In this and the following sections I shall proceed as in the foregoing.

I. Every man has in himself a principle of individuation, which distinguishes and separates him from all other men, in such a manner as may render him and them capable of distinct properties in things (or distinct subjects of property). That is: B and C are so distinguished, or exist so distinctly, that if there be anything which B can call his, it will be for that reason not C’s; and, vice versa, what is C’s will for that reason not be B’s. The proof of this I put upon every man’s own conscience. Let us see, then, whether there is anything which one man may truly call his.

II. There are some things, to which (at least before the case is altered by voluntary subjection, compact, or the like) every individual man has, or may have, such a natural and immediate relation, that he only of all mankind can call them his.

The life, limbs, etc. of B are as much his, as B is himself.347 It is impossible for C, or any other, to see with the eyes of B: therefore they are eyes only to B; and when they cease to be his eyes, they cease to be eyes at all. He then has the sole property in them, it being impossible in nature that the eyes of B should ever be the eyes of C.

Further, the labor of B cannot be the labor of C: because it is the application of the organs and powers of B, not of C, to the effecting of something; and therefore the labor is as much B’s, as the limbs and faculties made use of are his.

Again, the effect or produce of the labor of B is not the effect of the labor of C, and therefore this effect or produce is B’s, not C’s; as much B’s, as the labor was B’s and not C’s.348 Because, what the labor of B causes or produces, B produces by his labor; or it is the product of B by his labor: that is, it is B’s product, not C’s, nor any other’s. And, if C should pretend to any property in that which B only can truly call his, he would act contrary to truth.349

Lastly, there may be many things which B may truly call his in some such sense, or upon some such account, as no other can, and to which C has no more right than D, nor D than F, etc. the property of which will therefore be in B. Because C has no more title than D, nor D than F, etc., and that to which everyone besides B has an equal title, no one besides B can have any title to at all,350 their pretences mutually balancing and destroying each other, while his only remains. And in this case, a small matter, being opposed to nothing, will be strong enough to maintain the claim of B.

III. Whatever is inconsistent with the general peace and welfare (or good) of mankind, is inconsistent with the laws of human nature, wrong, intolerable. Those maxims may be esteemed the natural and true laws of any particular society, which are most proper to procure the happiness of it. Because happiness is the end of society and laws: otherwise we might suppose unhappiness to be proposed as the right end of them; that is, unhappiness to be desirable, contrary to nature and truth. And what is said of a particular society is not less true, when applied to the universal society of mankind. Now, those things are most apt to produce happiness, which make the most men happy. And therefore those maxims or principles which promote the general tranquility and well-being of mankind, if those words express the happiness of mankind, must be the true laws of humanity, or the basis of them; and all such practices as interfere with these, must also interfere with those. It is contradictory to say that anything can be a general law of human nature, which tends only to favor the pleasures of some particulars, to the prejudice of the rest who partake of the same common nature⁠—and especially if these pleasures are of the lower and brutal kind. As a million of men are more than one, so in fixing the public laws of human nature, and what ought to be or not to be, they must in reason be more regarded by a million of times: for here we consider men only as men.

It will be easy now to show that the transgression, of these laws conducing to the general good of the world, is wrong and morally evil. For if mankind may be said in general to be a rational animal, the general welfare of it must be the welfare of a rational nature: and therefore that, and the laws which advance it, must be founded in reason; nor can be opposed by anything but what is opposite to reason, and consequently to truth.

Let us suppose some rule by which, if all mankind would agree to govern themselves, it would be in general good for the world: that is, such a practice would be agreeable to the nature and circumstances of mankind. If all men should transgress this rule, what would be the consequence of such a universal revolt? A general evil, or something disagreeable to our nature and the truth of our circumstances: for of contrary practices there must be contrary effects; and contraries cannot both be agreeable to the same thing. This then would be wrong by the terms. And as wrong it would be in any one man: because all the individuals have equal right to do it⁠—one as much as another, and therefore all as much as any one. At least it is certain that whoever should violate that rule, would contribute his share towards the introduction of universal disorder and misery, and would for his part deny human circumstances to be what they are, public happiness to be what it is, and the rule to be what it really is, as much as if all others conspired with him in this iniquity and madness.

