The State Of Nature; And Common Interest As The Origin Of Justice

The state of nature is the imaginary state which preceded society

This state is a mere fiction, like the golden age invented by poets. The state of nature is full of war, violence and injustice. Whereas, the golden age is the most charming and peaceable condition imaginable.

The poets say that the seasons in that first age of nature were so temperate, that people did not need clothes and houses against the heat and cold.
    The rivers flowed with wine and milk.
    The oaks yielded honey.
    Nature spontaneously produced her greatest delicacies.
    Only mild storms were known to humans then.
    Avarice, ambition, cruelty, selfishness, were never heard of.
    Cordial affection, compassion, sympathy, were the only movements known by the mind.
    Even the distinction of 'mine and thine' was banished.
        People carried with them the very notions of property and obligation, justice and injustice.

This idle fiction deserves our attention because it shows the origin of those virtues, which are the subjects of our present enquiry.
Justice is created from human conventions.
    These conventions are intended as a remedy to some inconveniences from the concurrence of:
        certain qualities of the human mind, and
            These qualities are selfishness and limited generosity.
        the situation of external objects.
            The situation is their easy change, joined to their scarcity relative to people's wants and desires.
But however philosophers may have been bewildered in those speculations, poets have been guided more infallibly by a certain taste or common instinct.
    In most kinds of reasoning, this taste goes farther than anything we have known.
    They easily perceived that the jealousy of interest, which justice supposes, could no longer have place:
        if every person had a tender regard for another, or
        if nature supplied abundantly all our wants and desires.
    There would be no need for those distinctions and limits of property and possession currently used by mankind.
Increase the benevolence of people or the bounty of nature, and you render justice useless by replacing it with:
    much nobler virtues, and
    more valuable blessings.
The selfishness of people is animated by the few possessions we have, in proportion to our wants.
    It is to restrain this selfishness that people have been obliged:
        to separate themselves from the community, and
        to distinguish between their own goods and those of others.

We do not need the fictions of poets to learn this.
    We may discover the same truth by common experience.
We observe that:
    a cordial affection renders all things common among friends, and
    married people in particular mutually:
        lose their property, and
        are unacquainted with the mine and thine.
            This mine and thine are so necessary, but cause such disturbance in human society.
The same thing happens when things become so abundant as to satisfy all of our desires.
    In this case:
        the distinction of property is entirely lost, and
        everything remains in common.
    We can see this in the air and water, the most valuable of all external objects.
Justice and injustice would be equally unknown among mankind:
    if men were supplied with everything in the same abundance, or
    if everyone had the same affection and tender regard for everyone as for himself.

Justice derives its origin only from the selfishness and confined generosity of men, along with the scanty provision nature has made for his wants.
    This proposition gives an additional force on some of our previous observations on justice.

From this principle, we may conclude the following.
    A strong extensive benevolence or a regard to public interest is not our first and original motive for the observation of the rules of justice.
        Since if men were endowed with such a benevolence, these rules would never have been dreamt of.
    The sense of justice is not founded on reason, or on the discovery of certain connections and relations of eternal, immutable, and universally obligatory ideas.
        A change in mankind's temper and circumstances would entirely change our duties and obligations.
        It would then be necessary, on the common system, for the sense of virtue to be derived from reason.
            Reason is supposed to show the change in the relations and ideas.
        But man's generosity and perfect abundance would destroy the very idea of justice because they render justice useless.
            His confined benevolence and necessitous condition give rise to justice only by making it requisite to public and private interest.
        Therefore, a concern for the public and private interest made us establish the laws of justice.
            This concern is not brought by any relation of ideas.
            It is brought by our impressions and sentiments.
                Without these, everything in nature:
                    is perfectly indifferent to us, and
                    can never affect us.
        Therefore, the sense of justice is not founded on our ideas, but on our impressions.
    Those impressions, which give rise to this sense of justice, are not natural to the human mind, but arise from artifice and human conventions.
        Any considerable alteration of temper and circumstances destroys justice and injustice equally.
            Any such alteration only changes the private and public interest.
            It follows that the first establishment of the rules of justice depends on these different interests.
        But if people pursued the public interest naturally and heartily, they would never have dreamed of restraining each other by these rules.
        If they pursued their private interest freely, they would run head-long into every kind of injustice and violence.
            Therefore, these rules are artificial.
            They seek their end in an oblique and indirect manner.
        Interest does not give rise to rules which could be pursued by people's natural passions.

The rules of justice are established merely by interest.
    But their connection with interest is singular and different each time.
A single act of justice is frequently contrary to public interest.
    If it stood alone without being followed by other acts, it might be very prejudicial to society.
        When a man of merit restores a great fortune to a miser or a seditious bigot, he has acted justly and laudably.
        But the public is a real sufferer.
    Every separate act of justice is not more conducive to private than to public interest.
        A man may impoverish himself by a single instance of integrity.
        He might wish the laws of justice to be suspended for a moment with regard to that single act.
But however single acts of justice may be contrary to public or private interest, the whole scheme is absolutely requisite to:
    the support of society, and
    the well-being of every individual.
        It is impossible to separate the good from the bad.

