Understanding the produce of the passions.

indifference with which mankind receive it, he finds at length the little consequence with which they regard it.

Then convinced, that in exchange for the labour and anxiety which the search of truth demands, he shall receive but little renown, and much persecution, his courage fails; he becomes disgusted, no longer pursues new discoveries, but delivers himself up to indolence, and stops short in the midst of his career.

Our attention is fugitive strong passions are necessary to keep it fixed. A man for amusement will calculate a page of figures, but he will not calculate a volume, unless urged to it by the powerful incentive of glory or wealth. Those are the passions which set in action that equal aptitude which men have to understanding without them that aptitude is no more than a lifeless power.

What, once more, is the understanding or judgment? The knowledge of the true relations that a certain number of objects have to each other, and to ourselves. To what do we owe this knowledge? To meditation and the comparison of objects. But what does this comparison suppose? An interest, more or less urgent, to compare them. The understanding is therefore the produce of that interest, and not of the greater or less perfection of the senses.

But, it will be said, if the strength of our constitution determines that of our desires; if man owes his genius to his passions, and his passions to his temper

VOL. I.

T

ament,

New objection to be discussed.

ament, on this supposition, genius will still be the effect of organization, and consequently the gift of nature. It is to the discussion of this point that this important question is now reduced: it is on the examination of this fact that its complete solution depends.

NOTES.

NOTES.

1. (page 266.) I HAVE known the stupidity and wickedness of

theologians: every thing is to be feared from them. I am therefore forced to renew, from time to time, the same profession of faith, and to repeat that I do not consider chance as a being; that I do not make a God of it; and that by this word I only mean, a series of effects, of which we do not perceive the causes. It is in this sense that they say of chance, it determines the dice; yet all the world knows, that the manner of shaking the box and throwing the dice is the cause that 3 turns up and not 6.

2. (p. 270.) Let thoughtless men declaim incessantly against the passions. We learn however from experience that there is no great artist, general, minister, poet or philosopher without them. Philosophy, as the etymology of the word proves, consists in the love and search after wisdom. Now all love is a passion : it is therefore the passions that supported in their labours, Newton, Locke, Bayle, &c. Their discoveries were the price of their meditations. These discoveries suppose a lively, constant, assiduou pursuit of the truth, and that pursuit a passion.

He is not a philosopher who, indifferent to truth or falsehood, delivers himself up to that apathy, to that pretended philosophical repose, which keeps the mind in a state of insensibility, and retards its progress toward the truth. That this state is easy, free from envy and the fury of bigots, and consequently that the slothful may call himself prudent, I allow, but not that he call himself a philosopher. What company is most dangerous to youth? That of those prudent and discreet men; and who are the more sure to stifle in youth every kind of emulation, as they point out to him in ignorance a security from persecution, and consequently the hap piness of inaction.

NOTES ON SECTION III.

Among the apostles of idleness there are sometimes men of great understanding; but these are they who owe their indolence to the disgusts and chagrin met with in their search after truth. The majority of the remainder are men of mediocrity, who would have all men be the same. It is envy that makes them preach up idle

ness.

What is to be done to escape the seduction of their reasoning? Suspect its sincerity. Remember that an interest, either mean or noble, always makes men argue: that all superiority of undertanding is disgusting to him who disdains glory, and wraps himself up in what is called a philosophical indolence; and that such a man has always an interest in stifling in the hearts of others an emulation that would give him too many superiors.

3. (p. 270.) The aim of the greatest part of despotic princes is to reign over slaves, and to change each man into an automaton. These despots, seduced by the interest of the present moment, forget that the imbecillity of the subjects announces the fall of monarchs; that it is destructive to their empire, and in short, that it is on the whole more easy to govern an enlightened people, than such as are stupid.

SEC

Man is born without passions.

SECTION IV.

MEN COMMONLY WELL ORGANIZED ARE ALL SUSCEPTIBLE OF

THE SAME DEGREE OF PASSION: THE INEQUALITY OF THEIR CAPACITIES IS ALWAYS THE EFFECT OF THE DIFFERENCE OF SITUATION IN WHICH CHANCE HAS PLACED THEM. THE ORIGINAL CHARACTER OF EACH MAN, (AS PASCAL HAS OB

SERVED), IS NOTHING BUT THE

HABITS.

CHAP. I.

PRODUCE OF HIS FIRST

OF THE

LITTLE INFLUENCE WHICH ORGANISATION AND TEMPERAMENT HAVE ON THE PASSIONS AND CHARACTERS OF MEN.

AT the moment the child is delivered from the womb of his mother, and opens the gates of life, he enters it without ideas and without passions. The only want he feels is that of hunger. It is not therefore in the cradle that we receive the passions of pride, avarice, ambition, the desire of esteem and of glory. Those factitious

TS