has imbibed with his mother's milk,--that have rendered him ambitious,
avaricious, envious, haughty, arrogant, debauched, intolerant,
obstinate, prejudiced, incommodious to his fellows, mischievous to
himself. It is education that carries into his system the germ of those
vices which necessarily torment him during the whole course of his life.

_Fatalism_ is reproached with discouraging man--with damping the ardour
of his soul--with plunging him into apathy--with destroying the bonds
that should connect him with society. Its opponents say, "If every thing
is necessary, we must let things go on, and not be disturbed by any
thing." But does it depend on man to be sensible or not? Is he master of
feeling or not feeling pain? If Nature has endowed him with a humane,
with a tender soul, is it possible he should not interest himself in a
very lively manner, in the welfare of beings whom he knows are necessary
to his own peculiar happiness? His feelings are necessary: they depend
on his own peculiar nature, cultivated by education. His imagination,
prompt to concern itself with the felicity of his race, causes his heart
to be oppressed at the sight of those evils his fellow-creature is
obliged to endure,--makes his soul tremble in the contemplation of the
misery arising from the despotism that crushes him--from the
superstition that leads him astray--from the passions that distract him
in a state of warfare against his neighbour. Although he knows that
death is the fatal, the necessary period to the form of all beings, his
soul is not affected in a less lively manner at the loss of a beloved
wife,--at the demise of a child calculated to console his old age,--at
the final separation from an esteemed friend who had become dear to his
heart. Although he is not ignorant that it is the essence of fire to
burn, he does not believe he is dispensed from using his utmost efforts
to arrest the progress of a conflagration. Although he is intimately
convinced that the evils to which he is a witness, are the necessary