o the service of the body. If men were ever to content
themselves with material objects, it is probable that they would lose by
degrees the art of producing them; and they would enjoy them in the end,
like the brutes, without discernment and without improvement.

Chapter XVII: That In Times Marked By Equality Of Conditions And
Sceptical Opinions, It Is Important To Remove To A Distance The Objects
Of Human Actions

In the ages of faith the final end of life is placed beyond life. The
men of those ages therefore naturally, and in a manner involuntarily,
accustom themselves to fix their gaze for a long course of years on some
immovable object, towards which they are constantly tending; and they
learn by insensible degrees to repress a multitude of petty passing
desires, in order to be the better able to content that great and
lasting desire which possesses them. When these same men engage in the
affairs of this world, the same habits may be traced in their conduct.
They are apt to set up some general and certain aim and end to their
actions here below, towards which all their efforts are directed: they
do not turn from day to day to chase some novel object of desire, but
they have settled designs which they are never weary of pursuing. This
explains why religious nations have so often achieved such lasting
results: for whilst they were thinking only of the other world, they
had found out the great secret of success in this. Religions give men a
general habit of conducting themselves with a view to futurity: in
this respect they are not less useful to happiness in this life than
to felicity hereafter; and this is one of their chief political
characteristics.

But in proportion as the light of faith grows dim, the range of man's
sight is circumscribed, as if the end and aim of human actions appeared
every day to be more within his reach. When men have once allowed
themselves to think no more of what is to befall them after life, they
readily lapse into that complete and brutal indifference to futurity,
which is but too conformable to some propensities of mankind. As soon
as they have lost the habit of placing their chief hopes upon remote
events, they naturally seek to gratify without delay their smallest
desires; and no sooner do they despair of living forever, than they
are disposed to act as if they were to exist but for a single day.
In sceptical ages it is always therefore to be feared that men may
perpetually