gnorance was
the sole cause, both of the poverty that devours us, and of all the
calamities that have ever afflicted the human race.

My mind was frightened by this strange result: I doubted my reason.
What! said I, that which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor insight
penetrated, you have discovered! Wretch, mistake not the visions of
your diseased brain for the truths of science! Do you not know (great
philosophers have said so) that in points of practical morality
universal error is a contradiction?

I resolved then to test my arguments; and in entering upon this new
labor I sought an answer to the following questions: Is it possible
that humanity can have been so long and so universally mistaken in the
application of moral principles? How and why could it be mistaken? How
can its error, being universal, be capable of correction?

These questions, on the solution of which depended the certainty of my
conclusions, offered no lengthy resistance to analysis. It will be seen,
in chapter V. of this work, that in morals, as in all other branches of
knowledge, the gravest errors are the dogmas of science; that, even in
works of justice, to be mistaken is a privilege which ennobles man; and
that whatever philosophical merit may attach to me is infinitely small.
To name a thing is easy: the difficulty is to discern it before its
appearance. In giving expression to the last stage of an idea,--an idea
which permeates all minds, which to-morrow will be proclaimed by another
if I fail to announce it to-day,--I can claim no merit save that of
priority of utterance. Do we eulogize the man who first perceives the
dawn?

Yes: all men believe and repeat that equality of conditions is identical
with equality of rights; that PROPERTY and ROBBERY are synonymous terms;
that every social advantage accorded, or rather usurped, in the name of
superior talent or service, is iniquity and extortion. All men in their
hearts, I say, bear witness to these truths; they need only to be made
to understand it.

Before entering directly upon the question before me, I must say a word
of the road that I shall traverse. When Pascal approached a geometrical
problem, he invented a method of solution; to solve a problem in
philosophy a method is equally necessary. Well, by how much do the
problems of which philosophy treats surpass in the gravity of their
results those discussed by geometry! How much more imperatively, then,
do they demand for their