ABSTRACT
Man is always willing to be warned of his existence in the most lively manner, as long as he can be so without pain. Interest is the object to which each individual according to his temperament and his own peculiar ideas, attaches his welfare; from which it will be perceived that this interest is never more than that which each contemplates as necessary to his happiness. The honest man is he to whom truth has shewn his interest or his happiness in a mode of acting that others are obliged to love, are under the necessity to approve for their own peculiar interest. Morals would be a vain science if it did not incontestably prove to man that his interest consists in being virtuous. Obligation of whatever kind, can only be founded upon the probability or the certitude of either obtaining a good or avoiding an evil.
