An English translation ran to a second edition (1795).] the plan had been conceived some years before.
Volney was a traveller, deeply interested in oriental and classical antiquities, and, like Louis Le Roy, he approached the problem of man's destinies from the point of view of a student of the revolutions of empires.
The book opens with melancholy reflections amid the ruins of Palmyra.
"Thus perish the works of men, and thus do nations and empires vanish away...

Who can assure us that desolation like this will not one day be the lot of our own country ?" Some traveller like himself will sit by the banks of the Seine, the Thames, or the Zuyder Zee, amid silent ruins, and weep for a people inurned and their greatness changed into an empty name.

Has a mysterious Deity pronounced a secret malediction against the earth?
In this disconsolate mood he is visited by an apparition, who unveils the causes of men's misfortunes and shows that they are due to themselves.

Man is governed by natural invariable laws, and he has only to study them to know the springs of his destiny, the causes of his evils and their remedies.

The laws of his nature are self-love, desire of happiness, and aversion to pain; these are the simple and prolific principles of everything that happens in the moral world.