ake is to allow herself to follow the opinions of a multitude
who never examine, and who always suffer themselves to be conducted by
blind or deceitful guides.

To reestablish peace in your mind, dear Madam, cease to despise
yourself; entertain a just confidence in your own powers of mind, and
feel no chagrin at finding yourself infected with a general and
involuntary epidemic from which it did not depend on you to escape.
The good Abbe de St. Pierre had reason when he said that _devotion was
the small pox of the soul_. I will add that it is rare the disease
does not leave its pits for life. Indeed, see how often the most
enlightened persons persist forever in the prejudices of their
infancy! These notions are so early inculcated, and so many
precautions are continually taken to render them durable, that if any
thing may reasonably surprise us, it is to see any one have the
ability to rise superior to such influences. The most sublime geniuses
are often the playthings of superstition. The heat of their
imagination sometimes only serves to lead them the farther astray, and
to attach them to opinions which would cause them to blush did they
but consult their reason. Pascal constantly imagined that he saw hell
yawning under his feet; Mallebranche was extravagantly credulous;
Hobbes had a great terror of phantoms and demons;[3] and the immortal
Newton wrote a ridiculous commentary on the vials and visions of the
Apocalypse. In a word, every thing proves that there is nothing more
difficult than to efface the notions with which we are imbued during
our infancy. The most sensible persons, and those who reason with the
most correctness upon every other matter, relapse into their infancy
whenever religion is in question.

[3] On this subject see Bayle's _Dict. Crit._, art. _Hobbes_, Rem. N.

Thus, Madam, you need not blush for a weakness which you hold in
common with almost all the world, and from which the greatest men are
not always exempt. Let your courage then revive, and fear not to
examine with perfect composure the phantoms which alarm you. In a
matter which so greatly interests your repose, consult that
enlightened reason which places you as much above the vulgar, as it
elevates the human species above the other animals. Far from being
suspicious of your own understanding and intellectual faculties, turn
your just suspicion against those men, far less enlightened and honest
than you, who, to vanquish you, only addres