t in question. The spirit speaks to
the spirit, and not to the ears. The principles of everything we are
acquainted with must necessarily have been revealed to those from whom we
have received them by the great, supreme principle, which contains them
all. The bee erecting its hive, the swallow building its nest, the ant
constructing its cave, and the spider warping its web, would never have
done anything but for a previous and everlasting revelation. We must
either believe that it is so, or admit that matter is endowed with
thought. But as we dare not pay such a compliment to matter, let us stand
by revelation.

The great philosopher, who having deeply studied nature, thought he had
found the truth because he acknowledged nature as God, died too soon. Had
he lived a little while longer, he would have gone much farther, and yet
his journey would have been but a short one, for finding himself in his
Author, he could not have denied Him: In Him we move and have our being.
He would have found Him inscrutable, and thus would have ended his
journey.

God, great principle of all minor principles, God, who is Himself without
a principle, could not conceive Himself, if, in order to do it, He
required to know His own principle.

Oh, blissful ignorance! Spinosa, the virtuous Spinosa, died before he
could possess it. He would have died a learned man and with a right to
the reward his virtue deserved, if he had only supposed his soul to be
immortal!

It is not true that a wish for reward is unworthy of real virtue, and
throws a blemish upon its purity. Such a pretension, on the contrary,
helps to sustain virtue, man being himself too weak to consent to be
virtuous only for his own 'gratification. I hold as a myth that
Amphiaraus who preferred to be good than to seem good. In fact, I do not
believe there is an honest man alive without some pretension, and here is
mine.

I pretend to the friendship, to the esteem, to the gratitude of my
readers. I claim their gratitude, if my Memoirs can give them instruction
and pleasure; I claim their esteem if, rendering me justice, they find
more good qualities in me than faults, and I claim their friendship as
soon as they deem me worthy of it by the candour and the good faith with
which I abandon myself to their judgment, without disguise and exactly as
I am in reality. They will find that I have always had such sincere love
for truth, that I have often begun by telling stories for the pur