your argument, you add a strength to mine. So that if we are resolved
to submit our reason and our liberty to civil usurpation, we have
nothing to do but to conform as quietly as we can to the vulgar
notions which are connected with this, and take up the theology of
the vulgar as well as their politics. But if we think this necessity
rather imaginary than real, we should renounce their dreams of
society, together with their visions of religion, and vindicate
ourselves into perfect liberty."

The most interesting fact about this spirited performance is, that it
is a satirical literary handling of the great proposition which Burke
enforced, with all the thunder and lurid effulgence of his most
passionate rhetoric, five and thirty years later. This proposition is
that the world would fall into ruin, "if the practice of all moral
duties, and the foundations of society, rested upon having their
reasons made clear and demonstrative to every individual." The satire
is intended for an illustration of what with Burke was the cardinal
truth for men, namely, that if you encourage every individual to let
the imagination loose upon all subjects, without any restraint from a
sense of his own weakness, and his subordinate rank in the long scheme
of things, then there is nothing of all that the opinion of ages
has agreed to regard as excellent and venerable, which would not be
exposed to destruction at the hands of rationalistic criticism. This
was Burke's most fundamental and unswerving conviction from the first
piece that he wrote down to the last, and down to the last hour of his
existence.

It is a coincidence worth noticing that only two years before the
appearance of the _Vindication_, Rousseau had published the second
of the two memorable Discourses in which he insisted with serious