THE RUINS,
OR, MEDITATION ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF EMPIRES
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CONDITION OF MAN IN THE UNIVERSE.
The Genius, after some moments of silence, resumed in these words:
I have told thee already, O friend of truth! that man vainly
ascribes his misfortunes to obscure and imaginary agents; in vain
he seeks as the source of his evils mysterious and remote causes.
In the general order of the universe his condition is, doubtless,
subject to inconveniences, and his existence governed by superior
powers; but those powers are neither the decrees of a blind
fatality, nor the caprices of whimsical and fantastic beings. Like
the world of which he forms a part, man is governed by natural
laws, regular in their course, uniform in their effects, immutable
in their essence; and those laws,--the common source of good and
evil,--are not written among the distant stars, nor hidden in codes
of mystery; inherent in the nature of terrestrial beings,
interwoven with their existence, at all times and in all places,
they are present to man; they act upon his senses, they warn his
understanding, and give to every action its reward or punishment.
Let man then know these laws! let him comprehend the nature of the
elements which surround him, and also his own nature, and he will
know the regulators of his destiny; he will know the causes of his
evils and the remedies he should apply.
When the hidden power which animates the universe, formed the globe
which man inhabits, he implanted in the beings composing it,
essential properties which became the law of their individual
motion, the bond of their reciprocal relations, the cause of the
harmony of the whole; he thereby established a regular order of
causes and effects, of principles and consequences, which, under an
appearance of chance, governs the universe, and maintains the
equilibrium of the world. Thus, he gave to fire, motion and
activity; to air, elasticity; weight and density to matter; he made
air lighter than water, metal heavier than earth, wood less
cohesive than steel; he decreed flame to ascend, stones to fall,
plants to vegetate; to man, who was to be exposed to the action of
so many different beings, and still to preserve his frail life, he
gave the faculty of sensation. By this faculty all action hurtful
to his existence gives him a feeling of pain and evil, and all
which is salutary, of pleasure and happiness. By these sensations,
man, sometimes averted from that which wounds his senses, sometimes
allured towards that which soothes them, has been obliged to
cherish and preserve his own life; thus, self-love, the desire of
happiness, aversion to pain, become the essential and primary laws
imposed on man by nature herself--the laws which the directing
power, whatever it be, has established for his government--and
which laws, like those of motion in the physical world, are the
simple and fruitful principle of whatever happens in the moral
world.
Such, then, is the condition of man: on one side, exposed to the
action of the elements which surround him, he is subject to many
inevitable evils; and if, in this decree, nature has been severe,
on the other hand, just and even indulgent she has not only
tempered the evils with equivalent good, she has also enabled him
to increase the good and alleviate the evil. She seems to say:
"Feeble work of my hands, I owe thee nothing, and I give thee life;
the world wherein I placed thee was not made for thee, yet I give
thee the use of it; thou wilt find in it a mixture of good and
evil; it is for thee to distinguish them; for thee to guide thy
footsteps in a path containing thorns as well as roses. Be the
arbiter of thine own fate; I put thy destiny into thine own hands!"
Yes, man is made the architect of his own destiny; he, himself,
hath been the cause of the successes or reverses of his own
fortune; and if, on a review of all the pains with which he has
tormented his own life, he finds reason to weep over his own
weakness or imprudence yet, considering the beginnings from which
he sat out, and the height attained, he has, perhaps, still reason
to presume on his strength, and to pride himself on his genius.
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