All our ideas are representations of objects that strike us:what is to represent to us the idea of a god, who is plainly anidea without object? Is not such an idea, you will add when talkingto them, quite as impossible as effects without causes? Is an ideawithout prototype anything other than an hallucination? Somescholars, you will continue, assure us that the idea of a god isinnate, and that mortals already have this idea when in theirmothers' bellies. But, you will remark, that is false; everyprinciple is a judgment, every judgment the outcome of experience,and experience is only acquired by the exercise of the senses;whence it follows that religious principles bear upon nothingwhatever and are not in the slightest innate. How, you will go on,how have they been able to convince rational
