heard of one another, and who never
entertained any correspondence with any other man that could give
them common notions, yet speak at two extremities of the earth,
about a certain number of truths, as if they were in concert. It is
infallibly known beforehand in one hemisphere, what will be answered
in the other upon these truths. Men of all countries and of all
ages, whatever their education may have been, find themselves
invincibly subjected and obliged to think and speak in the same
manner. The Master who incessantly teaches us makes all of us think
the same way. Whenever we hastily judge, without hearkening to His
voice, in diffidence of ourselves, we think and utter dreams full of
extravagance. Thus what appears most to be part of ourselves, and
our very essence, I mean our reason, is least our own, and what, on
the contrary, ought to be accounted most borrowed. We continually
receive a reason superior to us, as we incessantly breathe the air,
which is a foreign body; or as we incessantly see all the objects
near us by the light of the sun, whose rays are bodies foreign to
our eyes. That superior reason over-rules and governs, to a certain
degree, with an absolute power all men, even the least rational, and
makes them all ever agree, in spite of themselves, upon those
points. It is she that makes a savage in Canada think about a great
many things, just as the Greek and Roman philosophers did. It is
she that made the Chinese geometricians find out much of the same
truths with the Europeans, whilst those nations so very remote were
unknown one to another. It is she that makes people in Japan
conclude, as in France, that two and two make four; nor is it
apprehended that any nation shall ever change their opinion about
it. It is she that makes men think nowadays about certain points,
just as men thought about the same four thousand years ago. It is
she that gives uniform thoughts to the most jealous and jarring men,
and the most irreconcilable among themselves. It is by her that men
of all ages and countries are, as it were, chained about an
immovable centre, and held in the bonds of amity by certain
invariable rules, called first principles, notwithstanding the
infinite variations of opinions that arise in them from their
passion, avocations, and caprices, which over-rule all their other
less-clear judgments. It is through her that men, as depraved as
they are, have not yet presumed openly to bestow on