Page:Treatise of Human Nature (1888).djvu/717

693 sense of duty, 518 (cf. 478, § 522); there is no natural inclination to their performance as there is to be humane, therefore fidelity is not a natural virtue, 519; the rule to observe, is required to supplement the laws of nature concerning stability or transference of property, 520 (cf. 526); we create a new motive by a form of words or symbol by which we subject ourselves to the penalty of never being trusted again if we fail in fidelity: but interest the first obligation to their performance, 522; afterwards a sentiment of morals concurs with interest and becomes a new obligation, 523; but the form of words soon becomes the chief part of the promise, which leads to certain contradictions, 524; the fact that force invalidates, shows they have no natural obligation, 525; performance of, a third fundamental law of nature invented by man, 526, its obligation antecedent to government: they are the original sanction of government and the source of the first obligation to obedience, 541; but allegiance quickly gets an obligation of its own, and so all government does not rest on consent, 543; the moral obligations of promises and allegiance different, as well as the natural obligations of interest, 545 (cf. 519) (v. Government, Obligation).

Property.

§ 1. A very close relation and the most common source of pride, 309; definition ot; 310; a particular species of causation, 310; animals incapable of the relation of property, 326; a quality perfectly insensible and even inconceivable apart from the sentiments of the mind, 515 (cf. 509); the quality which we call property is no sensible quality of the object, no relation of the object, but an internal relation, i.e. some influence which the external relations of the object have on the mind and actions, 527; admits of no degrees, 529, except in the imagination, 531.

§ 2. And justice (q.v. § 2) their origins, 484 f.; none in a state of nature, 501; unintelligible without an antecedent morality, 462 n, 491; a moral not a natural relation, 491; none independent of justice, 526.

§ 3. The rule that property shall be stable requires further determination by other rules, 502; that property shall be suitable to the person not one of these, 502; the rule that every one shall continue to enjoy what he is at present possessed of rests on custom, 503; imagination always the chief source of such rules, 504 n, 509 n; the utility of this rule confined to first formation of society, 505; afterwards the chief rules are those of (1) occupation or first possession: this not based on man's property in his labour, 505 n; impossible to determine where possession begins and ends, 506; its extent not determinable by reason or imagination, 507; (2) prescription or long possession: since property in this case is produced by time, it cannot be any real thing in the object but only the offspring