Not in the least.  It is true that reason herself will never attempt directly a struggle with this brutal force which resists her arms, and she will be as far as the son of Saturn in the ‘Iliad’ from descending into the dismal field of battle, to fight them in person.  But she chooses the most deserving among the combatants, clothes him with divine arms as Jupiter gave them to his son-in-law, and by her triumphing force she finally decides the victory.

Reason has done all that she could in finding the law and promulgating it; it is for the energy of the will and the ardour of feeling to carry it out.  To issue victoriously from her contest with force, truth herself must first become a force, and turn one of the instincts of man into her champion in the empire of phenomena.  For instincts are the only motive forces in the material world.  If hitherto truth has so little manifested her victorious power, this has not depended on the understanding, which could not have unveiled it, but on the heart which remained closed to it, and on instinct which did not act with it.

Whence, in fact, proceeds this general sway of prejudices, this might of the understanding in the midst of the light disseminated by philosophy and experience?  The age is enlightened, that is to say, that knowledge, obtained and vulgarised, suffices to set right at least our practical principles.  The spirit of free inquiry has dissipated the erroneous opinions which long barred the access to truth, and has undermined the ground on which fanaticism and deception had erected their throne.  Reason has purified itself from the il lusions of the senses and from a mendacious sophistry, and philosophy herself raises her voice and exhorts us to return to the bosom of nature, to which she had first made us unfaithful.  Whence then is it that we remain still barbarians?

There must be something in the spirit of man—­as it is not in the objects themselves—­which prevents us from receiving the truth, notwithstanding the brilliant light she diffuses, and from accepting her, whatever may be her strength for producing conviction.  This something was perceived and expressed by an ancient sage in this very significant maxim:  sapere aude [Footnote:  Dare to be wise].

Dare to be wise!  A spirited courage is required to triumph over the impediments that the indolence of nature as well as the cowardice of the heart oppose to our in struction.  It was not without reason that the ancient Mythos made Minerva issue fully armed from the head of Jupiter, for it is with warfare that this instruction com mences.  From its very outset it has to sustain a hard fight against the senses, which do not like to be roused from their easy slumber.  The greater part of men are much too exhausted and enervated by their struggle with want to be able to engage in a new and severe contest with error.  Satisfied if they themselves can escape from the hard labour of thought, they willingly abandon to others