but
it is impossible it should be the sole cause of the distinction we
make betwixt vice and virtue. For if nature did not aid us in this
particular, it would be in vain for politicians to talk of honourable or
dishonourable, praiseworthy or blameable. These words would be perfectly
unintelligible, and would no more have any idea annexed to them, than
if they were of a tongue perfectly unknown to us. The utmost politicians
can perform, is, to extend the natural sentiments beyond their original
bounds; but still nature must furnish the materials, and give us some
notion of moral distinctions.

As publick praise and blame encrease our esteem for justice; so private
education and instruction contribute to the same effect. For as parents
easily observe, that a man is the more useful, both to himself and
others, the greater degree of probity and honour he is endowed with;
and that those principles have greater force, when custom and education
assist interest and reflection: For these reasons they are induced to
inculcate on their children, from their earliest infancy, the principles
of probity, and teach them to regard the observance of those rules,
by which society is maintained, as worthy and honourable, and their
violation as base and infamous. By this means the sentiments of honour
may take root in their tender minds, and acquire such firmness and
solidity, that they may fall little short of those principles, which are
the most essential to our natures, and the most deeply radicated in our
internal constitution.

What farther contributes to encrease their solidity, is the interest
of our reputation, after the opinion, that a merit or demerit attends
justice or injustice, is once firmly established among mankind. There is
nothing, which touches us more nearly than our reputation, and nothing
on which our reputation more depends than our conduct, with relation to
the property of others. For this reason, every one, who has any regard
to his character, or who intends to live on good terms with mankind,
must fix an inviolable law to himself, never, by any temptation, to be
induced to violate those principles, which are essential to a man of
probity and honour.

I shall make only one observation before I leave this subject, viz, that
though I assert, that in the state of nature, or that imaginary state,
which preceded society, there be neither justice nor injustice, yet
I assert not, that it was allowable, in such a state,