It appeals more to their desires than to their intelligence; for, if the heart sometimes may be the dupe of the head, the latter is much more frequently the dupe of the former.

We do not accept a system because we deem it a true one, but because the truth we find in it suits us.

Political or religious fanaticism, any theological or philosophical channel in which truth flows, always has its source in some ardent longing, some secret passion, some accumulation of intense, painful desire to which a theory affords and outlet.

In the Jacobin, as well as in the Puritan, there is a fountain-head of this description.

What feeds this source with the Puritan is the anxieties of a disturbed conscience which, forming for itself some idea of perfect justice, becomes rigid and multiplies the commandments it believes that God has promulgated; on being constrained to disobey these it rebels, and, to impose them on others, it becomes tyrannical even to despotism.