I agree with you that it is important to examine our presuppositions, throughly and once for all, in order to establish something solid. For I hold that it is only when we can prove all that we bring forward that we perfectly understand the thing under consideration. I know that the common herd takes little pleasure in these researches, but I know also that the common herd take little pains thoroughly to understand things.

There are also two kinds of truths, those of reasoning and those of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible, and those of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible. When a truth is necessary its reason can be found by analysis, resolving it into more simple ideas and truths until we reach those which are primitive.

Natural religion itself, seems to decay very much. Many will have human souls to be material: others make God himself a corporeal being.

To love is to find pleasure in the happiness of others.

The greatness of a life can only be estimated by the multitude of its actions. We should not count the years, it is our actions which constitute our life.

But it is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths which distinguishes us from mere animals, and gives us reason and the sciences, raising us to knowledge of ourselves and God. It is this in us which we call the rational soul or mind.

Indeed in general I hold that there is nothing truer than happiness, and nothing happier and sweeter than truth.