_An examination of the Opinion which pretends that the System of
Fatalism is dangerous._
For a being whose essence obliges him to have a constant tendency to
his own conservation, to continually seek to render himself happy,
experience is indispensible: without it he cannot discover truth, which
is nothing more, as has been already said, than a knowledge of the
constant relations which subsist between man, and those objects that
act upon him; according to his experience he denominates those that
contribute to his permanent welfare useful and salutary; those that
procure him pleasure, more or less durable, he calls agreeable. Truth
itself becomes the object of his desires, only when he believes it is
useful; he dreads it, whenever he presumes it will injure him. But has
truth the power to injure him? Is it possible that evil can result to
man from a correct understanding of the relations he has with other
beings? Can it be true, that he can be harmed by becoming acquainted
with those things, of which, for his own happiness, he is interested in
having a knowledge? No: unquestionably not. It is upon its utility that
truth founds its worth; upon this that it builds its rights; sometimes
it may be disagreeable to individuals--it may even appear contrary to
their interests--but it will ever be beneficial to them in the end;
it will always be useful to the whole human species; it will eternally
benefit the great bulk of mankind; whose interests must for ever remain
distinct from those of men, who, duped by their own peculiar passions,
believe their advantage consists in plunging others into error.
_Utility_, then, is the touchstone of his systems, the test of his
opinions, the criterion of the actions of man; it is the standard of the
esteem, the measure of the love he owes to truth itself: the most useful
truths are the most estimable: those truths which are most interesting
for his species, he styles _eminent_; those of which the utility limits
itself to the amusement of some individuals who have not correspondent
ideas, similar modes of feeling, wants analogous to his own, he either
disdains, or else calls them _barren_.
It is according to this standard, that the principles laid down in this
work, ought to be judged. Those who are acquainted with the immense
chain of mischief produced on the earth by erroneous systems of
superstition, will acknowledge the importance of opposing to them
systems more accordant with truth, schemes drawn from Nature, sciences
founded on experience. Those who are, or believe they are, interested in
maintaining the established errors, will contemplate, with horror, the
truths here presented to them: in short, those infatuated mortals, who
do not feel, or who only feel very faintly, the enormous load of misery
brought upon mankind by metaphysical speculation; the heavy yoke of
slavery under which prejudice makes him groan, will regard all our
principles as useless; or, at most, as sterile truths, calculated to
amuse the idle hours of a few speculators.
No astonishment, therefore, need be excited at the various judgments
formed by man: his interests never being the same, any more than his
notions of utility, he condemns or disdains every thing that does not
accord with his own peculiar ideas. This granted, let us examine, if
in the eyes of the disinterested man, who is not entangled by
prejudice--who is sensible to the happiness of his species--who delights
in truth--the _doctrine of fatalism_ be useful or dangerous? Let us
see if it is a barren speculation, that his not any influence upon the
felicity of the human race? At has been already shewn, that it will
furnish morals with efficacious arguments, with real motives to
determine the will, supply politics with the true lever to raise the
proper activity in the mind of man. It will also be seen that it
serves to explain in a simple manner the mechanism of man's actions; to
develope in an easy way the arcana of the most striking phenomena of
the human heart: on the other hand, if his ideas are only the result of
unfruitful speculations, they cannot interest the happiness of the
human species. Whether he believes himself a free agent, or whether
he acknowledges the necessity of things, he always equally follows the
desires imprinted on his soul; which are to preserve his existence and
render himself happy. A rational education, honest habits, wise systems,
equitable laws, rewards uprightly distributed, punishments justly
inflicted, will conduct man to happiness by making him virtuous; while
thorny speculations, filled with difficulties, can at most only have an
influence over persons unaccustomed to think.
After these reflections, it will be very easy to remove the difficulties
that are unceasingly opposed to the system of fatalism, which so many
persons, blinded by their superstitious prejudices, are desirous to have
considered as dangerous--as deserving of punishment--as calculated
to disturb public tranquility--as tending to unchain the passions--to
undermine the opinions man ought to have; and to confound his ideas of
vice and of virtue.
The opposers of necessity, say, that if all the actions of man are
necessary, no right whatever exists to punish bad ones, or even to he
angry with those who commit them: that nothing ought to be imputed to
them; that the laws would be unjust if they should decree punishment for
necessary actions; in short, that under this system man could neither
have merit nor demerit. In reply, it may be argued, that, to impute an
action to any one, is to attribute that action to him; to acknowledge
him for the author: thus, when even an action was supposed to be the
effect of an agent, and that agent _necessity_, the imputation would
lie: the merit or demerit, that is ascribed to an action are ideas
originating in the effects, whether favourable or pernicious, that
result to those who experience its operation; when, therefore, it should
be conceded, that the agent was necessity, it is not less certain, that
the action would be either good or bad; estimable or contemptible, to
those who must feel its influence; in short that it would be capable of
either eliciting their love, or exciting their anger. Love and anger
are modes of existence, suitable to modify, beings of the human species:
when, therefore, man irritates himself against his fellow, he intends
to excite his fear, or even to punish him, in order to deter him from
committing that which is displeasing to him. Moreover his anger is
necessary; it is the result of his Nature; the consequence of his
temperament. The painful sensation produced by a stone that falls on the
arm, does not displease the less, because it comes from a cause deprived
of will; which acts by the necessity of its Nature. In contemplating
man as acting necessarily, it is impossible to avoid distinguishing that
mode of action or being which is agreeable, which elicits approbation,
from that which is afflicting, which irritates, which Nature obliges him
to blame and to prevent. From this it will be seen, that the system of
fatalism, does not in any manner change the actual state of things, and
is by no means calculated to confound man's ideas of virtue and vice.
Man's Nature always revolts against that which opposes it: there are men
so choleric, that they infuriate themselves even against insensible and
inanimate objects; reflection on their own impotence to modify these
objects ought to conduct them back to reason. Parents are frequently
very much to be blamed for correcting their children with anger: they
should be contemplated as beings who are not yet modified; or who have,
perhaps, been very badly modified by themselves: nothing is more common
in life, than to see men punish faults of which they are themselves the
cause.
