For what God had formerly ordained to preserve man in his innocence now fixes the sinner in his sin, and the sensations of pleasure He had wisely established as the quickest means of informing man (without distracting his reason from its true good) whether he should unite with the bodies surrounding him now exhaust his mind's capacity and attach him to objects incapable of acting on him and infinitely below him (because he considers these objects as the true causes of the happiness he enjoys upon their occasion, and because it is not up to him to arrest the motion they excite in him).