es. The comparison, therefore, in these respects,
is very imperfect. We may only learn from it the necessity of rules,
wherever men have any intercourse with each other.

They cannot even pass each other on the road without rules. Waggoners,
coachmen, and postilions have principles, by which they give the way;
and these are chiefly founded on mutual ease and convenience. Sometimes
also they are arbitrary, at least dependent on a kind of capricious
analogy like many of the reasonings of lawyers.

[Footnote: That the lighter machine yield to the heavier, and, in
machines of the same kind, that the empty yield to the loaded; this rule
is founded on convenience. That those who are going to the capital take
place of those who are coming from it; this seems to be founded on some
idea of dignity of the great city, and of the preference of the future
to the past. From like reasons, among foot-walkers, the right-hand
entitles a man to the wall, and prevents jostling, which peaceable
people find very disagreeable and inconvenient.]

To carry the matter farther, we may observe, that it is impossible for
men so much as to murder each other without statutes, and maxims, and an
idea of justice and honour. War has its laws as well as peace; and
even that sportive kind of war, carried on among wrestlers, boxers,
cudgel-players, gladiators, is regulated by fixed principles. Common
interest and utility beget infallibly a standard of right and wrong
among the parties concerned.

SECTION V. WHY UTILITY PLEASES.

PART I.

It seems so natural a thought to ascribe to their utility the praise,
which we bestow on the social virtues, that one would expect to meet
with this principle everywhere in moral writers, as the chief foundation
of their reasoning and enquiry. In common life, we may observe, that the
circumstance of utility is always appealed to; nor is it supposed, that
a greater eulogy can be given to any man, than to display his usefulness
to the public, and enumerate the services, which he has performed to
mankind and society. What praise, even of an inanimate form, if the
regularity and elegance of its parts destroy not its fitness for any
useful purpose! And how satisfactory an apology for any disproportion
or seeming deformity, if we can show the necessity of that particular
construction for the use intended! A ship appears more beautiful to an
artist, or one moderately skilled in navigation, where its prow