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longer possible; for the passions know how to obscure and entangle everything; and it is with as much reason as ingenuity, that Hobbes has s:id, that if men had a lively desire not to believe that two and two fnake four, they would have succeeded in rendering this truth doubtful/; we might produce proofs of it.
On many occasions, then, it is still more difficult to conciliate to truth than to discover it. This observation discovers to us a new relation between the subject we have treated of, and that which is next to occupy us, between the study of our actions and that of our sentiments. We have perceived, and said, that we should know well the consequences of our actions, to appreciate justly, the merit or demerit of the sentiments which urse us to this or that action; and now we see that it is necessary to analyze our sentiments themselves, submit them to a rigorous examination, distinguish those which being founded on just judgments always direct us well, and those which having their source in illusions, and rising from the obliquities of our minds, cannot fail to lead us astray and form within us a false and blind conscience, which always removes us further from the road of reason, the only one leading to happiness. This is what we shall next investigate, and if we have well exposed the results of the actions of men, and the effects of their passions, it seems that it will be easy to indicate the rules which they ought to prescribe to themselves. Tins would be the true spirit of laws and the best conclusion of a treatise on the will.
