him who possesses them, but when to obtain them he employs odious means, or when after he has obtained them he makes a pernicious use of them, injurious to himself, prejudicial to others. Let him wish for power, let him seek after grandeur, let him be ambitious of reputation, when he can obtain them without making the purchase at the expense of his own repose, or that of the beings with whom he lives: let him desire riches, when he knows how to make a use of them that is truly advantageous for himself, really beneficial for others; but never let him employ those means to procure them with which he may be obliged to reproach himself, or which may draw upon him the hatred of his associates. Let him always recollect, that his solid happiness should rest its foundations upon his own esteem, and upon the advantages he procures for others; and above all, that of all the objects to which his ambition may point, the most impracticable for a being who lives in society, is that of attempting to render himself exclusively happy. CHAPTER XVI. The Errours 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 are desirous of acting on an extended sphere; geniuses who are powerful, enlightened, 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, and 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, minds too vehement, too much inflamed, too active, are themselves tormented by the narrow sphere that confines them, and their misplaced ardour becomes the scourge of the human race.* Alexander was a monarch, who was as injurious to the earth, as 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; 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 they 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 and from falling into sloth. If his mind is virtuous and expansive, his ambition finds continual food in the contemplation of the power he possesses to unite by gentleness and 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, and to elicit the eulogies of all nations. 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 * Estuat infelix augusto limite mundi.Seneca says of Alexander, Post Darium and Indos pauper est Alexander; inventus est qui concupiscerit aliquid post omnia. V. Senec. Epist. 120. most ardent imagination, to gratify the most capacious ambition. Kings are the most happy of men only because they have the power of making a great number of other men happy, and thus of multiplying the causes of legitimate content with themselves. 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 mind worn out with enjoyment, enfeebled by excess; cannot invigorate a The advantages of the sovereign body enervated by debauchery, from power are participated by all those thenceforth become incapable of suswho contribute to the government of taining him, except by the necessity of states. Thus grandeur, rank, reputa-privations; he will know that the licention, are desirable for all who are tiousness of the voluptuary stifles pleasacquainted with all the means of ren-ure in its source, and that all the treasdering them subservient to their own ure in the world cannot renew his peculiar felicity; they are useless to senses. 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 and the welfare of society this society itself is in an errour 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 sub-king them turn to his own real adstantial benefits. Riches, useless to the miser, who is no more than their miserable jailer, prejudicial to the debauchee, for whom they only procure infirmities, disgust, and 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 representative of happiness: to enjoy it so as to make others happy, 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 and noble mind 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, and the From this it will be obvious, that nothing is more frivolous than the declamations of a gloomy philosophy against the desire of power, the pursuit of grandeur, the acquisition of riches, the enjoyment of pleasure.These objects are desirable for man, whenever his condition permits him to make pretensions to them, or whenever he has acquired the knowledge of ma vantage; reason cannot either censure or despise him, when to obtain them he wounds no one's interest: his associates will esteem him when he 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; it is even rational, when it renders his existence really valuable to himself, 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 mind sufficiently noble, elevated, benevolent, and energetic, which enables him to extend his happy influence over whole nations, which, by this means, he places in a state of legitimate dependance on his will: man only acquires the right of commanding men, when he renders them happy. The right of man over his fellowman, can only be founded, either upon the actual happiness he secures to him, or that which gives him reason to hope. he will procure for him; without this, the power he exercises would be violence, usurpation, manifest tyranny: it his heart, which alone can confer upon them legitimate rights, without they make him experience real benefits and 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 and necessary standard of his sentiments for the beings of his species, for the objects he desires, for the opinions he embraces, 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 laws, from the institutions, from the inventions and the various actions of all mankind. is only upon the faculty of rendering | on him, may dazzle him, may intimihim happy that legitimate authority date him, but they will never be able builds its structure. No man derives to obtain the voluntary submission of 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: 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; and the Gods are horrible phantoms if they do render man unhappy.* Government and religion, could be reasonable institutions only inasmuch as they equally contributed to the felicity of man: it would be folly in him to submit himself to a A superficial view may sometimes yoke from which these resulted nothing seduce him; but experience, aided by but evil: it would be rank injustice to reflection, will re-conduct him to reaoblige him to renounce his rights, with-son, which is incapable of deceiving out some corresponding advantage. him. This teaches him that pleasure The authority, which a father exer- is a momentary happiness, which frecises 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, respect, and obey them. The rich acquire rights over the indigent, only by virtue of the welfare they are able 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, esteems, and unceasingly adores. Gods and monarchs, the rich and the great, may easily impose * Cicero says-Nisi homini placuerit, Deus non erit." God cannot oblige men to obey him, unless he proves to them that he has the power of rendering them happy or unhappy." See the Defence of Religion, Vol. I. p. 433. From this we must conclude that we are right in judging of religion and of the Gods by the advantages or disadvantages they procure to society. quently becomes an