Both Greek and Roman historians tell a similar tale. Plutarch, for instance, expresses himself in the following terms: "If one were to wander over the whole world, one might find cities without walls, without literature, and without written laws, . . . but a city without temples and divinities no one has discovered as yet."
In our own day research has been carried so far that scarcely any country has remained unexplored, or any nation unknown. And all honest explorers bear unanimous witness that just as it was of old, so also in modern times there is no nation which does not possess its own religion.
4. To go yet further! Religion is the mainspring of all virtue, the solid foundation of all morality; and he who should attempt to found, extend, and perpetuate the kingdom of virtue apart from the kingdom of religion, would be like a man who should build a house upon the sand. Without religion, man is the sport of his passions. He resembles a ship which, being destitute of cable or anchor, is certain sooner or later to go to pieces on the rocks when overtaken by a storm. In a way, religion is to man what the flower is to the plant; if the flower is cut off, the fruit is destroyed at the same time.
Now, my dear young friend, you know what you ought to think of the frivolous way of talking which those adopt who assert that people can get on very well without religion.
