_The Errors of Man,--upon what constitutes Happiness.--the true Source
of his Evil.--Remedies that may be applied._
Reason by no means forbids man from forming capacious desires; ambition
is a passion useful to his species when it has for, its object the
happiness of his race. Great minds, elevated souls, are desirous of
acting on an extended sphere; geniuses who are powerful, beings who are
enlightened, men who are beneficent, distribute very widely their benign
influence; they must necessarily, in order to promote their own peculiar
felicity, render great numbers happy. So many princes fail to enjoy true
happiness only, because their feeble, narrow souls, are obliged to act
in a sphere too extensive for their energies: it is thus that by the
supineness, the indolence, the incapacity of their chiefs, nations
frequently pine in misery; are often submitted to masters, whose
exility of mind is as little calculated to promote their own immediate
happiness, as it is to further that of their miserable subjects. On
the other hand, souls too vehement, too much inflamed, too active, are
themselves tormented by the narrow sphere that confines them; their
ardour misplaced, becomes the scourge of the human race. Alexander was
a monarch who was equally injurious to the earth, equally discontented
with his condition, as the indolent despot whom he dethroned. The souls
of neither were by any means commensurate with their sphere of action.
The happiness of man will never be more than the result of the harmony
that subsists between his desires and his circumstances. The sovereign
power to him who knows not how to apply it to the advantage of his
citizens, is as nothing; it cannot even conduce to his own peculiar
happiness. If it renders him miserable, it is a real evil; if it
produces the misfortune of a portion of the human race, it is a
detestable abuse. The most powerful princes are ordinarily such
strangers to happiness, their subjects are commonly so unfortunate, only
because the first possess all the means of rendering themselves happy
without ever giving them activity; or because the only knowledge they
have of them, is their abuse. A wise man seated on a throne, would be
the most happy of mortals. A monarch is a man for whom his power, let
it be of whatever extent, cannot procure other organs, other modes of
feeling, than the meanest of his subjects; if he has an advantage
over them, it is by the grandeur, the variety, the multiplicity of the
objects with which he can occupy himself; which by giving perpetual
activity to his mind, can prevent it from decay; from falling into
sloth. If his soul is virtuous, if his mind is expansive, his ambition
finds continual food in the contemplation of the power he possesses,
to unite by gentleness, to consolidate by kindness, the will of his
subjects with his own; to interest them in his own conservation, to
merit their affections,--to draw forth the respect of strangers,--to
render luminous the page of history--to elicit the eulogies of all
nations--to clothe the orphan,--to dry the widow's tears. Such are
the conquests that reason proposes to all those whose destiny it is to
govern the fate of empires; they are sufficiently grand to satisfy the
most ardent imagination, of a sublimity to gratify the most capacious
ambition: for a monarch they are paramount duties.--KINGS are the most
happy of men, only because they have the power of making others happy;
because they possess the means of multiplying the causes of legitimate
content with themselves.
The advantages of the sovereign power are participated by all those who
contribute to the government of states. Thus grandeur, rank, reputation,
are desirable, are legitimate objects for all who are acquainted with
the means of rendering them subservient to their own peculiar felicity;
they are useless, they are illegitimate to those ordinary men who
have neither the energy nor the capacity to employ them in a mode
advantageous to themselves; they are detestable whenever to obtain them
man compromises his own happiness, when he implicates the welfare of
society: this society itself is in an error every time it respects men
who only employ to its destruction, a power, the exercise of which it
ought never to approve but when it reaps from it substantial benefits.
