Does nature, whose instincts in men are all simple, embrace such complicated and artificial objects, and create a rational creature, without trusting anything to the operation of his reason?
But even though all this were admitted, it would not be satisfactory.
Positive laws can certainly transfer property.

It is by another original instinct, that we recognize the authority of kings and senates, and mark all the boundaries of their jurisdiction?
Judges too, even though their sentence be erroneous and illegal, must be allowed, for the sake of peace and order, to have decisive authority, and ultimately to determine property.

Have we original innate ideas of praetors and chancellors and juries?
Who sees not, that all these institutions arise merely from the necessities of human society?
All birds of the same species in every age and country, built their nests alike: In this we see the force of instinct.

Men, in different times and places, frame their houses differently: Here we perceive the influence of reason and custom.

A like inference may be drawn from comparing the instinct of generation and the institution of property.
How great soever the variety of municipal laws, it must be confessed, that their chief outlines pretty regularly concur; because the purposes, to which they tend, are everywhere exactly similar.