With what face can any particular man put his own humor or unreasonable pleasure into the scale against such a weight of happiness as that of all the world? Does not he⁠—who thus centers in himself, disregards the good of everybody else, and entirely separates his enjoyments and interests from those of the public⁠—does not he, I say, strike himself out of the roll of mankind?351 Ought he to be owned as one of them? Ought he not rather to be repelled, and treated as an alien and enemy to the common happiness and tranquility of our species?

IV. Whatever is either reasonable or unreasonable in B with respect to C, would be just the same in C with respect to B, if the case was inverted.352 Because reason is universal, and respects cases,353 not persons. (See section III, proposition II.)

Corollary: Hence it follows, that a good way to know what is right or wrong, in relation to other men, is to consider what we should take things to be were we in their circumstances.354

V. In a state of nature, men are equal in respect of dominion.355 I except for the present the case of parents and their children, and perhaps of some few other near relations. Here, let me be understood to mean only those between whom there is no family relation (or between whom all family relation is vanished).

In a state where no laws of society make any subordination or distinction, men can only be considered as men, or only as individuals of the same species, and equally sharing in one common definition.356 And since, by virtue of this same definition, B is the same to C that C is to B, B has no more dominion over C than C reciprocally has over B: that is, they are in this regard equal.

Personal excellencies or defects can make no difference here: because,

1. Who must judge on which side the advantage lies? To say B (or D, or anybody else) has a right to judge to the disadvantage of C, is to suppose what is in question⁠—a dominion over him⁠—not to prove it.

2. Great natural or acquired endowments may be privileges to them who have them, but this does not deprive those who have less of their title to what they have; or, which is the same, give anyone who has greater abilities a right to take it, or the use of it, from them. If B has better eyes than C, it is well for him; but it does not follow from this that C should not therefore see for himself, and use his eyes, as freely as B may his. C’s eyes are accommodated by nature to his use, and so are B’s to his, and each has the sole property in his own; so their respective properties are equal. The case would be parallel to this if B should happen to have better intellectual faculties than C. And further, if B should be stronger than C, he would not yet for that reason have any right to be his lord. For C’s less degree of strength is as much his, as B’s greater is his: therefore C has as much right to his, and (which is the natural consequence) to use his, as B has to use his: that is, C has as much right to resist, as B has to impose or command, by virtue of his strength: and where the right (though nor the power) of resisting is equal to the right of commanding, the right of commanding or dominion is nothing.

3. Since strength and power are most apt to pretend a title to dominion,357 it may be added further that power and right, or a power of doing anything and right to do it, are quite different ideas, and therefore they may be separated; nor does one infer the other. Lastly, if power, quà power, gives a right to dominion, it gives a right to everything that is obnoxious to it; and then nothing can be done that is wrong. (For nobody can do anything which he has not the power to do.) But this is not only contrary to what has been proved in section I, but to assert it would be to advance a plain absurdity, or contradiction rather. For then to oppose the man who has this power, as far as one can, or (which is the same) as far as one has the power to do it, would not be wrong: and yet so it must be, if he has a right to dominion, or to be not opposed. Moreover, that a man should have a right to anything, merely because he has the power to take it, is a doctrine indeed which may serve a few tyrants, or some banditti and rogues, but directly opposite to the peace and general good of mankind; and therefore to be exploded, by proposition III. It is also what the powerful themselves could not allow, if they would but imagine themselves to be in the state of the weak and more defenceless; and therefore unreasonable, by proposition IV.358

