usand volumes of commentators, have not been found sufficient. Does
nature, whose instincts in men are all simple, embrace such complicated
and artificial objects, and create a rational creature, without trusting
anything to the operation of his reason?

But even though all this were admitted, it would not be satisfactory.
Positive laws can certainly transfer property. It is by another original
instinct, that we recognize the authority of kings and senates, and mark
all the boundaries of their jurisdiction? Judges too, even though their
sentence be erroneous and illegal, must be allowed, for the sake of
peace and order, to have decisive authority, and ultimately to determine
property. Have we original innate ideas of praetors and chancellors and
juries? Who sees not, that all these institutions arise merely from the
necessities of human society?

All birds of the same species in every age and country, built their
nests alike: In this we see the force of instinct. Men, in different
times and places, frame their houses differently: Here we perceive
the influence of reason and custom. A like inference may be drawn from
comparing the instinct of generation and the institution of property.

How great soever the variety of municipal laws, it must be confessed,
that their chief outlines pretty regularly concur; because the purposes,
to which they tend, are everywhere exactly similar. In like manner, all
houses have a roof and walls, windows and chimneys; though diversified
in their shape, figure, and materials. The purposes of the latter,
directed to the conveniencies of human life, discover not more plainly
their origin from reason and reflection, than do those of the former,
which point all to a like end.

I need not mention the variations, which all the rules of property
receive from the finer turns and connexions of the imagination, and from
the subtilties and abstractions of law-topics and reasonings. There is
no possibility of reconciling this observation to the notion of original
instincts.

What alone will beget a doubt concerning the theory, on which I insist,
is the influence of education and acquired habits, by which we are
so accustomed to blame injustice, that we are not, in every instance,
conscious of any immediate reflection on the pernicious consequences of
it. The views the most familiar to us are apt, for that very reason,
to escape us; and what we have very frequently performed from certain
motives, we