Undoubtedly, it is according to nature, according to the degree of strength of their religious opinions, that men seize with more or less confidence the hopes which they give, and the recompense they promise; but, doubt and obscurity have a powerful action, while supreme happiness is the object; for even in the affairs of this life, the grandeur of the prize offered to our ambition excites still more our ardour, than the probability of success. But where should we fix, where attach the slightest hope, if even the idea of a God, this first prop of religion, was ever destroyed; if, from the infancy of men, we did not present to their reflection, that worldly considerations are as transient as themselves; and if, early in life, they were humbled in their own eyes; if men applied themselves to stifle the internal sentiments, which inform them of the spirituality of their souls? Discouraged in this manner, by the first principles of their education, slackened in all the movements which carry thier reflections into futurity, they would often take retrospective views: the past recalling an irreparable loss, would too much captivate their attention; and their minds, in the midst of time, would no more be in a necessary equilibrium to enjoy the present moment; in short, this moment, which is not, in reality, but an imperceptible fraction, would appear almost nothing to our eyes, if it were not united in our contemplations, to the unknown number of days and years which are before us. It is then, because that there is nothing limited in the ideas of happiness and duration, with which religious sentiments impress us, that our imagination is not forced to recoil on itself, when it is insensibly lost in the immensity of futurity. When, in following the course of a noble river, a vast horizon is presented to our view, we turn not our observation on the sandy banks we are coasting: but if, changing our situation, or twilight narrowing this horizon, our attention was turned on the barren flat we are near; then only we should remark all its dryness and sterility. It is the same in the career of life: when the grand ideas of infinity elevate our thoughts and our hopes, we are less affected by the weariness and difficulties strewed in our path; but, if changing our principles, a gloomy philosophy were to obscure our perspective, our whole attention drawn back on the surrounding objects, we should then very distinctly discover the void and illusion of the satisfactions of which our moral nature is susceptible.