VI. No man can have a right to begin to interrupt the happiness of another. Because, in the first place, this supposes a dominion over him, and the most absolute too that can be. In the next, for B to begin to disturb the peace and happiness of C is what B would think unreasonable, if he was in C’s case. In the last, since it is supposed that C has never invaded the happiness of B, nor taken anything from him, nor at all meddled with him, but the whole transaction begins originally from B (for all this is couched in the word “begin”), C can have nothing that is B’s, and therefore nothing to which C has not at least as good a title as B has, or, in other words, nothing which C has not as much right to keep as B to claim. These two rights being then at least equal, and counterpoising each other, no alteration in the present state of things can follow from any superiority of right in B; and therefore, it must of right remain as it is, and what C has must, for any right that B has to oppose this settlement, remain with C in his undisturbed possession. But the argument is still stronger on the side of C, because he seems to have such a property in his own happiness, as is mentioned in proposition II⁠—such a one as no other can have.359

VII. Though no man can have a right to begin to interrupt another man’s happiness, or to hurt him; yet every man has a right to defend himself and his against violence, to recover what is taken by force from him, and even to make reprisals, by all the means that truth and prudence permit.360 We have seen already that there are some things which a man may truly call his; and let us for the present only suppose that there may be more. This premised, I proceed to make good the proposition.

To deny a man the privilege mentioned in it, is to assert, contrary to truth, either that he has not the faculties and powers which he has, or that the Author of nature has given them to him in vain. For to what end has he them, if he may not use them? And how may he use them, if not for his own preservation when he is attacked, and like to be abused or perhaps destroyed?

All animals have a principle of self-preservation, which exerts itself many times with an uncontrollable impetuosity. Nature is uniform in this, and everywhere constant to itself. Even inanimate bodies, when they are acted upon, react. And one may be sure that no position can have any foundation in nature, or be consistent with it and truth (those inseparable companions), which turns upon nature itself, and tends to its destruction.

Great part of the general happiness of mankind depends upon those means by which the innocent may be saved from their cruel invaders⁠—among which, the opportunities they have of defending themselves may be reckoned the chief. Therefore, to debar men of the use of these opportunities, and the right of defending themselves against injurious treatment and violence, must be inconsistent with the laws of nature by proposition III.

If a man has no right to defend himself and what is his, he can have no right to anything (the contrary to which has been already in part, and will by and by be more amply, proved), since that cannot be his right which he may not maintain to be his right.

If a man has no right to defend himself against insults, etc., it must be because the aggressor has a right to assail the other and usurp what is his. But this pretension has been prevented in the foregoing proposition. And, more than that, it includes a great absurdity: to commence an injury, or to begin the violence, being in nature more than only to repel it. He who begins is the true cause of all that follows; and whatever falls upon him, from the opposition made by the defending party, is but the effect of his own act: or, it is that violence of which he is the author, reflected back upon himself. It is as when a man spits at heaven, and the spittle falls back upon his own face.

Since he who begins to violate the happiness of another, does what is wrong, he who endeavors to obviate or put a stop to that violence, does in that respect what is right, by the terms.

Lastly, since every man is obliged to consult his own happiness, there can be no doubt but that he not only may, but even ought to defend it (section II, proposition IX); in such a manner, I mean, as does not interfere with truth,361 or his own design of being happy. He ought indeed not to act rashly, or do more than the end proposed requires⁠—that is, he ought, by a prudent carriage and wise forecast, to shut up, if he can, the avenues by which he may be invaded; and when that cannot be done, to use arguments and persuasives, or perhaps withdraw out of the way of harm: but when these measures are ineffectual or impracticable, he must take such other as he can, and confront force with force. Otherwise he will fail in his duty to himself, and deny happiness to be happiness.

By the same means that a man may defend what is his, he may certainly endeavor to recover what has been by any kind of violence or villainy taken from him. For it has been shown already that the power to take anything from another gives no right to it. The right, then, to that which has been taken from its owner against his will, remains still where it was: he may still truly call it his; and if it be his, he may use it as his: which, if he who took it away, or any other, shall hinder him from doing, that man is even here the aggressor, and the owner does but defend himself and what is his. Besides, he who uses anything as his, when it is his, acts on the side of truth; but that man who opposes him in this, and consequently asserts a right to that which is not his, acts contrary to truth. The former, therefore, does what cannot be amiss; but what the latter does, is wrong by that fundamental proposition, section I, proposition IV.

