We are naturally partial to ourselves, and to our friends; but are capable of learning the advantage resulting from a more equitable conduct.

Few enjoyments are given us from the open and liberal hand of nature; but by art, labour, and industry, we can extract them in great abundance.

Hence the ideas of property become necessary in all civil society: Hence justice derives its usefulness to the public: And hence alone arises its merit and moral obligation.
These conclusions are so natural and obvious, that they have not escaped even the poets, in their descriptions of the felicity attending the golden age or the reign of Saturn.

The seasons, in that first period of nature, were so temperate, if we credit these agreeable fictions, that there was no necessity for men to provide themselves with clothes and houses, as a security against the violence of heat and cold: The rivers flowed with wine and milk: The oaks yielded honey; and nature spontaneously produced her greatest delicacies.

Nor were these the chief advantages of that happy age.