Note 59 — NOTES.1

“The universe will never be happy unless it is atheistic.” Although La Mettrie calls this a “strange opinion” it is clear that he secretly sympathizes with it. Holbach affirms this doctrine very emphatically. “Experience teaches us that sacred opinions were the real source of the evils of human beings. Ignorance of natural causes created gods for them. Imposture made these gods terrible. This idea hindered the progress of reason.”71 “An atheist ... is a man who destroys chimeras harmful to the human race, in order to lead men back to nature, to experience, and to reason, which has no need of recourse to ideal powers, to explain the operations of nature.”72