Man is a feeble being, whose necessities render him constantly
dependent upon the support of others, whether it be for the
preservation or the pleasure of his existence; he has no means of
interesting others in his welfare except by his manner of conducting
himself towards them; that conduct which renders him an object of
affection to others is called virtue--whatever is pernicious to
society is called crime--and where the consequences are injurious only
to the individual himself, it is called vice. Thus every man must
immediately perceive that he consults his own happiness by advancing
that of others--that vices, however cautiously disguised from public
observation, are, nevertheless, fraught with ruin to him who practises
them--and that crimes are sure to render the perpetrator odious or
contemptible in the eyes of his associates, who are necessary to his
own happiness. In short, education, public opinion, and the laws point
out to us our mutual duties much more clearly than the chimeras of an
incomprehensible religion.

Every man on consulting with himself will feel indubitably that he
desires his own conservation; experience will teach him both what he
ought to do and what to avoid to arrive at this end; in consequence he
will shrink from those excesses which endanger his being; he will
debar himself from those gratifications which in their course would
render his existence miserable; and he would make sacrifices, if it
was necessary, in the view of procuring himself advantages more real
than those of which he momentarily deprived himself. Thus he would
know what he owes to himself and what he owes to others.

Here, Madam, you have a short but perfect summary of all morals,
derived, as they must be, from the nature of man, the uniform
experience and the universal reason of mankind. These precepts are
compulsory upon our minds, for they show us that the consequences of
our conduct flow from our actions with as natural and inevitable a
certainty as the return of a stone to the earth after the impetus is
exhausted which detained it in the air. It is natural and inevitable
that the man who employs himself in doing good must be preferred to
the man who does mischief. Every thinking being must be penetrated
with the truth of this incontrovertible maxim, and all the ponderous
volumes of theology that ever were composed can add nothing to the
force of his conviction; every thinking being will, therefore, avoid a
conduct c