Self-complacency is pleasure accompanied by the idea of oneself as cause.

Self - complacency is pleasure accompanied by the idea of oneself as cause

Nothing forbids man to enjoy himself, save grim and gloomy superstition

God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things.

Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.

Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods. For these men know that, once ignorance is put aside, that wonderment would be taken away, which is the only means by which their authority is preserved.