Then further, if a man has still a right to what is forcibly or without his consent taken from him, he must have a right to the value of it. For the thing is to him what it is in value to him: and the right he has to it, may be considered as a right to a thing of such a value. So that if the very thing which was taken be destroyed, or cannot be retrieved, the proprietor nevertheless retains his right to a thing of such a value to him, and something must be had in lieu of it: that is, he has a right to make reprisals. Since everything is to every man what it is in value to him, things of the same value to anyone may be reckoned as to him the same, and to recover the equivalent the same as to recover the thing itself: for otherwise it is not an equivalent. If the thing taken by way of reprisal should be, to the man from whom it is taken, of greater value than what he wrongfully took from the recoverer, he must charge himself with that loss. If injustice be done him, it is done by himself; the other has no more than what he has a right to. To which add, that as a man has a right to recover what is his, or the equivalent, from an invader; so he seems for the same reasons to have a right to an equivalent for the expense he is at in recovering his own, for the loss of time and quiet, and for the trouble, hazards, and dangers undergone: because all these are the effects of the invasion, and therefore to be added to the invader’s account.

VIII. The first possession of a thing gives the possessor a greater right to it than any other man has, or can have, till he, and all that claim under him, are extinct.

1. For till then, no other man can be the first possessor again: which is more than nothing; since he comes into it by God’s providence, and as it were donation.

2. That which no man has yet any title to,362 the finder may take without the violation of any truth. He does not deny that to be another man’s, which is another man’s; he does not begin to interrupt the happiness of anybody; etc. Therefore to possess himself of it is not wrong. So far from it, that, since every man is obliged to consult his own happiness (that is, his own interest and advantages, whenever he can do it without the violation of truth), not to act consonantly to this obligation is an omission that would be wrong. What he does, therefore, is right. And then if he does right in taking possession of it, he must from thence be the rightful possessor; or, it becomes his.

3. There are many things which cannot be possessed without cultivation and the contrivance and labor of the first possessor. This has generally been the case of lands, and these are indeed more eminently meant by the word possessions. Now, to deprive a man of the fruit of his own cares and sweat, and to enter upon it as if it was the effect of the intruder’s pains and travel, is a most manifest violation of truth. It is asserting in fact that to be his, which cannot be his. See proposition II.

4. The contrary doctrine, viz. that prime occupancy gives no right, interferes with proposition III, for it must certainly be inconsistent with the peace and happiness of mankind in general to be left in endless wars and struggles for that which no man can ever have any right to. And yet, thus it must be if that doctrine was true: because it has been demonstrated that power confers no right, and therefore the first right to many things can only accrue from the first possession of them.

5. If B should endeavor by force (or fraud) to eject C out of the possession of anything which C enjoys (and obtained without expelling or disturbing anybody), he would certainly do that which he himself would judge unreasonable, were he in C’s place. Therefore, he acts as if that was not reason with respect to C, which would be reason in respect of B; contrary to the nature of reason, and to proposition IV.

6. To endeavor to turn a man violently out of his possessions is the same as to command him to leave them, upon pain of suffering for non-obedience. But this is usurping a dominion which he has no right to, and is contrary to section V, proposition V.

7. No man can expel another out of his possession without beginning to interrupt his happiness; nor can anyone do this without contravening the truth contained in proposition VI. This therefore secures the possessor in his possession forever: that is, it confirms his right to the thing possessed.

8. Lastly, the first possessor, of whom I have been speaking, has undoubtedly a right to defend his person, and such other things as can only be his, against the attempts of any aggressor (see proposition II); therefore, these no one can have a right to violate. And therefore again, if he cannot be forcibly dispossessed without violence offered to these, no one has any right to dispossess him. But this must be the case, where the possessor does not quit his possession willingly. The right, consequently, must remain solely in him, unless he consents to quit it.

Note: The successors of an invader, got into possession wrongfully, may acquire a right in time,363 by the failure of such as might claim under him who had the right. For he who happens to be in possession, when all these are extinct, is in the place of a prime occupant.

