I was then in Germany,attracted thither by the wars in that country,which have not yet been brought to a termination;and as I was returning to the army from the coronation of the emperor,the setting in of winter arrested me in a locality where,as I found no society to interest me,and was besides fortunately undisturbed by any cares or passions,I remained the whole day in seclusion,with full opportunity to occupy my attention with my own thoughts.Of these one of the very first that occurred to me was,that there is seldom so much perfection in works composed of many separate parts,upon which different hands had been employed,as in those completed by a single master.Thus it is observable that the buildings which a single architect has planned and executed,are generally more elegant and commodious than those which several have attempted to improve,by making old walls serve for purposes for which they were not originally built.Thus also,those ancient cities which,from being at first only villages,have become,in course of time,large towns,are usually but ill laid out compared with the regularity constructed towns which a professional architect has freely planned on an open plain;so that although the several buildings of the former may often equal or surpass in beauty those of the latter,yet when one observes their indiscriminate juxtaposition,there a large one and here a small,and the consequent crookedness and irregularity of the streets,one is disposed to allege that chance rather than any human will guided by reason must have led to such an arrangement.And if we consider that nevertheless there have been at all times certain officers whose duty it was to see that private buildings contributed to public ornament,the difficulty of reaching high perfection with but the materials of others to operate on,will be readily acknowledged.In the same way I fancied that those nations which,starting from a semi-barbarous state and advancing to civilization by slow degrees,have had their laws successively determined,and,as it were,forced upon them simply by experience of the hurtfulness of particular crimes and disputes,would by this process come to be possessed of less perfect institutions than those which,from the commencement of their association as communities,have followed the appointments of some wise legislator.It is thus quite certain that the constitution of the true religion,the ordinances of which are derived from God,must be incomparably superior to that of every other.And,to speak of human affairs,I believe that the pre-eminence of Sparta was due not to the goodness of each of its laws in particular,for many of these were very strange,and even opposed to good morals,but to the circumstance that,originated by a single individual,they all tended to a single end.In the same way I thought that the sciences contained in books (such of them at least as are made up of probable reasonings,without demonstrations),composed as they are of the opinions of many different individuals massed together,are farther removed from truth than the simple inferences which a man of good sense using his natural and unprejudiced judgment draws respecting the matters of his experience.And because we have all to pass through a state of infancy to manhood,and have been of necessity,for a length of time,governed by our desires and preceptors (whose dictates were frequently conflicting,while neither perhaps always counseled us for the best),Ifarther concluded that it is almost impossible that our judgments can be so correct or solid as they would have been,had our reason been mature from the moment of our birth,and had we always been guided by it alone.
It is true,however,that it is not customary to pull down all the houses of a town with the single design of rebuilding them differently,and thereby rendering the streets more handsome;but it often happens that a private individual takes down his own with the view of erecting it anew,and that people are even sometimes constrained to this when their houses are in danger of falling from age,or when the foundations are insecure.
With this before me by way of example,I was persuaded that it would indeed be preposterous for a private individual to think of reforming a state by fundamentally changing it throughout,and overturning it in order to set it up amended;and the same I thought was true of any similar project for reforming the body of the sciences,or the order of teaching them established in the schools:but as for the opinions which up to that time I had embraced,I thought that I could not do better than resolve at once to sweep them wholly away,that I might afterwards be in a position to admit either others more correct,or even perhaps the same when they had undergone the scrutiny of reason.I firmly believed that in this way Ishould much better succeed in the conduct of my life,than if I built only upon old foundations,and leaned upon principles which,in my youth,I had taken upon trust.For although I recognized various difficulties in this undertaking,these were not,however,without remedy,nor once to be compared with such as attend the slightest reformation in public affairs.
