Les ruines, ou méditation sur les révolutions des empires

believing that the theory of political truths acquitted a citizen toward society, wished to join practice to it; and in a time when arms were counted for the defense of liberty, he endeavored to pay his debt. Since then, the same motives of utility that had suspended his work have engaged him to resume it; and although it no longer had the same merit as in the circumstances for which he had intended it, he thought that while a crowd of new passions were taking flight, and while these passions even restored their activity to religious opinions,

it became important to publish moral truths designed to serve as their check and common regulator. It is with this intention that he applied himself to dressing these truths, hitherto abstract, in the forms most suitable for promulgating them; and, whatever the powerful prejudices he could not avoid shocking may say, this Work is not the fruit of a spirit of disturbance, but of a reflected love of order and of humanity.

After reading, one will ask how, in 1784, one had the idea