Riches, useless to the miser, who is no more than their miserable
gaoler; prejudicial to the debauchee, for whom they only procure
infirmities; injurious to the voluptuary, to whom they only bring
disgust--whom they oppress with satiety; can in the hands of the honest
man produce unnumbered means of augmenting the sum of his happiness; but
before man covets wealth it is proper he should know how to employ it;
money is only a token, a representative of happiness; to enjoy it is so
to use it as to make others happy: this is the great secret, this is the
talisman, this is the reality. Money, according to the compact of man,
procures for him all those benefits he can desire; there is only one,
which it will not procure, that is, _the knowledge how to apply it
properly_. For man to have money, without the true secret how to
enjoy it, is to possess the key of a commodious palace to which he is
interdicted entrance; to lavish it, prodigally, is to throw the key
into the river; to make a bad use of it, is only to make it the means of
wounding himself. Give the most ample treasures to the enlightened man,
he will not be overwhelmed with them; if he has a capacious mind, if he
has a noble soul, he will only extend more widely his benevolence; he
will deserve the affection of a greater number of his fellow men; he
will attract the love, he will secure the homage, of all those who
surround him; he will restrain himself in his pleasures, in order that
he may be enabled truly to enjoy them; he will know that money
cannot re-establish a soul worn out with enjoyment; cannot give fresh
elasticity to organs enfeebled by excess; cannot give fresh tension to
nerves grown flaccid by abuse; cannot invigorate a body enervated
by debauchery; cannot corroborate a machine, from thenceforth become
incapable of sustaining him, except by the necessity of privations; he
will know that the licentiousness of the voluptuary stifles pleasure in
its source; that all the treasure in the world cannot renew his senses.
From this, it will be obvious, that nothing is more frivolous than the
declamations of a gloomy philosophy against the desire of power;
nothing more absurd than the rant of superstition against the pursuit
of grandeur; nothing more inconsistent than homilies against the
acquisition of riches; nothing more unreasonable than dogmas that forbid
the enjoyment of pleasure. These objects are desirable for man, whenever
his situation allows him to make pretensions to them; they are useful
to society, conducive to public happiness, whenever he has acquired the
knowledge of making them turn to his own real advantage; reason cannot
censure him, virtue cannot despise him, when in order to obtain them,
he never travels out of the road of truth; when in their acquisition,
he wounds no one's interest; when he pursues only legitimate means: his
associates will applaud him; his contemporaries will esteem him: he will
respect himself, when he only employs their agency to secure his own
happiness, and that of his fellows. Pleasure is a benefit, it is of
the essence of man to love, it is even rational when it renders his
existence really valuable to himself--when it does not injure him in his
own esteem; when its consequences are not grievous to others. _Riches_
are the symbols of the great majority of the benefits of this life; they
become a reality in the hands of the man who has the clew to their just
application. _Power_ is the most sterling of all benefits, when he who
is its depositary has received from nature a soul sufficiently noble, a
mind sufficiently elevated, a heart sufficiently benevolent, faculties
sufficiently energetic, above all, when he has derived from education a
true regard for virtue, that sacred love for truth which enables him to
extend his happy influence over whole nations; which by this means
he places in, a state of legitimate dependence on his will; _man only
acquires the right of commanding men, when he renders them happy._
The right of man over his fellow man can only be founded either upon the
actual happiness he secures to him, or that which he gives him reason to
hope he will procure for him; without this, the power he exercises would
be violence, usurpation, manifest tyranny; it is only upon the faculty
of rendering him happy, that legitimate authority builds its structure;
without this it is the "_baseless fabric of a vision." No man derives
from nature the right of commanding another_; but it is voluntarily
accorded to those, from whom he expects his welfare. _Government_ is the
right of commanding, conferred on the sovereign only for the advantage
of those who are governed. Sovereigns are the defenders of the persons,
the guardians of the property, the protectors of the liberty of their
subjects: this is the price of their obedience; it is only on this
condition these consent to obey; government would not be better than
a robbery whenever it availed itself of the powers confided to it,
to render society unhappy. _The empire of religion_ is founded on the
opinion man entertains of its having power to render nations happy;
government and religion are reasonable institutions; but only so,
inasmuch as they equally contribute to the felicity of man: it would
be folly in him to submit himself to a yoke from which there resulted
nothing but evil. It would be folly to expect that man should bind
himself to misery; it would be rank injustice to oblige him to renounce
his rights without some corresponding advantage!
The authority which a father exercises over his family is only founded
on the advantages which he is supposed to procure for it. Rank, in
political society, has only for its basis the real or imaginary utility
of some citizens for which the others are willing to distinguish
them--agree to respect them--consent to obey them. The rich acquire
rights over the indigent, the wealthy claim the homage of the needy,
only by virtue of the welfare they are conditioned to procure
them. Genius, talents, science, arts, have rights over man, only
in consequence of their utility; of the delight they confer; of the
advantages they procure for society. In a word, it is happiness, it is
the expectation of happiness, it is its image that man cherishes--that
he esteems--that he unceasingly adores. Monarchs, the rich, the great,
may easily impose on him, may dazzle him, may intimidate him, but they
will never be able to obtain the voluntary submission of his heart,
which alone can confer upon them legitimate rights, without they make
him experience real benefits--without they display virtue. Utility is
nothing more than true happiness; to be useful is to be virtuous; to be
virtuous is to make others happy.
