des climate has counted for nothing: government
has done everything. We are considering here second causes only, without
raising profane eyes to the Providence which directs them. The Christian
religion, born in Syria, having received its principal development in
Alexandria, inhabits to-day the lands where Teutate, Irminsul, Frida,
Odin were worshipped.

There are peoples whose religion has been made by neither climate nor
government. What cause detached the north of Germany, Denmark,
three-quarters of Switzerland, Holland, England, Scotland, Ireland, from
the Roman communion? Poverty. Indulgences and deliverance from purgatory
were sold too dear to souls whose bodies had at that time very little
money. The prelates, the monks devoured a province's whole revenue.
People took a cheaper religion. At last, after twenty civil wars,
people believed that the Pope's religion was very good for great lords,
and the reformed religion for citizens. Time will show whether the Greek
religion or the Turkish religion will prevail by the AEgean Sea and the
Pont-Euxine.

_COMMON SENSE_

There are sometimes in common expressions an image of what passes in the
depths of all men's hearts. Among the Romans _sensus communis_ signified
not only common sense, but humanity, sensibility. As we are not as good
as the Romans, this word signifies among us only half of what it
signified among them. It means only good sense, plain reason, reason set
in operation, a first notion of ordinary things, a state midway between
stupidity and intelligence. "This man has no common sense" is a great
insult. "A common-sense man" is an insult likewise; it means that he is
not entirely stupid, and that he lacks what is called wit and
understanding. But whence comes this expression _common sense_, unless
it be from the senses? Men, when they invented this word, avowed that
nothing entered the soul save through the senses; otherwise, would they
have used the word _sense_ to signify common reasoning?

People say sometimes--"Common sense is very rare." What does this phrase
signify? that in many men reason set in operation is stopped in its
progress by prejudices, that such and such man who judges very sanely in
one matter, will always be vastly deceived in another. This Arab, who
will be a good calculator, a learned chemist, an exact astronomer, will
believe nevertheless that Mohammed put half the moon in his sleeve.

Why will he go beyond common sense i