These philosophers are
fanatics: independent of any interest, which, if it operated alone,
would make them much more tractable, they are carried with such an
headlong rage towards every desperate trial that they would sacrifice
the whole human race to the slightest of their experiments. I am better
able to enter into the character of this description of men than the
noble Duke can be. I have lived long and variously in the world. Without
any considerable pretensions to literature in myself, I have aspired to
the love of letters. I have lived for a great many years in habitudes
with those who professed them. I can form a tolerable estimate of what
is likely to happen from a character chiefly dependent for fame and
fortune on knowledge and talent, as well in its morbid and perverted
state as in that which is sound and natural. Naturally, men so formed
and finished are the first gifts of Providence to the world. But when
they have once thrown off the fear of God, which was in all ages too
often the case, and the fear of man, which is now the case, and when in
that state they come to understand one another, and to act in corps, a
more dreadful calamity cannot arise out of hell to scourge mankind.
Nothing can be conceived more hard than the heart of a thorough-bred
metaphysician. It comes nearer to the cold malignity of a wicked spirit
than to the frailty and passion of a man. It is like that of the
Principle of Evil himself, incorporeal, pure, unmixed, dephlegmated,
defecated evil.
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