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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Do you want to prevent crimes? Then see to it that enlightenment and freedom go hand in hand. The evils which arise from knowledge are in inverse proportion to its diffusion, and the benefits are in direct proportion. A daring impostor, who is always an uncommon man, wins the adoration of an ignorant people and the jeers of an enlightened one. By facilitating the making of comparisons and multiplying the points of view, knowledge counterposes different sentiments, which modify each other reciprocally, a process that becomes all the easier as we learn to anticipate the same views and the same objections in others. In the face of widespread enlightenment within a nation, foul-mouthed ignorance is silenced and the authority which has no defences in reason trembles. Only the vigour of the laws remains unshaken. For there is no enlightened man who does not love the public, clear and useful compacts that guarantee the common security, comparing that small portion of useless freedom that he has sacrificed with the sum of the freedoms sacrificed by others who, without the laws, could become conspirators against him. Looking upon a well-framed code of laws and finding that he has lost nothing but the sorry freedom to do harm to others, any sensitive soul will be compelled to bless the throne and its occupant.
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