| This partiality, then, and unequal affection, must not only have an influence on our behaviour and conduct in society, but even on our ideas of vice and virtue; so as to make us regard any remarkable transgression of such a degree of partiality, either by too great an enlargement, or contraction of the affections, as vicious and immoral. |
| This we may observe in our common judgments concerning actions, where we blame a person, who either centers all his affections in his family, or is so regardless of them, as, in any opposition of interest, to give the preference to a stranger, or mere chance acquaintance. |
| From all which it follows, that our natural uncultivated ideas of morality, instead of providing a remedy for the partiality of our affections, do rather conform themselves to that partiality, and give it an additional force and influence. |
| The remedy, then, is not derived from nature, but from artifice; or more e properly speaking, nature provides a remedy in the judgment and understanding, for what is irregular and incommodious in the affections. |
| For when men, from their early education in society, have become sensible of the infinite advantages that result from it, and have besides acquired a new affection to company and conversation; and when they have observed, that the principal disturbance in society arises from those goods, which we call external, and from their looseness and easy transition from one person to another; they must seek for a remedy by putting these goods, as far as possible, on the same footing with the fixed and constant advantages of the mind and body. |
| This can be done after no other manner, than by a convention entered into by all the members of the society to bestow stability on the possession of those external goods, and leave every one in the peaceable enjoyment of what he may acquire by his fortune and industry. |
| By this means, every one knows what he may safely possess; and the passions ale restrained in their partial and contradictory motions. |
| Nor is such a restraint contrary to these passions; for if so, it coued never be entered into, nor maintained; but it is only contrary to their heedless and impetuous movement. |
| Instead of departing from our own interest, or from that of our nearest friends, by abstaining from the possessions of others, we cannot better consult both these interests, than by such a convention; because it is by that means we maintain society, which is so necessary to their well-being and subsistence, as well as to our own. |
| This convention is not of the nature of a promise: For even promises themselves, as we shall see afterwards, arise from human conventions. |
| It is only a general sense of common interest; which sense all the members of the society express to one another, and which induces them to regulate their conduct by certain rules. |
| I observe, that it will be for my interest to leave another in the possession of his goods, provided he will act in the same manner with regard to me. |
| He is sensible of a like interest in the regulation of his conduct. |
| When this common sense of interest is mutually expressed, and is known to both, it produces a suitable resolution and behaviour. |
| And this may properly enough be called a convention or agreement betwixt us, though without the interposition of a promise; since the actions of each of us have a reference to those of the other, and are performed upon the supposition, that something is to be performed on the other part. |
| Two men, who pull the oars of a boat, do it by an agreement or convention, though they have never given promises to each other. |
| Nor is the rule concerning the stability of possession the less derived from human conventions, that it arises gradually, and acquires force by a slow progression, and. |
| by our repeated experience of the inconveniences of transgressing it. |
| On the contrary, this experience assures us still more, that the sense of interest has become common to all our fellows, and gives us a confidence of the future regularity of their conduct: And it is only on the expectation of this, that our moderation and abstinence are founded. |
| In like manner are languages gradually established by human conventions without any promise. |
| 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. |