Never did a man with such diversified culture, possess such an incurably perverted intellect.

Never did a man, after so many abortive speculations and such repeated malpractices, conceive and maintain so high an opinion of himself.

Each of these two sources in him augments the other: through his faculty of not seeing things as they are, he attributes to himself virtue and genius; satisfied that he possesses genius and virtue, he regards his misdeeds as merits and his whims as truths .-- Thenceforth, and spontaneously, his malady runs its own course and becomes complex; to the ambitious delirium comes the persecution mania.

In effect, the evident or demonstrated truths which he advances should strike the public at once; if they burn slowly or miss fire, it is owing to their being stamped out by enemies or the envious; manifestly, they have conspired against him, and against him plots have never ceased.

First came the philosophers' plot: when his treatise on "Man" was sent to Paris from Amsterdam, "they felt the blow I struck at their principles and had the book stopped at the custom-house."[3121] Next came the plot of the doctors: "they ruefully estimated my enormous gains.