, either in temples or in public meetings. I
have never likewise practiced that quackery of beneficence, by which
a certain divine, imposing a tax upon the generosity of the public,
procures for himself the honors of a more numerous audience, and the
merit of distributing at his pleasure a bounty which costs him nothing,
and for which he receives grateful thanks dexterously stolen from the
original donors.

Either in the capacity of a stranger, or in that of a citizen, a sincere
friend to peace, I carry into society neither the spirit of dissension,
nor the desire of commotion; and because I respect in every one what
I wish him to respect in me, the name of liberty is in my mind nothing
else but the synonyma of justice.

As a man, whether from moderation or indolence, a spectator of the world
rather than an actor in it, I am every day less tempted to take on me
the management of the minds or bodies of men: it is sufficient for an
individual to govern his own passions and caprices.

If by one of these caprices, I am induced to think it may be useful,
sometimes, to publish my reflections, I do it without obstinacy or
pretension to that implicit faith, the ridicule of which you desire
to impart to me, p. 123. My whole book of the Ruins which you treat so
ungratefully, since you thought it amusing, p. 122, evidently bears this
character. By means of the contrasted opinions I have scattered through
it, it breathes that spirit of doubt and uncertainty which appears to me
the best suited to the weakness of the human mind, and the most adapted
to its improvement, inasmuch as it always leaves a door open to new
truths; while the spirit of dogmatism and immovable belief, limiting our
progress to a first received opinion, binds us at hazard, and without
resource, to the yoke of error or falsehood, and occasions the most
serious mischiefs to society; since by combining with the passions, it
engenders fanaticism, which, sometimes misled and sometimes misleading,
though always intolerant and despotic, attacks whatever is not of
its own nature; drawing upon itself persecution when it is weak, and
practising persecution when it is powerful; establishing a religion of
terror, which annihilates the faculties, and vitiates the conscience:
so that, whether under a political or a religious aspect, the spirit
of doubt is friendly to all ideas of liberty, truth, or genius, while a
spirit of confidence is connected with the ideas of tyranny,