wrong, philosophers; thirdly, because those
who reason on many subjects, and who are the first to reason on them,
are liable to be deceived.

Q. If the law of nature be not written, must it not become arbitrary and
ideal?

A. No: because it consists entirely in facts, the demonstration of which
can be incessantly renewed to the senses, and constitutes a science as
accurate and precise as geometry and mathematics; and it is because the
law of nature forms an exact science, that men, born ignorant and living
inattentive and heedless, have had hitherto only a superficial knowledge
of it.

CHAPTER III.

PRINCIPLES OF THE LAW OF NATURE RELATING TO MAN.

Q. Explain the principles of the law of nature with relation to man.

A. They are simple; all of them are comprised in one fundamental and
single precept.

Q. What is that precept?

A. It is self-preservation.

Q. Is not happiness also a precept of the law of nature?

A. Yes: but as happiness is an accidental state, resulting only from
the development of man's faculties and his social system, it is not
the immediate and direct object of nature; it is in some measure,
a superfluity annexed to the necessary and fundamental object of
preservation.

Q. How does nature order man to preserve himself?

A. By two powerful and involuntary sensations, which it has attached,
as two guides, two guardian Geniuses to all his actions: the one a
sensation of pain, by which it admonishes him of, and deters him
from, everything that tends to destroy him; the other, a sensation of
pleasure, by which it attracts and carries him towards everything that
tends to his preservation and the development of his existence.

Q. Pleasure, then, is not an evil, a sin, as casuists pretend?

A. No, only inasmuch as it tends to destroy life and health which, by
the avowal of those same casuists, we derive from God himself.

Q. Is pleasure the principal object of our existence, as some
philosophers have asserted?

A. No; not more than pain; pleasure is an incitement to live as pain is
a repulsion from death.

Q. How do you prove this assertion?

A. By two palpable facts: One, that pleasure, when taken immoderately,
leads to destruction; for instance, a man who abuses the pleasure of
eating or drinking, attacks his health, and injures his life. The other,
that pain sometimes leads to self-preservation; for instance, a man who
permits a mortified member to be cut off, suffers pain i