Laws are made with a view to maintain society; to uphold its existence;
to prevent man associated, from injuring his neighbour; they are
therefore competent to punish those who disturb its harmony, or those
who commit actions that are injurious to their fellows; whether these
associates may be the agents of necessity, or whether they are free
agents, it suffices to know they are susceptible of modification, and
are therefore submitted to the operation of the law. Penal laws are,
or ought to be, those motives which experience has shewn capable of
restraining the inordinate passions of man, or of annihilating the
impulse these passions give to his will; from whatever necessary cause
man may derive these passions, the legislator proposes to arrest their
effect, when he takes suitable means, when he adopts proper methods,
he is certain of success. The Judge, in decreeing to crime, gibbets,
tortures, or any other chastisement whatever, does nothing more than is
done by the architect, who in building a house, places gutters to carry
off the rain, and prevent it from sapping the foundation.
Whatever may be the cause that obliges man to act, society possesses
the right to crush the effects, as much as the man whose land would be
ruined by a river, has to restrain its waters by a bank: or even, if he
is able, to turn its course. It is by virtue of this right that society
has the power to intimidate, the faculty to punish, with a view to its
own conservation, those who may be tempted to injure it; or those who
commit actions which are acknowledged really to interrupt its repose; to
be inimical to its security; repugnant to its happiness.
It will, perhaps, be argued, that society does not, usually, punish
those faults in which the will has no share; that, in fact, it punishes
the will alone; that this it is which decides the nature of the crime,
and the degree of its atrocity; that if this will be not free, it ought
not to be punished. I reply, that society is an assemblage of sensible
beings, susceptible of reason, who desire their own welfare; who fear
evil, and seek after good. These dispositions enable their will to be so
modified or determined, that they are capable of holding such a conduct
as will conduce to the end they have in view. Education, the laws,
public opinion, example, habit, fear, are the causes that must modify
associated man, influence his will, regulate his passions, restrain the
actions of him who is capable of injuring the end of his association,
and thereby make him concur to the general happiness. These causes are
of a nature to make impressions on every man, whose organization, whose
essence, whose sanity, places him in a capacity to contract the habits,
to imbibe the modes of thinking, to adopt the manner of acting, with
which society is willing to inspire him. All the individuals of the
human species are susceptible of fear, from whence it flows as a natural
consequence, that the fear of punishment, or the privation of the
happiness he desires, are motives that must necessarily more or less
influence his will, and regulate his actions. If the man is to be found
who is so badly constituted as to resist, whose organization is so
vicious as to be insensible to those motives which operate upon all his
fellows, he is not fit to live in society; he would contradict the very
end of his association: he would be its enemy; he would place obstacles
to its natural tendency; his rebellious disposition, his unsociable
will, not being susceptible of that modification which is convenient
to his own true interests and to the interests of his fellow-citizens;
these would unite themselves against such an enemy; and the law which
is, or ought to be the expression of the general will, would visit with
condign punishment that refractory individual upon whom the motives
presented to him by society, had not the effect which it had been
induced to expect: in consequence, such an unsociable man would be
chastised; he would be rendered miserable, and according to the nature
of his crime he would be excluded from society as a being but little
calculated to concur in its views.
If society has the right to conserve itself, it has also the right
to take the means: these means are the laws which present or ought to
present to the will of man those motives which are most suitable to
deter him from committing injurious actions. If these motives fail of
the proper effect, if they are unable to influence him, society, for its
own peculiar good, is obliged to wrest from him the power of doing it
further injury. From whatever source his actions may arise, therefore,
whether they are the result of free-agency, or whether they are the
offspring of necessity, society coerces him if, after having furnished
him with motives, sufficiently powerful to act upon reasonable beings,
it perceives that these motives have not been competent to vanquish his
depraved nature. It punishes him with justice, when the actions from
which it dissuades him are truly injurious to society; it has an
unquestionable right to punish, when it only commands those things
that are conformable to the end proposed by man in his association; or
defends the commission of those acts, which are contrary to this
end; which are hostile to the nature of beings associated for their
reciprocal advantage. But, on the other hand, the law has not acquired
the right to punish him: if it has failed to present to him the motives
necessary to have an influence over his will, it has not the right to
coerce him if the negligence of society has deprived him of the means
of subsisting; of exercising his talents; of exerting his industry; of
labouring for its welfare. It is unjust, when it punishes those to whom
it has, neither given an education, nor honest principles; whom it has
not enabled to contract habits necessary to the maintenance of society:
it is unjust when it punishes them for faults which the wants of their
nature, or the constitution of society has rendered necessary to them:
it is unjust, it is irrational, whenever it chastises them for having
followed those propensities, which example, which public opinion, which
the institutions, which society itself conspires to give them. In short,
the law is defective when it does not proportion the punishment to the
real evil which society has sustained. The last degree of injustice, the
acme of folly is, when society is so blinded as to inflict punishment on
those citizens who have served it usefully.
The _penal_ laws, in exhibiting terrifying objects to man, who must be
supposed susceptible of fear, presents him with motives calculated to
have an influence over his will. The idea of pain, the privation of
liberty, the fear of death, are, to a being well constituted, in the
full enjoyment of his faculties, very puissant obstacles, that strongly
oppose themselves to the impulse of his unruly desires: when these do
not coerce his will, when they fail to arrest his progress, he is
an irrational being; a madman; a being badly organized; against whom
society has the right to guarantee itself; against whom it has a right
to take measures for its own security. Madness is, without doubt, an
involuntary, a necessary state; nevertheless, no one feels it unjust to
deprive the insane of their liberty, although their actions can only
be imputed to the derangement of their brain. The wicked are men whose
brain is either constantly or transitorily disturbed; still they must be
punished by reason of the evil they commit; they must always be placed
in the impossibility of injuring society: if no hope remains of bringing
them back to a reasonable conduct--if every prospect of recalling them
to their duty has vanished--if they cannot be made to adopt a mode of
action conformable to the great end of association--they must be for
ever excluded its benefits.
