Yes, ignorance and cupidity! these are the twin sources of all the
torments of man! Biased by these into false ideas of happiness, he has
mistaken or broken the laws of nature in his own relation with external
objects; and injuring his own existence, has violated individual
morality; shutting through these his heart to compassion, and his mind
to justice, he has injured and afflicted his equal, and violated social
morality. From ignorance and cupidity, man has armed against man, family
against family, tribe against tribe; and the earth is become a theatre
of blood, of discord, and of rapine. By ignorance and cupidity, a secret
war, fermenting in the bosom of every state, has separated citizen from
citizen; and the same society has divided itself into oppressors and
oppressed, into masters and slaves; by these, the heads of a nation,
sometimes insolent and audacious, have forged its chains within its
own bowels; and mercenary avarice has founded political despotism.
Sometimes, hypocritical and cunning, they have called from heaven a
lying power, and a sacrilegious yoke; and credulous cupidity has founded
religious despotism. By these have been perverted the ideas of good and
evil, just and unjust, vice and virtue; and nations have wandered in a
labyrinth of errors and calamities.

The cupidity of man and his ignorance,--these are the evil genii
which have wasted the earth! These are the decrees of fate which have
overthrown empires! These are the celestial anathemas which have smitten
these walls once so glorious, and converted the splendor of a populous
city into a solitude of mourning and of ruins! But as in the bosom of
man have sprung all the evils which have afflicted his life, there he
also is to seek and to find their remedies.