hey will quarrel in the division; after the loss of a battle,
all will be endeavouring to secure themselves by abandoning the rest.

From the impossibility of confining numbers to the constant and uniform
prosecution of a common interest, arises the difficulty of securing
subjects against the encroachment of governours. Power is always
gradually stealing away from the many to the few, because the few are
more vigilant and consistent; it still contracts to a smaller number,
till in time it centres in a single person.

Thus all the forms of governments instituted among mankind, perpetually
tend towards monarchy; and power, however diffused through the whole
community, is, by negligence or corruption, commotion or distress,
reposed at last in the chief magistrate.

"There never appear," says Swift, "more than five or six men of genius
in an age; but if they were united, the world could not stand before
them." It is happy, therefore, for mankind, that of this union there is
no probability. As men take in a wider compass of intellectual survey,
they are more likely to choose different objects of pursuit; as they see
more ways to the same end, they will be less easily persuaded to travel
together; as each is better qualified to form an independent scheme of
private greatness, he will reject with greater obstinacy the project of
another; as each is more able to distinguish himself as the head of a
party, he will less readily be made a follower or an associate.

The reigning philosophy informs us, that the vast bodies which
constitute the universe, are regulated in their progress through the
ethereal spaces by the perpetual agency of contrary forces; by one of
which they are restrained from deserting their orbits, and losing
themselves in the immensity of heaven; and held off by the other from
rushing together, and clustering round their centre with everlasting
cohesion.

The same contrariety of impulse may be perhaps discovered in the motions
of men: we are formed for society, not for combination; we are equally
unqualified to live in a close connexion with our fellow-beings, and in
total separation from them; we are attracted towards each other by
general sympathy, but kept back from contact by private interests.

Some philosophers have been foolish enough to imagine, that improvements
might be made in the system of the universe, by a different arrangement
of the orbs of heaven; and politicians, equally ignorant and equa