It will not be requisite to examine here, how far the punishments which
society inflicts upon those who offend against it, may be reasonably
carried. Reason should seem to indicate that the law ought to shew to
the necessary crimes of man, all the indulgence that is compatible with
the conservation of society. The system of fatalism, as we have seen,
does not leave crime unpunished; but it is, at least, calculated to
moderate the barbarity with which a number of nations punish the victims
to their anger. This cruelty becomes still more absurd, when experience
has shewn its inutility: the habit of witnessing ferocious punishments
familiarizes criminals with the idea. If it be true that society
possesses the right of taking away the life of its members--if it be
really a fact, that the death of a criminal, thenceforth useless, can
be advantageous for society, which it will be necessary to examine,
humanity, at least, exacts that this death should not be accompanied
with useless tortures; with which laws, perhaps in this instance too
rigorous, frequently seem to delight in overwhelming their victim. This
cruelty seems to defeat its own end, it only serves to make the culprit,
who is immolated to the public vengeance, suffer without any advantage
to society; it moves the compassion of the spectator, interests him
in favor of the miserable offender who groans under its weight; it
impresses nothing upon the wicked, but the sight of those cruelties
destined for himself; which but too frequently renders him more
ferocious, more cruel, more the enemy of his associates: if the
example of death was less frequent, even without being accompanied with
tortures, it would be more efficacious. If experience was consulted, it
would be found that the greater number of criminals only look upon death
as a _bad quarter of an hour_. It is an unquestionable fact, that a
thief seeing one of his comrades, display a want of firmness under the
punishment, said to him: _"Is not this what I have often told you,
that in our business, we have one evil more than the rest of mankind?"_
Robberies are daily committed, even at the foot of the scaffolds where
criminals are punished. In those nations, where the penalty of death is
so lightly inflicted, has sufficient attention been paid to the fact,
that society is yearly deprived of a great number of individuals who
would be able to render it very useful service, if made to work, and
thus indemnify the community for the injuries they have committed?
The facility with which the lives of men are taken away, proves
the incapacity of counsellors; is an evidence of the negligence of
legislators: they find it a much shorter road, that it gives them less
trouble to destroy the citizens than to seek after the means to render
them better.
What shall be said for the unjust cruelty of some nations, in which
the law, that ought to have for its object the advantage of the whole,
appears to be made only for the security of the most powerful? How shall
we account for the inhumanity of those societies, in which punishments
the most disproportionate to the crime, unmercifully take away the lives
of men, whom the most urgent necessity, the dreadful alternative of
famishing in a land of plenty, has obliged to become criminal? It
is thus that in a great number of civilized nations, the life of the
citizen is placed in the same scales with money; that the unhappy wretch
who is perishing from hunger, who is writhing under the most abject
misery, is put to death for having taken a pitiful portion of the
superfluity of another whom he beholds rolling in abundance! It is this
that, in many otherwise very enlightened societies, is called _justice_,
or making the punishment commensurate with the crime.
Let the man of humanity, whose tender feelings are alive to the welfare
of his species--let the moralist, who preaches virtue, who holds out
forbearance to man--let the philosopher, who dives into the secrets of
Nature--let the theologian himself say, if this dreadful iniquity, this
heinous sin, does not become yet more crying, when the laws decree the
most cruel tortures for crimes to which the most irrational customs gave
birth--which bad institutions engender--which evil examples multiply? Is
not this something like building a sorry, inconvenient hovel, and then
punishing the inhabitant, because he does not find all the conveniences
of the most complete mansion, of the most finished structure? Man, as
at cannot be too frequently repeated, is so prone to evil, only because
every thing appears to urge him on to the commission of it, by too
frequently shewing him vice triumphant: his education is void in a great
number of states, perhaps defective in nearly all; in many places
he receives from society no other principles, save those of an
unintelligible superstition; which make but a feeble barrier against
those propensities that are excited by dissolute manners; which are
encouraged by corrupt examples: in vain the law cries out to him:
"abstain from the goods of thy neighbour;" his wants, more powerful,
loudly declare to him that he must live: unaccustomed to reason, having
never been submitted to a wholesome discipline, he conceives he must
do it at the expence of a society who has done nothing for him: who
condemns him to groan in misery, to languish in indigence: frequently
deprived of the common necessaries requisite to support his existence,
which his essence, of which he is not the master, compels him to
conserve. He compensates himself by theft, he revenges himself by
assassination, he becomes a plunderer by profession, a murderer by
trade; he plunges into crime, and seeks at the risque of his life, to
satisfy those wants, whether real or imaginary, to which every thing
around him conspires to give birth. Deprived of education, he has
not been taught to restrain the fury of his temperament--to guide his
passions with discretion--to curb his inclinations. Without ideas of
decency, destitute of the true principles of honour, he engages in
criminal pursuits that injure his country: which at the same time has
been to him nothing more than a step-mother. In the paroxysm of his
rage, in the exacerbation of his mind, he loses sight of his neighbour's
rights, he overlooks the gibbet, he forgets the torture; his unruly
desires have become too potent--they have completely absorbed his mind;
by a criminal indulgence they have given an inveteracy to his habits
which preclude him from changing them; laziness has made him torpid:
remorse has gnawed his peace; despair has rendered him blind; he rushes
on to death; and society is compelled to punish him rigorously, for
those fatal, those necessary dispositions, which it has perhaps itself
engendered in his heart by evil example: or which at least, it has not
taken the pains seasonably to root out; which it has neglected to
oppose by suitable motives--by those calculated to give him honest
principles--to excite him to industrious habits, to imbue him with
virtuous inclinations. Thus, society frequently punishes those
propensities of which it is itself the author, or which its negligence
has suffered to spring up in the mind of man: it acts like those
unjust fathers, who chastise their children for vices which they have
themselves made them contract.
However unjust, however unreasonable this conduct may be, or appear to
be, it is not the less necessary: society, such as it is, whatever may
be its corruption, whatever vices may pervade its institutions, like
every thing else in Nature, is willing to subsist; tends to conserve
itself: in consequence, it is obliged to punish those excesses which
its own vicious constitution has produced: in despite of its peculiar
prejudices, notwithstanding its vices, it feels cogently that its own
immediate security demands that it should destroy the conspiracies of
those who make war against its tranquillity: if these, hurried on by the
foul current of their necessary propensities, disturb its repose--if,
borne on the stream of their ill-directed desires, they injure its
interests, this following the natural law, which obliges it to labour
to its own peculiar conservation, removes them out of its road; punishes
them with more or less rigor, according to the objects to which it
attaches the greatest importance, or which it supposes best suited to
further its own peculiar welfare: without doubt, it deceives itself
frequently, both upon these objects and the means; but it deceives
itself necessarily, for want of the knowledge calculated to enlighten
it, with regard to its true interests; for want of those, who regulate
its movements possessing proper vigilance--suitable talents--the
requisite virtue. From this it will appear, that the injustice of
a society badly constituted, and blinded by its prejudices, is as
necessary, as the crimes of those by whom it is hostilely attacked--by
whose vices it is distracted. The body politic, when in a state of
insanity, cannot act more consistently with reason, than one of its
members whose brain is disturbed by madness.
