which is more suitable, to make them revolt from his doctrines, than to
attract them to reason;--he will not disturb the repose of society--he
will not raise the people to insurrection against the sovereign
authority; on the contrary, he will feel that the miserable blindness of
the great, and the wretched perverseness, the fatal obstinacy of so many
conductors of the people, are the necessary consequence of that flattery
that is administered to them in their infancy--that feeds their hopes
with allusive falsehoods--of the depraved malice of those who surround
them--who wickedly corrupt them, that they may profit by their folly--
that they may take advantage of their weakness: in short, that these
things are the inevitable effect of that profound ignorance of their
true interest, in which every thing strives to keep them.

The fatalist has no right to be vain of his peculiar talents; no
privilege to be proud of his virtues; he knows that these qualities are
only the consequence of his natural organization, modified by
circumstances that have in no wise depended upon himself. He will
neither have hatred nor feel contempt for those whom Nature and
circumstances have not favoured in a similar manner. It is the fatalist
who ought to be humble, who should be modest from principle: is he not
obliged to acknowledge, that he possesses nothing that he has not
previously received?

In fact, will not every thing conduct to indulgence the fatalist whom
experience has convinced of the necessity of things? Will he not see
with pain, that it is the essence of a society badly constituted,
unwisely governed, enslaved to prejudice, attached to unreasonable
customs, submitted to irrational laws, degraded under despotism,
corrupted by luxury, inebriated by false opinions, to be filled with
trifling members; to be composed of vicious citizens; to be made up of