Locke.—­The mind, though free, has a governor within itself, which may and ought to limit the exercise of its freedom.  That governor is reason.

Bayle.—­Yes; but reason, like other governors, has a policy more dependent upon uncertain caprice than upon any fixed laws.  And if that reason which rules my mind or yours has happened to set up a favourite notion, it not only submits implicitly to it, but desires that the same respect should be paid to it by all the rest of mankind.  Now I hold that any man may lawfully oppose this desire in another; and that if he is wise, he will do his utmost endeavours to check it in himself.

Locke.—­Is there not also a weakness of a contrary nature to this you are now ridiculing?  Do we not often take a pleasure to show our own power and gratify our own pride by degrading notions set up by other men and generally respected?

Bayle.—­I believe we do; and by this means it often happens that if one man builds and consecrates a temple to folly, another pulls it down.

Locke.—­Do you think it beneficial to human society to have all temples pulled down?

Bayle.—­I cannot say that I do.

Locke.—­Yet I find not in your writings any mark of distinction to show us which you mean to save.

Bayle.—­A true philosopher, like an impartial historian, must be of no sect.

Locke.—­Is there no medium between the blind zeal of a sectary and a total indifference to all religion?

Bayle.—­With regard to morality I was not indifferent.

Locke.—­How could you, then, be indifferent with regard to the sanctions religion gives to morality?  How could you publish what tends so directly and apparently to weaken in mankind the belief of those sanctions?  Was not this sacrificing the great interests of virtue to the little motives of vanity?

Bayle.—­A man may act indiscreetly, but he cannot do wrong, by declaring that which, on a full discussion of the question, he sincerely thinks to be true.

Locke.—­An enthusiast who advances doctrines prejudicial to society, or opposes any that are useful to it, has the strength of opinion and the heat of a disturbed imagination to plead in alleviation of his fault; but your cool head and sound judgment can have no such excuse.  I know very well there are passages in all your works, and those not a few, where you talk like a rigid moralist.  I have also heard that your character was irreproachably good; but when, in the most laboured parts of your writings, you sap the surest foundations of all moral duties, what avails it that in others, or in the conduct of your life, you have appeared to respect them?  How many who have stronger passions than you had, and are desirous to get rid of the curb that restrains them, will lay hold of your scepticism to set themselves loose from all obligations of virtue!  What a misfortune is it to have made such a use of such talents!  It would have been better for you and for mankind if you had been one of the dullest of Dutch theologians, or the most credulous monk in a Portuguese convent.  The riches of the mind, like those of Fortune, may be employed so perversely as to become a nuisance and pest instead of an ornament and support to society.