We deceive ourselves then, I think, when we accuse religion of necessarily rendering the business and the pleasures of the world uninteresting; its chief pleasures, on the contrary, are derived from religion, from those ideas of eternity, which it presents to our mind, which serve to sustain the enchantments of hope, and the sense of those duties of which our moral nature is ingeniously composed. Religious opinions are perfectly adapted to our nature, to our weaknesses and perfections; they come to our succour in our real difficulties, and in those which the abuse of our foresight creates. But in what is grand and elevated in our nature, it sympathizes most: for, if men are animated by noble thoughts; if they respect their intelligence, their chief ornament; if they are interested about the dignity of their nature, they will fly, with transport, to bow before religion, which ennobles their faculties, preserves their strength of mind, and which, through its sentiments, unites them to Him, whose power astonishes their understanding. It is then that, considering themselves as an emanation of the Infinite Being, the commencement of all things, they will not let themselves be drawn aside by a philosophy, whose sad lessons tend to persuade us, that reason, liberty, all this immaterial essence of ourselves, is the mere result of a fortuitous combination, and an harmony without intelligence. We have never perhaps observed, with sufficient attention, the different kinds of happiness which would be destroyed, or at least sensibly weakened, if this discouraging doctrine was ever propagated. What would then become of the most sublime of all sentiments, that of admiration, if, instead of the grand view of the universe, far from reviving the idea of a Supreme Being, we retraced only a vast existence, but without design, cause, or destination; and if the astonishment of our minds was itself but one of the spontaneous accidents of blind matter? What would become of the pleasure which we find in the developement, exercise, and progress of our faculties, if this intelligence, of which we love to glory, was only the result of chance, and if all our ideas were but a mere obedience to the eternal law of motion; if our liberty was but a fiction, and if we had not, if I may say so, any possession of ourselves? What would become then of that active spirit of curiosity, whose charm excites us to observe continually the wonders with which we are surrounded, and which inspires, at the same time, the desire of penetrating, in some measure, into the mystery of our existence, and the secret of our origin? Certainly it would little avail us to study the course of nature, if this science could only teach us to comprehend the afflicting particulars of our mechanical slavery: a prisoner cannot be pleased to draw the form of his fetters, or reckon the links of his chains.