C.-F. Volney

Like the world of which he forms a part, man is governed by natural laws, regular in their course, uniform in their effects, immutable in their essence; and those laws, — the common source of good and evil, — are not written among the distant stars, nor hidden in codes of mystery; inherent in the nature of terrestrial beings, interwoven with their existence, at all times and in all places, they are present to man; they act upon his senses, they warn his understanding, and give to every action its reward or punishment. Let man then know these laws! let him comprehend the nature of the elements which surround him, and also his own nature, and he will know the regulators of his destiny; he will know the causes of his evils and the remedies he should apply.

Constantin Francois de Volney, The Ruins: or, Meditations on the Revolutions of Empires, Joel Barlow and Thomas Jefferson, translators (French original: 1793), Chapter V: “Condition of Man in the Universe.”