rs; their actions may--their reveries
never. Our ideas, our thoughts, our systems, depend not on us. He who
is fully convinced on one point, is not satisfied on another. All men
have not the same eyes, nor the same brains; all have not the same
ideas, the same education, or the same opinions; they never agree
wholly, when they have the temerity to reason on matters that are
enveloped in the obscurity of imaginative fiction, and which cannot be
subject to the usual evidence accompanying matters of report, or
historic relation.

Men do not long dispute on objects that are cognizable to their
senses, and which they can submit to the test of experience. The
number of self-evident truths on which men agree is very small; and
the fundamentals of morality are among this number. It is obvious to
all men of sense, that beings, united in society, require to be
regulated by justice, that they ought to respect the happiness of each
other, that mutual succor is indispensable; in a word, that they are
obliged to practise virtue, and to be useful to society, for personal
happiness. It is evident to demonstration, that the interest of our
preservation excites us to moderate our desires, and put a bridle on
our passions; to renounce dangerous habits, and to abstain from vices
which can only injure our fortune, and undermine our health. These
truths are evident to every being whose passions have not dominion
over his reason; they are totally independent of theological
speculations, which have neither evidence nor demonstration, and which
our mind can never verify; they have nothing in common with the
religious opinions on which the imagination soars from earth to sky,
nor with the fanaticism and credulity which are so frequently
producing among mankind the most opposite principles to morality and
the well-being of society.

They who are of the Freethinkers' opinions are not more dangerous than
they who are of the priests' opinions. In short, Christianity has
produced effects more appalling than heathenism. The speculative
principles of the Freethinkers have done no injury to society; the
contagious principles of fanaticism and enthusiasm have only served to
spread disorder on the earth. If there are dangerous notions and fatal
speculations in the world, they are those of the devotees, who obey a
religion that divides men, and excites their passions, and who
sacrifice the interests of society, of sovereigns, and their subjects,
to thei