evil; that evil is a fleeting trouble, that frequently becomes a good: it makes him understand the true nature of objects, and 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 obstruct their felicity in this world. If he consults experience, he will perceive that it is in illusions and opinions looked upon as sacred, 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 Gods; imposture rendered these Gods terrible to him; and these fatal ideas haunted him without rendering true felicity, who were but little disposhim better, made him tremble without ed to occupy themselves with their either benefit to himself or to others; prosperity: under such chiefs their filled his mind with chimeras, opposed physical and moral happiness were themselves to the progress of his rea- equally neglected or even annihilated. son, prevented him from seeking after The same blindness may be perceivhis happiness. His fears rendered him ed in the science of morals. Religion, the slave of those who have deceived which never had any thing but ignorhim under pretence of consulting his ance for its basis, and imagination for welfare; he committed evil whenever its guide, did not found ethics upon they told him his Gods demanded man's nature, upon his relations with crimes; he lived in misfortune, because his fellows, upon those duties which they made him believe these Gods con- necessarily flow from these relations, demned him to be miserable; the slave it preferred founding them upon imaof these Gods, he never dared to disen- ginary relations, which it pretended tangle himself from his chains, because subsisted between him and some invisthe artful ministers of these Divinities ible powers it had gratuitously imagingave him to understand, that stupidity, ed, and had falsely been made to speak.* the renunciation of reason, sloth of mind, abjection of soul, were the sure means of obtaining eternal felicity. It was these invisible Gods which religion always paints as furious tyrants, who were declared the arbiters of man's Prejudices, not less dangerous, have destiny-the models of his conduct; blinded man upon the true nature of when he was willing to imitate these government; nations are ignorant of tyrannical Gods, when he was willing the true foundations of authority; they to conform himself to the lessons of dare not demand happiness from those their interpreters, he became wicked, kings who are charged with the care was an unsociable creature, a useless of procuring it for them: they have be- being, or else a turbulent maniac and a lieved that their sovereigns were Gods zealous fanatic. It was these alone disguised, who received with their who profited by religion, who advanbirth, the right of commanding the rest taged themselves by the darkness in of mankind; that they could at their which it involved the human mind; pleasure dispose of the felicity of the nations were ignorant of nature, they people, and that they were not ac- knew nothing of reason, they undercountable for the misery they engen- stood not truth; they had only a gloomy dered. By a necessary consequence religion, without one certain idea of of these opinions, politics have al- either morals or virtue. When man most every where degenerated into committed evil against his fellow creathe fatal art of sacrificing the interests ture, he believed he had offended his of the many, either to the caprice of God; but he also believed himself foran individual, or to some few privile- given, as soon as he had prostrated himged rascals. In despite of the evils self before him; as soon as he had made which assailed them, nations fell down him costly presents, and gained over in adoration before the idols they them- the priest to his interest. Thus reliselves had made, and foolishly respect-gion, far from giving a sure, a natural, ed the instruments of their misery; obeyed their unjust will: lavished their blood, exhausted their treasure, sacrificed their lives, to glut the ambition, the cupidity, the never-ending caprices Thus Trophonius, from his cave, made of these men; they bent the knee to affrighted mortals tremble, shook the stoutest established opinion, bowed to rank, nerves, made them turn pale with fear; his miserable, deluded supplicants, who were obliyielded to title, to opulence, to pageant-ged to sacrifice to him, anointed their bodies ry, to ostentation: at length, victims to with oil, bathed in certain rivers, and after their prejudices, they in vain expected they had offered their cake of honey and re their welfare at the hands of men who ceived their destiny, became so dejected, su were themselves unhappy from their wretchedly forlorn, that to this day their deown vices, whose neglect of virtue had man, exclaim, "He has consulted the oracie of scendants, when they behold a melanchy rendered them incapable of enjoying Trophonius." and a known basis to morals, only rested it on an unsteady fc indation, 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 religion was desirous to combat the unruly passions of man, it attempted it in vain; always enthusiastic, and 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 and more powerful concurred to give birth, which every thing conspired to nourish in his heart. The voice of religion, or of the Gods, could not make itself heard amidst the tumult of society, where all cried out to man, that he could not render himself happy without injuring his fellow creature; 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; and man became wicked, because every thing informed him he must be so in order to obtain happiness. Thus, the sum of human misery was never diminished; on the contrary, it was accumulating either by his religion, 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 cannot be too often repeated, it is in errour 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 and 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 and miserable, it is to errour 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 No. V.-20 that marvellous panacea, which some adepts have been willing to pass upon mankind for a universal remedy. All men are diseased; the moment of their birth delivers them over to the contagion of errour; but individuals are variously affected by it, by a consequence of their natural organization and 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, and this remedy is truth, which he must draw from nature. At the sight of those errours which blind the greater number of mortalsof those delusions which man is doomed to suck in with his mother's milk; at the sight of those desires, of those propensities, by which he is perpetually agitated, of those passions which torment him, of those inquietudes which gnaw his repose, of those 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, and that any effort to cure those minds which every thing unites to poison, would be a vain enterprise. 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 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, and 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 and atrabilious mortals, 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 irri |