Every nation has received, or formed, opposite opinions; and every one ascribing to itself the exclusive possession of the truth, must believe the other to be wrong.

Now if, as must be the fact in this discordance of opinion, the greater part are in error, and are honest in it, then it follows that our mind embraces falsehood as it does truth; and if so, how is it to be enlightened?
When prejudice has once seized the mind, how is it to be dissipated?
How shall we remove the bandage from our eyes, when the first article in every creed, the first dogma in all religion, is the absolute proscription of doubt, the interdiction of examination, and the rejection of our own judgment?
How is truth to make herself known ?--If she resorts to arguments and proofs, the timid man stifles the voice of his own conscience; if she invokes the authority of celestial powers, he opposes it with another authority of the same origin, with which he is preoccupied; and he treats all innovation as blasphemy.

Thus man in his blindness, has riveted his own chains, and surrendered himself forever, without defence, to the sport of his ignorance and his passions.
To dissolve such fatal chains, a miraculous concurrence of happy events would be necessary.

A whole nation, cured of the delirium of superstition, must be inaccessible to the impulse of fanaticism.

Freed from the yoke of false doctrine, a whole people must impose upon itself that of true morality and reason.