This is something to proceed upon.A society then of the one kind or the other;a natural society,or else a political society,was formed.I would here then put a case,and then propose a question.In this society we will say no contract had as yet been entered into;no habit of obedience as yet formed.Was this then a natural society merely,or was itapolitical one?For my part,according to my notion of the two kinds of society as above explained,I can have no difficulty.It was a merely natural one.
But,according to our Author's notion,which was it?If it was already a political one,what notion would he give us of such an one as shall have been a natural one;and by what change should such precedent natural one have turned into this political one?If this was not a political one,then what sort of a society are we to understand any one to be which is political?
By what mark are we to distinguish it from a natural one?To this,it is plain,our Author has not given any answer.At the same time,that to give an answer to it,was,if any thing,the professed purpose of the long paragraph before us.
33.It is time this passage of our Author were dismissedAs among the expressions of it are some of the most striking of those which the vocabulary of the subject furnishes,and these ranged in the most harmonious order,on a distant glance nothing can look fairer:a prettier piece of tinsel-work one shall seldom see exhibited from the shew-glass of political erudition.
Step close to it,and the delusion vanishes.It is then seen to consist partly of self-evident observations,and partly of contradictions;partly of what every one knows already and partly of what no one can understand at all.
34.Throughout the whole of it,what distresses me is,not the meeting with any positions,such as,thinking them false,I find a difficulty in proving so:but the not meeting with any positions,true,or false,(unless it be here and there a self-evident one,)that I can find a meaning for.
If I can find nothing positive to accede to,no more can I to contradict.
Of this latter kind of work,indeed,there is the less to do for any one else,our Author himself having executed it,as we have seen,so amply.
The whole of it is,I must confess,to me a riddle:more acute,by far,than I am,must be the Oedipus that can solve it.Happily it is not necessary,on account of any thing that follows,that it should be solved.Nothing is concluded from it.For aught I can find,it has in itself no use,and none is made of it.There it is,and as well might it be any where else,or no where.
35.Were it then possible,there would be no use in its being solved:
but being,as I take it,really unsolvable,it were of use it should be seen to be so.Peace may by this means be restored to the breast of many a desponding student,who,now prepossessed with the hopes of a rich harvest of instruction,makes a crime to himself of his inability to reap what,in truth,his Author has not sown.
36.As to the Original Contract,by turns embraced and ridiculed by our Author,a few pages,perhaps,may not be ill bestowed in endeavouring to come to a precise notion about its reality and use.The stress laid on it formerly,and still,perhaps,by some,is such as renders it an object not undeserving of attention.I was in hopes,however,till I observed the notice taken of it by our author,that this chimera had been effectually demolished by Mr HUME.(52)I think we hear not so much of it now as formerly.The indestructible prerogatives of mankind have no need to be supported upon the sandy foundation of a fiction.
37.With respect to this,and other fictions,there was once a time,perhaps,when they had their use.With instruments of this temper,I will not deny but that some political work may have been done,and that useful work,which,under the then circumstances of things,could hardly have been done with any other.But the season of Fiction is now over:insomuch,that what formerly might have been tolerated and countenanced under that name,would,if now attempted to be set on foot,be censured and stigmatized under the harsher appellations of incroachment or imposture.To attempt to introduce any new one,would be now a crime:for which reason there is much danger,without any use,in vaunting and propagating such as have been introduced already.In point of political discernment,the universal spread of learning has raised mankind in a manner to a level with each other,in comparison of what they have been in any former time:nor is any man now so far elevated above his fellows,as that he should be indulged in the dangerous licence of cheating them for their good.
38.As to the fiction now before us,in the character of an argumentum ad hominem coming when it did,and managed as it was,it succeeded to admiration.
That compacts,by whomsoever entered into,ought to be kept;that men are bound by compacts,are propositions which men,without knowing or enquiring why,were disposed universally to accede to.The observance of promises they had been accustomed to see pretty constantly enforced.They had been accustomed to see Kings,as well as others,behave themselves as if bound by them.This proposition,then,`that men are bound by compacts;'and this other,`that,if one party performs not his part,the other is released from his,'being propositions which no man disputed,were propositions which no man had any call to prove.In theory they were assumed for axioms:
