these words, so common and yet so sacred: JUSTICE, EQUITY,
LIBERTY; that concerning each of these principles our ideas have
been utterly obscure; and, in fact, that this ignorance was the
sole cause, both of the poverty that devours us, and of all the
calamities that have ever afflicted the human race.

My mind was frightened by this strange result: I doubted my
reason. What! said I, that which eye has not seen, nor ear
heard, nor insight penetrated, you have discovered! Wretch,
mistake not the visions of your diseased brain for the truths of
science! Do you not know (great philosophers have said so) that
in points of practical morality universal error is a
contradiction?

I resolved then to test my arguments; and in entering upon this
new labor I sought an answer to the following questions: Is it
possible that humanity can have been so long and so universally
mistaken in the application of moral principles? How and why
could it be mistaken? How can its error, being universal, be
capable of correction?

These questions, on the solution of which depended the certainty
of my conclusions, offered no lengthy resistance to analysis. It
will be seen, in chapter V. of this work, that in morals, as in
all other branches of knowledge, the gravest errors are the
dogmas of science; that, even in works of justice, to be mistaken
is a privilege which ennobles man; and that whatever
philosophical merit may attach to me is infinitely small. To
name a thing is easy: the difficulty is to discern it before its
appearance. In giving expression to the last stage of an idea,--