It will still be said that these maxims, by submitting every thing
to necessity, must confound, or even destroy the notions man forms of
justice and injustice; of good and evil; of merit and demerit: I deny
it. Although man, in every thing he does, acts necessarily, his actions
are good, they are just, they are meritorious, every time they tend
to the real utility of his fellows; of the society of which he makes a
part: they are, of necessity, distinguished from those which are really
prejudicial to the welfare of his associates. Society is just, it is
good, it is worthy our reverence, when it procures for all its members,
their physical wants, when it affords them protection, when it secures
their liberty, when it puts them in possession of their natural rights.
It is ill this that consists all the happiness of which the social
compact is susceptible: society is unjust, it is bad, it is unworthy
our esteem, when it is partial to a few, when it is cruel to the greater
number: it is then that it multiplies its enemies, obliges them to
revenge themselves by criminal actions which it is under the necessity
to punish. It is not upon the caprices of political society that depend
the true notions of justice and injustice--the right ideas of moral
good and evil--a just appreciation of merit and demerit; it is upon
_utility_, upon the necessity of things, which always forces man to feel
that there exists a mode of acting on which he implicitly relies, which
he is obliged to venerate, which he cannot help approving either in
his fellows, in himself, or in society: whilst there is another mode to
which he cannot lend his confidence, which his nature makes him to hate,
which his feelings compel him to condemn. It is upon his own peculiar
essence that man founds his ideas of pleasure and of pain--of right and
of wrong--of vice and of virtue: the only difference between these is,
that pleasure and pain make them instantaneously felt in his brain;
he becomes conscious of their existence upon the spot; in the place of
which, the advantages that accrue to him from justice, the benefit that
he derives from virtue, frequently do not display themselves but after
a long train of reflections--after multiplied experience and complicated
attention; which many, either from a defect in their conformation, or
from the peculiarity of the circumstances under which they are placed,
are prevented from making, or at least from making correctly.
By a necessary consequence of this truism, the system of fatalism,
although it has frequently been so accused, does not tend to encourage
man in crime, to make remorse vanish from his mind. His propensities are
to be ascribed to his nature; the use he makes of his passions depends
upon his habits, upon his opinions, upon the ideas he has received in
his education; upon the examples held forth by the society in which he
lives. These things are what necessarily decide his conduct. Thus,
when his temperament renders him susceptible of strong passions, he is
violent in his desires, whatever may be his speculations.
_Remorse_ is the painful sentiment excited in him by grief, caused
either by the immediate or probable future effect of his indulged
passions: if these effects were always useful to him, he would not
experience remorse; but, as soon as he is assured that his actions
render him hateful, that his passions make him contemptible; or, as
soon as he fears he shall be punished in some mode or other, he becomes
restless, discontented with himself--he reproaches himself with his own
conduct--he feels ashamed--he fears the judgement of those beings whose
affection he has learned to esteem--in whose good-will he finds his own
comfort deeply interested. His experience proves to him that the wicked
man is odious to all those upon whom his actions have any influence:
if these actions are concealed at the moment of commission, he knows
it very rarely happens they remain so for ever. The smallest reflection
convinces him that there is no wicked man who is not ashamed of his
own conduct--who is truly contented with himself--who does not envy the
condition of the good man--who is not obliged to acknowledge that he has
paid very dearly for those advantages he is never able to enjoy, without
experiencing the most troublesome sensations, without making the most
bitter reproaches against himself; then he feels ashamed, despises
himself, hates himself, his conscience becomes alarmed, remorse follows
in it train. To be convinced of the truth of this principle it is only
requisite to cast our eyes on the extreme precautions that tyrants
and villains, who are otherwise sufficiently powerful not to dread the
punishment of man, take to prevent exposure;--to what lengths they push
their cruelties against some, to what meannesses they stoop to others of
those who are able to hold them up to public scorn. Have they not, then,
a consciousness of their own iniquities? Do they not know that they
are hateful and contemptible? Have they not remorse? Is their condition
happy? Persons well brought up acquire these sentiments in their
education; which are either strengthened or enfeebled by public opinion,
by habit, or by the examples set before them. In a depraved society,
remorse either does not exist, or presently disappears; because, in
all his actions, it is ever the judgment of his fellow-man that man is
obliged necessarily to regard. He never feels either shame or remorse
for actions he sees approved, that are practised by the world.
Under corrupt governments, venal souls, avaricious being, mercenary
individuals, do not blush either at meanness, robbery, or rapine, when
it is authorized by example; in licentious nations, no one blushes
at adultery except the husband, at whose expence it is committed; in
superstitious countries, man does not blush to assassinate his fellow
for his opinions. It will be obvious, therefore, that his remorse, as
well as the ideas, whether right or wrong, which man has of decency,
virtue, justice, &c. are the necessary consequence of his temperament,
modified by the society in which he lives: assassins and thieves, when
they live only among themselves, have neither shame nor remorse.
Thus, I repeat, all the actions of man are necessary those which are
always useful, which constantly contribute to the real, tend to the
permanent happiness of his species, are called _virtues_, and are
necessarily pleasing to all who experience their influence; at least,
if their passions or false opinions do not oblige them to judge in that
manner which is but little accordant with the nature of things: each man
acts, each individual judges, necessarily, according to his own peculiar
mode of existence--after the ideas, whether true or false, which he has
formed with regard to his happiness. There are necessary actions
which man is obliged to approve; there are others, that, in despite of
himself, he is compelled to censure; of which the idea generates shame
when his reflection permits him to contemplate them under the same point
of view that they are regarded by his associates. The virtuous man and
the wicked man act from motives equally necessary: they differ simply in
their organization--in the ideas they form to themselves of happiness:
we love the one necessarily--we detest the other from the same
necessity. The law of his nature, which wills that a sensible being
shall constantly labour to preserve himself, has not left to man the
power to choose, or the free-agency to prefer pain to pleasure--vice to
utility--crime to virtue. It is, then, the essence of man himself that
obliges him to discriminate those actions which are advantageous to him,
form those which are prejudicial to his interest, from those which are
baneful to his felicity.
