2.2.3. Chap. III
Of the utility of this constitution of Nature
It is thus that man, who can subsist only in society, was
fitted by nature to that situation for which he was made. All the
members of human society stand in need of each others assistance,
and are likewise exposed to mutual injuries. Where the necessary
assistance is reciprocally afforded from love, from gratitude,
from friendship, and esteem, the society flourishes and is happy.
All the different members of it are bound together by the
agreeable bands of love and affection, and are, as it were, drawn
to one common centre of mutual good offices.
But though the necessary assistance should not be afforded
from such generous and disinterested motives, though among the
different members of the society there should be no mutual love
and affection, the society, though less happy and agreeable, will
not necessarily be dissolved. Society may subsist among different
men, as among different merchants, from a sense of its utility,
without any mutual love or affection; and though no man in it
should owe any obligation, or be bound in gratitude to any other,
it may still be upheld by a mercenary exchange of good offices
according to an agreed valuation.
Society, however, cannot subsist among those who are at all
times ready to hurt and injure one another. The moment that
injury begins, the moment that mutual resentment and animosity
take place, all the bands of it are broke asunder, and the
different members of which it consisted are, as it were,
dissipated and scattered abroad by the violence and opposition of
their discordant affections. If there is any society among
robbers and murderers, they must at least, according to the trite
observation, abstain from robbing and murdering one another.
Beneficence, therefore, is less essential to the existence of
society than justice. Society may subsist, though not in the most
comfortable state, without beneficence; hut the prevalence of
injustice must utterly destroy it.
Though Nature, therefore, exhorts mankind to acts of
beneficence, by the pleasing consciousness of deserved reward,
she has not thought it necessary to guard and enforce the
practice of it by the terrors of merited punishment in case it
should be neglected. It is the ornament which embellishes, not
the foundation which supports the building, and which it was,
therefore, sufficient to recommend, but by no means necessary to
impose. Justice, on the contrary, is the main pillar that upholds
the whole edifice. If it is removed, the great, the immense
fabric of human society, that fabric which to raise and support
seems in this world, if I may say so, to have been the peculiar
and darling care of Nature, must in a moment crumble into atoms.
In order to enforce the observation of justice, therefore, Nature
has implanted in the human breast that consciousness of
ill-desert, those terrors of merited punishment which attend upon
its violation, as the great safe-guards of the association of
mankind, to protect the weak, to curb the violent, and to
chastise the guilty. Men, though naturally sympathetic, feel so
little for another, with whom they have no particular connexion,
in comparison of what they feel for themselves; the misery of
one, who is merely their fellow-creature, is of so little
importance to them in comparison even of a small conveniency of
their own; they have it so much in their power to hurt him, and
may have so many temptations to do so, that if this principle did
not stand up within them in his defence, and overawe them into a
respect for his innocence, they would, like wild beasts, be at
all times ready to fly upon him; and a man would enter an
assembly of men as he enters a den of lions.
In every part of the universe we observe means adjusted with
the nicest artifice to the ends which they are intended to
produce; and in the mechanism of a plant, or animal body, admire
how every thing is contrived for advancing the two great purposes
of nature, the support of the individual, and the propagation of
the species. But in these, and in all such objects, we still
distinguish the efficient from the final cause of their several
motions and organizations. The digestion of the food, the
circulation of the blood, and the secretion of the several juices
which are drawn from it, are operations all of them necessary for
the great purposes of animal life. Yet we never endeavour to
account for them from those purposes as from their efficient
causes, nor imagine that the blood circulates, or that the food
digests of its own accord, and with a view or intention to the
purposes of circulation or digestion. The wheels of the watch are
all admirably adjusted to the end for which it was made, the
pointing of the hour. All their various motions conspire in the
nicest manner to produce this effect. If they were endowed with a
desire and intention to produce it, they could not do it better.
Yet we never ascribe any such desire or intention to them, but to
the watch-maker, and we know that they are put into motion by a
spring, which intends the effect it produces as little as they
do. But though, in accounting for the operations of bodies, we
never fail to distinguish in this manner the efficient from the
final cause, in accounting for those of the mind we are very apt
to confound these two different things with one another. When by
natural principles we are led to advance those ends, which a
refined and enlightened reason would recommend to us, we are very
apt to impute to that reason, as to their efficient cause, the
sentiments and actions by which we advance those ends, and to
imagine that to be the wisdom of man, which in reality is the
wisdom of God. Upon a superficial view, this cause seems
sufficient to produce the effects which are ascribed to it; and
the system of human nature seems to be more simple and agreeable
when all its different operations are in this manner deduced from
a single principle.
As society cannot subsist unless the laws of justice are
tolerably observed, as no social intercourse can take place among
men who do not generally abstain from injuring one another; the
consideration of this necessity, it has been thought, was the
ground upon which we approved of the enforcement of the laws of
justice by the punishment of those who violated them. Man, it has
been said, has a natural love for society, and desires that the
union of mankind should be preserved for its own sake, and though
he himself was to derive no benefit from it. The orderly and
flourishing state of society is agreeable to him, and he takes
delight in contemplating it. Its disorder and confusion, on the
contrary, is the object of his aversion, and he is chagrined at
whatever tends to produce it. He is sensible too that his own
interest is connected with the prosperity of society, and that
the happiness, perhaps the preservation of his existence, depends
upon its preservation. Upon every account, therefore, he has an
abhorrence at whatever can tend to destroy society, and is
willing to make use of every means, which can hinder so hated and
so dreadful an event. Injustice necessarily tends to destroy it.
Every appearance of injustice, therefore, alarms him, and he
runs, if I may say so, to stop the progress of what, if allowed
to go on, would quickly put an end to every thing that is dear to
him. If he cannot restrain it by gentle and fair means, he must
beat it down by force and violence, and at any rate must put a
stop to its further progress. Hence it is, they say, that he
often approves of the enforcement of the laws of justice even by
the capital punishment of those who violate them. The disturber
of the public peace is hereby removed out of the world, and
others are terrified by his fate from imitating his example.
Such is the account commonly given of our approbation of the
punishment of injustice. And so far this account is undoubtedly
true, that we frequently have occasion to confirm our natural
sense of the propriety and fitness of punishment, by reflecting
how necessary it is for preserving the order of society. When the
guilty is about to suffer that just retaliation, which the
natural indignation of mankind tells them is due to his crimes;
when the insolence of his injustice is broken and humbled by the
terror of his approaching punishment; when he ceases to be an
object of fear, with the generous and humane he begins to be an
object of pity. The thought of what he is about to suffer
extinguishes their resentment for the sufferings of others to
which he has given occasion. They are disposed to pardon and
forgive him, and to save him from that punishment, which in all
their cool hours they had considered as the retribution due to
such crimes. Here, therefore, they have occasion to call to their
assistance the consideration of the general interest of society.
They counterbalance the impulse of this weak and partial humanity
by the dictates of a humanity that is more generous and
comprehensive. They reflect that mercy to the guilty is cruelty
to the innocent, and oppose to the emotions of compassion which
they feel for a particular person, a more enlarged compassion
which they feel for mankind.
Sometimes too we have occasion to defend the propriety of
observing the general rules of justice by the consideration of
their necessity to the support of society. We frequently hear the
young and the licentious ridiculing the most sacred rules of
morality, and professing, sometimes from the corruption, but more
frequently from the vanity of their hearts, the most abominable
maxims of conduct. Our indignation rouses, and we are eager to
refute and expose such detestable principles. But though it is
their intrinsic hatefulness and detestableness, which originally
inflames us against them, we are unwilling to assign this as the
sole reason why we condemn them, or to pretend that it is merely
because we ourselves hate and detest them. The reason, we think,
would not appear to be conclusive. Yet why should it not; if we
hate and detest them because they are the natural and proper
objects of hatred and detestation? But when we are asked why we
should not act in such or such a manner, the very question seems
to suppose that, to those who ask it, this manner of acting does
not appear to be for its own sake the natural and proper object
of those sentiments. We must show them, therefore, that it ought
to be so for the sake of something else. Upon this account we
generally cast about for other arguments, and the consideration
which first occurs to us, is the disorder and confusion of
society which would result from the universal prevalence of such
practices. We seldom fail, therefore, to insist upon this topic.
But though it commonly requires no great discernment to see
the destructive tendency of all licentious practices to the
welfare of society, it is seldom this consideration which first
animates us against them. All men, even the most stupid and
unthinking, abhor fraud, perfidy, and injustice, and delight to
see them punished. But few men have reflected upon the necessity
of justice to the existence of society, how obvious soever that
necessity may appear to be.
