When Voltaire wrote a letter of reproach to him in prison, Diderot replied that these were not his own opinions. “I believe in God,” he wrote, “but I live very well with the atheists.” Actually, however, it made very little difference to him whether God existed or not. God had become a sublime but useless truth. “It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley but to believe or not to believe in God is not important at all.”
