above all, when he has learned to attach to them the ideas of utility,
of common interest, of the welfare of society. Such is the source of
that obstinacy, of that stubbornness, which man evinces for his
religion, for ancient usages, for unreasonable customs, for laws so
little accordant with justice, for abuses, which so frequently make him
suffer, for prejudices of which he sometimes acknowledges the absurdity,
yet is unwilling to divest himself of them. Here is the reason why
nations contemplate the most useful novelties as mischievous
innovations--why they believe they would be lost, if they were to remedy
those evils to which they have become habituated; which they have
learned to consider as necessary to their repose; which they have been
taught to consider dangerous to be cured.

_Education_ is only the art of making man contract, in early life, that
is to say, when his organs are extremely flexible, the habits, the
opinions, the modes of existence, adopted by the society in which he is
placed. The first moments of his infancy are employed in collecting
experience; those who are charged with the care of rearing him, or who
are entrusted to bring him up, teach him how to apply it: it is they who
develope reason in him: the first impulse they give him commonly decides
upon his condition, upon his passions, upon the ideas he forms to
himself of happiness, upon the means he shall employ to procure it, upon
his virtues, and upon his vices. Under the eyes of his masters, the
infant acquires ideas: under their tuition he learns to associate them,
--to think in a certain manner,--to judge well or ill. They point out to
him various objects, which they accustom him either to love or to hate,
to desire or to avoid, to esteem or to despise. It is thus opinions are
transmitted from fathers, mothers, nurses, and masters, to man in his
infantine state. It is thus, that his mind by degrees saturates itself
with truth, or fills itself with error; after which he regulates his