his own country; and so, when he is too curious concerning what went on
in past ages, he is apt to remain ignorant of what is taking place in
his own day. I set a high price on eloquence, and I was in love with
poetry; above all, I rejoiced in mathematics, but I knew nothing of its
true use.

I revered our theology, but, since the way to heaven lies open to the
ignorant no less than to the learned, and the revealed truths which lead
thither are beyond our intelligence, I did not dare to submit them to my
feeble reasonings.

In philosophy there is no truth which is not disputed, and which,
consequently, is not doubtful; and, as to the other sciences, they all
borrow their principles from philosophy.

Therefore, I entirely gave up the study of letters, and employed the
rest of my youth in travelling, being resolved to seek no other science
than that which I might find within myself, or in the Great Book of the
World.

Here the best lesson that I learned was not to believe too firmly
anything of which I had learnt merely by example and custom; and thus
little by little was delivered from many errors which are liable to
obscure the light of nature, and to diminish our capacity of hearing
reason. Finally, I resolved one day to study myself in the same way, and
in this it seems to me I succeeded much better than if I had never
departed from either my country or my books.

_II.--THE INTELLECTUAL CRISIS_

Being in Germany, on my way to rejoin the army after the coronation of
the Emperor [Ferdinand II.], I was lying at an inn where, in default of
other conversation, I was at liberty to entertain my own thoughts. Of
these, one of the first was that often there is less perfection in works
which are composite than in those which issue from a single hand. Such
was the case with buildings, cities, states; for a people which has made
its laws from time to time to meet particular occasions will enjoy a
less perfect polity than a people which from the beginning has observed
the constitution of a far-sighted legislator. This is very certain, that
the estate of true religion, which God alone has ordained, must be
incomparably better guided than any other. And again, I considered that
as, during our childhood, we had been governed by our appetites and our
tutors, which are often at variance, which neither of them perhaps
always gave us the best counsel, it is almost impossible that our
judgments should be so pure and so solid as