be the fatal source of his disputes, of his hatreds, of his injustice,
every time he shall reason upon unknown objects, but to which he shall
attach the greatest importance. He will never understand either himself
or others, in speaking of a spiritual soul, or of immaterial substances
distinguished from Nature; he will, from that moment, cease to speak the
same language, and he will never attach the same ideas to the same
words. What, then, shall be, the common standard that shall decide which
is the man that thinks with the greatest justice? What the scale by
which to measure who has the best regulated imagination? What balance
shall be found sufficiently exact to determine whose knowledge is most
certain, when he agitates subjects, which experience cannot enable him
to examine, that escape all his senses, that have no model, that are
above reason? Each individual, each legislator, each speculator, each
nation, has ever formed to himself different ideas of these things; each
believes, that his own peculiar reveries ought to be preferred to those
of his neighbours; which always appear to him an absurd, ridiculous, and
false as his own can possibly have appeared to his fellow; each clings
to his own opinion, because each retains his own peculiar mode of
existence; each believes his happiness depends upon his attachment to
his prejudices, which he never adopts but because he believes them
beneficial to his welfare. Propose to a man to change his religion for
yours, he will believe you a madman; you will only excite his
indignation, elicit his contempt; he will propose to you, in his turn,
to adopt his own peculiar opinions; after much reasoning, you will treat
each other as absurd beings, ridiculously opiniated, pertinaciously
stubborn: and he will display the least folly, who shall first yield.
But if the adversaries become heated in the dispute, which always
happens, when they suppose the matter important, or when they would
defend the cause of their own self-love; from thence their passions
sharpen, they grow angry, quarrels are provoked, they hate each other,