178
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, towards 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, towards 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 whilst 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
