Man was not made to be a sublime slave, like Epictetus, employed in supporting bad fortune well without trying to surmount it, nor, like the author of the _Imitation_, the angelic inhabitant of a cloister, calling for death as a fortunate deliverance, and anticipating it, as far as in him lies, by continual penitence and in mute adoration. The love of pleasure, even the passions, have a place among the needs of humanity. Suppress the passions, and it is true there is no more excess; neither is there any mainspring of action,--without winds the vessel no longer proceeds, and soon sinks in the deep. Suppose a being that lacks love of self, the instinct of preservation, the horror of suffering, especially the horror of death, who has neither the love of pleasure nor the love of happiness, in a word, destitute of all personal interest,--such a being will not long resist the innumerable causes of destruction that surround and besiege him; he will not remain a day. Never can a single family, nor the least society be formed or maintained. He who has made man has not confided the care of his work to virtue alone, to devotedness and sublime charity,--he has willed that the duration and development of the race and human society should be placed upon simpler and surer foundations; and this is the reason why he has given to man the love of self, the instinct of preservation, the taste of pleasure and happiness, the passions that animate life, hope and fear, love, ambition, personal interest, in fine, a powerful, permanent, universal motive that urges us on to continually ameliorate our condition upon the earth. So we do not contest with the ethics of interest the reality of their principle,--we are convinced that this principle exists, that it has a right to be. The only question that we raise is the following:--The principle of interest is true in itself, but are there not other principles quite as true, quite as real? Man seeks pleasure and happiness, but are there not in him other needs, other sentiments as powerful, as vital? The first and universal principle of human life is the need of the individual to preserve himself; but would this principle suffice to support human life and society entire and as we behold it? Just as the existence of the body does not hinder that of the soul, and reciprocally, so in the ample bosom of humanity and the profound designs of divine Providence, the principles that differ most do not exclude each other.