lie: the merit or demerit, that is ascribed to an action are ideas
originating in the effects, whether favourable or pernicious, that
result to those who experience its operation; when, therefore, it should
be conceded, that the agent was necessity, it is not less certain, that
the action would be either good or bad; estimable or contemptible, to
those who must feel its influence; in short that it would be capable of
either eliciting their love, or exciting their anger. Love and anger are
modes of existence, suitable to modify, beings of the human species:
when, therefore, man irritates himself against his fellow, he intends to
excite his fear, or even to punish him, in order to deter him from
committing that which is displeasing to him. Moreover his anger is
necessary; it is the result of his Nature; the consequence of his
temperament. The painful sensation produced by a stone that falls on the
arm, does not displease the less, because it comes from a cause deprived
of will; which acts by the necessity of its Nature. In contemplating man
as acting necessarily, it is impossible to avoid distinguishing that
mode of action or being which is agreeable, which elicits approbation,
from that which is afflicting, which irritates, which Nature obliges him
to blame and to prevent. From this it will he seen, that the system of
fatalism, does not in any manner change the actual state of things, and
is by no means calculated to confound man's ideas of virtue and vice.

Man's Nature always revolts against that which opposes it: there are men
so choleric, that they infuriate themselves even against insensible and
inanimate objects; reflection on their own impotence to modify these
objects ought to conduct them back to reason. Parents are frequently
very much to be blamed for correcting their children with anger: they
should be contemplated as beings who are not yet modified; or who have,
perhaps, been very badly modified by themselves: nothing is more common
in life, than to see men punish faults of which they are themselves the