IX. A title to many things may be transferred by compact or donation.364 If B has the sole right in lands, or goods, nobody has any right to the disposal of them besides B⁠—and he has a right. For disposing of them is but using them as his. Therefore the act of B in exchanging them for something else, or bestowing them upon C, interferes not with truth: and so B does nothing that is wrong. Nor does C do anything against truth, or that is wrong, in taking them, because he treats them as being what they are: as things which come to him by the act of that person in whom is lodged the sole power of disposing of them. Thus C gets the title innocently.

But in the case of compact, the reason on which this transaction stands is more evident still. For the contractors are supposed to receive, each from other, the equivalent of that which they part with, or at least what is equivalent to them retrospectively, or perhaps by each party preferable. Thus neither of them is hurt; perhaps both advantaged. And so each of them treats the thing, which he receives upon the innocent exchange, as being what it is: better for him, and promoting his convenience and happiness. Indeed he who receives the value of anything, and what he likes as well, in effect has it still. His property is not diminished: the situation and matter of it is only altered.

Mankind could not well subsist without bartering one thing for another; therefore, whatever tends to take away the benefit of this intercourse is inconsistent with the general good of mankind, etc. If a man could find the necessaries of life without it, and by himself, he must at least want many of the comforts of it.

X. There is, then, such a thing as property, founded in nature and truth:365 or, there are things which one man only can, consistently with nature and truth, call his: by propositions II, VIII, IX.366

XI. Those things which only one man can truly and properly call his, must remain his till he agrees to part with them (if they are such as he may part with) by compact or donation; or (which must be understood) till they fail, or death extinguishes him and his title together, and he delivers the lamp to his next man. Because no one can deprive him of them without his approbation, but the depriver must use them as his when they are not his, in contradiction to truth. For,

XII. To have the property of anything and to have the sole right of using and disposing of it are the same thing: they are equipollent expressions. For, when it is said that P has the property, or that such a thing is proper to P, it is not said, that P and Q, or P and others, have the property (proprium limits the thing to P only); and when anything is said to be his, it is not said that part of it only is his. P has therefore the all or all-hood367 of it, and consequently all the use of it. And then, since the all of it to him, or all that P can have of it, is but the use and disposal of it,368 he who has this has the thing itself, and it is his.369

Laws, indeed, have introduced a way of speaking, by which the property and the usufruct are distinguished; but in truth, the usufructuary has a temporary or limited property, and the proprietary has a perpetual usufruct, either at present, or in reversion. Propriety without the use (if the use is never come to the proprietary) is an empty sound.

I have before, upon some occasions, taken it as granted, that he who uses anything as his, when it is not his, acts against truth, etc., but now I say further, that,

XIII. He who uses or disposes of anything, does by that declare it to be his. Because this is all that he, whose it really is, can do. Borrowing and hiring afford no objection to this. When the borrower or hirer uses the thing borrowed or hired, he uses what is his own for the time allowed, and his doing so is only one of those ways in which the true proprietary disposes of it.

XIV. To usurp or invade the property of another man is injustice: or, more fully, to take, detain, use, destroy, hurt, or meddle370 with anything that is his without his allowance, either by force or fraud or any other way, or even to attempt any of these, or assist them who do, are acts of injustice. The contrary⁠—to render and permit quietly to everyone what is his⁠—is justice. Definition.

XV. He that would not violate truth, must avoid all injustice: or, all injustice is wrong and evil. It interferes with the truths371 here before laid down, and perhaps more. It denies men to be subjects capable of distinct properties; in some cases it denies them to have a property even in their own bodies, life, fame, and the like; the practice of it is incompatible with the peace and happiness of mankind; it is what every man thinks unreasonable in his own case, when the injury is done to himself; to take anything from another only because I think I want it, or because I have power to take it and will have it, without any title to it, is the highest pretence to dominion, and denial of our natural equality; it is setting up a right to begin to disturb the happiness of others; and lastly, it is to deny there is any such thing as property, contrary to truth.

Briefly, if there be anything which P can truly and properly call his, then, if T takes or uses it without the consent of P, he declares it to be his (for if it was his he could do no more) when it is not his, and so acts a lie,372 in which consists the idea and formal ratio of moral evil.

