with more than a due confidence in their own powers, are precipitate in
their judgments and want the patience requisite for orderly and
circumspect thinking; whence it happens, that if men of this class once
take the liberty to doubt of their accustomed opinions, and quit the
beaten highway, they will never be able to thread the byway that would
lead them by a shorter course, and will lose themselves and continue to
wander for life; in the second place, of those who, possessed of
sufficient sense or modesty to determine that there are others who excel
them in the power of discriminating between truth and error, and by whom
they may be instructed, ought rather to content themselves with the
opinions of such than trust for more correct to their own reason.

For my own part, I should doubtless have belonged to the latter class, had
I received instruction from but one master, or had I never known the
diversities of opinion that from time immemorial have prevailed among men
of the greatest learning. But I had become aware, even so early as during
my college life, that no opinion, however absurd and incredible, can be
imagined, which has not been maintained by some on of the philosophers;
and afterwards in the course of my travels I remarked that all those whose
opinions are decidedly repugnant to ours are not in that account
barbarians and savages, but on the contrary that many of these nations
make an equally good, if not better, use of their reason than we do. I
took into account also the very different character which a person brought
up from infancy in France or Germany exhibits, from that which, with the
same mind originally, this individual would have possessed had he lived
always among the Chinese or with savages, and the circumstance that in
dress itself the fashion which pleased us ten years ago, and which may
again, perhaps, be received into favor before ten years have gone,
appears to us at this moment extravagant and ridiculous. I was thus led
to infer that the ground of our opinions is far more custom and example