Abstract
In the eighteenth century all the philosophers were moralists, whatever their philosophy, whatever their religion. They were not pious, they were not devout, certainly they were not orthodox, but they had a religion all the same. It was the religion of happiness. That is what they were after in morals, politics, society; that is what they were after in life itself. Not the answer to the old question, what shall I do to be saved, nor the more familiar question, what is man's whole duty to God. No, theirs was a secular religion. What must man do to be happy? What should government do to assure happiness to its citizens? Pope had made this clear, Pope who summed up so neatly what the age thought: О Happiness! Our being's end and aim good, pleasure, ease, content, whate'er thy name: that something still which prompts the eternal sigh for which we bear to live, or dare to die.(Essay on Man, IV, I, 1 ff.)
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