Abhandlung über die allgemeine Zusammenkunft der Freymaurer, bei den Gesundbrunnen in Wilhelmsbad

[He] showed these dangerous orators the absurdity of their claims through the simplest and most convincing reasons. (i) The Epicureans followers of Epicurus who sought pleasure as the highest good, who wanted to support their system of sensual pleasure, (*) asserted that the good was sometimes contrary to the useful. However, they were accused of the falsehood of this principle by being told that everything in nature is governed by unchangeable laws. They were told that whatever overturns the order of these laws also shifts the order of nature; (k) that this creates confusion, and that confusion is the opposite of rest and peace, without which there could be no happiness. Therefore, the man who seeks peace will never disrupt the order of nature; he will rather live according to its laws.

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(i) Plato, The Republic, in the 32nd Book. Note: Plato's Republic contains only ten books; this may be a citation error or a reference to a specific numbered edition used in 1784.

(*) We are now well accustomed to seeing from the French gentlemen that they know the Greek philosophers only from translations and distorted extracts. It will therefore be superfluous to mention here that the author has not sufficiently examined the long-vindicated philosophy of Epicurus, which has been restored to its full dignity.

These initials likely refer to the editor or translator of the German edition, providing a critical commentary on the original French author's work.

(k) Where there is shame, there can be no utility. original Latin: "Ubi turpitudo sit, ibi utilitatem esse non posse." Cicero, On Duties, Book III, chapter 8. Men pervert the foundations of nature when they separate utility from honesty. original Latin: "Pervertunt homines ea quae sind fundamenta naturae, quum utilitatem ab honestate sejungunt." Ibid. Book III, chapter 38.

(l) When he looks within himself, when he consults the original law, when he reflects: then he will feel that sensual pleasure, which leaves a void in the soul and is often accompanied by disgust and always by remorse, cannot possibly be the source of happiness. Or one would have to claim that even this void, this disgust, and this remorse had the qualities of happiness, and that would be absurd. (*)

But you, who doubt the truth which I am not skillful enough to lay upon your heart—the truth that nothing can be good that is not useful, and nothing is useful but the good—ask the oracles of philosophy, (m) and they will tell you that the opposite resists nature, that everything shameful is contrary to nature, (n) that nature drives you to wish for what is useful; that, while calling you to it, she cannot move you to desire a shameful thing,

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(l) To live in accordance with nature. original Latin: "Convenienter naturae vivere." Ibid. Book III, chapter 3.

(*) In this foreign work, I have not allowed myself to shorten the author's immense verbosity in generally known propositions, nor the army of citations for the most common truths.

(m) Cicero, On Duties, Book III, chapter 8.

(n) Ibid. Book III, chapter 28. Plato, The Republic, Book IV.