a consciousness of their own iniquities? Do they not know that they are
hateful and contemptible? Have they not remorse? Is their condition
happy? Persons well brought up acquire these sentiments in their
education; which are either strengthened or enfeebled by public opinion,
by habit, or by the examples set before them. In a depraved society,
remorse either does not exist, or presently disappears; because, in all
his actions, it is ever the judgment of his fellow-man that man is
obliged necessarily to regard. He never feels either shame or remorse
for actions he sees approved, that are practised by the world. Under
corrupt governments, venal souls, avaricious being, mercenary
individuals, do not blush either at meanness, robbery, or rapine, when
it is authorized by example; in licentious nations, no one blushes at
adultery except the husband, at whose expence it is committed; in
superstitious countries, man does not blush to assassinate his fellow
for his opinions. It will be obvious, therefore, that his remorse, as
well as the ideas, whether right or wrong, which man has of decency,
virtue, justice, &c. are the necessary consequence of his temperament,
modified by the society in which he lives: assassins and thieves, when
they live only among themselves, have neither shame nor remorse.

Thus, I repeat, all the actions of man are necessary those which are
always useful, which constantly contribute to the real, tend to the
permanent happiness of his species, are called _virtues_, and are
necessarily pleasing to all who experience their influence; at least, if
their passions or false opinions do not oblige them to judge in that
manner which is but little accordant with the nature of things: each man
acts, each individual judges, necessarily, according to his own peculiar
mode of existence--after the ideas, whether true or false, which he has
formed with regard to his happiness. There are necessary actions which
man is obliged to approve; there are others, that, in despite of