nces but from his own conscience, will seldom be long without
the art of controling his convictions, and modifying justice by his own
will.

If in any situation the heart were inaccessible to malignity, it might
be supposed to be sufficiently secured by parental relation. To have
voluntarily become to any being the occasion of its existence, produces
an obligation to make that existence happy. To see helpless infancy
stretching out her hands, and pouring out her cries in testimony of
dependence, without any powers to alarm jealousy, or any guilt to
alienate affection, must surely awaken tenderness in every human mind;
and tenderness once excited will be hourly increased by the natural
contagion of felicity, by the repercussion of communicated pleasure, by
the consciousness of the dignity of benefaction. I believe no generous
or benevolent man can see the vilest animal courting his regard, and
shrinking at his anger, playing his gambols of delight before him,
calling on him in distress, and flying to him in danger, without more
kindness than he can persuade himself to feel for the wild and unsocial
inhabitants of the air and water. We naturally endear to ourselves those
to whom we impart any kind of pleasure, because we imagine their
affection and esteem secured to us by the benefits which they receive.

There is, indeed, another method by which the pride of superiority may
be likewise gratified. He that has extinguished all the sensations of
humanity, and has no longer any satisfaction in the reflection that he
is loved as the distributor of happiness, may please himself with
exciting terrour as the inflictor of pain: he may delight his solitude
with contemplating the extent of his power and the force of his
commands; in imagining the desires that flutter on the tongue which is
forbidden to utter them, or the discontent which preys on the heart in
which fear confines it: he may amuse himself with new contrivances of
detection, multiplications of prohibition, and varieties of punishment;
and swell with exultation when he considers how little of the homage
that he receives he owes to choice.

That princes of this character have been known, the history of all
absolute kingdoms will inform us; and since, as Aristotle observes,
_[Greek: hae oikonomikae monarchia], the government of a family is
naturally monarchical_, it is, like other monarchies, too often
arbitrarily administered. The regal and parental tyrant differ only