transcendent virtues as well as for atrocious crimes; enthusiasm places
the soul in a state similar to that of drunkenness; both the one and the
other excite in man that rapidity of motion which is approved, when good
results, when its effects are beneficial; but which is censured, is
called folly, delirium, crime, fury; when it produces nothing but
disorder and confusion.

The mind is out of order, it is incapable of judging sanely--the
imagination is badly regulated, whenever man's organization is not so
modified, as to perform its functions with precision. At each moment of
his existence, man gathers experience; every sensation he has, furnishes
a fact that deposits in his brain an idea which his memory recalls with
more or less fidelity: these facts connect themselves, these ideas are
associated; their chain constitutes _experience_; this lays the
foundation of _science_. Knowledge is that consciousness which arises
from reiterated experience--from experiments made with precision of the
sensations, of the ideas, of the effects which an object is capable of
producing, either in ourselves or in others. All science, to be just,
must be founded on truth. Truth itself rests on the constant, the
faithful relation of our senses. Thus, _truth_ is that conformity, that
perpetual affinity, which man's senses, when well constituted, when
aided by experience, discover to him, between the objects of which he
has a knowledge, and the qualities with which he clothes them. In short,
truth is nothing more than the just, the precise association of his
ideas. But how can he, without experience, assure himself of the
accuracy, of the justness of this association? How, if he does not
reiterate this experience, can he compare it? how prove its truth? If
his senses are vitiated, how is it possible they can convey to him with
precision, the sensations, the facts, with which they store his brain?
It is only by multiplied, by diversified, by repeated experience, that