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Rh in its own defeat. This is the picture of self-love, the whole existence of which is nothing but one long and mighty agitation. The sea is a sensible image of it, and self-love finds in the ebb and flow of the waves a faithful representation of the turbulent succession of its thoughts, and of its ceaseless movements.

What we take for virtues is often nothing but an assemblage of different actions, and of different interests, that fortune or our industry know how to arrange; and it is not always from valor and from chastity that men are valiant, and that women are chaste.