rding as there are or are
not eternal joys to hope for, that it is impossible to take one step
with sense and judgment, unless we regulate our course by our view of
this point which ought to be our ultimate end.

Thus our first interest and our first duty is to enlighten ourselves on
this subject, whereon depends all our conduct. Therefore among those who
do not believe, I make a vast difference between those who strive with
all their power to inform themselves, and those who live without
troubling or thinking about it.

I can have only compassion for those who sincerely bewail their doubt,
who regard it as the greatest of misfortunes, and who, sparing no effort
to escape it, make of this inquiry their principal and most serious
occupations.

But as for those who pass their life without thinking of this ultimate
end of life, and who, for this sole reason that they do not find within
themselves the lights which convince them of it, neglect to seek them
elsewhere, and to examine thoroughly whether this opinion is one of
those which people receive with credulous simplicity, or one of those
which, although obscure in themselves, have nevertheless a solid and
immovable foundation, I look upon them in a manner quite different.

This carelessness in a matter which concerns themselves, their eternity,
their all, moves me more to anger than pity; it astonishes and shocks
me; it is to me monstrous. I do not say this out of the pious zeal of a
spiritual devotion. I expect, on the contrary, that we ought to have
this feeling from principles of human interest and self-love; for this
we need only see what the least enlightened persons see.

We do not require great education of the mind to understand that here is
no real and lasting satisfaction; that our pleasures are only vanity;
that our evils are infinite; and, lastly, that death, which threatens us
every moment, must infallibly place us within a few years under the
dreadful necessity of being for ever either annihilated or unhappy.

There is nothing more real than this, nothing more terrible. Be we as
heroic as we like, that is the end which awaits the noblest life in the
world. Let us reflect on this, and then say whether it is not beyond
doubt that there is no good in this life but in the hope of another;
that we are happy only in proportion as we draw near it; and that, as
there are no more woes for those who have complete assurance of
eternity, so there is no more happi