_Nature and her Laws_.


Man has always deceived himself when he abandoned experience to follow
imaginary systems.--He is the work of nature.--He exists in Nature.--He
is submitted to the laws of Nature.--He cannot deliver himself from
them:--cannot step beyond them even in thought. It is in vain his mind
would spring forward beyond the visible world: direful and imperious
necessity ever compels his return--being formed by Nature, he is
circumscribed by her laws; there exists nothing beyond the great whole
of which he forms a part, of which he experiences the influence. The
beings his fancy pictures as above nature, or distinguished from her,
are always chimeras formed after that which he has already seen, but of
which it is utterly impossible he should ever form any finished idea,
either as to the place they occupy, or their manner of acting--for him
there is not, there can be nothing out of that Nature which includes all
beings.

Therefore, instead of seeking out of the world he inhabits for beings
who can procure him a happiness denied to him by Nature, let him study
this Nature, learn her laws, contemplate her energies, observe the
immutable rules by which she acts.--Let him apply these discoveries to
his own felicity, and submit in silence to her precepts, which nothing
can alter.--Let him cheerfully consent to be ignorant of causes hid from
him under the most impenetrable veil.--Let him yield to the decrees of a
universal power, which can never be brought within his comprehension,
nor ever emancipate him from those laws imposed on him by his essence.

The distinction which has been so often made between the _physical_ and
the _moral_ being, is evidently an abuse of terms. Man is a being purely