To the reader, then, I recommend attention to the hints here given; and in order to form a correct judgment how he should perform the duties which he owes to himself, and also to his fellow mortals, to study and always appeal to the laws of his organization. Let him bring every action to that never-failing index of his nature, the love of happiness and the aversion to pain. Let him sum up every day his moral accounts by this unerring rule, and this mode will never fail to make his moral path as clear as light; for as he knows that, according to the laws of his nature, he is compelled to love happiness, and to shrink from pain, so also, is every one that has life, governed by the laws of pleasure and pain. The laws of our organization, and the voice of reason united, proclaim to every human being, that the whole of man’s duty towards his fellow man consists at all times, and in all places, in increasing his happiness, and reducing his pain.
To know this, so easy to be known, and strictly to practise it, is all the revelation which man requires. But pretended revelation has either obscured moral light, or held out lights that are false and delusive. The false light presented to man, called revealed religion, instead of conducting him safely into the haven of happiness, has continually tossed him, without rudder or compass, on the roaring billows of theology, on which troubled ocean he has met with little else than robbers and pirates.
Never, then, let us forget, that the best men or women are they, whose whole lives are directed to the promotion of the permanent happiness of every thing having life and feeling, and to the reduction of misery wherever it may be found; and that whoever shall thus act, will be not only the best, but also the happiest, of the human race.
THE END.
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*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LEGACY TO THE FRIENDS OF FREE DISCUSSION ***