ith one voice, without distinction
of race or of sect: white men, black men, followers of Mahomet and of
Moses, worshippers of Boudha and of Jesus, all have returned the same
answer. We then proposed another question, and you have all disagreed!
Why this unanimity in one case, and this discordance in the other?"

And the group of simple men and savages answered and said: "The reason
of this is plain. In the first case we see and feel the objects, and we
speak from sensation; in the second, they are beyond the reach of our
senses--we speak of them only from conjecture."

"You have resolved the problem," said the legislator; "and your own
consent has established this first truth:

"That whenever objects can be examined and judged of by your senses,
you are agreed in opinion; and that you only differ when the objects are
absent and beyond your reach.

"From this first truth flows another equally clear and worthy of notice.
Since you agree on things which you know with certainty, it follows that
you disagree only on those which you know not with certainty, and about
which you are not sure; that is to say, you dispute, you quarrel, you
fight, for that which is uncertain, that of which you doubt. O men! is
this wisdom?

"Is it not, then, demonstrated that truth is not the object of your
contests? that it is not her cause which you defend, but that of your
affections, and your prejudices? that it is not the object, as it really
is in itself, that you would verify, but the object as you would have
it; that is to say, it is not the evidence of the thing that you would
enforce, but your own personal opinion, your particular manner of seeing
and judging? It is a power that you wish to exercise, an interest that
you wish to satisfy, a prerogative that you arrogate to yourself; it is
a contest of vanity. Now, as each of you, on comparing himself to every
other, finds himself his equal and his fellow, he resists by a feeling
of the same right. And your disputes, your combats, your intolerance,
are the effect of this right which you deny each other, and of the
intimate conviction of your equality.

"Now, the only means of establishing harmony is to return to nature,
and to take for a guide and regulator the order of things which she has
founded; and then your accord will prove this other truth:

"That real beings have in themselves an identical, constant and uniform
mode of existence; and that there is in your organs a like mod