practice of actions which are useful to the individual and to society.

5 What is vice according to the law of nature? It is the practice of actions prejudicial to the individual and to society.

6 In what manner does the law of nature prescribe the practice of good and virtue, and forbid that of evil and of vice? By the moral and physical advantages resulting from the practice of good and virtue, and the injuries which our very existence receives from the practice of evil and vice.

7 What division do you make of the virtues? We divide them into three classes; 1st, Private virtues, or those which refer to single and insulated persons; 2d, Domestic virtues, or those which relate to families; 3d, Social virtues, or those which respect society at large.

SECTION V.

Of individual or private virtues; of knowledge, temperance, industry, cleanliness.

1 Which are the private virtues? There are four principal ones: namely, knowledge; which comprehends prudence and wisdom. 2d, Temperance; which includes sobriety and chastity. 3d, Activity; that is, the love of labor, and a proper employment of our time. 4th, Lastly; cleanliness, or purity of body, as well in our clothing, as in our dwellings.

2 How does the law of nature prescribe to us the possession of knowledge? In this way; The man who is acquainted with the causes and effects of things, provides in a very extensive and certain manner for his own preservation, and the developement of his faculties. Knowledge is for him, as it were light acting upon its appropriate organ, making him discern all the objects which surround him, and in the midst of which he moves with precision and clearness.

3 And for this reason, we used to say an enlightened man, to designate, a wise and well informed man. By the help of knowledge and information, we are never left without resources, and means of subsistence; and whence a philosopher, who had suffered shipwreck, observed justly to his companions, who were lamenting the loss of their fortunes, "As for me, I carry all my fortune in myself."

4 What is the vice opposed to knowledge? Ignorance. How does the law of nature forbid ignorance? By the great injury which our existence sustains from it; for the ignorant, who are unacquainted with either causes or effects, commit, every instant, mistakes the most pernicious to themselves

or others; like a blind man who walks groping his way, and who at every step stumbles against, or is jostled by his companions.

5 What is prudence? An anticipated view, a foresight of effects, and the consequences of every event: a foresight by which a man avoids the dangers which threaten him, and seizes and raises up opportunities which are favorable: whence it appears that he provides, on a large and sure scale, for his present and future conservation; while the imprudent man, who neither calculates his progress nor his conduct, the efforts required, nor the resistances to overcome, falls every moment into a thousand difficulties and dangers; which more or less slowly destroy his faculties and his being.

6 What is temperance? A well regulated employment of our faculties; which prevents our ever exceeding in our sensible pleasures the end of nature, self-conservation. It is the moderation of our passions. What is the vice opposed to temperance? The want of government over our passions; an over-great eagerness to possess enjoyments in a word, cupidity. What are the principal branches of temperance? Sobriety and chastity.

7 In what manner does the law of nature enjoin sobriety? By its powerful influence over our health. The man of sobriety digests his food with comfort; he is not oppressed by the weight of his aliment; his ideas are clear and easily impressed; he performs every function well; he attends with diligence to his business; he grows old free from sickness; he does not throw away his money in remedies for disorders; he enjoys with gay good humor the goods which fortune or prudence have procured for him. Thus does generous nature make a thousand rewards flow from a single virtue.

8 By what means does she prohibit gluttony? By the numerous evils attached to it. The glutton, oppressed by his aliment, digests with pain and difficulty; his head, disturbed by the fumes arising during bad digestion, is incapable of receiving neat and clear ideas; he gives himself up with fury to the inordinate movements of luxury and anger, which destroy his health; his body becomes fat, heavy, and unfit for labor; he passes through painful and expensive fits of sickness; he rarely lives to old age, and his latter part of life is marked by infirmity and disgust.

9 In what light does this law consider drunkenness? As the vilest and most pernicious of vices. The drunkard, deprived of the sense and reason given us by God, profanes

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the gifts of the divinity; he lowers himself to the condition of the brutes; incapable of directing his steps, he totters and falls as in a fit of epilepsy; he wounds himself, and endangers his own life.

10 His weakness in this state renders him the plaything and the scorn of all around him: he contracts, during his drunkenness, ruinous engagements, and loses the management of his affairs: he suffers violent and outrageous observations to escape him, which raise him up enemies and bring him to repentance: he fills his house with trouble and chagrin; and he concludes by a premature death, or an old age, comfortless and diseased.

11 Does the law of nature prescribe chastity? Yes. How does it forbid libertinism? By the innumerable evils which it entails upon our existence, physical and moral. The man who abandons himself to it, becomes enervated and languid; he is no longer able to attend to his studies or his business; he contracts idle and expensive habits, which diminish his means of livelihood, his reputation and his credit; his intrigues occasion him embarrassments, cares, quarrels and lawsuits, not to take into the account heavy and grievous diseases; and lastly, a premature and infirm old age.

