“I confess, sir, I might look with joy upon the manner in which the author invincibly crumples up proud reason with its own arms. I could love with my whole heart the minister of so mighty a vengeance if, as a faithful disciple of the Church, he had followed its moral guidance. But he acts, on the contrary, like a pagan, concluding that we ought to abandon care for others and dwell in peace, gliding lightly over such subjects lest we lose ourselves in them, and taking that to be true and good which at first appears to be so. This is why he follows everywhere the evidence of the senses and the notions of the community. . . . In this manner, he says, there is nothing extravagant in his conduct. He does as others do. Whatever they do in the foolish thought that they are following the true good, he does from another principle, that as the probabilities (_vraisemblances_) are equally on one side and the other, so example and convenience carry the day with him. He mounts his horse like any one else—not as a philosopher—because the horse allows him to do so, but without thinking there is any right in the matter, and not knowing whether the horse, on the contrary, may not be entitled to make use of him. He puts constraint to himself in order to shun certain vices; and even guards marriage faithfully, merely on account of the disorder which would otherwise follow. . . . “I cannot dissemble that in reading Montaigne, and comparing him with Epictetus, I find in them the two greatest defenders of the most celebrated sects of the world, who profess to follow reason rather than revelation. We must follow one or other. Either there is a God and a Sovereign Good, or this is uncertain, and all is uncertain,—whether there is any true good or not. . . . “The error in both is, in not seeing that the present state of man differs from that in which he was created. The one, observing only the traces of his primitive grandeur, and ignoring his corruption, has treated human nature as if it were whole, without any need of a Redeemer—this leads to the height of pride; the other, sensible of man’s present misery, and ignorant of his original dignity, treats human nature as necessarily weak and irreparable, and thus, in despair of attaining any true good, plunges it into a depth of baseness.” {185}