This distinction subsists even in the most corrupt societies, in which
the ideas of virtue, although completely effaced from their conduct,
remain the same in their mind. Let us suppose a matt, who had decidedly
determined for villainy, who should say to himself--"It is folly to
be virtuous in a society that is depraved, in a community that is
debauched." Let us suppose also, that he has sufficient address, the
unlooked-for good fortune to escape censure or punishment, during a
long series of years; I say, that in despite of all these circumstances,
apparently so advantageous for himself, such a man has neither been
happy nor contented with his own conduct, He has been in continual
agonies--ever at war with his own actions--in a state of constant
agitation. How much pain, how much anxiety, has he not endured in this
perpetual conflict with himself? How many precautions, what excessive
labour, what endless solicitude, has he not been compelled to employ in
this continued struggle; how many embarrassments, how many cares, has
he not experienced in this eternal wrestling with his associates, whose
penetration he dreads, whose scorn he fears will follow a true knowledge
of his pursuits. Demand of him what he thinks of himself, he will shrink
from the question. Approach the bedside of this villain at the moment
he is dying; ask him if he would be willing to recommence, at the same
price, a life of similar agitation? If he is ingenuous, he will avow
that he has tasted neither repose nor happiness; that each crime filled
him with inquietude--that reflection prevented him from sleeping--that
the world has been to him only one continued scene of alarm--an
uninterrupted concatenation of terror--an everlasting, anxiety of
mind;--that to live peaceably upon bread and water, appears to him to be
a much happier, a more easy condition, than to possess riches, credit,
reputation, honours, on the same terms that he has himself acquired
them. If this villain, notwithstanding all his success, finds his
condition so deplorable, what must be thought of the feelings of those
who have neither the same resources nor the same advantages to succeed
in their criminal projects.
Thus, the system of necessity is a truth not only founded upon certain
experience, but, again, it establishes morals upon an immoveable basis.
Far from sapping the foundations of virtue, it points out its necessity;
it clearly shows the invariable sentiments it must excite--sentiments
so necessary, so strong, so congenial to his existence, that all the
prejudices of man--all the vices of his institutions--all the effect of
evil example, have never been able entirely to eradicate them from his
mind. When he mistakes the advantages of virtue, it ought to be ascribed
to the errors that are infused into him--to the irrationality of
his institutions: all his wanderings are the fatal consequences of
error,--the necessary result of prejudices which have identified
themselves with his existence. Let it not, therefore, any longer be
imputed to his nature that he has become wicked, but to those baneful
opinions which he has imbibed with his mother's milk,--that have
rendered him ambitious, avaricious, envious, haughty, arrogant,
debauched, intolerant, obstinate, prejudiced, incommodious to his
fellows, mischievous to himself. It is education that carries into his
system the germ of those vices which necessarily torment him during the
whole course of his life.
_Fatalism_ is reproached with discouraging man--with damping the ardour
of his soul--with plunging him into apathy--with destroying the bonds
that should connect him with society. Its opponents say, "If every thing
is necessary, we must let things go on, and not be disturbed by any
thing." But does it depend on man to be sensible or not? Is he master
of feeling or not feeling pain? If Nature has endowed him with a humane,
with a tender soul, is it possible he should not interest himself in a
very lively manner, in the welfare of beings whom he knows are necessary
to his own peculiar happiness? His feelings are necessary: they depend
on his own peculiar nature, cultivated by education. His imagination,
prompt to concern itself with the felicity of his race, causes his
heart to be oppressed at the sight of those evils his fellow-creature is
obliged to endure,--makes his soul tremble in the contemplation of
the misery arising from the despotism that crushes him--from the
superstition that leads him astray--from the passions that distract
him in a state of warfare against his neighbour. Although he knows that
death is the fatal, the necessary period to the form of all beings, his
soul is not affected in a less lively manner at the loss of a beloved
wife,--at the demise of a child calculated to console his old age,--at
the final separation from an esteemed friend who had become dear to his
heart. Although he is not ignorant that it is the essence of fire to
burn, he does not believe he is dispensed from using his utmost efforts
to arrest the progress of a conflagration. Although he is intimately
convinced that the evils to which he is a witness, are the necessary
consequence of primitive errors with which his fellow-citizens are
imbued, he feels he ought to display truth to them, if Nature has given
him the necessary courage; under the conviction, that if they listen to
it, it will, by degrees, become a certain remedy for their sufferings,
that it will produce those necessary effects which it is of its essence
to operate.
If the speculations of man modify his conduct, if they change his
temperament, he ought not to doubt that the system of necessity would
have the most advantageous influence over him; not only is it suitable
to calm the greater part of his inquietude, but it will also contribute
to inspire him with a useful submission, a rational resignation, to the
decrees of a destiny with which his too great sensibility frequently
causes him to be overwhelmed. This happy apathy, without doubt, would
be, desirable to those whose souls, too tender to brook the inequalities
of life, frequently render them the deplorable sport of their fate; or
whose organs, too weak to make resistance to the buffettings of fortune,
incessantly expose them to be dashed in pieces under the rude blows of
adversity.
But, of all the important advantages the human race would be enabled
to derive from the doctrine of fatalism, if man was to apply it to
his conduct, none would be of greater magnitude, none of more happy
consequence, none that would more efficaciously corroborate his
happiness, than that general indulgence, that universal toleration, that
must necessarily spring from the opinion, that _all is necessary_. In
consequence, of the adoption of this principle, the fatalist, if he
had a sensible soul, would commisserate the prejudices of his
fellow-man--would lament over his wanderings--would seek to undeceive
him--would try by gentleness to lead him into the right path, without
ever irritating himself against his weakness, without ever insulting
his misery. Indeed, what right have we to hate or despise man for his
opinions? His ignorance, his prejudices, his imbecility, his vices,
his passions, his weakness, are they not the inevitable consequence of
vicious institutions? Is he not sufficiently punished by the multitude
of evils that afflict him on every side? Those despots who crush him
with an iron sceptre, are they not continual victims to their own
peculiar restlessness--mancipated to their perpetual diffidence--eternal
slaves to their suspicions? Is there one wicked individual who enjoys
a pure, an unmixed, a real happiness? Do not nations unceasingly
suffer from their follies? Are they not the incessant dupes to their
prejudices? Is not the ignorance of chiefs, the ill-will they bear to
reason, the hatred they have for truth, punished by the imbecility of
their citizens, by the ruin of the states they govern? In short, the
fatalist would grieve to witness necessity each moment exercising its
severe decrees upon mortals who are ignorant of its power, or who feel
its castigation, without being willing to acknowledge the hand from
whence it proceeds; he will perceive that ignorance is necessary, that
credulity is the necessary result of ignorance--that slavery and bondage
are necessary consequences of ignorant credulity--that corruption of
manners springs necessarily from slavery--that the miseries of society,
the unhappiness of its members, are the necessary offspring of this
corruption. The fatalist, in consequence, of these ideas, will neither
be a gloomy misanthrope, nor a dangerous citizen; he will pardon in
his brethren those wanderings, he will forgive them those errors--which
their vitiated nature, by a thousand causes, has rendered necessary--he
will offer them consolation--he will endeavour to inspire them with
courage--he will be sedulous to undeceive them in their idle notions,
in their chimerical ideas; but he will never display against them
bitterness of soul--he will never show them that rancorous animosity
which is more suitable, to make them revolt from his doctrines, than to
attract them to reason;--he will not disturb the repose of society--he
will not raise the people to insurrection against the sovereign
authority; on the contrary, he will feel that the miserable blindness of
the great, and the wretched perverseness, the fatal obstinacy of so many
conductors of the people, are the necessary consequence of that flattery
that is administered to them in their infancy--that feeds their hopes
with allusive falsehoods--of the depraved malice of those who surround
them--who wickedly corrupt them, that they may profit by their
folly--that they may take advantage of their weakness: in short, that
these things are the inevitable effect of that profound ignorance of
their true interest, in which every thing strives to keep them.
The fatalist has no right to be vain of his peculiar talents; no
privilege to be proud of his virtues; he knows that these qualities
are only the consequence of his natural organization, modified by
circumstances that have in no wise depended upon himself. He will
neither have hatred nor feel contempt for those whom Nature and
circumstances have not favoured in a similar manner. It is the fatalist
who ought to be humble, who should be modest from principle: is he
not obliged to acknowledge, that he possesses nothing that he has not
previously received?
In fact, will not every thing conduct to indulgence the fatalist whom
experience has convinced of the necessity of things? Will he not see
with pain, that it is the essence of a society badly constituted,
unwisely governed, enslaved to prejudice, attached to unreasonable
customs, submitted to irrational laws, degraded under despotism,
corrupted by luxury, inebriated by false opinions, to be filled with
trifling members; to be composed of vicious citizens; to be made up
of cringing slaves, who are proud of their chains; of ambitious men,
without idea of true glory; of misers and prodigals; of fanatics and
libertines! Convinced of the necessary connection of things, he will
not be surprised to see that the supineness of their chiefs carries
discouragement into their country, or that the influence of their
governors stirs up bloody wars by which it is depopulated, and causes
useless expenditures that impoverish it; that all these excesses united,
is the reason why so many nations contain only men wanting happiness,
without understanding to attain it; who are devoid of morals, destitute
of virtue. In all this he will contemplate nothing more than the
necessary action and re-action of physics upon morals, of morals upon
physics. In short, all who acknowledge fatality, will remain persuaded
that a nation badly governed is a soil very fruitful in venomous
reptiles--very abundant in poisonous plants; that these have such a
plentiful growth as to crowd each other and choak themselves. It is in a
country cultivated by the hands of a Lycurgus, that he will witness
the production of intrepid citizens, of noble-minded individuals,
of disinterested men, who are strangers to irregular pleasures. In a
country cultivated by a Tiberius, he will find nothing but villains with
depraved hearts, men with mean contemptible souls, despicable informers,
execrable traitors. It is the soil, it is the circumstances in which
man finds himself placed, that renders him either a useful object or
a prejudicial being: the wise man avoids the one, as he would those
dangerous reptiles whose nature it is to sting and communicate their
deadly venom; he attaches himself to the other, esteems him, loves him,
as he does those delicious fruits with whose rich maturity his palate
is pleasantly gratified, with whose cooling juices he finds himself
agreeably refreshed: he sees the wicked without anger--he cherishes the
good with pleasure--he delights in the bountiful: he knows full well
that the tree which is languishing without culture in the arid, sandy
desert, that is stunted for want of attention, leafless for want of
moisture, that has grown crooked from neglect, become barren from
want of loam, whose tender bark is gnawed by rapacious beasts of prey,
pierced by innumerable insects, would perhaps have expanded far and wide
its verdant boughs from a straight and stately stem, have brought forth
delectable fruit, have afforded from its luxuriant foliage under its
lambent leaves an umbrageous refreshing retreat from the scorching rays
of a meridian sun, have offered beneath its swelling branches, under
its matted tufts a shelter from the pitiless storm, it its seed had
been fortunately sown in a more fertile soil, placed in a more congenial
climate, had experienced the fostering cares of a skilful cultivator.
Let it not then be said, that it is degrading man reduce his functions
to a pure mechanism; that it is shamefully to undervalue him,
scandalously to abuse him, to compare him to a tree; to an abject
vegetation. The philosopher devoid of prejudice does not understand this
language, invented by those who are ignorant of what constitutes the
true dignity of man. A tree is an object which, in its station, joins
the useful with the agreeable; it merits our approbation when it
produces sweet and pleasant fruit; when it affords a favourable shade.
All machines are precious, when they are truly useful, when they
faithfully perform the functions for which they are designed. Yes, I
speak it with courage, reiterate it with pleasure, the honest man, when
he has talents, when he possesses virtue, is, for the beings of his
species, a tree that furnishes them with delicious fruit, that affords
them refreshing shelter: the honest man is a machine of which the
springs are adapted to fulfil its functions in a manner that must
gratify the expectation of all his fellows. No, I should not blush, I
should not feel degraded, to be a machine of this sort; and my heart
would leap with joy, if I could foresee that the fruit of my reflections
would one day be useful to my race, consoling to my fellow-man.
Is not Nature herself a vast machine, of which the human species is but
a very feeble spring? I see nothing contemptible either in her or her
productions; all the beings who come out of her hands are good, are
noble, are sublime, whenever they co-operate to the production of
another, to the maintenance of harmony in the sphere where they must
act. Of whatever nature the soul may be, whether it is made mortal, or
whether it be supposed immortal; whether it is regarded as a spirit,
or whether it be looked upon as a portion of the body; it will be found
noble, it will be estimated great, it will be ranked good, it will be
considered sublime, in a Socrates, in an Aristides, in a Cato: it will
be thought abject, it will be viewed as despicable, it will be called
corrupt, in a Claudius, in a Sejanus, in a Nero: its energies will be
admired, we shall be delighted with its manner, fascinated with
its efforts, in a Shakespeare, in a Corneille, in a Newton, in a
Montesquieu: its baseness will be lamented, when we behold mean,
contemptible men, who flatter tyranny, or who servilely cringe at the
foot of superstition.
All that has been said in the course of this work, proves clearly
that every thing is necessary; that every thing is always in order,
relatively to Nature; where all beings do nothing more than follow the
laws that are imposed on their respective classes. It is part of her
plan, that certain portions of the earth shall bring forth delicious
fruits, shall blossom beauteous flowers; whilst others shall only
furnish brambles, shall yield nothing but noxious vegetables: she has
been willing that some societies should produce wise men, great heroes;
that others should only give birth to abject souls, contemptible
men, without energy, destitute of virtue. Passions, winds, tempests,
hurricanes, volcanoes, wars, plagues, famines, diseases, death, are as
necessary to her eternal march as the beneficent heat of the sun, the
serenity of the atmosphere, the gentle showers of spring, plentiful
years, peace, health, harmony, life: vice and virtue, darkness and
light, and science are equally necessary; the one are not benefits,
the other are not evils, except for those beings whose happiness they
influence by either favouring or deranging their peculiar mode of
existence. _The whole cannot be miserable, but it may contain unhappy
individuals._
Nature, then, distributes with the same hand that which is called
_order_, and that which is called _disorder_; that which is called
_pleasure_, and that which is called _pain_: in short, she diffuses by
the necessity of her existence, good and evil in the world we inhabit.
Let not man, therefore, either arraign her bounty, or tax her
with malice; let him not imagine that his feeble cries, his weak
supplications, can never arrest her colossal power, always acting after
immutable laws; let him submit silently to his condition; and when he
suffers, let him not seek a remedy by recurring to chimeras that his
own distempered imagination has created; let him draw from the stores
of Nature herself, the remedies which she offers for the evil she brings
upon him: if she sends him diseases, let him search in her bosom for
those salutary productions to which she has given birth, which will cure
them: if she gives him errors, she also furnishes him with experience to
counteract them; in truth, she supplies him with an antidote suitable
to destroy their fatal effects. If she permits man to groan under the
pressure of his vices, beneath the load of his follies, she also shews
him in virtue, a sure remedy for his infirmities: if the evils that
some societies experience are necessary, when they shall have become
too incommodious they will be irresistibly obliged to search for those
remedies which Nature will always point out to them. If this Nature has
rendered existence insupportable, to some unfortunate beings, whom she
appears to have selected for her victims, still death, is a door
that will surely be opened to them--that will deliver them from their
misfortunes, although in their puny, imbecile, wayward judgment, they
may be deemed impossible of cure.
Let not man, then, accuse Nature with being inexorable to him, since
there does not exist in her whole circle an evil for which she has not
furnished the remedy, to those who have the courage to seek it, who have
the fortitude to apply it. Nature follows general and necessary laws
in all her operations; physical calamity and moral evil are not to
be ascribed to her want of kindness, but to the necessity of things.
Physical calamity is the derangement produced in man's organs by
physical causes which he sees act: moral evil is the derangement
produced in him by physical causes of which the action is to him a
secret. These causes always terminate by producing sensible effects,
which are capable of striking his senses; neither the thoughts nor the
will of man ever shew themselves, but by the marked effects they
produce either in himself or upon those beings whom Nature has rendered
susceptible of feeling their impulse. He suffers, because it is of the
essence of some beings to derange the economy of his machine; he enjoys,
because the properties of some beings are analogous to his own mode of
existence; he is born, because it is of the nature of some matter to
combine itself under a determinate form; he lives, he acts, he thinks,
because it is of the essence of certain combinations to maintain
themselves in existence by given means for a season; at length he dies,
because a necessary law prescribes that all the combinations which are
formed, shall either be destroyed or dissolve themselves. From all this
it results, that Nature is impartial to all its productions; she submits
man, like all other beings, to those eternal laws from which she has
not even exempted herself; if she was to suspend these laws, even for
an instant, from that moment disorder would reign in her, system; her
harmony would be disturbed.
Those who wish to study Nature, must take experience for their guide;
this, and this only, can enable them to dive into her secrets, to
unravel by degrees, the frequently imperceptible woof of those slender
causes, of which she avails herself to operate the greatest phenomena:
by the aid of experience, man often discovers in her properties,
perceives modes of action entirely unknown to the ages which have
preceded him; those effects which his grandfathers contemplated as
marvellous, which they regarded as supernatural efforts, looked upon
as miracles, have become familiar to him in the present day, and are at
this moment contemplated as simple and natural consequences, of which he
comprehends the mechanism--of which he understands the cause--of which
he can unfold the manner of action. Man, in fathoming Nature, has
arrived at discovering the true causes of earthquakes; of the periodical
motion of the sea; of subterraneous conflagrations; of meteors; of the
electrical fluid, the whole of which were considered by his ancestors,
and are still so by the ignorant, by the uninformed, as indubitable
signs of heaven's wrath. His posterity, in following up, in rectifying
the experience already made, will perhaps go further, and discover those
causes which are totally veiled from present eyes. The united efforts of
the human species will one day perhaps penetrate even into the sanctuary
of Nature, and throw into light many of those mysteries which up to the
present time she seems to have refused to all his researches.
In contemplating man under his true aspect; in quitting authority
to follow experience; in laying aside error to consult reason; in
submitting every thing to physical laws, from which his imagination has
vainly exerted its utmost power to withdraw them; it will be found that
the phenomena of the moral world follow exactly the same general rules
as those of the physical; that the greater part of those astonishing
effects, which ignorance, aided by his prejudices, make him consider as
inexplicable, and regard as wonderful, are natural consequences flowing
from simple causes. He will find that the eruption of a volcano and the
birth of a Tamerlane are to Nature the same thing; in recurring to
the primitive causes of those striking events which he beholds with
consternation, which he contemplates with fearful alarm, in falling
back to the sources of those terrible revolutions, those frightful
convulsions, those dreadful explosions that distract mankind, lay waste
the fairest works of Nature, ravage nations, and tear up society by
the roots; he will find the wills that compassed the most surprising
changes, that operated the most extensive alterations in the state of
things, that brought about the most unlooked-for events, were moved
by physical causes, whose exility made him treat them as contemptible;
whose want of consequence in his own purblind eyes led him to believe
them utterly incapable to give birth to the phenomena whose magnitude
strikes him with such awe, whose stupendous range fills him with such
amazement.
If man was to judge of causes by their effects, there would be no small
causes in the universe. In a Nature where every thing is connected,
where every thing acts and re-acts, moves and changes, composes and
decomposes, forms and destroys, there is not an atom which does not play
an important part--that does not occupy a necessary station; there
is not an imperceptible particle, however minute, which, placed in
convenient circumstances, does not operate the most prodigious effects.
