Large bodies, if once overthrown, are with great difficulty set up again,
or even kept erect when once seriously shaken, and the fall of such is
always disastrous. Then if there are any imperfections in the
constitutions of states (and that many such exist the diversity of
constitutions is alone sufficient to assure us), custom has without doubt
materially smoothed their inconveniences, and has even managed to steer
altogether clear of, or insensibly corrected a number which sagacity could
not have provided against with equal effect; and, in fine, the defects are
almost always more tolerable than the change necessary for their removal;
in the same manner that highways which wind among mountains, by being much
frequented, become gradually so smooth and commodious, that it is much
better to follow them than to seek a straighter path by climbing over the
tops of rocks and descending to the bottoms of precipices.

Hence it is that I cannot in any degree approve of those restless and busy
meddlers who, called neither by birth nor fortune to take part in the
management of public affairs, are yet always projecting reforms; and if I
thought that this tract contained aught which might justify the suspicion
that I was a victim of such folly, I would by no means permit its
publication. I have never contemplated anything higher than the
reformation of my own opinions, and basing them on a foundation wholly my
own. And although my own satisfaction with my work has led me to present
here a draft of it, I do not by any means therefore recommend to every one
else to make a similar attempt. Those whom God has endowed with a larger
measure of genius will entertain, perhaps, designs still more exalted; but
for the many I am much afraid lest even the present undertaking be more
than they can safely venture to imitate. The single design to strip one's
self of all past beliefs is one that ought not to be taken by every one.
The majority of men is composed of two classes, for neither of which would
this be at all a befitting resolution: in the first place, of those who