inhospitable desert, where he might never more behold the face of a human creature, nor read in the countenance of mankind the condemnation of his crimes. But folitude is ftill more dread-ful than fociety. His own thoughts can prefent him with nothing but what is black, unfortunate, and difaftrous, the melancholy forebodings of incomprehensible misery and ruin. The horror of folitude drives him back into fociety, and he comes again into the presence of mankind, aftonished to appear before them, loaded with fhame and distracted with fear, in order to fupplicate fome little protection from the countenance of thofe very judges, who he knows have already all unanimoufly condemned him. Such is the nature of that fentiment, which is properly called remorfe; of all the fentiments which can enter the human breaft the most dreadful. It is made up of fhame from the sense of the impropriety of past conduct; of grief for the effects of it; of pity for those who fuffer by it; and of the dread and terror of punishment from the consciousness of the juftly provoked refentment of all rational creatures.

The oppofite behaviour naturally inspires the op→ posite sentiment. The man who, not from frivolous fancy, but from proper motives, has performed a generous action, when he looks forward to those whom he has served, feels himself to be the natural object of their love and gratitude, and by fympathy with them, of the esteem and approbation of all mankind. And when he looks backward to the motive from which he acted, and furveys it in the light

in which the indifferent fpectator will furvey it, he still continues to enter into it, and applauds himself by fympathy with the approbation of this fuppofed impartial judge. In both these points of view his own conduct appears to him every way agreeable. His mind, at the thought of it, is filled with cheerfulness, ferenity, and compofure. He is in friendship and harmony with all mankind, and looks upon his fellow-creatures with confidence and benevolent fatisfaction, fecure that he has rendered himself worthy of their most favorable regards In the combination of all these sentiments confifts the consciousnefs of merit, or of deferved reward.

IT

CHA P. III

the utility of this conflitution of Nature.

T is thus that man, who can fubfift only in fociety, was fitted by nature to that fituation for which he was made. All the members of human fociety ftand in need of each other's affiftance, and are likewife exposed to mutual injuries. Where the neceffary affiftance is reciprocally afforded from love, from gratitude, from friendship, and esteem, the fociety flourishes and is happy. All the different members of it are bound together by the agreeable bands of love and affection, and are, as it were, drawn to one common centre of mutual good offices.

But though the neceffary affiftance fhould not be afforded from fuch generous and difinterested

motives, though among the different members of the fociety there fhould be no mutual love and affection, the fociety, though less happy and agreeable, will not neceffarily be diffolved. Society may fubfift among different men, as among different merchants, from a fense of its utility 2 without any mutual love or affection; and though

no

man in it fhould owe any obligation, or be bound in gratitude to any other, it may ftill be. upheld by a mercenary exchange of good offices according to an agreed valuation.

Society, however, cannot fubfift among those who are at all times ready to hurt and injure one another. The moment that injury begins, the moment that mutual refentment and animofity take place, all the bands of it are broke asunder, and the different members of which it confifted are, as it were, diffipated and scattered abroad by the violence and oppofition of their discordant affections. If there is any fociety among robbers, and murderers, they must at leaft, according to the trite observation, abstain from robbing and murdering one another. Beneficence, therefore, is lefs effential to the existence of society than juftice. Society may fubfift, though not in the most comfortable state, without beneficence; but the prevalence of injuftice muft utterly deftroy it.

Though Nature, therefore, exhorts mankind to acts of beneficence, by the pleafing confcioufnefs of deferved reward, fhe has not thought it neceffary to guard and enforce the practice of it by the terrors of merited punishment in case it

fhould be neglected. It is the ornament which embellishes, not the foundation which fupports the building, and which it was, therefore, fufficient to recommend, but by no means neceffary to impose. Juftice, on the contrary is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice. If it is removed, the great, the immenfe fabric of human fociety, that fabric which to raise and fupport feems in this world, if I may say so, to have been the peculiar and darling care of Nature, must in a moment crumble into atoms. In order to enforce the obfervation of juftice, therefore, Nature has implanted in the human breast that consciousness of ill-defert, those terrors of merited punishment which attend upon its violation as the great fafeguards of the affociation of mankind, to protect the weak, to curb the violent, and to chastise the guilty. Men, though naturally fympathetic, feel fo little for an other, with whom they have no particular connexion, in comparison of what they feel for themselves; the mifery of one, who is merely their fellow-creature, is of fo little importance to them in comparison even of a small conveniency of their own; they have it fo much in their power to hurt him, and may have so many temptations to do so, that if this principle did not stand up within them in his defence, and overawe them into a refpect for his innocence, they would, like wild beafts, be at all times ready to fly upon him; and a man would enter affembly of men as he enters a den of lions.

an

In every part of the univerfe we observe

means adjusted with the niceft artifice to the ends which they are intended to produce; and in the mechanism of a plant, or animal body, admire how every thing is contrived for advancing the two great purposes of nature, the support of the individual, and the propagation of the species. But in these, and in all such objects, we ftill diftinguifh the efficient from the final caufe of their feveral motions and organizations. The digestion of the food, the circulation of the blood, and the fecretion of the feveral juices which are drawn from it, are operations all of them neceffary for the great purposes of animal life. Yet we never endeavour to account for them from thofe purposes as from their efficient causes, nor imagine that the blood circulates, or that the food digefts of its own accord, and with a view or intention to the purposes of circulation or digeftion. The wheels of the watch are all admirably adjusted to the end for which it was made, the pointing of the hour. All their various motions conspire in the nicest manner to produce this effect. If they were endowed with a defire and intention to produce it, they could not do it better. Yet we never afcribe any fuch defire or intention to them but to the watch-maker, and we know that they are put into motion by a spring, which intends the effect it produces as little as they do. But though, in accounting for the operations of bodies; we never fail to diftinguish in this manner the efficient from the final caufe, in accounting for thofe of the mind we are very apt to confound