If man was in a capacity to follow the eternal chain, to pursue the
concatenated links, that connect with their causes all the effects he
witnesses, without losing sight of any one of its rings,--if he could
unravel the ends of those insensible threads that give impulse to the
thoughts, decision to the will, direction to the passions of those men
who are called mighty, according to their actions, he would find, they
are true atoms which Nature employs to move the moral world; that it is
the unexpected but necessary function of these indiscernible particles
of matter, it is their aggregation, their combination, their proportion,
their fermentation, which modifying the individual by degrees, in
despite of himself, frequently without his own knowledge, make him
think, will, and act, in a determinate, but necessary mode. If, then,
the will and the actions of this individual have an influence over a
great number of other men, here is the moral world in a state of the
greatest combustion, and those consequences ensue which man contemplates
with fearful wonder. Too much acrimony in the bile of a fanatic--blood
too much inflamed in the heart of a conqueror--a painful indigestion in
the stomach of a monarch--a whim that passes in the mind of a woman--are
sometimes causes sufficient to bring on war--to send millions of men
to the slaughter--to root out an entire people--to overthrow walls--to
reduce cities into ashes--to plunge nations into slavery--to put a
whole people into mourning--to breed famine in a land--to engender
pestilence--to propagate calamity--to extend misery--to spread
desolation far and wide upon the surface of our globe, through a long
series of ages.
The dominant passion of an individual of the human species, when it
disposes of the passions of many others, arrives at combining their
will, at uniting their efforts, and thus decides the condition of man.
It is after this manner that an ambitious, crafty, and voluptuous
Arab, gave to his countrymen an impulse of which the effect was the
subjugation and desolation of vast countries in Asia, in Africa, and in
Europe; whose consequences were sufficiently potential to erect a new,
extensive, but slavish empire; to give a novel system of religion to
millions of human beings; to overturn the altars of their former gods;
in short, to alter the opinions, to change the customs of a considerable
portion of the population of the earth. But in examining the primitive
sources of this strange revolution, what were the concealed causes that
had an influence over this man--that excited his peculiar passions, and
modified his temperament? What was the matter from the combination of
which resulted a crafty, ambitious, enthusiastic, and eloquent man; in
short, a personage competent to impose on his fellow-creatures--capable
of making them concur in his most extravagant views. They were,
undoubtedly, the insensible particles of his blood; the imperceptible
texture of his fibres; the salts, more or less acrid, that stimulated
his nerves; the proportion of igneous fluid that circulated in his
system. From whence came these elements? It was from the womb of his
mother; from the aliments which nourished him; from the climate in which
he had his birth; from the ideas he received; from the air which
he respired; without reckoning a thousand inappreciable, a thousand
transitory causes, that in the instance given had modified, had
determined the passions of this importent being, who had thereby
acquired the capacity to change the face of this mundane sphere.
To causes so weak in their principles, if in the origin the slightest
obstacle had been opposed, these wonderful events, which have astounded
man, would never have been produced. The fit of an ague, the consequence
of bile a little too much inflamed, had sufficed, perhaps, to have
rendered abortive all the vast projects, of the legislator of the
Mussulmen. Spare diet, a glass of water, a sanguinary evacuation, would
sometimes have been sufficient to have saved kingdoms.
It will be seen, then, that the condition of the human species, as well
as that of each of its individuals, every instant depends on insensible
causes, to which circumstances, frequently fugitive, give birth; that
opportunity developes, that convenience puts in action: man attributes
their effects to chance, whilst these causes operate necessarily, act
according to fixed rules: he has frequently neither the sagacity nor
the honesty to recur to their true principles; he regards such feeble
motives with contempt, because he has been taught to consider them as
incapable of producing such stupendous events. They are, however, these
motives, weak as they may appear to be, these springs, so pitiful in his
eyes, is which according to her necessary laws, suffice in the hands of
Nature to move the universe. The conquests of a Gengis-Khan have nothing
in them that is more strange to the eye of a philosopher than the
explosion of a mine, caused in its principle by a feeble spark, which
commences with setting fire to a single grain of powder; this presently
communicates itself to many millions of other contiguous grains, of
which the united force, the multiplied powers, terminate by blowing
up mountains, overthrowing fortifications, or converting populous,
well-built cities, into heaps of ruins.
Thus, imperceptible causes, concealed in the bosom of Nature, until the
moment their action is displayed, frequently decide the fate of man.
The happiness or the wretchedness, the prosperity or the misery of each
individual, as well as that of whole nations, are attached to powers
which it is impossible for him to foresee, which he cannot appreciate,
of which he is incapable to arrest the action. Perhaps at this moment
atoms are amassing, insensible particles are combining, of which the
assemblage shall form a sovereign, who will be either the scourge or the
saviour of a mighty empire. Man cannot answer for his own destiny one
single instant; he has no cognizance of what is passing within himself;
he is ignorant of the causes which act in the interior of his machine;
he knows nothing of the circumstances that will give them activity:
he is unacquainted with what may develope their energy; it is,
nevertheless, on these causes, impossible to be unravelled by him, that
depends his condition in life. Frequently, an unforeseen rencontre
gives birth to a passion in his soul, of which the consequences shall,
necessarily, have an influence over his felicity. It is thus that
the most virtuous man, by a whimsical combination of unlooked-for
circumstances, may become in an instant the most criminal of his
species.
This truth, without doubt, will be found frightful--this fact will
unquestionably appear terrible: but at bottom, what has it more
revolting than that which teaches him that an infinity of accidents, as
irremediable as they are unforeseen, may every instant wrest from him
that life to which he is so strongly attached? Fatalism reconciles the
good man easily to death: it makes him contemplate it as a certain means
of withdrawing himself from wickedness; this system shews death, even
to the happy man himself, as a medium between him and those misfortunes
which frequently terminate by poisoning his happiness; that end with
embittering the most fortunate existence.
Let man, then, submit to necessity: in despite of himself it will always
hurry him forward: let him resign himself to Nature, let him accept the
good with which she presents him: let him oppose to the necessary evil
which she makes him experience, those necessary remedies which she
consents to afford him; let him not disturb his mind with useless
inquietude; let him enjoy with moderation, because he will find that
pain is the necessary companion of excess: let him follow the paths of
virtue, because every thing will prove to him, even in this world of
perverseness, that it is absolutely necessary to render him estimable in
the eyes of others, to make him contented with himself.
Feeble, vain mortal, thou pretendest to be a free agent. Alas! dost thou
not see all the threads which enchain thee? Dost thou not perceive that
they are atoms which form thee; that they are atoms which move thee;
that they are circumstances independent of thyself, that modify
thy being; that they are circumstances over which thou hast not any
controul, that rule thy destiny? In the puissant Nature that environs
thee, shalt thou pretend to be the only being who is able to resist her
power? Dost thou really believe that thy weak prayers will induce her
to stop in her eternal march; that thy sickly desires can oblige her to
change her everlasting course?