Is it even practicable for mankind to love their neighbours as themselves? Every man naturally loves himself in preference to all others. He loves his fellow-creatures only in proportion as they contribute to his happiness. He exercises virtue in doing good to his neighbour. He acts generously when he sacrifices his self love to his love for another. Yet he will never love his fellow creatures but for the useful qualities he finds in them. He can love them no farther than they are known to him, and his love for them must ever be governed by the good he receives from them. To love one's enemies is then impossible. A man may abstain from doing evil to the person by whom he is injured; but love is an affection which can be excited in our hearts only by an object which we supposed friendly to us. Politic nations, who have enacted just and wise laws, have always forbidden individual to revenge, or do justice to themselves, A sentiment of generosity, of greatness of soul, or heroism, may induce mankind to do good to those from whom they suffer injuries. By such means they exalt themselves above their enemies, and may even change the disposition of their hearts. Thus, without having recourse to a supernatural morality, we feel that it is our interest to stifle in our hearts the lust of revenge. Christians may, therefore, cease to boast the forgiveness of injuries, as a precept that could be given only by their God, and which proves the divine origin of their morality. Pythagoras, long before the time of Christ, had said, let men revenge themselves upon their enemies, only by labouring to convert them into friends. Socrates taught that it was not lawful for a man, who had received an injury, to revenge it by doing another injury. Christ must have forgotten that he spoke to men, when, in order to conduct them to perfection, he commanded them to abandon their possessions to the avidity of the first who should demand them; to turn the other cheek to receive a new insult; to oppose no resistance to the most outrageous violence; to renounce the perishable riches of this world; to forsake houses, possessions, relations, and friends to follow him; and to reject even the most innocent pleasures. Who does not see, in these sublime precepts, the language of enthusiasm and hyperbole? Are not they calculated to discourage man, and throw him into despair? If literally practised, would they not prove ruinous to society? What shall we say of the morality, which commands the human heart to detach itself from objects which reason commands it to love? When we refuse the blessings offered us by nature, do we not despise the benefactions of the One Supreme? What real good can result to society from the melancholy and ferocious virtues which Christians consider indispensible?