Believe
me, then, my friend, that that is a miserable arithmetic, which could
estimate friendship at nothing, or at less than nothing. Respect for
you has induced me to enter into this discussion, and to hear principles
uttered, which I detest and abjure. Respect for myself now obliges me to
recall you into the proper limits of your office. When nature assigned
us the same habitation, she gave us over it a divided empire. To you she
allotted the field of science; to me that of morals.
When the circle is to be squared, or the orbit of a comet to be traced;
when the arch of greatest strength, or the solid of least resistance is
to be investigated, take up the problem; it is yours; nature has given
me no cognizance of it. In like manner, in denying to you the feelings
of sympathy, of benevolence, of gratitude, of justice, of love, of
friendship, she has excluded you from their control. To these she has
adapted the mechanism of the heart. Morals were too essential to the
happiness of man, to be risked on the uncertain combinations of the
head. She laid their foundation, therefore, in sentiment, not in
science.
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