The happiness which man derives from them is the invariable, the
necessary standard of his sentiments, for the beings of his species; for
the objects he desires; for the opinions he embrases; for those actions
on which he decides. He is the dupe of his prejudices every time he
ceases to avail himself of this standard to regulate his judgment. He
will never run the risk of deceiving himself, when he shall examine
strictly what is the real utility resulting to his species from the
religion, from the superstition, from the laws, from the institutions,
from the inventions, from the various actions of all mankind.
A superficial view may sometimes seduce him; but experience, aided
by reflection, will reconduct him to reason, which is incapable of
deceiving him. This teaches him that pleasure is a momentary happiness,
which frequently becomes an evil; that evil is a fleeting trouble that
frequently becomes a good: it makes him understand the true nature of
objects, enables him to foresee the effects he may expect; it makes
him distinguish those desires to which his welfare permits him to lend
himself, from those to whose seduction he ought to make resistance. In
short, it will always convince him that the true interest of intelligent
beings, who love happiness, who desire to render their own existence
felicitous, demands that they should root out all those phantoms,
abolish all those chimerical ideas, destroy all those prejudices, which
by traducing virtue, obstruct their felicity in this world.
If he consults experience, he will perceive that it is in illusions, in
false opinions, rendered sacred by time, that he ought to search out the
source of that multitude of evils which almost every where overwhelms
mankind. From ignorance of natural causes, man has created imaginary
causes; not knowing to what cause to attribute thunder, he ascribed it
to an imaginary being whom he called JUPITER; imposture availing itself
of this disposition, rendered these causes terrible to him; these fatal
ideas haunted him without rendering him better; made him tremble without
either benefit to himself or to others; filled his mind with chimeras
that opposed themselves to the progress of his reason; that prevented
him from really seeking after his happiness. His vain fears rendered him
the slave of those who deceived him, under pretence of consulting his
welfare; he committed evil, because they persuaded him his gods demanded
sacrifices; he lived in misfortune, because they made him believe these
gods condemned him to be miserable; the slave of beings, to which his
own imagination had given birth, he never dared to disentangle himself
from his chains; the artful ministers of these divinities gave him to
understand that stupidity, the renunciation of reason, sloth of mind,
abjection of soul, were the sure means of obtaining eternal felicity.
Prejudices, not less dangerous, have blinded man upon the true nature of
government. Nations in general are ignorant of the true foundations
of authority; they dare not demand happiness from those kings who are
charged with the care of procuring it for them: some have believed their
sovereigns were gods disguised, who received with their birth the right
of commanding the rest of mankind; that they could at their pleasure
dispose of the felicity of the people; that they were not accountable
for the misery they engendered. By a necessary consequence of these
erroneous opinions, politics have almost every where degenerated into
the fatal art of sacrificing the interests of the many, either to the
caprice of an individual, or to some few privileged irrational beings.
In despite of the evils which assailed them, nations fell down in
adoration before the idols they themselves had made: foolishly respected
the instruments of their misery; had a stupid veneration for those who
possessed the sovereign power of injuring them; obeyed their unjust
will; lavished their blood; exhausted their treasure; sacrificed their
lives, to glut the ambition, to feed the cupidity to minister to the
regenerated phantasms, to gratify the never-ending caprices of these
men; they bend the knee to established opinion, bowed to rank, yielded
to title, to opulence, to pageantry, to ostentation: at length victims
to their prejudices, they in vain expected their welfare at the hands of
men who were themselves unhappy from their own vices; whose neglect of
virtue, had rendered them incapable of enjoying true felicity; who are
but little disposed to occupy themselves with their prosperity: under
such chiefs their physical and moral happiness were equally neglected or
even annihilated.
The same blindness may be perceived in the science of morals.
