It is true that men themselves made this world of nations... but this world without doubt has issued from a mind often diverse, at times quite contrary, and always superior to the particular ends that men had proposed to themselves.

Governments must be conformable to the nature of the governed; governments are even a result of that nature.

Uniform ideas originating among entire peoples unknown to each other must have a common ground of truth.

Understanding arises through making

Common sense is judgment without reflection, shared by an entire class, an entire nation, or the entire human race.

The criterion and rule of the true is to have made it. Accordingly, our clear and distinct idea of the mind cannot be a criterion of the mind itself, still less of other truths. For while the mind perceives itself, it does not make itself.

It is true that men themselves made this world of nations... but this world without doubt has issued from a mind often diverse, at times quite contrary, and always superior to the particular ends that men had proposed to themselves.