one another. When by natural principles we are led to advance those ends, which a refined and enlightened reason would re|commend to us, we are very apt to impute to that reason, as to their efficient cause, the sentiments and actions by which we advance those ends, and to imagine that to be the wisdom of man, which in reality is the wisdom of God. Upon a superficial view this cause seems sufficient to produce the effects which are ascribed to it; and the system of human nature seems to be more simple and agreeable when all its different operations are in this manner deduced from a single principle.
As society cannot subsist unless the laws of justice are tolerably observed, as no so|cial intercourse can take place among men who do not generally abstain from injuring one another; the consideration of this ne|cessity, it has been thought, was the ground upon which we approved of the enforce|ment of the laws of justice by the punish|ment of those who violated them. Man, it has been said, has a natural love for so|ciety, and desires that the union of mankind should be preserved for its own sake, and tho' he himself was to derive no benefit from
