“Isn’t that what we say, that the stupidity and lack of apprehension of the vulgar gives them this endurance of present troubles and this profound nonchalance about sinister accidents to come, that their souls, because they are thick and obtuse, are less penetrable and unstable? For Heaven’s sake, if that is so, let us henceforth hold a school of stupidity. Learning promises us no greater boon than this, to which stupidity so gently leads its disciples.”

III.12 Of physiognomy (p. 981)