Superstition, which never had any thing but ignorance for its basis,
which never had more than a disordered imagination for its guide, did
not found ethics upon man's nature; upon his relations with his fellows;
upon those duties which necessarily flow from these relations; it
preferred, as more in unison with itself, founding them upon imaginary
relations which it pretended subsisted between him and those invisible
powers it had so gratuitously imagined; that were delivered by oracles
which their priests had the address to make him believe spoke the will
of the Divinity: thus, TROPHONIUS, from his cave made affrightened
mortals tremble; shook the stoutest nerves; made them turn pale with
fear; his miserable, deluded supplicants, who were obliged to sacrifice
to him, anointed their bodies with oil, bathed in certain rivers, and
after they had offered their cake of honey and received their destiny,
became so dejected, so wretchedly forlorn, that to this day their
descendants, when they behold a malencholy man, exclaim, "_He has
consulted the oracle of Trophonius_." It was these invisible gods, which
superstition always paints as furious tyrants, who were declared the
arbiters of man's destiny; the models of his conduct: when he was
willing to imitate them, when he was willing to conform himself to
the lessons of their interpreters, he became wicked, was an unsociable
creature, an useless being or else a turbulent maniac--a zealous
fanatic. It was these alone who profited by superstition, who advantaged
themselves by the darkness in which they contrived to involve the human
mind; nations were ignorant of nature; they knew nothing of reason; they
understood not truth; they had only a gloomy superstition, without one
certain idea of either morals or virtue. When man committed evil against
his fellow creature, he believed he had offended these gods; but he also
believed himself forgiven, as soon as he had prostrated himself before
them; as soon as he had by costly presents gained over the priest to his
interest. Thus superstition, far from giving a sure, far from affording
a natural, far from introducing a known basis to morals, only rested it
on an unsteady foundation; made it consist in ideal duties impossible
to be accurately understood. What did I say? It first corrupted him,
and his expiations finished by ruining him. Thus when superstition was
desirous to combat the unruly passions of man it attempted it in vain;
always enthusiastic, ever deprived of experience, it knew nothing of the
true remedies: those which it applied were disgusting, only suitable to
make the sick revolt against them; it made them pass for divine, because
they were not made of man; they were inefficacious, because chimeras
could effectuate nothing against those substantive passions to which
motives more real, impulsions more powerful, concurred to give birth,
which every thing conspired, to flourish in his heart. The voice of
superstition or of the gods, could not make itself heard amidst the
tumult of society--where all was in confusion--where the priest cried
out to man, that he could not render himself happy without injuring his
fellow creatures, who happened to differ from him in opinion: these
vain clamours only made virtue hateful to him, because they always
represented it as the enemy to his happiness; as the bane of human
pleasures: he consequently failed in the observation of his duties,
because real motives were never held forth to induce him to make the
requisite sacrifice; the present prevailed over the future; the visible
over the invisible; the known over the unknown: man became wicked
because every thing informed him he must be so, in order to obtain the
happiness after which he sighed.
Thus the sum of human misery was never diminished; on the contrary, it
was accumulating either by his superstition, by his government, by his
education, by his opinions or by the institutions he adopted under
the idea of rendering his condition more pleasant: it not unfrequently
happened that the whole of these acted upon him simultaneously; he was
then completely wretched. It cannot be too often repeated, _it is in
error that man will find the true spring of those evils with which the
human race is afflicted;_ it is not nature that renders him miserable;
it is not nature that makes him unhappy; it is not an irritated
Divinity who is desirous he should live in tears; it is not hereditary
depravation that has caused him to be wicked; it is to error, to
long cherished, consecrated error, to error identified with his very
existence, that these deplorable effects are to be ascribed.
The sovereign good, so much sought after by some philosophers, announced
with so much emphasis by others, may be considered as a chimera, like
unto that marvellous panacea which some adepts have been willing to pass
upon mankind for an universal remedy. All men are diseased; the moment
of their birth delivers them over to the contagion of error; but
individuals are variously affected by it by a consequence of their
natural organization; of their peculiar circumstances. If there is a
sovereign remedy, which can be indiscriminately applied to the diseases
of man, there is without doubt only ONE, this catholic balsam is TRUTH,
Which he must draw from nature.
