ABSTRACT
I would show that eras one could call enlightened were exceedingly few. Brilliant yet imperfect ideas occupied a small number of heads, a Socrates, a Xenophon, a Cicero, and yet how many of these ideas were not incomplete, how many of these people had correct ideas in all areas, in geography, in physics, in political economy? All the rest were plunged in the crassest ignorance or what is worse, in the most dangerous prejudice. We should be ashamed to call these eras of enlightenment, and it is not surprising that morality is encountered in these eras only rarely. It may be said that the enlightenment itself, if it were as I suppose, never
attained this goal because one never supposed it to be general, and that enlightened people desiring to be virtuous would always be the victims of the wicked who would not be restrained by scruples. It requires only a tyrant to hold the most enlightened nation in abjection and despair. I do not think so. I will not give men the honour of believing that they
will ever see a time when there will not be tyrants among them; but I see that their work becomes more difficult in proportion as nations become more enlightened, and note that it is not necessary for a nation to be composed of scholars to be what I call enlightened; it is not that; it is sufficient that each
person have a correct idea of the things which concern him, that which is good is not absolute and, as a consequence, chimerical but gradual and one necessarily approaches closer to the good social life as one is more certain to have correct ideas concerning those things which concern one. It is a gift of nature to feel oneself on the right path from the first step one takes. Tyrants feel, without demonstration, an instinct to destroy enlightenment, confuse ideas, darken minds by false instruction and prejudice. The unhappy do us evil without doing themselves any good. [This handwritten note is in the possession of Professor A.Heertje, who
kindly sent me a copy. It is also reprinted in Say’s Oeuvres Diverses (1848: 581– 2), with very minor stylistic variations which do not affect the translation. Professor Heertje’s bound volume, to which this note is appended, appears to have been made in 1826. Therefore, it seems likely that this letter was not written before that date.]
