Q. Does it allow us to repair it by prayers, vows, offerings to God,
fasting and mortifications?

A. No: for all those things are foreign to the action we wish to repair:
they neither restore the ox to him from whom it has been stolen, honor
to him whom we have deprived of it, nor life to him from whom it has
been taken away; consequently they miss the end of justice; they are
only perverse contracts by which a man sells to another goods which do
not belong to him; they are a real depravation of morality, inasmuch
as they embolden to commit crimes through the hope of expiating them;
wherefore, they have been the real cause of all the evils by which
the people among whom those expiatory practices were used, have been
continually tormented.

Q. Does the law of nature order sincerity?

A. Yes; for lying, perfidy, and perjury create distrust, quarrels,
hatred, revenge, and a crowd of evils among men, which tend to their
common destruction; while sincerity and fidelity establish confidence,
concord, and peace, besides the infinite good resulting from such a
state of things to society.

Q. Does it prescribe mildness and modesty?

A. Yes; for harshness and obduracy, by alienating from us the hearts of
other men, give them an inclination to hurt us; ostentation and vanity,
by wounding their self-love and jealousy, occasion us to miss the end of
a real utility.

Q. Does it prescribe humility as a virtue?

A. No; for it is a propensity in the human heart to despise secretly
everything that presents to it the idea of weakness; and self-debasement
encourages pride and oppression in others; the balance must be kept in
equipoise.

Q. You have reckoned simplicity of manners among the social virtues;
what do you understand by that word?

A. I mean the restricting our wants and desires to what is truly useful
to the existence of the citizen and his family; that is to say, the man
of simple manners has but few wants, and lives content with a little.

Q. How is this virtue prescribed to us?

A. By the numerous advantages which the practice of it procures to the
individual and to society; for the man whose wants are few, is free at
once from a crowd of cares, perplexities, and labors; he avoids many
quarrels and contests arising from avidity and a desire of gain; he
spares himself the anxiety of ambition, the inquietudes of possession,
and the uneasiness of losses; finding superfluity everywhere, he is the
real rich man;