life. If it appears a cruel
alternative to those who enjoy the good things of this world, why do
they not console themselves with the idea of what they do actually
enjoy? Let them call reason to their aid; it will calm the inquietudes
of their imagination, but too greatly alarmed; it will disperse the
clouds which religion spreads over their minds; it will teach them
that this death, so terrible in apprehension, is really nothing, and
that it will neither be accompanied with remembrance of past pleasures
nor of sorrow now no more.

Live, then, happy and tranquil, amiable Eugenia! Preserve carefully an
existence so interesting and so necessary to all those with whom you
live. Allow not your health to be injured, nor trouble your quiet with
melancholy ideas. Without being teased by the prospect of an event
which has no right to disturb your repose, cultivate virtue, which has
always been your favorite, so necessary to your internal peace, and
which has rendered you so dear to all those who have the happiness of
being your friends. Let your rank, your credit, your riches, your
talents be employed to make others happy, to support the oppressed, to
succor the unfortunate, to dry up the tears of those whom you may have
an opportunity of comforting! Let your mind be occupied about such
agreeable and profitable employments as are likely to please you!
Call in the aid of your reason to dissipate the phantoms which alarm
you, to efface the prejudices which you have imbibed in early life! In
a word, comfort yourself, and remember that in practising virtue, as
you do, you cannot become an object of hatred to God, who, if he has
reserved in eternity rigorous punishments for the social virtues, will
be the strangest, the most cruel, and the most insensible of beings!

You demand of me, perhaps, "In destroying the idea of another world,
what is to become of the remorse, those chastisements so useful to
mankind, and so well calculated to restrain them within the bounds of
propriety?" I reply, that remorse will always subsist as long as we
shall be capable of feeling its pangs, even when we cease to fear the
distant and uncertain vengeance of the Divinity. In the commission of
crimes, in allowing one's self to be the sport of passion, in injuring
our species, in refusing to do them good, in stifling pity, every man
whose reason is not totally deranged perceives clearly that he will
render himself odious to others, that he ought to fear