It is not only confidence in this or that man which is then destroyed, but the taste for trusting the ipse dixit of any man whatsoever.

Everyone shuts himself up in his own breast, and affects from that point to judge the world.
The practice which obtains amongst the Americans of fixing the standard of their judgment in themselves alone, leads them to other habits of mind.

As they perceive that they succeed in resolving without assistance all the little difficulties which their practical life presents, they readily conclude that everything in the world may be explained, and that nothing in it transcends the limits of the understanding.

Thus they fall to denying what they cannot comprehend; which leaves them but little faith for whatever is extraordinary, and an almost insurmountable distaste for whatever is supernatural.

As it is on their own testimony that they are accustomed to rely, they like to discern the object which engages their attention with extreme clearness; they therefore strip off as much as possible all that covers it, they rid themselves of whatever separates them from it, they remove whatever conceals it from sight, in order to view it more closely and in the broad light of day.