Power is coveted as the medium of obtaining pleasure.

I obtain a new degree of esteem, of importance, riches, and above all, of power? It is because I esteem power as the most sure means of increasing my happiness.

Men love themselves: they all desire to be happy, and think their happiness would be complete, if they were invested with a degree of power sufficient to procure them every sort of pleasure. The love of power therefore takes its source from the love of pleasure. Suppose a man absolutely insensible. But, it will be said, he must then be without ideas, and consequently a mere statue. Be it so but allow that he may exist, and even think. Of what consequence would the sceptre of a monarch be to him? None. In fact, what could the most immense power add to the felicity of a man without feeling.

If power be so coveted by the ambitious, it is as the mean of acquiring pleasure. Power is like gold, a money. The effect of power, and of a bill of exchange is the same. If I be in possession of such a bill, I receive at London or Paris a hundred thousand crowns, and consequently all the pleasures that sum can procure. Am I in possession of a letter of authority or com mand? I draw in like manner from my fellow-citizens, a like quantity of provisions or pleasures. The effects of riches and power are in a manner the same for riches are power.

In a country where money is unknown, in what man

ner

Of wealth and honors.

ner can taxes be paid? In kind, that is, in corn, wine, cattle, fowls, &c.-How can commerce be carried on? By exchange. Money therefore is to be regarded as a portable merchandise, which it is agreed, for the facility of commerce, to take in exchange for all other sorts of merchandise. Can it be the same with the dignities and honours with which polished nations recompense the services rendered their country? Why not? What are honours? A money that is in like manner the representative of every kind of provision and pleasure. Suppose a country where the honorary money is not current; suppose the people to be too free, and too haughty, to suffer a very great inequality in the ranks and authority of the people: in what manner must the nation recompense great actions, and such as are useful to the nation? By natural riches and pleasures, that is, by transferring a certain quantity of corn, beer, hay, wine, &c. to the granary and cellar of the hero: by giving him so many acres of land to till, or so many handsome slaves. by the possession of Briseis*, that the Greeks recom

It was

* In the island of Rimini, no man can marry that has not killed an enemy, and borne away his head. The conqueror of two enemies has a right to marry two wives, and so on to fifty. What could be the cause of such an establishment? The situation of these islanders, who being surrounded by nations that were their enemies, would not have been able to resist them, if they had not perpetually excited the courage of their people by the highest rewards.

Reasons for coveting wealth and honors.

penced the valour of Achilles. What among the Scandinavians, the Saxons, the Scythians, the Celts, the Samnites, and the Arabs*, was the recompence of courage, of talents and virtues? Sometimes a fine woman, and sometimes a banquet, where feasting on delicate viands, and quaffing delicious liquors, the warriors with transport listened to the songs of the bards.

It is therefore evident, that if money and honours be, among most polished nations, the rewards of virtuous actions, they are in that case the representative of the same possessions, and the same pleasures that poor and free nations grant to their heroes, and for the acquisition of which those heroes expose themselves to the greatest dangers. Therefore, on the supposition, that these dignities and honours were not the representatives of wealth or pleasures, that they were nothing more than empty titlest, those titles being estimated

* Among the presents which the caravans at this day make to the Arabs of the Desert, the most agreeable are marriageable vir gins. This was the tribute the victorious Saracens formerly demanded of the conquered. Abderahman, after the conquest of the Spaniards, exacted of the petty prince of the Asturias, the annual tribute of a hundred beautiful virgins.

+ If in despotic nations the spring of glory be commonly very weak, it is, because glory there confers no sort of power, because all power is absorbed in despotism; because in those countries a hero, covered with glory, is not secure from the intrigues of a vilLainous courtier ; because he has no certain property in his effects, or his liberty; because, in short, he is liable, at the pleasure of

according

Motives which influence the actions and passions of men.

according to their real value, would presently cease to be the objects of desire. To enter a breach, a crown piece, the representative of a pint of brandy, and the enjoyment of a trull must be given to the soldier. The warriors of antiquity, and those of the present day are the same*. Men have not changed their nature, and they will always perform nearly the same actions for the same rewards. If a man be supposed indifferent to pleasure and pain, he will be without action: unsusceptible of remorse, or friendship, or, in short, of the love of riches or of power: for when we are insensible

his sovereign, to be thrown into a prison, to be deprived of his wealth and honours, and even of life itself.

Why does the Englishman behold, in the greatest part of foreign noblemen, nothing more than gaudy valets and victims adorned with garlands? Because a peasant in England, is in fact greater than an officer of state in another country: the peasant is free; he can be virtuous with impunity; and sees nothing above him but the law.

It is the desire of glory that must be the most powerful principle of action in poor republics; and it is the love of money, founded on the love of luxury, that in despotic countries is the principle of action, and the moving power in nations subject to that sort of government.

* The irruption of Brennus into Italy,it is well known, was not the first, but the fifth made by the Gauls. Bellovesus had invaded it before him; and how did this chief persuade his countrymen to follow him over the Alps? By showing them the wine of Italy. "Taste this wine, he cried, and see if you like it? if you do, follow me, and conquer the country that produced it."

Origin of human societies.

to pleasure itself, we must be insensible to the means of acquiring it. What we seek in riches and power, is the means of avoiding bodily pains, and procuring bodily pleasures. If the acquisition of gold and power be always a pleasure, it is because foresight and memory convert into an actual pleasure all the means of obtaining it.

The general conclusion of this chapter, is, that in man all is sensation: a truth of which I shall give a fresh proof, by showing that his sociability is nothing more than a consequence of the same sensations.

CHAP. VIII.

OF SOCIABILITY.

MAN is by nature a devourer of fruits and of flesh; but he is weak, unarmed, and consequently exposed to the voracity of animals stronger than himself. Man, therefore, to avoid the fury of the tyger and the lion, was forced to unite with man. The object of this union was to attack and kill other animals*, either to feed on them, or to prevent their consuming the fruits

There is, they say, in Africa, a sort of wild dogs, that go in troops to make war on animals that are stronger than themselves.