The very attempting any instance of injustice, or assisting others in such an attempt, since it is attempting and promoting what is wrong, is being in the wrong as much as one is able to be, or doing what one can to achieve that which is evil, and to do this, by the terms, must be wrong and evil.

Even the desire of obtaining anything unjustly is evil: because to desire to do evil, by the terms again, is an evil or criminal desire. If the act follows such a desire, it is the child and product of it; and the desire, if anything renders the fulfilling of it impracticable, is the act obstructed in the beginning and stifled in the womb.

Let it be observed here, by way of scholion concerning the thing called “covetousness,” that there seem to be three sorts of it. One is this here mentioned: a desire of getting from others, though it be unjustly. This is wrong and wicked. Another is an immense desire of heaping up what one can, by just methods, but without any reasonable end proposed,373 and only in order to keep,374 and, as it were, bury it;375 and the more he accumulates, the more he craves.376 This also entrenches upon truth, and seems to be a vice. But to covet to obtain what is another man’s, by just means and with his consent, when it may contribute to the happiness of ourselves or families, and perhaps of the other person too, has nothing surely that looks unfriendly upon truth, or is blameable, in it. This, if it may be called covetousness, is a virtuous covetousness.

XVI. When a man cares not what sufferings he causes to others, and especially if he delights in other men’s sufferings and makes them his sport, this is what I call cruelty. And not to be affected with the sufferings of other people, though they proceed not from us, but from others or from causes in which we are not concerned, is unmercifulness. Mercy and humanity are the reverse of these.

XVII. He, who religiously regards truth and nature, will not only be not unjust, but (more) not unmerciful, and much less cruel. Not to be affected with the afflictions of others, so far as we know them, and in proportion to the several degrees and circumstances of them, though we are not the causes of them, is the same as to consider the afflicted as persons not in affliction: that is, as being not what they are, or (which is the same) as being what they are not⁠—and this contradicts matter of fact.

One can scarce know the sufferings of another without having at least some image of them in his mind: nor can one have these images without being conscious of them and, as it were, feeling them. Next to suffering itself is to carry the representation of it about with one. So that he who is not affected with the calamities of others, so far as they fall within his knowledge, may be said to know and not to know, or at least to cancel his knowledge, and contradict his own conscience.

There is something in human nature,377 resulting from our very make and constitution⁠—while it retains its genuine form, and is not altered by vicious habits, not perverted by transports of revenge or fury, by ambition, company, or false philosophy,378 nor oppressed by stupidity and neglecting to observe what happens to others⁠—I say, there is something which renders us obnoxious to the pains of others, causes us to sympathize with them, and almost comprehends us in their case. It is grievous to see or hear (and almost to hear of) any man, or even any animal whatever, in torment. This compassion appears eminently in them who, upon other accounts, are justly reckoned among the best of men:379 in some degree it appears in almost all⁠—nay, even sometimes, when they more coolly attend to things, in those hardened and execrable monsters of cruelty themselves, who seem just to retain only the least tincture of humanity that can be. The Pheræan tyrant, who had never wept over any of those murders he had caused among his own citizens, wept when he saw a tragedy but acted in the theatre:380 the reason was, his attention was caught here, and he more observed the sufferings of Hecuba and Andromache than ever he had those of the Pheræans, and more impartially, being no otherwise concerned in them but as a common spectator. Upon this occasion, the principle of compassion, implanted in human nature, appeared, overcame his habits of cruelty, broke through his petrifaction, and would show that it could not be totally eradicated. It is therefore according to nature to be affected with the sufferings of other people, and the contrary is inhuman and unnatural.

Such are the circumstances of mankind, that we cannot (or but very few of us, God knows) make our way through this world without encountering dangers and suffering many evils; and therefore, since it is for the good of such as are so exposed, or actually smarting under pain or trouble, to receive comfort and assistance from others, without which they must commonly continue to be miserable or perish, it is for the common good and welfare of the majority, at least, of mankind that they should compassionate and help each other.381 To do the contrary must therefore be contrary to nature and wrong by proposition III. And besides, it is by one’s behavior and actions to affirm that the circumstances of men in this world are not what they are, or that peace, and health, and happiness, and the like, are not what they are.

