21 May 1805

Evidence

Introd.

Ch. Sinister Ends. Imbecillity

' Self-deceit

So much for generals. Come we now to particulars. Being resolved to admire the system - to be persuaded of its excellence - of the excellence of a system which runs in constant /continual/ repugnancy to every end of justice, be sure you never suffer a glance of your mind ever to point to any of those ends. Keep them all - any of them, as compleatly out of sight as possible - to bring your system in contact with them, would be to give it its death-warrant.

Yet the system is to be [...?]: this is the problem: [...?] the one theory needful. What is to be done? To be done? Why that same /divine/ thing is to be done, which every body has done, [...?] to your hands, - which reading[?] to your hands you see done every where.

It was written so long ago: written by such grave, such excellent men: men whose names end in us, give back to the ever one of those sweet sounds which it has been in the habit of connecting with ideas of duty or delight from earliest infancy: written by men, who were descended from time, who in their time were such great conquerors: who became conquerors of the world, that is of every part of it that they could conquer, or that is worth thinking about.

Correspondent to the excellence of the system, is the presumption of those, by whom its excellence, or any part of its excellence is disputed. Ignorance or improbity?; in these two, or a combination of both, you have your choice of motives. Ignorance? or how is it that any man should be otherwise than ignorant? A long life could scarce be sufficient for reading so much as the titles of the books in which all this learning is locked up. So ignorance in astrology, alchemy or witchcraft - the anatomy, physiology and pathology of the divine essence. What presumption! for an [...?] of the present degenerate times to set up the force of his single wits against that of a host of sages, every one more learned more jurisprudential than another, connected together by a chain of the length of more than eighteen centuries. Such presumption! Such intolerable presumption! Could it have been dictated by any but the worst motives, by any but the most mischievous intentions, the intentions of throwing every thing into confusion, and re-establishing the reign of chaos upon earth? These ends of justice should any such inactive logic have extended itself, which it could not have done but by force, insist upon it, assume it as a self-evident proposition that a nation way of contravening these ends, contravening them all in the [...?] in the nature of confronting [...?] thence any of those arrangements which either are comprised in that body of matchless science or has been derived from it.