he should occasion some damage to an|other person, he is by the laws of, I be|lieve, all countries, obliged to compensate it. And though this is no doubt a real punishment, and what no mortal would have thought of inflicting upon him, had it not been for the unlucky accident which his conduct gave occasion to; yet this de|cision of the law is approved of by the na|tural sentiments of all mankind. Nothing, we think, can be more just than that one man should not suffer by the carelessness of another; and that the damage occasioned by blameable negligence should be made up by the person who was guilty of it.
There is another species of negligence * 1.1, which consists merely in a want of the most anxious timidity and circumspection, with regard to all the possible consequences of our actions. The want of this painful at|tention, when no bad consequences follow from it, is so far from being regarded as blameable, that the contrary quality is ra|ther considered as such. That timid circum|spection which is afraid of every thing, is never regarded as a virtue, but as a qua|lity which more than any other incapacitates