At the afflicting sight of those errors which blind the greater number
of mortals--of those delusions which man is doomed to suck in with his
mother's milk; viewing with painful sensations those irregular desires,
those disgusting propensities, by which he is perpetually agitated;
seeing the terrible effect of those licentious passions which torment
him; of those lasting inquietudes which gnaw his repose; of those
stupendous evils, as well physical as moral, which assail him on every
side: the contemplator of humanity would be tempted to believe that
happiness was not made for this world; that any effort to cure those
minds which every thing unites to poison, would be a vain enterprize;
that it was an Augean stable, requiring the strength of another
Hercules. When he considers those numerous superstitions by which man
is kept in a continual state of alarm--that divide him from his
fellow--that render him vindictive, persecuting, and irrational; when he
beholds the many despotic governments that oppress him; when he examines
those multitudinous, unintelligible, contradictory laws that torture
him; the manifold injustice under which he groans; when he turns his
mind to the barbarous ignorance in which he is steeped, almost over the
whole surface of the earth; when he witnesses those enormous crimes that
debase society; when he unmasks those rooted vices that render it so
hateful to almost every individual; he has great difficulty to prevent
his mind from embracing the idea that misfortune is the only appendage
of the human species; that this world is made solely to assemble the
unhappy; that human felicity is a chimera, or at least a point so
fugitive, that it is impossible it can be fixed.
Thus superstitious mortals, atrabilious men, beings nourished in
melancholy, unceasingly see either nature or its author exasperated
against the human race; they suppose that man is the constant object
of heaven's wrath; that he irritates it even by his desires: that he
renders himself criminal by seeking a felicity which is not made for
him: struck with beholding that those objects which he covets in the
most lively manner, are never competent to content his heart, they have
decried them as abominations, as things prejudicial to his interest, as
odious to his gods; they prescribe him abstinence from all search after
them; that he should entirely shun them; they have endeavoured to put to
the rout all his passions, without any distinction even of those which
are the most useful to himself, the most beneficial to those beings with
whom he lives: they have been willing that man should render himself
insensible; should become his own enemy; that he should separate himself
from his fellow creatures; that he should renounce all pleasure; that
he should refuse happiness; in short, _that he should cease to be a man,
that he should become unnatural_. "Mortals!" have they said, "ye were
born to be unhappy; the author of your existence has destined ye for
misfortune; enter then into his views, and render yourselves miserable.
Combat those rebellious desires which have felicity for their object;
renounce those pleasures which it is your essence to love; attach
yourselves to nothing in this world; by a society that only serves to
inflame your imagination, to make you sigh after benefits you ought not
to enjoy; break up the spring of your souls; repress that activity that
seeks to put a period to your sufferings; suffer, afflict yourselves,
groan, be wretched; such is for you the true road to happiness."
Blind physicians! who have mistaken for a disease the natural state
of man! they have not seen that his desires were necessary; that
his passions were essential to him; that to defend him from loving
legitimate pleasures; to interdict him from desiring them, is to deprive
him of that activity which is the vital principle of society; that to
tell him to hate, to desire him to despise himself, is to take from him
the most substantive motive, that can conduct him to virtue. It is thus,
by its supernatural remedies, by its wretched panacea, superstition, far
from curing those evils which render man decrepid, which bend him almost
to the earth, has only increased them; made them more desperate; in the
room of calming his passions, it gives them inveteracy; makes them more
dangerous; renders them more venomous; turns that into a curse which
nature has given him for his preservation; to be the means of his own
happiness. It is not by extinguishing the passions of man that he is
to be rendered happier; it is by turning them into proper channels, by
directing them towards useful objects, which by being truly advantageous
to himself, must of necessity be beneficial to others.
In despite of the errors which blind the human race, in despite of
the extravagance of man's superstition, maugre the imbecility of his
political institutions, notwithstanding the complaints, in defiance of
the murmurs he is continually breathing forth against his destiny, there
are yet happy individuals on the earth. Man has sometimes the felicity
to behold sovereigns animated by the noble passion to render nations
flourishing; full of the laudable ambition to make their people happy;
now and then he encounters an ANTONINUS, a TRAJAN, a JULIAN, an ALFRED,
a WASHINGTON; he meets with elevated minds who place their glory in
encouraging merit--who rest their happiness in succouring indigence--who
think it honourable to lend a helping hand to oppressed virtue: he sees
genius occupied with the desire of meriting the eulogies of posterity;
of eliciting the admiration of his fellow-citizens by serving them
usefully, satisfied with enjoying that happiness he procures for others.
