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Reason or unreason deduced from the consequences. All states and social arrangements-?class, marriage, education, law-acquire strength and permanence solely because of the faith of bound spirits in them; they exist, then, in the absence of reasons, or at least in the resistance to asking for reasons. That is something bound spirits do not want to admit, and they probably feel that it is a pudendum.⁴ Christianity, which was very innocent in its intellectual ideas, perceived nothing of this pudendum; it demanded faith and nothing but faith, and passionately rejected the desire for reasons; it pointed to the successful result of faith: "You'll soon discover the advantage of faith," it suggested, "you'll be blessed because of it." The state, in fact, does the same thing, and each father raises his son in the same way: "Just take this to be true," he says, "you'll discover how good it feels." But this means that the truth of an opinion should be proved by its personal benefit; the usefulness of a teaching should guarantee its intellectual certainty and substantiation. This is as if the defendant were to say in court: "My defender is telling the whole truth, for just see what happens as a result of his plea: I am acquitted."
Because bound spirits hold principles for the sake of their usefulness, they also assume that the free spirit is likewise seeking his benefit with his views, holding for true only that which benefits him. But since he seems to find useful the opposite of what his countrymen or people of his class do, they assume that his principles are dangerous to them; they say or feel, "He must not be right, for he is harmful to us."