And Though The Philosopher May Live Remote

There Is An Universal Tendency Among Mankind To Conceive All Beings Like Themselves, And To Transfer To Every Object, Those Qualities, With Which They Are Familiarly Acquainted, And Of Which They Are Intimately Conscious. We Find Human Faces In The Moon, Armies In The Clouds; And By A Natural Propensity, If Not Corrected By Experience And Reflection, Ascribe Malice Or Good-will To Every Thing, That Hurts Or Pleases Us.

This Avidity Alone, Of Acquiring Goods And Possessions For Ourselves And Our Nearest Friends, Is Insatiable, Perpetual, Universal, And Directly Destructive Of Society.

I Never Asserted Such An Absurd Thing As That Things Arise Without A Cause.

It Were Better, Never To Look Beyond The Present Material World. By Supposing It To Contain The Principle Of Its Order Within Itself, We Really Assert It To Be God; And The Sooner We Arrive At That Divinity, The Better.

Superstition Is An Enemy To Civil Liberty.