Let it not be believed that the man of poverty himself is excluded
from happiness: mediocrity and indigence frequently procure for him
advantages that opulence and grandeur are obliged to acknowledge; which
title and wealth are constrained to envy: the soul of the needy man,
always in action, never ceases to form desires which his activity places
within his reach; whilst the rich, the powerful, are frequently in the
afflicting embarrassment, of either not knowing what to wish for, or
else of desiring those objects which their listlessness renders it
impossible for them to obtain. The poor man's body, habituated to
labour, knows the sweets of repose; this repose of the body, is the most
troublesome fatigue to him who is wearied with his idleness; exercise,
and frugality, procure for the one vigour, health, and contentment; the
intemperance and sloth of the other, furnish him only with disgust--load
him with infirmities. Indigence sets all the springs of the soul to
work; it is the mother of industry; from its bosom arises genius; it is
the parent of talents, the hot-bed of that merit to which opulence is
obliged to pay tribute; to which grandeur bows its homage. In short the
blows of fate find in the poor man a flexible reed, who bends without
breaking, whilst the storms of adversity tear the rich man like the
sturdy oak in the forest, up by the very roots.
Thus Nature is not a step-mother to the greater number of her children.
He whom fortune has placed in an obscure station is ignorant of that
ambition which devours the courtier; knows nothing of the inquietude
which deprives the intriguer of his rest; is a stranger to the remorse,
an alien to the disgust, is unconscious of the weariness of the man,
who, enriched with the spoils of a nation, does not know how to turn
them to his profit. The more the body labours, the more the imagination
reposes itself; it is the diversity of the objects man runs over that
kindles it; it is the satiety of those objects that causes him disgust;
the imagination of the indigent is circumscribed by necessity: he
receives but few ideas: he is acquainted with but few objects: in
consequence, he has but little to desire; he contents himself with that
little: whilst the entire of nature with difficulty suffices to satisfy
the insatiable desires, to gratify the imaginary wants of the man,
plunged in luxury, who has run over and exhausted all common objects.
Those, whom prejudice contemplates; as the most unhappy of men,
frequently enjoy advantages more real, happiness much greater, than
those who oppress them--who despise them--but who are nevertheless
often reduced to the misery of envying them. Limited desires are a real
benefit: the man of meaner condition, in his humble fortune, desires
only bread: he obtains it by the sweat of his brow; he would eat it with
pleasure if injustice did not sometimes render it bitter to him. By the
delirium of some governments, those who roll in abundance, without
for that reason being more happy, dispute with the cultivator even the
fruits which the earth yields to the labour of his hands. _Princes_
sometimes sacrifice their true happiness, as well as that of their
states, to these passions--to those caprices which discourage the
people; which plunge their provinces in misery: which make millions
unhappy, without any advantage to themselves. _Tyrants_ oblige the
subjects to curse their existence; to abandon labour; take from them
the courage of propagating a progeny who would be as unhappy as their
fathers: the excess of oppression sometimes obliges them to revolt;
makes them avenge themselves by wicked outrages of the injustice it
has heaped on their devoted heads: injustice, by reducing indigence to
despair, obliges it to seek in crime, resources, against its misery. An
unjust government, produces discouragement in the soul: its vexations
depopulate a country; under its influence, the earth remains without
culture; from thence is bred frightful famine, which gives birth to
contagion and plague. The misery of a people produce revolutions;
soured by misfortunes, their minds get into a state of fermentation;
the overthrow of an empire, is the necessary effect. It is thus that
_physics_ and _morals_ are always connected, or rather are the _same
thing_.
If the bad morals of chiefs do not always produce such marked effects,
at least they generate slothfulness, of which their effect is to fill
society with mendicants; to crowd it with malefactors; whose vicious
course neither superstition nor the terror of the laws can arrest; which
nothing can induce to remain the unhappy spectators of a welfare they
are not permitted to participate. They seek a fleeting happiness at the
expence even of their lives, when injustice has shut up to them the road
of labour, those paths of industry which would have rendered them both
useful and honest.
