But hypocrisy opens against me, and feeble men ask me, if it be not dangerous, thus to inculcate contempt of opinion? In following but a part of the ideas, which I announce, my readers might be led astray. The whole must be adopted, for a fair experiment of the result. A physician had chosen many plants, from which to form a salutary decoction. His patient swallowed the juice of but one and was poisoned. Let us discard that timidity, which conducts to falsehood; and, to subserve morals, let us be faithful to truth. The wicked and the sage alike break the yoke of opinion; the former to increase his power of annoyance; the latter that of doing good. I can conceive, that a depraved man will commit fewer faults, in yielding to the caprices of opinion, than in abandoning himself to his own errors. There are cruel passions and shameful vices, which he reproves even in the midst of his aberrations. But in doing so he gives to falsehood the name of politeness, and to cowardice the title of prudence. His favorite inculcation is, _the terror of ridicule_. To form true men, it is indispensable, that this precept should be engraven on their hearts--_Fear nothing but remorse_. The simple and generous mind, that follows these lessons, and is worthy of happiness, need not blush, in view of his course. Only let him march on with unshrinking courage. In breaking the yoke of opinion, let him fly the still more shameful chains which the passions impose. In contemning the prejudices of the multitude dread still more those fatal instructers, who treat morality as a popular fable, and pretend to the honor of dispelling our errors. The aberrations of opinion prove only, that the most bold, not the most virtuous, press forward to announce their principles. These principles cannot annihilate that secret and universal opinion, that voice of conscience, without which the moral world would have presented only a chaos; and the human race would have perished. Consult those men, who have been instructed by the lessons of wisdom and experience. Consult those whom you would choose to resemble. Their first precept will be, that you descend into yourself. If we interrogate conscience, in good faith, she will enlighten us. She makes herself heard in the tumult of our vices, even against our will. If she become distorted, during the storm of our passions, she recovers the serenity of truth, as soon as that passes away; as a river, which has been agitated by a tempest, as soon as calm returns, reflects anew the verdure of the shores and the azure of heaven.