If We Could Abandon Every Theistical Idea...

If we could abandon, for a moment, every theistical idea, it

would nevertheless remain substantially true, that the happiness of

society must depend upon the exercise of equal and reciprocal

justice. It would also be true, that benevolence is an amiable trait

in the character of man; that the cultivation of his faculties is a

duty imposed on him, because the faithful performance of his duty

extends the circle of his real felicity; that vice is the bane of

individual and social existence; that truth is to be preferred to

falsehood, activity to indolence, temperance to debauchery, and,

generally, that science and virtue claim pre-eminently over ignorance

and vice, the universal attachment of the human race. All these, and

many other particulars of a like nature, would stand as immortal

monuments of the real nature of moral principles, even after

cultivated intellect shall have performed the last solemn act of duty

relative to the ancient regimen, and shall have recalled bewildered

man to the happy contemplation of the laws and immutable energies of

the physical universe.

 --Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery Among the Human Species