards in another life was its foundation – a dogma inseparable from the merit of works, which consists in vice and virtue. I will not deny, though, that the nature of the public part of religion has not often given rise to errors in the practice of private religion, concerning the efficacy o9f external acts in particular cases. But these sacred mysteries into which many persons were initiated corrected the evils that polytheism did not have the power to repress.

Notes

1. The translation of Pope is extremely garbled; what follows is what Pope actually wrote and regards the transition from monarchy to monotheism.

2. The author mistakenly cites Georgics II; this is IV, in Theodore Williams’ English verse translation.

3. Although it is not ascribed, this quote comes from Book 2 of Plato’s Republic ; I have used Jowett’s translation. - SE