🚀 go-pugleaf

finding his happiness in himself, I
abandoned him to himself. And setting in revolt the creatures that were
subject to him, I made them his enemies; so that man is now become like the
brutes and so estranged from me that there scarce remains to him a dim
vision of his Author. So far has all his knowledge been extinguished or
disturbed! The senses, independent of reason, and often the masters of
reason, have led him into pursuit of pleasure. All creatures either torment
or tempt him, and domineer over him, either subduing him by their strength,
or fascinating him by their charms, a tyranny more awful and more imperious.

"Such is the state in which men now are. There remains to them some feeble
instinct of the happiness of their former state; and they are plunged in the
evils of their blindness and their lust, which have become their second
nature. "From this principle which I disclose to you, you can recognize the
cause of those contradictions which have astonished all men and have divided
them into parties holding so different views. Observe, now, all the feelings
of greatness and glory which the experience of so many woes cannot stifle,
and see if the cause of them must not be in another nature.

For Port-Royal to-morrow (Prosopopaea).--"It is in vain, O men, that you
seek within yourselves the remedy for your ills.