Ebook The Passions of the Human Soul

"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou cat bread; - such are, according to Scripture, the words that God addressed to our first parent on driving him from the terrestrial Paradise.

Adam, before his condemnation, earned his bread without any trouble. He was consequently in a state of continual pleasure, of permanent attraction.

In admitting literally this picture of the primitive state, it follows from it that we ought all to wish for the return of this state of attraction; that order of things wherein all the bread was procured without going to seek it in the sweat of one's brow.

Our critics, on seeing in the Treatise on Attraction a theory that speculates on nothing but pleasures, will reply to me: The people must think of earning their bread, and not of amusing themselves."