The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. | Page 8

It finds out imaginary beings prescribing imaginary laws; and
then, it raises imaginary terrors to support a belief in the beings, and an
obedience to the laws.--Many things have been said, and very well
undoubtedly, on the subjection in which we should preserve our bodies
to the government of our understanding; but enough has not been said
upon the restraint which our bodily necessities ought to lay on the
extravagant sublimities and eccentric rovings of our minds. The body,
or as some love to call it, our inferior nature, is wiser in its own plain

way, and attends its own business more directly than the mind with all
its boasted subtlety.
In the state of nature, without question, mankind was subjected to many
and great inconveniences. Want of union, want of mutual assistance,
want of a common arbitrator to resort to in their differences. These
were evils which they could not but have felt pretty severely on many
occasions. The original children of the earth lived with their brethren of
the other kinds in much equality. Their diet must have been confined
almost wholly to the vegetable kind; and the same tree, which in its
flourishing state produced them berries, in its decay gave them an
habitation. The mutual desires of the sexes uniting their bodies and
affections, and the children which are the results of these intercourses,
introduced first the notion of society, and taught its conveniences. This
society, founded in natural appetites and instincts, and not in any
positive institution, I shall call natural society. Thus far nature went
and succeeded: but man would go farther. The great error of our nature
is, not to know where to stop, not to be satisfied with any reasonable
acquirement; not to compound with our condition; but to lose all we
have gained by an insatiable pursuit after more. Man found a
considerable advantage by this union of many persons to form one
family; he therefore judged that he would find his account
proportionably in an union of many families into one body politic. And
as nature has formed no bond of union to hold them together, he
supplied this defect by laws.
This is political society. And hence the sources of what are usually
called states, civil societies, or governments; into some form of which,
more extended or restrained, all mankind have gradually fallen. And
since it has so happened, and that we owe an implicit reverence to all
the institutions of our ancestors, we shall consider these institutions
with all that modesty with which we ought to conduct ourselves in
examining a received opinion; but with all that freedom and candor
which we owe to truth wherever we find it, or however it may
contradict our own notions, or oppose our own interests. There is a
most absurd and audacious method of reasoning avowed by some
bigots and enthusiasts, and through fear assented to by some wiser and
better men; it is this: they argue against a fair discussion of popular
prejudices, because, say they, though they would be found without any

reasonable support, yet the discovery might be productive of the most
dangerous consequences. Absurd and blasphemous notion! as if all
happiness was not connected with the practice of virtue, which
necessarily depends upon the knowledge of truth; that is, upon the
knowledge of those unalterable relations which Providence has
ordained that every thing should bear to every other. These relations,
which are truth itself, the foundation of virtue, and consequently the
only measures of happiness, should be likewise the only measures by
which we should direct our reasoning. To these we should conform in
good earnest; and not think to force nature, and the whole order of her
system, by a compliance with our pride and folly, to conform to our
artificial regulations. It is by a conformity to this method we owe the
discovery of the few truths we know, and the little liberty and rational
happiness we enjoy. We have something fairer play than a reasoner
could have expected formerly; and we derive advantages from it which
are very visible.
The fabric of superstition has in this our age and nation received much
ruder shocks than it had ever felt before; and through the chinks and
breaches of our prison, we see such glimmerings of light, and feel such
refreshing airs of liberty, as daily raise our ardor for more. The miseries
derived to mankind from superstition under the name of religion, and of
ecclesiastical tyranny under the name of church government, have been
clearly and usefully exposed. We begin to think and to act from reason
and from nature alone. This is true of several, but by far the majority is
still in the same old state of blindness and slavery; and much is it to