Instead of mastering one's opinions by the labour of study and subjecting one's volition to discipline so as to elevate it to free obedience, the easiest course is to renounce cognition of objective truth, to nurse a sense of grievance and hence also of self conceit, and to find in one's own godliness all that is required in order to see through the nature of the laws and of political institutions, to pass judge ment on them, and to lay down what their character should and must be.