f animals.

Q. The murdering of a man is, therefore, a crime in the law of nature?

A. Yes, and the greatest that can be committed; for every other evil can
be repaired, but murder alone is irreparable.

Q. What is a sin in the law of nature?

A. Whatever tends to disturb the order established by nature for the
preservation and perfection of man and of society.

Q. Can intention be a merit or a crime?

A. No, for it is only an idea void of reality: but it is a commencement
of sin and evil, by the impulse it gives to action.

Q. What is virtue according to the law of nature?

A. It is the practice of actions useful to the individual and to
society.

Q. What is meant by the word individual?

A. It means a man considered separately from every other.

Q. What is vice according to the law of nature?

A. It is the practice of actions prejudicial to the individual and to
society.

Q. Have not virtue and vice an object purely spiritual and abstracted
from the senses?

A. No; it is always to a physical end that they finally relate, and that
end is always to destroy or preserve the body.

Q. Have vice and virtue degrees of strength and intensity?

A. Yes: according to the importance of the faculties, which they attack
or which they favor; and according to the number of persons in whom
those faculties are favored or injured.

Q. Give me some examples?

A. The action of saving a man's life is more virtuous than that of
saving his property; the action of saving the lives of ten men, than
that of saving only the life of one, and an action useful to the whole
human race is more virtuous than an action that is only useful to one
single nation.

Q. How does the law of nature prescribe the practice of good and virtue,
and forbid that of evil and vice?

A. By the advantages resulting from the practice of good and virtue
for the preservation of our body, and by the losses which result to our
existence from the practice of evil and vice.

Q. Its precepts are then in action?

A. Yes: they are action itself, considered in its present effect and in
its future consequences.

Q. How do you divide the virtues?

A. We divide them in three classes, first, individual virtues, as
relative to man alone; secondly, domestic virtues, as relative to a
family; thirdly, social virtues, as relative to society.

CHAPTER V.

OF INDIVIDUAL VIRTUES.

Q. Which are the individual virtues?

A. There are five principal one