Let it not then be said that no government can render all its subjects
happy; without doubt it cannot flatter itself with contenting the
capricious humours of some idle citizens who are obliged to rack their
imagination, to appease the disgust arising from lassitude: but it can,
and it ought to occupy itself with ministering to the real wants of the
multitude, with giving a useful activity to the whole body politic. A
society enjoys all the happiness of which it is susceptible whenever the
greater number of its members are wholesomely fed, decently cloathed,
comfortably lodged--in short when they can without an excess of toil
beyond their strength, procure wherewith to satisfy those wants which
nature has made necessary to their existence. Their mind rests contented
as soon as they are convinced no power can ravish from them the fruits
of their industry; that they labour for themselves; that the sweat of
their brow is for the immediate comfort of their own families. By a
consequence of human folly in some regions, whole nations are obliged to
toil incessantly, to waste their strength, to sweat under their burdens
to undulate the air with their sighs, to drench the earth with their
tears, in order to maintain the luxury, to gratify the whims, to support
the corruption of a small number of irrational beings; of some few
useless men to whom happiness has become impossible, because their
bewildered imaginations no longer know any bounds. It is thus that
superstitious, thus that political errors have changed the fair face of
nature into a valley of tears.
For want of consulting reason, for want of knowing the value of virtue,
for want of being instructed in their true interest, for want of being
acquainted with what constitutes solid happiness, in what consists real
felicity, the prince and the people, the rich and the poor, the great
and the little, are unquestionably, frequently very far removed from
content; nevertheless if an impartial eye be glanced over the human
race, it will be found to comprise a greater number of benefits than of
evils. No man is entirely happy, but he is so in detail; those who make
the most bitter complaints of the rigour of their fate, are however,
held in existence by threads frequently imperceptible; are prevented
from the desire of quitting it by circumstances of which they are not
aware. In short, habit lightens to man the burden of his troubles; grief
suspended becomes true enjoyment; every want is a pleasure in the moment
when it is satisfied; freedom from chagrin, the absence of disease, is a
happy state which he enjoys secretly, without even perceiving it; hope,
which rarely abandons him entirely, helps him to support the most
cruel disasters. The PRISONER laughs in his irons. The wearied VILLAGER
returns singing to his cottage. In short, the man who calls himself the
most unfortunate, never sees death approach without dismay, at least, if
despair has not totally disfigured nature in his eyes.
As long as man desires the continuation of his being, he has no right
to call himself completely unhappy; whilst hope sustains him, he still
enjoys a great benefit. If man was more just, in rendering to himself an
account of his pleasures, in estimating his pains, he would acknowledge
that the sum of the first exceeds by much the amount of the last; he
would perceive that he keeps a very exact ledger of the evil, but a very
unfaithful journal of the good: indeed he would avow, that there are but
few days entirely unhappy during the whole course of his existence. His
periodical wants procure for him the pleasure of satisfying them; his
soul is perpetually moved by a thousand objects, of which, the variety,
the multiplicity, the novelty, rejoices him, suspends his sorrows,
diverts his chagrin. His physical evils, are they violent? They are not
of long duration; they conduct him quickly to his end: the sorrows of
his mind, when too powerful, conduct him to it equally. At the same time
nature refuses him every happiness, she opens to him a door by which he
quits life; does he refuse to enter it? It is that he yet finds pleasure
in existence. Are nations reduced to despair? Are they completely
miserable? They have recourse to arms; at the risque of perishing, they
make the most violent efforts to terminate there sufferings.
Thus because he sees so many of his fellows cling to life, man ought
to conclude they are not so unhappy as he thinks. Then let him not
exaggerate the evils of the human race, but let him impose silence on
that gloomy humour that persuades him these evils are without remedy;
let him only diminish by degrees the number of his errors, his
calamities will vanish in the same proportion; he is not to conclude
himself infelicitous because his heart never ceases to form new desires,
which he finds it difficult, sometimes impossible to gratify. Since his
body daily requires nourishment, let him infer that it is sound, that it
fulfils its functions. As long as he has desires, the proper deduction
ought to be, that his mind is kept in the necessary activity; he should
gather from all this that passions are essential to him, that they
constitute the happiness of a being who feels; are indispensable to a
man who thinks; are requisite to furnish him with ideas; that they are
a vital principle with a creature who must necessarily love that which
procures him comfort, who must equally desire that which promises him
a mode of existence analogous to his natural energies. As long as he
exists, as long as the spring of his soul maintains its elasticity, this
soul desires; as long as it desires, he experiences the activity which
is necessary to him; as long as he acts, so long he lives. Human life
may be compared to a river, of which the waters succeed each other,
drive each other forward, and flow on without interruption; these
waters, obliged to roll over an unequal bed, encounter at intervals
those obstacles which prevent their stagnation; they never cease
to undulate; sometimes they recoil, then again rush forward, thus
continuing to run with more or less velocity, until they are restored to
_the ocean of nature_.