ome motives or impelling passions,
distinct from the sense of morals, these distinct passions must have a
great influence on that sense. It is according to their general force
in human nature, that we blame or praise. In judging of the beauty of
animal bodies, we always carry in our eye the oeconomy of a certain
species; and where the limbs and features observe that proportion, which
is common to the species, we pronounce them handsome and beautiful.
In like manner we always consider the natural and usual force of the
passions, when we determine concerning vice and virtue; and if the
passions depart very much from the common measures on either side, they
are always disapproved as vicious. A man naturally loves his children
better than his nephews, his nephews better than his cousins, his
cousins better than strangers, where every thing else is equal. Hence
arise our common measures of duty, in preferring the one to the other.
Our sense of duty always follows the common and natural course of our
passions.

To avoid giving offence, I must here observe, that when I deny justice
to be a natural virtue, I make use of the word, natural, only as opposed
to artificial. In another sense of the word; as no principle of the
human mind is more natural than a sense of virtue; so no virtue is more
natural than justice. Mankind is an inventive species; and where an
invention is obvious and absolutely necessary, it may as properly be
said to be natural as any thing that proceeds immediately from original
principles, without the intervention of thought or reflection. Though
the rules of justice be artificial, they are not arbitrary. Nor is
the expression improper to call them Laws of Nature; if by natural we
understand what is common to any species, or even if we confine it to
mean what is inseparable from the species.

SECT. II OF THE ORIGIN OF JUSTICE AND PROPERTY

We now proceed to examine two questions, viz, CONCERNING THE MANNER, IN
WHICH THE RULES OF JUSTICE ARE ESTABLISHed BY THE ARTIFICE OF MEN;
and CONCERNING THE REASONS, WHICH DETERMINE US TO ATTRIBUTE TO THE
OBSERVANCE OR NEGLECT OF THESE RULES A MORAL BEAUTY AND DEFORMITY. These
questions will appear afterwards to be distinct. We shall begin with the
former.

Of all the animals, with which this globe is peopled, there is none
towards whom nature seems, at first sight, to have exercised more
cruelty than towards man, in the numberless wants and necessities, with