d never coued have any reality. Human nature being composed
of two principal parts, which are requisite in all its actions, the
affections and understanding; it is certain, that the blind motions of
the former, without the direction of the latter, incapacitate men for
society: And it may be allowed us to consider separately the effects,
that result from the separate operations of these two component parts of
the mind. The same liberty may be permitted to moral, which is allowed
to natural philosophers; and it is very usual with the latter to
consider any motion as compounded and consisting of two parts separate
from each other, though at the same time they acknowledge it to be in
itself uncompounded and inseparable.

This state of nature, therefore, is to be regarded as a mere fiction,
not unlike that of the golden age, which poets have invented; only with
this difference, that the former is described as full of war, violence
and injustice; whereas the latter is pointed out to us, as the most
charming and most peaceable condition, that can possibly be imagined.
The seasons, in that first age of nature, were so temperate, if we
may believe the poets, that there was no necessity for men to provide
themselves with cloaths and houses as a security against the violence
of heat and cold. The rivers flowed with wine and milk: The oaks yielded
honey; and nature spontaneously produced her greatest delicacies.
Nor were these the chief advantages of that happy age. The storms and
tempests were not alone removed from nature; but those more furious
tempests were unknown to human breasts, which now cause such uproar, and
engender such confusion. Avarice, ambition, cruelty, selfishness, were
never heard of: Cordial affection, compassion, sympathy, were the
only movements, with which the human mind was yet acquainted. Even
the distinction of mine and thine was banished from that happy race
of mortals, and carryed with them the very notions of property and
obligation, justice and injustice.

This, no doubt, is to be regarded as an idle fiction; but yet deserves
our attention, because nothing can more evidently shew the origin of
those virtues, which are the subjects of our present enquiry. I have
already observed, that justice takes its rise from human conventions;
and that these are intended as a remedy to some inconveniences, which
proceed from the concurrence of certain qualities of the human mind
with the situation of external obje