Epilogue: On the social chaos of the globe

Summary

You authors of the inexact sciences claim to be working for the good of the whole human race. Do you think that the six hundred million barbarians and savages are not part of it? Yet they suffer. And what have you done for them? Nothing. Your systems are only applicable in Civilisation, whose misfortunes are aggravated each time your policies are put into practice. When you possess the art of making us happy, perhaps you will think you are fulfilling God's design by trying to limit happiness to the inhabitants of Civilisation, who occupy only a tiny part of the globe. But God sees the human race as a single family, all of whose members have a right to its blessings. He wants either the whole of mankind to be happy, or nobody at all.

If you want to promote the wishes of God you must seek for a social order that is applicable to the whole of the globe, not just to a few nations. The vastly greater number of savages and barbarians ought to warn you that they must be governed and controlled by attraction, not by force. Do you imagine you could win them over by the prospect of your customs, which can only be maintained by the use of gallows and bayonets? Customs which even your own people hate, and which all countries would rise up against if they were not held back by fear of the whip!