SECT.  VI SOME FARTHER REFLECTIONS CONCERNING JUSTICE AND INJUSTICE

We have now run over the three fundamental laws of nature, that of the stability of possession, of its transference by consent, and of the performance of promises.  It is on the strict t observance of those three laws, that the peace and security of human society entirely depend; nor is there any possibility of establishing a good correspondence among men, where these are neglected.  Society is absolutely necessary for the well-being of men; and these are as necessary to the support of society.  Whatever restraint they may impose on the passions of men, they are the real offspring of those passions, and are only a more artful and more refined way of satisfying them.  Nothing is more vigilant and inventive than our passions; and nothing is more obvious, than the convention for the observance of these rules.  Nature has, therefore, trusted this affair entirely to the conduct of men, and has not placed in the mind any peculiar original principles, to determine us to a set of actions, into which the other principles of our frame and constitution were sufficient to lead us.  And to convince us the more fully of this truth, we may here stop a moment, and from a review of the preceding reasonings may draw some new arguments, to prove that those laws, however necessary, are entirely artificial, and of human invention; and consequently that justice is an artificial, and not a natural virtue.

(1) The first argument I shall make use of is derived from the vulgar definition of justice.  Justice is commonly defined to be a constant and perpetual will of giving every one his due.  In this definition it is supposed, that there are such things as right and property, independent of justice, and antecedent to it; and that they would have subsisted, though men had never dreamt of practising such a virtue.  I have already observed, in a cursory manner, the fallacy of this opinion, and shall here continue to open up a little more distinctly my sentiments on that subject.

I shall begin with observing, that this quality, which we shall call property, is like many of the imaginary qualities of the peripatetic philosophy, and vanishes upon a more accurate inspection into the subject, when considered a-part from our moral sentiments.  It is evident property does not consist in any of the sensible qualities of the object.  For these may continue invariably the same, while the property changes.  Property, therefore, must consist in some relation of the object.  But it is not in its relation with regard to other external and inanimate objects.  For these may also continue invariably the same, while the property changes.  This quality, therefore, consists in the relations of objects to intelligent and rational beings.  But it is not the external and corporeal relation, which forms the essence of property.  For that relation may be