If in addition to the taste for physical well-being a social condition be superadded, in which the laws and customs make no condition permanent, here is a great additional stimulant to this restlessness of temper.

Men will then be seen continually to change their track, for fear of missing the shortest cut to happiness.

It may readily be conceived that if men, passionately bent upon physical gratifications, desire eagerly, they are also easily discouraged: as their ultimate object is to enjoy, the means to reach that object must be prompt and easy, or the trouble of acquiring the gratification would be greater than the gratification itself.

Their prevailing frame of mind then is at once ardent and relaxed, violent and enervated.

Death is often less dreaded than perseverance in continuous efforts to one end.
The equality of conditions leads by a still straighter road to several of the effects which I have here described.