12 Ought modesty to be considered as a virtue? Yes; because modesty maintains the mind and body in all the habits tending to the good order and self-preservation of the individual. A modest woman is esteemed, while the immodest, unchaste woman is despised, rejected, and abandoned to misery and disgrace.

13 Why do you say that activity is a virtue according to the law of nature? Because the man who labors and employs his time usefully, derives, from so doing, innumerable advantages with respect to his existence. Is he poor? his labor furnishes him with his subsistence; and if, in addition, he issober, continent and prudent, he soon acquires many conveniences, and enjoys the sweets of life: his very labor produces in him those virtues; for as long as he continues to employ his mind and his body, he is not affected by inordinate desires; he is free from dulness; he contracts mild and pleasant habits; he augments his strength and his health, and arrives to an old age of felicity and peace.

14 Are idleness and sloth then vices in the order of nature? Yes; and the most pernicious of all vices; for they lead to In idleness and sloth man remains ignorant, every other. and even loses the knowledge which he had before acquired,

falling into all the evils which accompany ignorance and folly. 15 In idleness and sloth, man, devoured by listless dulness, gives himself up to the dominion of sense, whose empire, as it increases and extends from day to day, renders him intemperate, gluttonous, luxurious, enervate, cowardly, base, and despicable. The certain effects of all which vices are, the ruin of his fortune, the wasting of his health, and the termination of his life in the anguish of disease, poverty and disgrace.

16 If I understand you, it would appear that poverty is a vice. No; it is not a vice; but still less is it a virtue; for it is much more frequently injurious than useful; it is even commonly the result of vice, or its first occasion; for every individual vice conducts towards indigence; even to the privation of the necessaries of life; and when a man is in want of the necessaries, he is on the point of endeavoring to procure them by vicious methods; that is, methods hurtful to society.

17 All the private virtues, on the contrary, tend to procure for man an abundance of subsistence; and when he has more than he can consume, it becomes more easy for him to give to others, and to perform actions useful to society.

18 Why do you rank cleanliness in the class of virtues? Because it is really one of the most important, as it has a powerful influence on the health and preservation of the body. Cleanliness, as well in our garments as in our dwellings, prevents the pernicious effects of dampness, of bad smells, and of contagious vapors arising from substances abandoned to putrify. Cleanliness keeps up a free perspiration, renews the air, refreshes the blood, and even animates and enlivens the mind.

19 Whence we see that persons, attentive to the cleanli ness of their persons and their habitations, are, in general, more healthy, and less exposed to diseases, than those who live in filth and nastiness; and it may moreover be remarked, that cleanliness brings with it, throughout every part of domestic discipline, habits of order and arrangement, which are among the first and best methods and elements of happiness.

20 Is uncleanliness then, or filthiness, a real vice? Yes; as real as drunkenness, or as sloth, from which, for the most part, it derives its origin. Uncleanliness is a secondary, and often a first cause of a multitude of slight disorders, and even of dangerous sicknesses.

21 It is well known in medicine, that it generates the itch,

the scald head, the leprosy, no less certainly than the same disorders are produced by corrupted or acrid aliments; that it contributes to the contagious power of the plague and of malignant fevers; that it even gives birth to them in hospitals and prisons; that it occasions rheumatism by incrusting the skin with dirt, and checking perspiration; not to mention the disgraceful inconvenience of being devoured by insects, the unclean appendage of abject misery.

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22 Thus all the individual or private virtues have, for their more or less direct, and more or less proximate end, the preservation of the man who practises them; while, by the servation of each individual, they tend to insure that of the family and of society at large, which is nothing more than the united sum of those individuals.

SECTION VI.

Of domestic virtues; economy, parental affection, conjúgal love, filial love, brotherly love.

1 What do you mean by domestic virtues? I mean the practice of those actions which are useful to a family, that is, to a number of persons living under one roof. What are those virtues? Economy, parental affection, conjugal love, filial love, brotherly love, and the fulfilment of the reciprocal duties of master and servant.

2 What is economy? Taken in its most extensive signification, it is the proper administration of whatever concerns the existence of the family or household; but as subsistence holds the first rank among these circumstances, the word economy has been restricted to the employment of our money in procuring for us the primary wants of life.

3 Why is economy a virtue? Because the man who enters into no useless expense, generally possesses a superabundance, which constitutes real wealth, and by means of which he procures for himself and his family, all that is truly useful and convenient; without taking into the account, that, by this means he ensures to himself resources against accidental and unforeseen losses; so that himself and his family live in a tranquil and pleasant state of ease, which is the basis of all human happiness.

4 Are dissipation and prodigality then vices? Yes: for they bring a man at last to the want of the necessaries of life; he falls into poverty, misery, and abject disgrace; so that even his acquaintance, fearful of being obliged to restore to him what he has squandered with them or upon them, fly