I had indeed often reflected on that subject before I could prevail on myself to communicate my reflections to anybody.

They were generally melancholy enough; as those usually are which carry us beyond the mere surface of things; and which would undoubtedly make the lives of all thinking men extremely miserable, if the same philosophy which caused the grief, did not at the same time administer the comfort.
On considering political societies, their origin, their constitution, and their effects, I have sometimes been in a good deal more than doubt, whether the Creator did ever really intend man for a state of happiness.
He has mixed in his cup a number of natural evils, (in spite of the boasts of stoicism they are evils,) and every endeavor which the art and policy of mankind has used from the beginning of the world to this day, in order to alleviate or cure them, has only served to introduce new mischiefs, or to aggravate and inflame the old.

Besides this, the mind of man itself is too active and restless a principle ever to settle on the true point of quiet.

It discovers every day some craving want in a body, which really wants but little.

It every day invents some new artificial rule to guide that nature which, if left to itself, were the best and surest guide.