ers *, man is driven to take refuge in fociety, not by any natural love which he bears to his own kind, but becaufe without the affiftance of others he is incapable of fubfifting with eafe or fafety. Society, upon this account, becomes neceffary to him, and whatever tends to its fupport and welfare, he confiders as having a remote tendency to his own intereft, and, on the contrary, whatever is likely to disturb or deftroy it, he regards as in fome measure hurtful or pernicious to himfelf. Virtue is the great fupport and vice the great difturber of human fociety. The former therefore, is agreeable, and the latter offenfive to every man; as from the one he forefees the profperity, and from the other the ruin and diforder of what is fo neceffary for the comfort and fecurity of his existence.

That the tendency of virtue to promote, and of vice to difturb the order of fociety, when we confider it coolly and philosophically, reflects a very great beauty upon the one, and a very great deformity upon the other, cannot, as I have obferved upon a former occafion, be called in queftion. Human fociety, when we contemplate it in a certain abstract and philofophical light, appears like a great, an immense machine, whofe regular and harmonious movements produce a thousand agreeable effects. As in any other beautiful and noble machine that was the production of human art, whatever tended to render its move

* Puffendorff.

Mandeville.

Cc 3

ments

ments more smooth and eafy, would derive a beauty from this effect, and, on the contrary, whatever tended to obftruct them would difplease upon that account: fo virtue, which is, as it were, the fine polish to the wheels of society, neceffarily pleases; while vice, like the vile ruft, which makes them jarr and grate upon one another, is as neceffarily offenfive. This account, therefore, of the origin of approbation and difapprobation, fo far as it derives them from a regard to the order of fociety, runs into that principle which gives beauty to utility, and which I have explained upon a former occafion; and it is from thence that this system derives all that appearance of probability which it poffeffes. When those authors defcribe the innumerable advantages of a cultivated and social, above a favage and folitary life; when they expatiate upon neceffity of virtue and good order for the maintenance of the one, and demonftrate how infallibly the prevalence of vice and difobedience to the laws tend to bring back the other, the reader is charmed with the novelty and grandeur of those views which they open to him; he fees plainly a new beauty in virtue, and a new deformity in vice, which he had never taken notice of before, and is commonly fo delighted with the discovery, that he feldom takes time to reflect, that this political view, having never occurred to him in his life before, cannot poffibly be the ground of that approbation and disapprobation with

the

which he has always been accustomed to confider thofe different qualities.

have any

When thofe authors, on the other hand, deduce from felf-love the intereft which we take in the welfare of fociety, and the esteem which upon that account we bestow upon virtue, they do not mean, that when we in this age applaud the virtue of Cato, and deteft the villainy of Catiline, our fentiments are influenced by the notion of any benefit we receive from the one, or of any detriment we fuffer from the other. It was not because the profperity or fubverfion of fociety, in those remote ages and nations, was apprehended to influence upon our happiness or mifery in the present times; that according to those philofophers, we esteemed the virtuous, and blamed the diforderly character. They never imagined that our fentiments were influenced by any benefit or damage which we fuppofed actually to redound to us, from either; but by that which might have redounded to us, had we lived in thofe diftant ages and countries; or by that which might ftill redound to us, if in our own times we fhould meet with characters of the fame kind. The idea, in fhort, which those authors were groping about, but which they were never able to unfold diftinctly, was that indirect fympathy which we feel with the gratitude or refentment of those who received the benefit or fuffered the damage refulting from fuch oppofite characters and it was this which they were indiftinctly pointing at, when they said, Cc 4

that

that it was not the thought of what we had gained or fuffered which prompted our applause or indignation, but the conception or imagination of what we might gain or fuffer if we were to act in fociety with fuch affo

ciates.

Sympathy, however, cannot, in any sense, be regarded as a selfish principle. When I fympathize with your forrow or your indignation, it may be pretended, indeed, that my emotion is founded in felf-love, because it arifes from bringing your cafe home to myfelf, from putting myself in your fituation, and thence conceiving what I fhould feel in the like circumstances. But though fympathy is very properly faid to arise from an imaginary change of fituations with the perfon principally concerned, yet this imaginary change is not supposed to happen to me in my own perfon and character, but in that of the perfon with whom I fympathize. When I condole with you for the lofs of your only fon, in order to enter into your grief I do not confider what I, a person of such a character and profeffion, fhould fuffer, if I had a fon, and if that fon was unfortunately to die but I confider what I fhould fuffer if I was really you, and I not only change circumftances with you, but I change perfons and characters. My grief, therefore, is entirely upon your account, and not in the least upon my own. It is not, therefore, in the leaft felfifh. How can that be regarded as a selfish paffion, which does not arife even from the imagination of

:

any thing that has befallen, or that relates to myself, in my own proper perfon and character, but which is entirely occupied about what relates to you. A man may sympathize with a woman in child-bed; though it is impoffible that he fhould conceive himself as fuffering her pains in his own proper person, and character. That whole account of human nature, however, which deduces all fentiments and affections from felf-love, which has made fo much noife in the world, but which, fo far as I know, has never yet been fully and diftinctly explained, feems to me to have arisen from fome confused misapprehenfion of the system of sympathy.

CHA P. II.

Of thofe fyftems which make reafon the principle of approbation.

T is well known to have been the doctrine of Mr. Hobbs, that a ftate of nature, is a ftate of war; and that antecedent to the institution of civil government there could be no fafe or peaceable fociety among men. To preserve society, therefore, according to him, was to fupport civil government, and to dif troy civil government was the fame thing as to put an end to fociety. But the existence of civil government depends upon the obedience that is paid to the fupreme magiftrate. The moment he loses his authority, all government