Property must be:

• stable, and
• fixed by general rules.

Even if the public becomes a sufferer in one instance, it is amply compensated by: the steady prosecution of the rule, and the peace and order it establishes. Every person would find himself a gainer on balancing the account, since without justice: society must immediately dissolve, and everyone must fall into a savage and solitary condition infinitely worse than the worst situation that can happen in society. Justice and property soon take place after people experience that the system of actions agreed to by society is infinitely advantageous to the whole. Every member of society is sensible of this interest. Everyone expresses this sense to his fellows, along with his resolution of squaring his actions by it, provided that others will do the same. They do not need to be induced to perform an act of justice. The first act of justice becomes an example to others. Thus, justice establishes itself by a kind of convention or agreement; that is, by a sense of interest common to all. Every act is done expecting that others will do the same. Without such a convention, no one would ever: have dreamed that there was such a virtue as justice, or have been induced to conform his actions to it. My actions might be pernicious. I can only be induced to embrace justice on the supposition that others will imitate my example. Only this combination can: render justice advantageous, or afford me any motives to conform myself to its rules.

Why do we annex the idea of virtue to justice and vice to injustice?
    This will be explained briefly here and in detail in Part 3.
Interest or the natural obligation to justice has been fully explained.
    The natural virtues must be examined before we can give a full account of moral obligation.
People are naturally induced to restrain their selfishness, in order to render their commerce safer after they find:
    that acting at their liberty totally incapacitates them for society, and
    that society is necessary to satisfy those very passions.
People are initially induced only by interest to impose and observe these rules.
    This motive is sufficiently strong in the first formation of society.
    But this interest becomes more remote after society has increased into a tribe or a nation.
    People do not readily see that disorder follows the breach of these rules, as in a more narrow and contracted society.
In our own actions, we may frequently:
    lose sight of that interest in maintaining order, and
    may follow a lesser and more present interest.
        The prejudice from the injustice of others is always
            blinded by passion, or
            biased by a contrary temptation.
Injustice still displeases us even when it is so distant from us as to not affect our interest.
    Because we consider it as:
        prejudicial to human society, and
        pernicious to everyone.
We share their uneasiness by sympathy.
    Everything which gives uneasiness in human actions is called Vice.
    Whatever produces satisfaction is called Virtue.
This is why the sense of moral good and evil follows on justice and injustice.
    This sense is derived only from contemplating the actions of others.
    But we do not fail to extend it even to our own actions.
The general rule goes beyond the instances it arose from.
    At the same time, we naturally sympathize with others in their sentiments for us.
Thus, self-interest is the original motive to establish justice.
    But a sympathy with public interest is the source of the moral approbation, which attends justice.

The Esteem For Justice

This progress of the sentiments is natural and even necessary.
It is here advanced by the artifice of politicians.
    They have created an esteem for justice and an abhorrence of injustice in order to:
        govern men more easily, and
        preserve peace in human society.
    However, this has been carried too far by certain writers on morals.
        They seem to have given their utmost efforts to destroy all sense of virtue.
The artifice of politicians can assist nature in producing the sentiments she suggests to us.
    It may even produce an approbation or esteem for any particular action alone.
    But it can never be the sole cause of our distinction between vice and virtue.
    Because if nature did not aid us in making distinctions, it would be in vain for politicians to talk of 'honourable' or 'dishonourable', 'praiseworthy' or 'blameable'.
        These words would be unintelligible, as if they were from an unknown language.
The most politicians can do is to extend the natural sentiments beyond their original bounds.
    But still nature must:
        furnish the materials, and
        give us some notion of moral distinctions.

Our esteem for justice is increased by:
    public praise and blame, and
    private education and instruction.
Parents easily observe:
    that a man is more useful to himself and others the more probity and honour he has, and
    that probity and honour have greater force when custom and education assist interest and reflection.
This is why parents are induced to:
    inculcate the principles of probity on their children, and
    teach them to regard the observance of the rules which maintain society as worthy and honourable and their violation as base and infamous.
Through this, the sentiments of honour may:
    take root in their tender minds,
    acquire such firmness and solidity so that they may not fall short of those principles which are:
        essential to our natures, and
        most deeply rooted in our internal constitution.

The interest of our reputation further contributes to increase their solidity.
    This comes after the opinion that a merit or demerit attends justice or injustice.
Nothing touches us more nearly than our reputation.
    Our reputation depends most on our conduct, with relation to the property of others.
This is why a person must never violate those principles essential to probity and honour if he:
    has any regard to his character, or
    intends to live on good terms with mankind.

There is neither justice nor injustice in the imaginary state which preceded society.
    But it does not mean that it was allowable to violate the property of others in such a state.
    I only maintain that there was no such thing as property.
    Consequently, there could be no such thing as justice or injustice.
I shall make a similar reflection regarding promises.
    I hope this reflection will remove all odium from the foregoing opinions on justice and injustice.