Baron d'Holbach - The System of Nature

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If the ignorance of nature gave birth to such a variety of gods, the knowledge of this nature is calculated to destroy them.

Baron d'Holbach
It is thus superstition infatuates man from his infancy, fills him with vanity, and enslaves him with fanaticism.

Baron d'Holbach
The universe, that vast assemblage of every thing that exists, presents only matter and motion: the whole offers to our contemplation, nothing but an immense, an uninterrupted succession of causes and effects.

Baron d'Holbach
As all the world are nearly agreed that matter can, never be totally annihilated, or cease to exist, how can we understand, that that which cannot cease to be... could ever have had a beginning?

Baron d'Holbach
If the ignorance of nature gave birth to the Gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.

Baron d'Holbach
It is thus that in the universe everything is connected; it is itself but an immense chain of causes and effects, which flow without ceasing one from the other.

Baron d'Holbach
Instead... of seeking out of the world he inhabits for beings who can procure him a happiness denied to him by Nature, let man study this Nature, let him learn her laws, contemplate her energies [and] observe the immutable rules by which she acts.

Baron d'Holbach
Man unfortunately for himself, wishes to exceed the limits of his sphere, and to transport himself beyond the visible world. He neglects experience, and feeds himself with conjectures.

Baron d'Holbach
Man seeks to range out of his sphere: notwithstanding the reiterated checks his ambitious folly experiences, he still attempts the impossible; strives to carry his researches beyond the visible world; and hunts out misery in imaginary regions.

Baron d'Holbach