Some men have talents denied to others, and the gifts of nature are sometimes developed by circumstances, sometimes left buried in obscurity.

The inequalities in the march of nations are due to the infinite variety of circumstances; and these inequalities may be taken to prove that the world had a beginning, for in an eternal duration they would have disappeared.
But the development of human societies has not been guided by human reason.

Men have not consciously made general happiness the end of their actions.

They have been conducted by passion and ambition and have never known to what goal they were moving.

For if reason had presided, progress would soon have been arrested.