951

952

comforts of such a state, that they afterwards gradually united into larger and larger societies.

It must not be overlooked, that the sense of property is fortified by another principle. Every man has a peculiar affection for what he calls his own. He applies his skill and industry with great alacrity to improve his own subject: his affection to it grows with the time of his possession; and he puts a much greater value upon it, than upon any subject of the same kind that belongs to another.

But this is not all that is involved in the sense of property. We not only suffer pain in having our goods taken from us by force; for that would happen were they destroyed or lost by accident. We have the sense of wrong and injustice. The person who robs us has the same sense, and every mortal who beholds the action, considers it as vitious, and contrary to right.

953 Judging it not altogether sufficient to have overturned the foundation of our author's doctrine, we proceed to make some observations upon it, in order to show how ill it hangs together.

954

And, in the first place, he appears to reason not altogether consistently in making out his system. He founds justice on a general sense of common interest1. And yet, at no greater distance than a few pages, he endeavours to make out 2, and does it successfully, that public interest is a motive too remote and too sublime to affect the generality of mankind, and to operate, with any force, in actions so contrary to private interest, as are frequently those of justice and common honesty.

In the second place, abstracting from the sense of property, it does not appear, that a sense of common interest would necessarily lead to such a regulation, as that every man should have the undisturbed enjoyment of what he hath acquired by his industry or good fortune. Supposing no sense of property, I do not see it inconsistent with society, to have a Lacedemonian constitution, that every man may lawfully take what by address he can make himself master of, without force or violence. The depriving us of that to which we have no right, would be doing little more than drinking in our brook, or breathing in our air. At any rate, such a refined regulation would never be considered of importance enough, to be established upon the very commencement of society. 2 Vol. iii. p. 43.

1 Vol. iii. p. 59.

It must come late, if at all, and be the effect of long experience, and great refinement in the art of living. It is very true, that, abstaining from the goods of others, is a regulation, without which society cannot well subsist. But the necessity of this regulation ariseth from the sense of property, without which a man would suffer little pain in losing his goods, and would have no notion of wrong or injustice. There appears not any way to evade the force of this reasoning, other than peremptorily to deny the reality of the sense of property. Others may, but our author, after all, cannot with a good grace do it. An appeal may be safely made to his own authority. For is it not evidently this sense, which hath suggested to him the necessity, in the institution of every society, to secure individuals in their possessions? He cannot but be sensible, that, abstracting from the affection for property, the necessity would be just nothing at all. But our perceptions operate calmly and silently; and there is nothing more common, than to strain for far-fetched arguments in support of conclusions which are suggested by the simplest and most obvious perceptions. 955 A third observation is, that since our author resolves all virtue into sympathy, why should he with-hold the same principle from being the foundation of justice? Why should not sympathy give us a painful sensation, in depriving our neighbour of the goods he has acquired by industry, as well as in depriving him of his life or limb? For it is a fact too evident to be denied, that many men are more uneasy at the loss of their goods, than at the loss of a member.

956

957

And, in the last place, were justice founded on a general sense of common interest only, it behoved to be the weakest sense in human nature; especially where injustice is committed against a stranger, with whom we are not in any manner connected. Now, this is contrary to all experience. The sense of injustice is one of the strongest that belongs to humanity, and is also of a peculiar nature. It involves a sense of duty which is transgressed, and of meriting punishment for the transgression. Had our author but once reflected upon these peculiarities, he never could have been satisfied with the slight foundation he gives to justice; for these peculiarities are altogether unaccountable upon his system.

I shall close this reasoning with one reflection in general upon

325 the whole. The subject in dispute is a strong instance how dangerous it is to erect schemes, and assert propositions, without relation to facts and experiments;-not less dangerous in morals than in natural philosophy. Had our author examined human nature, and patiently submitted to the method of induction, by making a complete collection of facts, before venturing upon general propositions; I am positive he would have been as far as any man from maintaining, that justice is an artificial virtue, and that property is the child of society. Discovering this edifice of his to be a mere castle in the air, without the slightest foundation, he would have abandoned it without any reluctance.

*

JOHN LOCKE

An Essay

concerning Human Understanding

[First edition, 1690.]

958

BOOK I.

CHAPTER II.-NO INNATE PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES.

1. No moral principles so clear and so generally received as the fore-mentioned speculative maxims.—If those speculative maxims whereof we discoursed in the foregoing chapter, have not an actual universal assent from all mankind, as we there proved, it is much more visible concerning practical principles, that they come short of an universal reception; and I think it will be hard to instance any one moral rule which can pretend to so general and ready an assent as 'What is, is,' or to be so manifest a truth as this, 'That it is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be.' Whereby it is evident, that they are farther removed from a title to be innate; and the doubt of their being native impressions on the mind is stronger against these moral principles than the other. Not that it brings their truth at all in question. They are equally true, though not equally evident. Those speculative maxims carry their own evidence with them; but moral principles require reasoning and discourse, and some exercise of the mind, to discover the certainty of their truth. They lie not open as natural characters engraven on the mind; which if any such were, they must needs be visible by themselves,

and by their own light be certain and known to everybody. But this is no derogation to their truth and certainty; no more than it is to the truth or certainty of the three angles of a triangle being equal to two right ones, because it is not so evident as, 'The whole is bigger than a part,' nor so apt to be assented to at first hearing. It may suffice that these moral rules are capable of demonstration; and therefore it is our own fault if we come not to a certain knowledge of them. But the ignorance wherein many men are of them, and the slowness of assent wherewith others receive them, are manifest proofs that they are not innate, and such as offer themselves to their view without searching.

959 2. Faith and justice not owned as principles by all men.—

Whether there be any such moral principles wherein all men do agree, I appeal to any who have been but moderately conversant in the history of mankind, and looked abroad beyond the smoke of their own chimneys. Where is that practical truth that is universally received without doubt or question, as it must be if innate? Justice, and keeping of contracts, is that which most men seem to agree in. This is a principle which is thought to extend itself to the dens of thieves, and the confederacies of the greatest villains; and they who have gone farthest towards the putting off of humanity itself, keep faith and rules of justice one with another. I grant, that outlaws themselves do this one amongst another; but it is without receiving these as the innate laws of nature. They practise them as rules of convenience within their own communities; but it is impossible to conceive that he embraces justice as a practical principle who acts fairly with his fellow-highwayman, and at the same time plunders or kills the next honest man he meets with. Justice and truth are the common ties of society; and therefore even outlaws and robbers, who break with all the world besides, must keep faith and rules of equity amongst themselves, or else they cannot hold together. But will any one say, that those that live by fraud and rapine have innate principles of truth and justice, which they allow and assent to?

960 3. Objection. Though men deny them in their practice, yet they admit them in their thoughts,' answered.-Perhaps it will be urged, that the tacit assent of their minds agrees to what their practice