Let a man substitute himself into the room of some poor creature dejected with invincible poverty, distracted with difficulties, or groaning under the pangs of some disease or the anguish of some hurt or wound, and without help abandoned to want and pain. In this distress, what reflections can he imagine he should have, if he found that everybody neglected him, nobody so much as pitying him or vouchsafing to take notice of his calamitous and sad condition? It is certain that what it would be reasonable or unreasonable for others to do in respect of him, he must allow to be reasonable or unreasonable for him to do in respect of them, or deny a manifest truth in proposition IV.

If unmercifulness, as before defined, be wrong, no time need to be spent in proving that cruelty is so. For all that is culpable in unmercifulness is contained in cruelty, with additions and aggravations. Cruelty not only denies due regard to the sufferings of others, but causes them, or perhaps delights in them, and (which is the most insolent and cruel of all cruelties) makes them a jest and subject of raillery. If the one be a defect of humanity, the other is diametrically opposite to it.382 If the one does no good, the other does much evil. And no man, how cruel soever in reality he was, has ever liked to be reckoned a cruel man: such a confession of guilt does nature extort, so universally does it reject, condemn, abhor this character.

XVIII. The practice of justice and mercy is just as right, as injustice, unmercifulness, and cruelty are wrong. This follows from the nature of contraries. Besides, not to be just to a man is to be not just, or unjust, to him; and so not to be merciful is to be unmerciful, or perhaps cruel.

Here I might end this section, but perhaps it may not be improper to be a little more particular. Therefore,

XIX. From the foregoing propositions may be deduced the heinousness of all such crimes as murder, or even hurting the person of another anyhow, when our own necessary defense does not require it, (it being not possible that anything should be more his than his own person, life and limbs); robbing, stealing, cheating, betraying, defamation, detraction, defiling the bed of another man, etc. with all the approaches and tendencies to them. For these are not only comprised within the definition of injustice, and are therefore violations of those truths which are violated by that, but commonly (and some of them always) come within the description of cruelty too. All which is evident at first light with respect to murder, robbery, cheating, slandering, etc., especially if a man brings himself into the case, and views himself in his own imagination as rendered scandalous by calumniators and liars, stripped by thieves, ruined in his fortunes and undone by knaves, struggling to no purpose, convulsed and agonizing under the knife of some truculent ruffian, or the like.

The same is altogether as plain in the case of adultery,383 when anyone384 ensnares and corrupts the wife of another⁠—notwithstanding the protection it gains from false notions, great examples,385 and the commonness of the crime.386 For (the nature of matrimony being, for the present, supposed to be such as it will appear by and by to be) the adulterer denies the property a husband has in his wife by compact, the most express and sacred that can possibly be made; he does that which tends to subvert the peace of families, confounds relation, and is altogether inconsistent with the order and tranquility of the world and therefore with the laws of human nature; he does what no man in his wits could think reasonable, or even tolerable, were he the person wronged;387 briefly, he impudently treats a woman as his own woman (or wife388), who is not his but another’s, contrary to justice, truth, and fact.389 Nor is this simple injustice only, but injustice for which no reparation can be made, if the injured man thinks so, as he generally does (see section II, proposition I, observation 4)⁠—injustice accompanied with the greatest cruelty, so complicated as scarce any other can be. The husband is forever robbed of all that pleasure and satisfaction which arises from the wife’s fidelity and affection to him,390 presuming upon which he took her to be not only the partner of his bed, but the companion of his life and sharer in all his fortunes;391 and into the room of them succeed painful and destructive passions. The poor woman392 herself, though she may be deluded,393 and not see at present her guilt or the consequences of it, usually pays dear for her security and want of guard, the husband becoming cold394 and averse to her, and she full of apprehensions and fears,395 with a particular dread of his further resentment. And their affairs, in this disjointed and distracted condition, are neglected: innocent children slighted, and left unprovided for, without so much as the comfort of any certain relations to pity them,396 etc.

