The Ruins; Or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires and the Law of Nature

according to th

that tends to pres

at is

to man's destructi

sical good and evil, an

hat acts by consequences more or less remote. Calumny is a moral evil; a fair reputation is a moral good, because both one and the other occasion towards u

ord habitudes, (rei

he word moral, and

ri

to preserve, or to prod

s have classed among the works agreeable to the divinity,

to cause death is,

gislators have extended the idea of evil

an is, therefore, a cri

mmitted; for every other evil can be re

sin in the

established by nature for the preservat

ion be a meri

lity: but it is a commencement of sin and

e according to t

actions useful to the i

ant by the wo

onsidered separatel

according to t

ctions prejudicial to the

an object purely spiritual a

hat they finally relate, and that end i

rtue degrees of str

they attack or which they favor; and according to the numb

me some

n of saving the lives of ten men, than that of saving only the life of one, and an action useful

ribe the practice of good and virtu

virtue for the preservation of our body, and by the losses wh

epts are th

considered in its present effect

ou divide t

as relative to man alone; secondly, domestic virtues, as relati