But I am in the wrong to adduce paternal or filial affection in defence of patriotism and loyalty, since even those natural instincts are reprobated by the _Illuminati_, as hostile to the all-comprehending philanthropy. Mr. de la Metherie says, that among the memorials sent from the clubs in England to the National Assembly, he read two, (printed,) in which the Assembly was requested to establish a community of wives, and to take children from their parents and educate them for the nation. In full compliance with this dictate of universal philanthropy, Weishaupt would have murdered his own child and his concubine,--and Orleans voted the death of his near relation. Indeed, of all the consequences of Illumination, the most melancholy is this revolution which it seems to operate in the heart of man,--this forcible sacrifice of every affection of the heart to an ideal divinity, a mere creature of the imagination.--It seems a prodigy, yet it is a matter of experience, that the farther we advance, or vainly suppose that we do advance, in the knowledge of our mental powers, the more are our moral feelings flattened and done away. I remember reading, long ago, a dissertation on the nursing of infants by a French academician, Le Cointre of Versailles. He indelicately supports his theories by the case of his own son, a weak puny infant, whom his mother was obliged to keep continually applied to her bosom, so that she rarely could get two hours of sleep during the time of suckling him. Mr. Le Cointre says, that she contracted for this infant "_une partialite toute-a-fait deraisonable_."--Plato, or Socrates, or Cicero, would probably have explained this by the habitual exercise of pity, a very endearing emotion.--But our Academician, better illuminated, solves it by stimuli on the _papillæ_ and on the nerves of the skin, and by the meeting of the humifying _aura_, &c. and does not seem to think that young Le Cointre was much indebted to his mother. It would amuse me to learn that this was the wretch Le Cointre, Major of the National Guards of Versailles, who countenanced and encouraged the shocking treason and barbarity of those ruffians on the 5th and 6th of October 1789. Complete freezing of the heart would (I think) be the consequence of a theory which could perfectly explain the affections by vibrations or crystallizations.--Nay, any very perfect theory of moral sentiments must have something of this tendency.--Perhaps the ancient systems of moral philosophy, which were chiefly searches after the _summum bonum_, and systems of moral duties, tended more to form and strengthen the heart, and produce a worthy man, than the most perfect theory of modern times, which explains every phenomenon by means of a nice anatomy of our affections.