The nations amongst which this liberty exists are as apt to cling to their opinions from pride as from conviction.
They cherish them because they hold them to be just, and because they exercised their own free-will in choosing them; and they maintain them not only because they are true, but because they are their own.

Several other reasons conduce to the same end.
It was remarked by a man of genius that "ignorance lies at the two ends of knowledge." Perhaps it would have been more correct to have said, that absolute convictions are to be met with at the two extremities, and that doubt lies in the middle; for the human intellect may be considered in three distinct states, which frequently succeed one another.

A man believes implicitly, because he adopts a proposition without inquiry.

He doubts as soon as he is assailed by the objections which his inquiries may have aroused.

But he frequently succeeds in satisfying these doubts, and then he begins to believe afresh: he no longer lays hold on a truth in its most shadowy and uncertain form, but he sees it clearly before him, and he advances onwards by the light it gives him.