latter offensive to every man; as from the one he foresees the prosperity, and from the other the ruin and disorder of what is so ne|cessary for the comfort and security of his existence.
That the tendency of virtue to promote, and of vice to disturb the order of society, when we consider it coolly and philosophi|cally, reflects a very great beauty upon the one, and a very great deformity upon the other, cannot, as I have observed upon a former occasion, be called in question. Hu|man society, when we contemplate it in a certain abstract and philosophical light, ap|pears like a great, an immense machine whose regular and harmonious movements produce a thousand agreeable effects. As in any other beautiful and noble machine that was the production of human art, whatever tended to render its movements more smooth and easy, would derive a beauty from this effect, and, on the contrary, whatever ten|ded to obstruct them would displease upon that account: so virtue, which is, as it were, ••he fine polish to the wheels of society, ne|cessarily pleases; while vice, like the vile ••••ust, which makes them jarr and grate upon one another, is as necessarily offensive. This
