These precautions were necessary because presenting an argument for a human source of moral feeling was risky in the Catholic, politically authoritarian France of the day. Human-based morality implied that we needed no external authority to guide our ethical choices. This worried the political establishment, as well as the religious one, because it suggested a state of moral anarchy in which people could follow their own ideas. That would not do: for a coherent state, there must be unity, not pluralism; conformity, not independence; hierarchy, not individuality. Besides, the very word atheist
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