Men sacrifice their friends, their family, and their native country to a religious opinion; one can believe them to be absorbed in the pursuit of the intellectual good that they have come to buy at such a high price. One nevertheless sees them seeking with an almost equal ardor material wealth and moral satisfactions, Heaven in the other world and well-being and freedom in this one. In their hands, political principles, laws, and human institutions seem malleable things that can be turned and combined at will. Before them fall the barriers that imprisoned the society in whose bosom they were
...more
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.