16 May 1808

I. Reasons

Ch.V. Advantages

§.9./8./ Fiction ousted.

to worship vice and absurdity under the name of wisdom[?]

To the public understanding again, by contributing its part in the composition of the matter of false science: by contributing its part towards rendering the rule of action unintelligible, and to cause man to acquiesce in its being so, to produce this acquiescence not only on the part of the uninformed and powerless multitude, but on the part even of the select few, to whose office it belongs to concurr in the formation of the laws the extension, correction and improvement of that rule of action which by this and other hundred artifices[?] thus has been rendered unintelligible even to themselves.

To the public understanding again, by familiarizing it with absurdity: absurdity of the very grossest kind conceivable, such as if uttered by any man not protected from censure by irresistible power, would expose him to universal scorn, familiarizing men with it, and deluding them so far [as] engaging them to regard it not merely with indifference but with veneration, as part and parcel of the matter of arduous and peculiar science, whereas the science is nothing but what any man of the lowest vulgar[?] may equal and display at pleasure, who without making it the instrument of iniquity, will be satisfied with talking nonsense.