knowledge of the moderns had made him adopt this false principle of
improved reason, the basis of all the institutions he proposed, and the
source of his political sophisms. This extraordinary man, an honor to
the age in which he lived, and to the human species, and perhaps the only
person, since the creation of mankind, whose sole passion was that of
reason, wandered in all his systems from error to error, by attempting to
make men like himself, instead of taking them as they were, are, and will
continue to be. He labored for imaginary beings, while he thought
himself employed for the benefit of his contemporaries.

All these things considered, I was rather embarrassed as to the form I
should give to my work. To suffer the author's visions to pass was doing
nothing useful; fully to refute them would have been unpolite, as the
care of revising and publishing his manuscripts, which I had accepted,
and even requested, had been intrusted to me; this trust had imposed on
me the obligation of treating the author honorably. I at length
concluded upon that which to me appeared the most decent, judicious, and
useful. This was to give separately my own ideas and those of the
author, and, for this purpose, to enter into his views, to set them in a
new light, to amplify, extend them, and spare nothing which might
contribute to present them in all their excellence.

My work therefore was to be composed of two parts absolutely distinct:
one, to explain, in the manner I have just mentioned, the different
projects of the author; in the other, which was not to appear until the
first had had its effect, I should have given my opinion upon these
projects, which I confess might sometimes have exposed them to the fate
of the sonnet of the misanthrope. At the head of the whole was to have
been the life of the author. For this I had collected some good
materials, and which I flattered myself I should not spoil in making use