The Religion of Nature Delineated by William Wollaston (mystery books to read .txt) 📕

live in a society, where men are serviceable to themselves and their neighbors at the same time, by exchanging their money, or goods, for such other things as they want more⁠—where they are capable of doing good offices each for other in time of need⁠—where they have the protection of laws, and a public security against cheats, robbers, assassins, and all enemies to property⁠—where a common force or army is ready to interpose between them and foreign invaders⁠—and where they may enjoy those discoveries which have been made in arts and learning, may improve their faculties by conversation and innocent conflicts of reason, and (to speak out) may be made men.

If, when we have the privilege of society and laws, we can scarce preserve our own or be safe, what a woeful condition should we be in without them: exposed to the insults, rapines, and violence of unjust and merciless men, not having any sanctuary, anything to take refuge in? So again, if notwithstanding the help of friends and those about us, and such conveniencies as may be had in cities and peopled places, we are forced to bear many pains and melancholy hours, how irksome would life be, if in sickness or other trouble there was nobody to administer either remedy or consolation?

Lastly, society is what men generally desire. And though much company may be attended with much vanity, and occasion many evils,413 yet it is certain that absolute and perpetual solitude has something in it very irksome and hideous.414 Thus the social life is natural to man, or what his nature and circumstances require.

II. The end of society is the common welfare and good of the people associated. This is but the consequence of what has been just said. For because men cannot subsist well, or not so well, separately, therefore they unite into greater bodies: that is, the end of their uniting is their better subsistence; and by how much their manner of living becomes better, by so much the more effectually is this end answered.

III. A society, into which men enter for this end, supposes some rules or laws, according to which they agree all to be governed, with a power of altering or adding to them as occasion shall require. A number of men, met together without any rules by which they submit to be governed, can be nothing but an irregular multitude. Everyone being still sui juris, and left entirely to his own private choice, by whatever kind of judgment or passion or caprice that happens to be determined, they must needs interfere one with another; nor can such a concourse of people be anything different from an indigested chaos of dissenting parts, which by their confused motions would damnify and destroy each other. This must be true if men differ in the size of their understandings, in their manner of thinking, and the several turns their minds take from their education, way of living, and other circumstances; if the greatest part of them are under the direction of bodily affections, and if these differ as much as their shapes, their complexions, their constitutions do.415 Here then we find nothing but confusion and unhappiness.

Such a combination of men, therefore, as may produce their common good and happiness, must be such a one as, in the first place, may render them compatible one with another, which cannot be without rules that may direct and adjust their several motions and carriages towards each other, bring them to some degree of uniformity, or at least restrain such excursions and enormities as would render their living together inconsistent.

Then, there must be some express declarations and scita to ascertain properties and titles to things by common consent: that, so when any altercations or disputes shall happen concerning them (as be sure many must in a world so unreasonable and prone to iniquity), the appeal may be made to their own settlements, and by the application of a general undisputed rule to the particular case before them, it may appear on which side the obliquity lies, the controversy may be fairly decided, and all mouths eternally stopped. And then again, that they may be protected and persevere in this agreeable life, and the enjoyment of their respective properties be secured to them, several things must be forecasted by way of precaution against foreign invasions; punishments must be appointed for offences committed among themselves, which, being known, may deter men from committing them, etc. These rules, methods, and appointments of punishments, being intelligibly and honestly drawn up, agreed to, and published, are the mutual compacts416 under which the society is confederated, and the laws of it.

If, then, to have the members of a society capable of subsisting together, if to have their respective properties ascertained, if to be safe and quiet in the possession of them be for the general good of the society, and these things cannot be had without laws; then a society whose foundation and cement is the public good must have such laws, or be supposed at least to design such.

As to the making of any further laws, when the public interest and welfare require them, that is but repeating the same power, in other instances, which they made use of before in making their first laws; and as to altering or repealing, it is certain the power of making and unmaking here are equal. Besides, when men are incorporated and live together for their mutual good, this end is to be considered at one time as much as at another: not only in their first constitution and settlement.

IV. These laws and determinations must be such as are not inconsistent with natural justice. For

To ordain anything that interferes with truth is the same as to ordain that what is true shall be false, or vice versa,417 which is absurd.

To pretend by a law