The adulterer may not be permitted to extenuate his crime by such impertinent similes and rakish talk as are commonly used for that purpose.397 When anyone wrongs another of his property, he wrongs him of what it is to him, the proprietor: and the value must be set according to what he esteems it to be, not what the injurer⁠—who perhaps has no taste of virtuous pleasures⁠—may think it to be. (See section II, proposition 1, observations 3 and 4.) Nor may these thefts be excused from their secrecy:

1. For the injustice of the fact is the same in itself, whether known or not. In either case truth is denied, and a lie is as much a lie when it is whispered as when it is proclaimed at the market-cross.

2. It has been shown (section II) that the rectitude of our actions and way to happiness are coincident, and that such acts as are disagreeable to truth, wrong in themselves, tend to make men ultimately unhappy.398 Things are so ordered and disposed by the Author of nature, or such a constitution of things flows from him, that it must be so. And since no retreat can be impervious to his eye, no corner so much out of the way as not to be within his plan, no doubt there is to every wrong and vicious act a suitable degree of unhappiness and punishment annexed, which the criminal will be sure to meet with same time or other.399 For his own sake, therefore, he ought not to depend upon the darkness of the deed.

3. But lastly, it can hardly be but that it must be discovered.400 People generally rise in vice, grow impudent and vain and careless, and discover themselves;401 the opportunities contrived for it must be liable to observation; some confidents must be trusted, who may betray the secret, and upon any little distaste probably will do it; and besides, love is quick of apprehension.402

It will be easily perceived, from what has been said, that if to murder, rob, etc. are unjust and crimes of a heinous nature, all those things which have any tendency toward them, or affinity with them, or any way countenance them, must be in their degree criminal403 because they are of the same complexion with that which they tend to, though not of the same growth, nor matured into the gross act, or perhaps do not operate so presently, apparently, or certainly. Envy, malice, and the like, are conatus toward the destruction or ruin of the person who is the object of these unhappy passions. To throw dust404 upon a man’s reputation by innuendos, ironies, etc. may not indeed sully it all at once, as when dirt is thrown, or gross calumnies, yet it infects the air, and may destroy it by a lingering poison. To expose another by the strength of a jesting talent, or harder temper of face, is to wound him, though it be in an invisible place.405 Many freedoms and reputed civilities of barbarian extract, and especially gallantries,406 that proceed not to consummate wickedness, nor perhaps are intended to be carried so far, may yet divert people’s affections from their proper object, and debauch the mind.407 By stories or insinuations to sow the seeds of discord and quarrels between men is to murder or hurt them by another hand. Even for men to intermeddle in other people’s affairs, as busybodies and ἀλλοτριοεπίσκοποι408 do, is to assume a province which is not theirs; to concern themselves with things in which they are not concerned; to make that public which in itself is private; and perhaps to rob the person, into whose business they intrude themselves, of his quiet, if of nothing else. For indeed this intermeddling looks like setting up a pretence to something further: like an unjust attack begun at a distance. All which declares what an enemy, and how irreconcilable to truth, this pragmatical humor is. And so on.

If these things are so, how guilty must they be who are designedly the promoters or instruments of injustice and wickedness, such as mercenary-swearers and false witnesses, traders in scandal, solicitors in vice, they who intend by their conversation to relax men’s principles too much, and (as it seems) prepare them for knavery, lewdness, or any flagitious enterprise.409

There are other crimes, such as infidelity to friends or them who entrust us with anything, ingratitude, all kinds of wilful perjury, and the like, which might have been mentioned in the proposition, being great instances of injustice; but because they are visibly such, and their nature cannot be mistaken, I comprise them in the et cetera there. Anyone may see that he who acts unfaithfully, acts against his promises and engagements, and therefore denies and sins against truth, does what it can never be for the good of the world should become a universal practice, does what he would not have done to himself, and wrongs the man who depends upon him of what he justly might expect. So the ungrateful man treats his benefactor as not being what be is, etc. And the false-swearer respects neither things, nor himself, nor the persons affected, nor mankind in general, nor God himself, as being what they are. All this is obvious.410