Suppose, then, that an individual, inﬂuenced partly by the weakness of all the speculative arguments that are thought so much of, and partly by the number of irregularities he finds in nature and the moral world, becomes persuaded of the proposition: There is no God; nevertheless in his own eyes he would be a worthless creature if he chose on that account to regard the laws of duty as simply fanciful, invalid, and nonobligatory, and resolved boldly to transgress them.