f to
show us the way we should walk in, but it likewise carries its own
authority with it, that it is our natural guide; the guide assigned us by
the Author of our nature: it therefore belongs to our condition of being;
it is our duty to walk in that path, and follow this guide, without
looking about to see whether we may not possibly forsake them with
impunity.

However, let us hear what is to be said against obeying this law of our
nature. And the sum is no more than this: "Why should we be concerned
about anything out of and beyond ourselves? If we do find within
ourselves regards to others, and restraints of we know not how many
different kinds, yet these being embarrassments, and hindering us from
going the nearest way to our own good, why should we not endeavour to
suppress and get over them?"

Thus people go on with words, which when applied to human nature, and the
condition in which it is placed in this world, have really no meaning.
For does not all this kind of talk go upon supposition, that our
happiness in this world consists in somewhat quite distinct from regard
to others, and that it is the privilege of vice to be without restraint
or confinement? Whereas, on the contrary, the enjoyments--in a manner
all the common enjoyments of life, even the pleasures of vice--depend
upon these regards of one kind or another to our fellow-creatures. Throw
off all regards to others, and we should be quite indifferent to infamy
and to honour; there could be no such thing at all as ambition; and
scarce any such thing as covetousness; for we should likewise be equally
indifferent to the disgrace of poverty, the several neglects and kinds of
contempt which accompany this state, and to the reputation of riches, the
regard and respect they usually procure. Neither is restraint by any
means peculiar to one course of life; but our very nature, exclusive of
conscience and our condition, lays us under an absolute necessity of it.
We cannot gain any end whatever without being confined to the proper
means, which is often the most painful and uneasy confinement. And in
numberless instances a present appetite cannot be gratified without such
apparent and immediate ruin and misery that the most dissolute man in the
world chooses to forego the pleasure rather than endure the pain.

Is the meaning, then, to indulge those regards to our fellow-creatures,
and submit to those restraints which upon the whole are attended with
more