: for they often exceed bounds, either in rewarding deserts, or in
punishing delinquencies, and consider as meritorious or criminal, null
or indifferent actions.

Q. Which is the eighth character?

A. To be pacific and tolerant, because in the law of nature, all men
being brothers and equal in rights, it recommends to them only peace and
toleration, even for errors.

Q. Are not other laws pacific?

A. No: for all preach dissension, discord, and war, and divide mankind
by exclusive pretensions of truth and domination.

Q. Which is the ninth character?

A. To be equally beneficent to all men, in teaching them the true means
of becoming better and happier.

Q. Are not other laws beneficent likewise?

A. No: for none of them teach the real means of attaining happiness; all
are confined to pernicious or futile practices; and this is evident from
facts, since after so many laws, so many religions, so many legislators
and prophets, men are still as unhappy and ignorant, as they were six
thousand years ago.

Q. Which is the last character of the law of nature?

A. That it is alone sufficient to render men happier and better, because
it comprises all that is good and useful in other laws, either civil or
religious, that is to say, it constitutes essentially the moral part of
them; so that if other laws were divested of it, they would be reduced
to chimerical and imaginary opinions devoid of any practical utility.

Q. Recapitulate all those characters.

A. We have said that the law of nature is,

1. Primitive; 6. Reasonable;
2. Immediate; 7. Just;
3. Universal; 8. Pacific;
4. Invariable; 9. Beneficent: and
5. Evident; 10. Alone sufficient.

And such is the power of all these attributes of perfection and truth,
that when in their disputes the theologians can agree upon no article of
belief, they recur to the law of nature, the neglect of which, say they,
forced God to send from time to time prophets to proclaim new laws; as
if God enacted laws for particular circumstances, as men do; especially
when the first subsists in such force, that we may assert it to have
been at all times and in all countries the rule of conscience for every
man of sense or understanding.

Q. If, as you say, it emanates immediately from God, does it teach his
existence?

A. Yes, most positively: for, to any man whatever, who observes with
reflection the astonishing spectacle of th