ation if they did not
find pleasure in it, and if there was not in that great work an
irresistible attraction for them. In the third place, all creatures have
a determined and invincible propensity to destroy their enemies; and it
is certainly a very wise ordination, for that feeling of
self-preservation makes it a duty for them to do their best for the
destruction of whatever can injure them.

Each species obeys these laws in its own way. The three sensations:
hunger, desire, and hatred--are in animals the satisfaction of habitual
instinct, and cannot be called pleasures, for they can be so only in
proportion to the intelligence of the individual. Man alone is gifted
with the perfect organs which render real pleasure peculiar to him;
because, being, endowed with the sublime faculty of reason, he foresees
enjoyment, looks for it, composes, improves, and increases it by thought
and recollection. I entreat you, dear reader, not to get weary of
following me in my ramblings; for now that I am but the shadow of the
once brilliant Casanova, I love to chatter; and if you were to give me
the slip, you would be neither polite nor obliging.

Man comes down to the level of beasts whenever he gives himself up to the
three natural propensities without calling reason and judgment to his
assistance; but when the mind gives perfect equilibrium to those
propensities, the sensations derived from them become true enjoyment, an
unaccountable feeling which gives us what is called happiness, and which
we experience without being able to describe it.

The voluptuous man who reasons, disdains greediness, rejects with
contempt lust and lewdness, and spurns the brutal revenge which is caused
by a first movement of anger: but he is dainty, and satisfies his
appetite only in a manner in harmony with his nature and his tastes; he
is amorous, but he enjoys himself with the object of his love only when
he is certain that she will share his enjoyment, which can never be the
case unless their love is mutual; if he is offended, he does not care for
revenge until he has calmly considered the best means to enjoy it fully.
If he is sometimes more cruel than necessary, he consoles himself with
the idea that he has acted under the empire of reason; and his revenge is
sometimes so noble that he finds it in forgiveness. Those three
operations are the work of the soul which, to procure enjoyment for
itself, becomes the agent of our passions. We sometimes suff