Thus, on the one hand, the falsest judgments, whether based on
isolated facts or only on appearances, always embrace some truths
whose sphere, whether large or small, affords room for a certain
number of inferences, beyond which we fall into absurdity. The
ideas of St. Augustine, for example, contained the following
truths: that bodies fall towards the earth, that they fall in a
straight line, that either the sun or the earth moves, that
either the sky or the earth turns, &c. These general facts
always have been true; our science has added nothing to them.
But, on the other hand, it being necessary to account for every
thing, we are obliged to seek for principles more and more
comprehensive: that is why we have had to abandon successively,
first the opinion that the world was flat, then the theory which
regards it as the stationary centre of the universe, &c.

If we pass now from physical nature to the moral world, we still
find ourselves subject to the same deceptions of appearance, to
the same influences of spontaneity and habit. But the
distinguishing feature of this second division of our knowledge
is, on the one hand, the good or the evil which we derive from
our opinions; and, on the other, the obstinacy with which we
defend the prejudice which is tormenting and killing us.

Whatever theory we embrace in regard to the shape of the earth
and the cause of its weight, the physics of the globe does not
suffer; and, as for us, our social economy can derive therefrom
neither profit nor damage. But it is in us and through us that
the laws of our moral nature work; now, these laws cannot be
executed without our deliberate aid, and, consequently, unless we
know them. If, then, our science of moral laws is false, it