Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/14

x the declamations of angry men make but little impression on any except those who are angry: the greatest part of the readers are men of moderation, and seldom take up a book but when they are in cool blood; for rational and sensible men love reason. Had the author loaded Bayle with a thousand injurious reproaches, it would not have followed from thence, that Bayle had reasoned well or ill; all that his readers would have been able to conclude from it would have been, that the author knew how to be abusive."

The third objection is, that he has not in his first chapter spoken of original sin. To which he replies: "I ask every sensible man if this chapter is a treatise of divinity? if the author had spoken of original sin, they might have imputed it to him as a crime that he had not spoken of redemption."

The next objection takes notice, that "The author has said that in England self-murder is the effect of distemper, and that it cannot be punished without punishing the effects of madness; the consequence the critic draws from hence is, that a follower of natural Rh