Now, two things belong to the fulfillment of our duties: action and conviction. Action accomplishes what duty demands, and conviction causes that that action to proceed from the proper source, that is, from pure motives.
Hence actions and convictions belong to the perfection of man, and society should, as far as possible, take care of both by collective efforts, that is, it should direct the actions of its members toward the common good, and cause convictions which lead to these actions. The one is the government, the other the education of societal man. To both man is led by reasons; to actions by reasons that motivate the will, and to convictions by reasons that persuade by their truth. Society should therefore establish both through public institutions in such a way that they will be in accord with the common good.
Moses Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, Allan Arkush, tr., Brandeis University Press (Waltham, MA: 1983) p. 40. He goes on to argue that the two major kinds of public institution that do this are the state and the church/synagogue/mosque.
