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But I know not how it is, I
fear that girl. Her moral ascendency, as they call it, is so dreadful to
me, that I often feel as if I hated her. What right has she to subjugate
a spirit like mine, by the influence of her sense of honor and her
virtuous principles? or to school me to my face by her example? I am not
a man disposed to brook inferiority, yet she sometimes makes me feel as
if I were a monster. However, she is a fool, and talks of happiness as
if it were anything but a chimera or a dream. Is she herself happy? I
would be glad to see the mortal that is. Do her virtues make her happy?
No. Then where is the use of this boasted virtue, if it will not procure
that happiness after which all are so eager in pursuit, but which none
has ever yet attained? Was Christ, who is said to have been spotless,
happy? No; he was a man of sorrows. Away, then, with this cant of
virtue. It is a shadow, a deception; a thing, like religion, that has
no existence, but takes our senses, our interests, and our passions, and
works with them under its own mask.


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