At
present I return to the thread of my narrative.
I imagined that I possessed treasures in the manuscripts given me by
the Comte de Saint-Pierre. On examination I found they were a little
more than the collection of the printed works of his uncle, with notes
and corrections by his own hand, and a few other trifling fragments
which had not yet been published. I confirmed myself by these moral
writings in the idea I had conceived from some of his letters, shown
me by Madam de Crequi, that he had more sense and ingenuity than at
first I had imagined; but after a careful examination of his political
works, I discerned nothing but superficial notions, and projects
that were useful but impracticable, in consequence of the idea from
which the author never could depart, that men conducted themselves
by their sagacity rather than by their passions. The high opinion he
had of the knowledge of the moderns had made him adopt this false
principle of improved reason, the basis of all the institutions he
proposed, and the source of his political sophisms. This extraordinary
man, an honor to the age in which he lived, and to the human
species, and perhaps the only person, since the creation of mankind,
whose sole passion was that of reason, wandered in all his systems
from error to error, by attempting to make men like himself, instead
of taking them as they were, are, and will continue to be. He
labored for imaginary beings, while he thought himself employed for
the benefit of his contemporaries.
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