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CHAPTER XVII.
THAT IN TIMES MARKED BY EQUALITY OF CONDITIONS AND SCEPTICAL
OPINIONS, IT IS IMPORTANT TO REMOVE TO A DISTANCE THE
OBJECTS OF HUMAN ACTIONS.
In the ages of faith the final end of life is placed beyond life.
The men of those ages therefore, naturally, and in a manner
involuntarily, accustom themselves to fix their gaze for a long
course of years on some immoveable object, toward which they
are constantly tending; and they learn by insensible degrees to
repress a multitude of petty passing desires, in order to be the
better able to content that great and lasting desire which possesses
them. When these same men engage in the affairs of this world,
the same habits may be traced in their conduct. They are apt to
set up some general and certain aim and end to their actions here
below, toward which all their efforts are directed: they do not turn
from day to day to chase some novel object of desire, but they
have settled designs which they are never weary of pursuing.
This explains why religious nations have so often achieved such lasting results: for while they were thinking only of the other world, they had found out the great secret of success in this. Religions give men a general habit of conducting themselves with a view to futurity; in this respect they are not less useful to happiness in this life than to felicity hereafter; and this is one of their chief political characteristics.
But in proportion as the light of faith grows dim, the range of man's sight is circumscribed, as if the end and aim of human actions appeared every day to be more within his reach. When men have once allowed themselves to think no more of what is to befall them after life, they readily lapse into that complete and brutal indifference to futurity, which is but too conformable to some propensities of mankind. As soon as they have lost the
