people: these are good whenever society draws from them true felicity
and solid happiness; they are bad, they are detestable in the eye of
reason, when the happiness of society does not spring from them; they
are unwholesome when they have nothing more in their favour than the
suffrage of time, and the countenance of prejudice which rarely consults
experience, which is almost ever at variance with good sense:
notwithstanding they may have the sanction of the law, custom, religion,
public opinion, or example, they may be unworthy and may be disgraceful,
provided society is in disorder; that crime abounds; that virtue shrinks
beneath the basilisk eye of triumphant vice; they may then be said to
resemble the UPAS, whose luxuriant yet poisonous foliage, the produce of
a rank soil, becomes more baneful to those who are submitted to its
vortex, in proportion as it extends its branches. If experience he
consulted, it will be found there is no action, however abominable, that
has not received the applause, that has not obtained the approbation of
some people. Parricide, the sacrifice of children, robbery, usurpation,
cruelty, intolerance, and prostitution, have all in their turn been
licensed actions; have been advocated; have been deemed laudable and
meritorious deeds with some nations of the earth. Above all,
_superstition_ has consecrated the most unreasonable, the most revolting
customs.

Man's passions result from and depend on the motion of attraction or
repulsion, of which he is rendered susceptible by Nature; who enables
him, by his peculiar essence, to be attracted by those objects which
appear useful to him, to be repelled by those which he considers
prejudicial; it follows that government, by holding the magnet, can put
these passions into activity, has the power either of restraining them,
or of giving them a favorable or an unfavorable direction. All his
passions are constantly limited by either loving or hating, seeking or