service, for the purpose of enriching themselves; and, as they cannot acquire, without a great deal of trouble, the means of gratification on this element, you always see them restless, sullen, and impatient, because there is nothing so discontented as vice, when it finds itself in the road of virtue. A ship is the crucible in which morals are put to the test. There, the wicked, degenerate more and more, and the good become better."

p. 408.

He who is desirous of doing good to mankind, must inure himself betimes to submit to unkind treatment from them. It is by the labour of the body, and the injustice of men, that you are enabled to fortify, at once, both your body and your soul. p. 409.

Present danger totally obliterates past deliverance from the mind. p. 428.

As soon as I recovered the use of my reasoning powers, and began to reflect on the extreme danger which I had just escaped, I fainted away. O, how weak is man,

in a paroxysm of joy! He is strong, only to encounter woe. They brought me to myself, after the manner of the Gauls, by shaking about my head, and blowing on my face. p. 431.

In vain did he consult the most aged of his people; no one could give him any advice. At last he laid his distress before his mother, who was now very old, but who still possessed an excellent understanding.

p. 435. It is easy to be brave amidst conflicts, out of which you are sure of escaping. We ought, on all occasions, to be diffident of ourselves. In vain do we trust to our own experience; in the aid of Heaven alone our confidence should be placed. p. 444.

I myself experienced the truth of the ancient maxim, That public consideration is to be acquired only at the expense of domestic felicity. p. 466.

The human mind is so contracted, that

though we sometimes feel ourselves much incommoded, it is impossible for us to imagine how we could mend our condition. If we remove a single one of the natural evils of which we so bitterly complain, we should behold starting up out of its absence, a thousand other evils of much more dangerous consequence. p. 468.

For my own part, I, who am no magician, think I have a glimpse, conformably to some of the works of nature, of an easy method whereby aërostats may direct their course even against the wind; but I would not publish it were I ever so certain of its success. What miseries have not the perfecting of the compass, and of gunpowder, brought upon the human race! The desirable object of research is not, what is to render us more intelligent, but what is to render us better. Science, in the hand of wisdom, is a torch which illuminates, but brandished by the hand of wickedness, sets the world on fire. p. 481.

Bodily exercise is the aliment of health. Certain philosophers have carried matters much farther. They have pretended that bodily exercise was the aliment of the soul. Exercise of body is good only for the preservation of health; the soul has its own apart. Nothing is more common, than to see men of delicate health possessed of exalted virtue, and robust persons very defective there. Virtue is no more the result of physical qualities, than strength of body is the effect of moral qualities. All temperaments are equally pre-disposed to vice and to virtue. p. 482.

The powerful ought never to despise the feeble. p. 485.

The feebler animals are much more vindictive than the powerful. The bee darts her sting into the hand of any one who comes near her hive; but the elephant sees the arrow of the huntsman fly close to him, without turning aside out of his road. p. 486.

Nature has made man good. Had she made him wicked, she who is so uniformly consequential in her works, would have furnished him with claws, with fangs, with poison, with some offensive weapon, as she has done to those of the beasts, whose character is designed to be ferocious. She has not so much as provided him with defensive armour, like other animals; but has created him the most miserable, undoubtedly in the view of constraining him to have constant recourse to the humanity of his fellow-creatures, and to extend it to them in his turn. p. 487.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME,