st have recourse to statutes, customs,
precedents, analogies, and a hundred other circumstances; some of
which are constant and inflexible, some variable and arbitrary. But the
ultimate point, in which they all professedly terminate, is the
interest and happiness of human society. Where this enters not into
consideration, nothing can appear more whimsical, unnatural, and even
superstitious, than all or most of the laws of justice and of property.

Those who ridicule vulgar superstitions, and expose the folly of
particular regards to meats, days, places, postures, apparel, have an
easy task; while they consider all the qualities and relations of the
objects, and discover no adequate cause for that affection or antipathy,
veneration or horror, which have so mighty an influence over a
considerable part of mankind. A Syrian would have starved rather than
taste pigeon; an Egyptian would not have approached bacon: But if these
species of food be examined by the senses of sight, smell, or taste,
or scrutinized by the sciences of chemistry, medicine, or physics, no
difference is ever found between them and any other species, nor
can that precise circumstance be pitched on, which may afford a just
foundation for the religious passion. A fowl on Thursday is lawful
food; on Friday abominable: Eggs in this house and in this diocese,
are permitted during Lent; a hundred paces farther, to eat them is a
damnable sin. This earth or building, yesterday was profane; to-day,
by the muttering of certain words, it has become holy and sacred. Such
reflections as these, in the mouth of a philosopher, one may safely
say, are too obvious to have any influence; because they must always,
to every man, occur at first sight; and where they prevail not, of
themselves, they are surely obstructed by education, prejudice, and
passion, not by ignorance or mistake.

It may appear to a careless view, or rather a too abstracted reflection,
that there enters a like superstition into all the sentiments of
justice; and that, if a man expose its object, or what we call property,
to the same scrutiny of sense and science, he will not, by the most
accurate enquiry, find any foundation for the difference made by moral
sentiment. I may lawfully nourish myself from this tree; but the fruit
of another of the same species, ten paces off, it is criminal for me to
touch. Had I worn this apparel an hour ago, I had merited the severest
punishment; but a man, by pronounc