12. Its enforcement is commendation and discredit.
If any one shall imagine that I have forgot my own notion of a
law, when I make the law, whereby men judge of virtue and vice, to be nothing else but the consent of private
men, who have not authority enough to make a law: especially wanting that which is so necessary and essential to
a law, a power to enforce it: I think I may say, that he who imagines commendation and disgrace not to be strong
motives to men to accommodate themselves to the opinions and rules of those with whom they converse, seems
little skilled in the nature or history of mankind: the greatest part whereof we shall find to govern themselves
chiefly, if not solely, by this law of fashion; and so they do that which keeps them in reputation with their
company, little regard the laws of God, or the magistrate. The penalties that attend the breach of God's laws some,
nay perhaps most men, seldom seriously reflect on: and amongst those that do, many, whilst they break the law,
entertain thoughts of future reconciliation, and making their peace for such breaches. And as to the punishments
due from the laws of the commonwealth, they frequently flatter themselves with the hopes of impunity. But no
man escapes the punishment of their censure and dislike, who offends against the fashion and opinion of the
company he keeps, and would recommend himself to. Nor is there one of ten thousand, who is stiff and insensible
enough, to bear up under the constant dislike and condemnation of his own club. He must be of a strange and
unusual constitution, who can content himself to live in constant disgrace and disrepute with his own particular
society. Solitude many men have sought, and been reconciled to: but nobody that has the least thought or sense of
a man about him, can live in society under the constant dislike and ill opinion of his familiars, and those he
converses with. This is a burden too heavy for human sufferance: and he must be made up of irreconcilable
contradictions, who can take pleasure in company, and yet be insensible of contempt and disgrace from his
companions.
