Their body and mind alike crumble into a hideous wreck of humanity; idiocy and disease become perpetuated in their miserable offspring, and distant generations suffer for the bigoted morality of their forefathers. Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality; it strikes at the root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than half of the human race to misery, that some few may monopolize according to law. A system could not well have been devised more studiously hostile to human happiness than marriage.

I conceive that from the abolition of marriage, the fit and natural arrangement of sexual connection would result. I by no means assert that the intercourse would be promiscuous: on the contrary, it appears, from the relation of parent to child, that this union is generally of long duration, and marked above all others with generosity and self-devotion. But this is a subject which it is perhaps premature to discuss. That which will result from the abolition of marriage will be natural and right; because choice and change will be exempted from restraint.

In fact, religion and morality, as they now stand, compose a practical code of misery and servitude: the genius of human happiness must tear every leaf from the accursed book of God ere man can read the inscription on his heart. How would morality, dressed up in stiff stays and finery, start from her own disgusting image should she look in the mirror of nature! —

6. 45, 46: —

To the red and baleful sun
That faintly twinkles there.

The north polar star, to which the axis of the earth, in its present state of obliquity, points. It is exceedingly probable, from many considerations, that this obliquity will gradually diminish, until the equator coincides with the ecliptic: the nights and days will then become equal on the earth throughout the year, and probably the seasons also. There is no great extravagance in presuming that the progress of the perpendicularity of the poles may be as rapid as the progress of intellect; or that there should be a perfect identity between the moral and physical improvement of the human species. It is certain that wisdom is not compatible with disease, and that, in the present state of the climates of the earth, health, in the true and comprehensive sense of the word, is out of the reach of civilized man. Astronomy teaches us that the earth is now in its progress, and that the poles are every year becoming more and more perpendicular to the ecliptic. The strong evidence afforded by the history of mythology, and geological researches, that some event of this nature has taken place already, affords a strong presumption that this progress is not merely an oscillation, as has been surmised by some late astronomers. (Laplace, “Systeme du Monde”.)

Bones of animals peculiar to the torrid zone have been found in the north of Siberia, and on the banks of the river Ohio. Plants have been found in the fossil state in the interior of Germany, which demand the present climate of Hindostan for their production. (Cabanis, “Rapports du Physique et du Moral de l’Homme”, volume 2 page 406.) The researches of M. Bailly establish the existence of a people who inhabited a tract in Tartary 49 degrees north latitude, of greater antiquity than either the Indians, the Chinese, or the Chaldeans, from whom these nations derived their sciences and theology. (Bailly, “Lettres sur les Sciences, a Voltaire”.) We find, from the testimony of ancient writers, that Britain, Germany, and France were much colder than at present, and that their great rivers were annually frozen over. Astronomy teaches us also that since this period the obliquity of the earth’s position has been considerably diminished.

6. 171-173: —

No atom of this turbulence fulfils
A vague and unnecessitated task,
Or acts but as it must and ought to act.

‘Deux examples serviront a nous rendre plus sensible le principe qui vient d’etre pose; nous emprunterons l’un du physique at l’autre du moral. Dans un tourbillon de poussiere qu’eleve un vent impetueux, quelque confus qu’il paraisse a nos yeux; dans la plus affreuse tempete excitee par des vents opposes qui soulevent les flots, — il n’y a pas une seule molecule de poussiere ou d’eau qui soit placee au HASARD, qui n’ait sa cause suffisante pour occuper le lieu ou elle se trouve, et qui n’agisse rigoureusement de la maniere dont ella doit agir. Un geometre qui connaitrait exactement les differentes forces qui agissent dans ces deux cas, at las proprietes des molecules qui sent mues, demontrerait que d’apres des causes donnees, chaque molecule agit precisement comme ella doit agir, et ne peut agir autrement qu’elle ne fait.

‘Dans les convulsions terribles qui agitent quelquefois les societes politiques, et qui produisent souvent le renversement d’un empire, il n’y a pas une seule action, une seule parole, une seule pensee, une seule volonte, une seule passion dans las agens qui concourent a la revolution comme destructeurs ou comme victimes, qui ne soit necessaire, qui n’agissa comme ella doit agir, qui n’opere infailliblemont les effets qu’eile doit operer, suivant la place qu’occupent ces agens dana ce tourbillon moral. Cela paraitrait evident pour une intelligence qui sera en etat de saisir et d’apprecier toutes las actions at reactions des esprits at des corps de ceux qui contribuent a cette revolution.’—”Systeme de la Nature”, volume 1, page 44.

6. 198: —

Necessity! thou mother of the world!

He who asserts the doctrine of Necessity means that, contemplating the events which compose the moral and material universe, he beholds only an immense and uninterrupted chain of causes and effects, no one of which could occupy any other place than it does occupy, or act in any other place than it does act. The idea of necessity is obtained by our experience of the connection between objects, the uniformity of the operations of nature, the constant conjunction of similar events, and the consequent inference of one from the other. Mankind are therefore agreed in the admission of necessity, if they admit that these two circumstances take place in voluntary action. Motive is to voluntary action in the human mind what cause is to effect in the material universe. The word liberty, as applied to mind, is analogous to the word chance as applied to matter: they spring from an ignorance of the certainty of the conjunction of antecedents and consequents.

Every human being is irresistibly impelled to act precisely as he does act: in the eternity which preceded his birth a chain of causes was generated, which, operating under the name of motives, make it impossible that any thought of his mind, or any action of his life, should be otherwise than it is. Were the doctrine of Necessity false, the human mind would no longer be a legitimate object of science; from like causes it would be in vain that we should expect like effects; the strongest motive would no longer be paramount over the conduct; all knowledge would be vague and undeterminate; we could not predict with any certainty that we might not meet as an enemy to-morrow him with whom we have parted in friendship to-night; the most probable inducements and the clearest reasonings would lose the invariable influence they possess. The contrary of this is demonstrably the fact.