is thus quite certain that the constitution of the true religion, the
ordinances of which are derived from God, must be incomparably superior to
that of every other.  And, to speak of human affairs, I believe that the
pre-eminence of Sparta was due not to the goodness of each of its laws in
particular, for many of these were very strange, and even opposed to good
morals, but to the circumstance that, originated by a single individual,
they all tended to a single end.  In the same way I thought that the
sciences contained in books (such of them at least as are made up of
probable reasonings, without demonstrations), composed as they are of the
opinions of many different individuals massed together, are farther
removed from truth than the simple inferences which a man of good sense
using his natural and unprejudiced judgment draws respecting the matters
of his experience.  And because we have all to pass through a state of
infancy to manhood, and have been of necessity, for a length of time,
governed by our desires and preceptors (whose dictates were frequently
conflicting, while neither perhaps always counseled us for the best), I
farther concluded that it is almost impossible that our judgments can be
so correct or solid as they would have been, had our reason been mature
from the moment of our birth, and had we always been guided by it alone.

It is true, however, that it is not customary to pull down all the houses
of a town with the single design of rebuilding them differently, and
thereby rendering the streets more handsome; but it often happens that a
private individual takes down his own with the view of erecting it anew,
and that people are even sometimes constrained to this when their houses
are in danger of falling from age, or when the foundations are insecure.
With this before me by way of example, I was persuaded that it would
indeed be preposterous for a private individual to think of reforming a
state by fundamentally changing it throughout, and overturning it in order
to set it up amended; and the same I thought was true of any similar
project for reforming the body of the sciences, or the order of teaching
them established in the schools:  but as for the opinions which up to that
time I had embraced, I thought that I could not do better than resolve at
once to sweep them wholly away, that I might afterwards be in a position
to admit either others more correct, or even perhaps the same when they
had undergone the scrutiny of reason.  I firmly believed that in this way I
should much better succeed in the conduct of my life, than if I built only
upon old foundations, and leaned upon principles which, in my youth, I had
taken upon trust.  For although I recognized various difficulties in this
undertaking, these were not, however, without remedy, nor once to be
compared with such as attend the slightest reformation in public affairs.
Large bodies, if once overthrown, are with great difficulty set up again,
or even kept erect when once seriously shaken, and the fall of such is
always disastrous.  Then if there are any imperfections in the
constitutions of states (and that many such exist the diversity of
constitutions is alone sufficient to assure us), custom has without doubt
materially smoothed their inconveniences, and has even managed to steer
altogether clear of, or insensibly corrected a number which sagacity could
not have provided against with equal effect; and, in fine, the defects are
almost always more tolerable than the change necessary for their removal;
in the same manner that highways which wind among mountains, by being much
frequented, become gradually so smooth and commodious, that it is much
better to follow them than to seek a straighter path by climbing over the
tops of rocks and descending to the bottoms of precipices.

Hence it is that I cannot in any degree approve of those restless and busy
meddlers who, called neither by birth nor fortune to take part in the
management of public affairs, are yet always projecting reforms; and if I
thought that this tract contained aught which might justify the suspicion
that I was a victim of such folly, I would by no means permit its
publication.  I have never contemplated anything higher than the
reformation of my own opinions, and basing them on a foundation wholly my
own.  And although my own satisfaction with my work has led me to present
here a draft of it, I do not by any means therefore recommend to every one
else to make a similar attempt.  Those whom God has endowed with a larger
measure of genius will entertain, perhaps, designs still more exalted; but
for the many I am much afraid lest even the present undertaking be more
than they can safely venture to imitate.  The single design to strip one's
self of all past beliefs is one that ought not to be taken by every one.
The majority of men is composed of two classes, for neither of which would
this be at all a befitting resolution:  in the first place, of those who
with more than a due confidence in their own powers, are precipitate in
their judgments and want the patience requisite for orderly and
circumspect thinking; whence it happens, that if men of this class once
take the liberty to doubt of their accustomed opinions, and quit the
beaten highway, they will never be able to thread the byway that would
lead them by a shorter course, and will lose themselves and continue to
wander for life; in the second place, of those who, possessed of
sufficient sense or modesty to determine that there are others who excel
them in the power of discriminating between truth and error, and by whom
they may be instructed, ought rather to content themselves with the
opinions of such than trust for more correct to their own reason.

For my own part, I should doubtless have belonged to the latter class, had
I received instruction from but one master, or had I never known the
diversities of opinion that from time immemorial have prevailed among men
of the greatest learning.  But I had become aware, even so early as during
my college life, that no opinion, however absurd and incredible, can be
imagined, which has not been maintained by some on of the philosophers;
and afterwards in the course of my travels I remarked that all those whose
opinions are decidedly repugnant to ours are not in that account
barbarians and savages, but on the contrary that many of these nations
make an equally good, if not better, use of their reason than we do.  I
took into account also the very different character which a person brought
up from infancy in France or Germany exhibits, from that which, with the
same mind originally, this individual would have possessed had he lived
always among the Chinese or with savages, and the circumstance that in
dress itself the fashion which pleased us ten years ago, and which may
again, perhaps, be received into favor before ten years have gone,
appears to us at this moment extravagant and ridiculous.  I was thus led