when undertaken with reason for one's guide. It is
difficult to be virtuous and happy with a temperament so ardent as to
sway the passions to its will. One must in calmness consult reason as
to his duty. Nature, in giving us lively passions and a susceptible
imagination, has made us capable of suffering the instant we
transgress her bounds. She then renders us necessary to ourselves, and
we cannot proceed to consult our real interest if we continue in
indulgence that she forbids. The passions which reason cannot restrain
are not to be bridled by religion. It is in vain that we hope to
derive succors from religion if we despise and refuse what nature
offers us. Religion leaves men just such as nature and habit have made
them; and if it produce any changes on some few, I believe I have
proved that those changes are not always for the better.

Congratulate yourself, then, Madam, on being born with good
dispositions, of having received honest principles, which shall carry
you through life in the practice of virtue, and in the love of a fine
and exalted taste for the rational pleasures of our nature. Continue
to be the happiness of your family, which esteems and honors you.
Continue to diffuse around you the blessings you enjoy; continue to
perform only those actions which are esteemed by all the world, and
all men will respect you. Respect yourself, and others will respect
you. These are the legitimate sentiments of virtue and of happiness.
Labor for your own happiness, and you will promote that of your
family, who will love you in proportion to the good you do it. Allow
me to congratulate myself if, in all I have said, I have in any
measure swept from your mind those clouds of fanaticism which obscure
the reason; and to felicitate you on your having escaped from vague
theories of imagination. Abjure superstition, which is calculated only
to make you miserable; let the morality of humanity be your uniform
religion; that your happiness may be constant, let reason be your
guide; that virtue may be the idol of your soul, cultivate and love
only what is virtuous and good in the world; and if there be a God who
is interested in the happiness of his creatures, if there be a God
full of justice and goodness, he will not be angry with you for having
consulted your reason; if there be another life, your happiness in it
cannot be doubtful, if God rewards every one according to the good
done here.