That it is not a regard to the preservation of society, which
originally interests us in the punishment of crimes committed
against individuals, may be demonstrated by many obvious
considerations. The concern which we take in the fortune and
happiness of individuals does not, in common cases, arise from
that which we take in the fortune and happiness of society. We
are no more concerned for the destruction or loss of a single
man, because this man is a member or part of society, and because
we should be concerned for the destruction of society, than we
are concerned for the loss of a single guinea, because this
guinea is a part of a thousand guineas, and because we should be
concerned for the loss of the whole sum. In neither case does our
regard for the individuals arise from our regard for the
multitude: but in both cases our regard for the multitude is
compounded and made up of the particular regards which we feel
for the different individuals of which it is composed. As when a
small sum is unjustly taken from us, we do not so much prosecute
the injury from a regard to the preservation of our whole
fortune, as from a regard to that particular sum which we have
lost; so when a single man is injured, or destroyed, we demand
the punishment of the wrong that has been done to him, not so
much from a concern for the general interest of society, as from
a concern for that very individual who has been injured. It is to
be observed, however, that this concern does not necessarily
include in it any degree of those exquisite sentiments which are
commonly called love, esteem, and affection, and by which we
distinguish our particular friends and acquaintance. The concern
which is requisite for this, is no more than the general
fellow-feeling which we have with every man merely because he is
our fellow-creature. We enter into the resentment even of an
odious person, when he is injured by those to whom he has given
no provocation. Our disapprobation of his ordinary character and
conduct does not in this case altogether prevent our
fellow-feeling with his natural indignation; though with those
who are not either extremely candid, or who have not been
accustomed to correct and regulate their natural sentiments by
general rules, it is very apt to damp it.
Upon some occasions, indeed, we both punish and approve of
punishment, merely from a view to the general interest of
society, which, we imagine, cannot otherwise be secured. Of this
kind are all the punishments inflicted for breaches of what is
called either civil police, or military discipline. Such crimes
do not immediately or directly hurt any particular person; but
their remote consequences, it is supposed, do produce, or might
produce, either a considerable inconveniency, or a great disorder
in the society. A centinel, for example, who falls asleep upon
his watch, suffers death by the laws of war, because such
carelessness might endanger the whole army. This severity may,
upon many occasions, appear necessary, and, for that reason, just
and proper. When the preservation of an individual is
inconsistent with the safety of a multitude, nothing can be more
just than that the many should be preferred to the one. Yet this
punishment, how necessary soever, always appears to be
excessively severe. The natural atrocity of the crime seems to be
so little, and the punishment so great, that it is with great
difficulty that our heart can reconcile itself to it. Though such
carelessness appears very blamable, yet the thought of this crime
does not naturally excite any such resentment, as would prompt us
to take such dreadful revenge. A man of humanity must recollect
himself, must make an effort, and exert his whole firmness and
resolution, before he can bring himself either to inflict it, or
to go along with it when it is inflicted by others. It is not,
however, in this manner, that he looks upon the just punishment
of an ungrateful murderer or parricide. His heart, in this case,
applauds with ardour, and even with transport, the just
retaliation which seems due to such detestable crimes, and which,
if, by any accident, they should happen to escape, he would be
highly enraged and disappointed. The very different sentiments
with which the spectator views those different punishments, is a
proof that his approbation of the one is far from being founded
upon the same principles with that of the other. He looks upon
the centinel as an unfortunate victim, who, indeed, must, and
ought to be, devoted to the safety of numbers, but whom still, in
his heart, he would be glad to save; and he is only sorry, that
the interest of the many should oppose it. But if the murderer
should escape from punishment, it would excite his highest
indignation, and he would call upon God to avenge, in another
world, that crime which the injustice of mankind had neglected to
chastise upon earth.
For it well deserves to be taken notice of, that we are so
far from imagining that injustice ought to be punished in this
life, merely on account of the order of society, which cannot
otherwise be maintained, that Nature teaches us to hope, and
religion, we suppose, authorises us to expect, that it will be
punished, even in a life to come. Our sense of its ill desert
pursues it, if I may say so, even beyond the grave, though the
example of its punishment there cannot serve to deter the rest of
mankind, who see it not, who know it not, from being guilty of
the like practices here. The justice of God, however, we think,
still requires, that he should hereafter avenge the injuries of
the widow and the fatherless, who are here so often insulted with
impunity. In every religion, and in every superstition that the
world has ever beheld, accordingly, there has been a Tartarus as
well as an Elysium; a place provided for the punishment of the
wicked, as well as one for the reward of the just.