himself against his weakness, without ever insulting his misery. Indeed,
what right have we to hate or despise man for his opinions? His
ignorance, his prejudices, his imbecility, his vices, his passions, his
weakness, are they not the inevitable consequence of vicious
institutions? Is he not sufficiently punished by the multitude of evils
that afflict him on every side? Those despots who crush him with an iron
sceptre, are they not continual victims to their own peculiar
restlessness--mancipated to their perpetual diffidence--eternal slaves
to their suspicions? Is there one wicked individual who enjoys a pure,
an unmixed, a real happiness? Do not nations unceasingly suffer from
their follies? Are they not the incessant dupes to their prejudices? Is
not the ignorance of chiefs, the ill-will they bear to reason, the
hatred they have for truth, punished by the imbecility of their
citizens, by the ruin of the states they govern? In short, the fatalist
would grieve to witness necessity each moment exercising its severe
decrees upon mortals who are ignorant of its power, or who feel its
castigation, without being willing to acknowledge the hand from whence
it proceeds; he will perceive that ignorance is necessary, that
credulity is the necessary result of ignorance--that slavery and bondage
are necessary consequences of ignorant credulity--that corruption of
manners springs necessarily from slavery--that the miseries of society,
the unhappiness of its members, are the necessary offspring of this
corruption. The fatalist, in consequence, of these ideas, will neither
he a gloomy misanthrope, nor a dangerous citizen; he will pardon in his
brethren those wanderings, he will forgive them those errors--which
their vitiated nature, by a thousand causes, has rendered necessary--he
will offer them consolation--he will endeavour to inspire them with
courage--he will be sedulous to undeceive them in their idle notions, in
their chimerical ideas; but he will never display against them
bitterness of soul--he will never show them that rancorous animosity