| In like manner do gold and silver become the common measures of exchange, and are esteemed sufficient payment for what is of a hundred times their value. |
| After this convention, concerning abstinence from the possessions of others, is entered into, and every one has acquired a stability in his possessions, there immediately arise the ideas of justice and injustice; as also those of property, right, and obligation. |
| The latter are altogether unintelligible without first understanding the former. |
| Our property is nothing but those goods, whose constant possession is established by the laws of society; that is, by the laws of justice. |
| Those, therefore, who make use of the words property, or right, or obligation, before they have explained the origin of justice, or even make use of them in that explication, are guilty of a very gross fallacy, and can never reason upon any solid foundation. |
| A man's property is some object related to him. |
| This relation is not natural, but moral, and founded on justice. |
| It is very preposterous, therefore, to imagine, that we can have any idea of property, without fully comprehending the nature of justice, and shewing its origin in the artifice and contrivance of man. |
| The origin of justice explains that of property. |
| The same artifice gives rise to both. |
| As our first and most natural sentiment of morals is founded on the nature of our passions, and gives the preference to ourselves and friends, above strangers; it is impossible there can be naturally any such thing as a fixed right or property, while the opposite passions of men impel them in contrary directions, and are not restrained by any convention or agreement. |
| No one can doubt, that the convention for the distinction of property, and for the stability of possession, is of all circumstances the most necessary to the establishment of human society, and that after the agreement for the fixing and observing of this rule, there remains little or nothing to be done towards settling a perfect harmony and concord. |
| All the other passions, besides this of interest, are either easily restrained, or are not of such pernicious consequence, when indulged. |
| Vanity is rather to be esteemed a social passion, and a bond of union among men. |
| Pity and love are to be considered in the same light. |
| And as to envy and revenge, though pernicious, they operate only by intervals, and are directed against particular persons, whom we consider as our superiors or enemies. |
| This avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends, is insatiable, perpetual, universal, and directly destructive of society. |
| There scarce is any one, who is not actuated by it; and there is no one, who has not reason to fear from it, when it acts without any restraint, and gives way to its first and most natural movements. |
| So that upon the whole, we are to esteem the difficulties in the establishment of society, to be greater or less, according to those we encounter in regulating and restraining this passion. |
| It is certain, that no affection of the human mind has. |
| both a sufficient force, and a proper direction to counterbalance the love of gain, and render men fit members of society, by making them abstain from the possessions of others. |