rtion to the value he set upon himself, the effects of revenge
became terrible, and men learned to be sanguinary and cruel. Such
precisely was the degree attained by most of the savage nations with
whom we are acquainted. And it is for want of sufficiently
distinguishing ideas, and observing at how great a distance these
people were from the first state of nature, that so many authors have
hastily concluded that man is naturally cruel, and requires a regular
system of police to be reclaimed; whereas nothing can be more gentle
than he in his primitive state, when placed by nature at an equal
distance from the stupidity of brutes, and the pernicious good sense
of civilized man; and equally confined by instinct and reason to the
care of providing against the mischief which threatens him, he is
withheld by natural compassion from doing any injury to others, so far
from being ever so little prone even to return that which he has
received. For according to the axiom of the wise Locke, Where there is
no property, there can be no injury.

But we must take notice, that the society now formed and the relations
now established among men required in them qualities different from
those, which they derived from their primitive constitution; that as a
sense of morality began to insinuate itself into human actions, and
every man, before the enacting of laws, was the only judge and avenger
of the injuries he had received, that goodness of heart suitable to
the pure state of nature by no means suited infant society; that it
was necessary punishments should become severer in the same proportion
that the opportunities of offending became more frequent, and the
dread of vengeance add strength to the too weak curb of the law. Thus,
though men were become less patient, and natural compassion had
already suffered some alteration, this period of the development of
the human faculties, holding a just mean between the indolence of the
primitive state, and the petulant activity of self-love, must have
been the happiest and most durable epoch. The more we reflect on this
state, the more convinced we shall be, that it was the least subject
of any to revolutions, the best for man, and that nothing could have
drawn him out of it but some fatal accident, which, for the public
good, should never have happened. The example of the savages, most of
whom have been found in this condition, seems to confirm that mankind
was formed ever to remain in it, that t