his mind no longer has any ideas--it no longer knows upon what it
meditates. This, as will be seen in the sequel, no doubt, is the source
of those unformed notions which some men have formed of the Divinity;
they themselves frequently annihilate him, by assembling incompatible
and contradictory attributes. In giving him morals--in composing him of
known qualities,--they make him a man;--in assigning him the negative
attributes of every thing they know, they render him inaccessible to
their senses--they destroy all antecedent ideas--they make him a mere
nothing. From this it will appear, that those sublime sciences which are
called _Theology, Psychology, Metaphysics_, have been mere sciences of
words: morals and politics, with which they very frequently mix, have,
in consequence, become inexplicable enigmas, which there is nothing
short of the study of Nature can enable us to expound.

Man has occasion for truth; it consists in a knowledge of the true
relations he has with those beings competent to have an influence on his
welfare; these relations are to be known only by experience: without
experience there can be no reason; without reason man is only a blind
creature, who conducts himself by chance. But, how is he to acquire
experience upon ideal objects, which his senses neither enable him to
know nor to examine? How is he to assure himself of the existence, how
ascertain the qualities of beings he is not able to feel? How can he
judge whether there objects be favorable or prejudicial to him? How is
he to know, without the evidence of his senses, what he ought to love,
what he should hate, what to seek after, what to shun, what to do, what
to leave undone? It is, however, upon this knowledge that his condition
in this world rests; it is upon this knowledge that morals is founded.
From whence it may be seen, that, by causing him to blend vague
metaphysical notions with morals, or the science of the certain and
invariable relations which subsist between mankind; or by weakly