'If, as we are taught to believe, the benevolent Author of nature be, indeed, benevolent,' said I, to myself, 'he surely must have intended the _happiness_ of his creatures. Our morality cannot extend to him, but must consist in the knowledge, and practice, of those duties which we owe to ourselves and to each other.--Individual happiness constitutes the general good:--_happiness_ is the only true _end_ of existence; --all notions of morals, founded on any other principle, involve in themselves a contradiction, and must be erroneous. Man does right, when pursuing interest and pleasure--it argues no depravity--this is the fable of superstition: he ought to only be careful, that, in seeking his own good, he does not render it incompatible with the good of others--that he does not consider himself as standing alone in the universe. The infraction of established _rules_ may, it is possible, in some cases, be productive of mischief; yet, it is difficult to state any _rule_ so precise and determinate, as to be alike applicable to every situation: what, in one instance, might be a _vice_, in another may possibly become a _virtue_:--a thousand imperceptible, evanescent, shadings, modify every thought, every motive, every action, of our lives--no one can estimate the sensations of, can form an exact judgment for, another. 'I have sometimes suspected, that all mankind are pursuing phantoms, however dignified by different appellations.--The healing operations of time, had I patience to wait the experiment, might, perhaps, recover my mind from its present distempered state; but, in the meanwhile, the bloom of youth is fading, and the vigour of life running to waste.--Should I, at length, awake from a delusive vision, it would be only to find myself a comfortless, solitary, shivering, wanderer, in the dreary wilderness of human society. I feel in myself the capacities for increasing the happiness, and the improvement, of a few individuals--and this circle, spreading wider and wider, would operate towards the grand end of life--_general utility_.'