preservation of the whole, which is necessary to procure what is
advantageous to its existence. This mechanism will also explain the
irregularity, the indecision, the inconstancy of man; and account for
that conduct, which frequently appears an inexplicable mystery, which
indeed it is, under the received systems. In consulting experience, it
will be found that the soul is submitted to precisely the same physical
laws as the material body. If the will of each individual, during a
given time, was only moved by a single cause or passion, nothing would
be more easy than to foresee his actions; but his heart is frequently
assailed by contrary powers, by adverse motives, which either act on him
simultaneously or in succession; then his brain, attracted in opposite
directions, is either fatigued, or else tormented by a state of
compression, which deprives it of activity. Sometimes it is in a state
of incommodious inaction; sometimes it is the sport of the alternate
shocks it undergoes. Such, no doubt, is the state in which man finds
himself, when a lively passion solicits him to the commission of crime,
whilst fear points out to him the danger by which it is attended: such,
also, is the condition of him whom remorse, by the continued labour of
his distracted soul, prevents from enjoying the objects he has
criminally obtained.

If the powers or causes, whether exterior or interior, acting on the
mind of man, tend towards opposite points, his soul, is well as all
other bodies, will take a mean direction between the two; in consequence
of the violence with which his soul is urged, his condition becomes
sometimes so painful that his existence is troublesome: he has no longer
a tendency to his own peculiar conservation; he seeks after death, as a
sanctuary against himself--as the only remedy to his despair: it is thus
we behold men, miserable and discontented, voluntarily destroy
themselves, whenever life becomes insupportable. Man is competent to