(AP:17) They are bound to estimate the nature of such rulers ( having no
information on the subject) in accordance with their own nature, and
therefore they assert that the gods ordained everything for the use of man,
in order to bind man to themselves and obtain from him the highest honors.
(AP:18) Hence also it follows, that everyone thought out for himself,
according to his abilities, a different way of worshipping God, so that
God might love him more than his fellows, and direct the whole course of
nature for the satisfaction of his blind cupidity and insatiable avarice.
(AP:19) Thus the prejudice developed into superstition, and took deep root
in the human mind; and for this reason everyone strove most zealously to
understand and explain the final causes of things; but in their endeavor
to show that nature does nothing in vain, i.e., nothing which is useless
to man, they only seem to have demonstrated that nature, the gods, and men
are all mad together. (AP:20) Consider, I pray you, the result: among the
many helps of nature they were bound to find some hindrances, such as
storms, earthquakes, diseases, etc.: so they declared that such things
happen, because the gods are angry at some wrong done them by men, or
at some fault committed in their worship. (21) Experience day by day
protested showed by infinite examples, that good and evil fortunes fall
to the lot of pious and impious alike; still they would not abandon their
inveterate prejudice, for it was more easy for them to class such
contradictions among other unknown things of whose use they were ignorant,
and thus to retain their actual and innate condition of ignorance, than to
destroy the whole fabric of their reasoning and start afresh.
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