BOOK II PRINCIPALS OF SOCIETY CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION In the preceding book we have cleared the foundations for the remaining branches of inquiry, and shown what are the prospects it is reasonable to entertain as to future political improvement. The effects which are produced by positive institutions have there been delineated, as well as the extent of the powers of man, considered in his social capacity. It is time that we proceed to those disquisitions which are more immediately the object of the present work. Political inquiry may be distributed under two heads: first, what are the regulations which will conduce to the well being of man in society; and, secondly, what is the authority which is competent to prescribe regulations. The regulations to which the conduct of men living in society ought to be con...
BOOK II CHAPTER V 0F RIGHTS Active rights exploded.-Province of morality unlimited.-Objection.- Consequences of the doctrine of active rights.-Admonition considered.-Rights of kings-of communities.-Passive rights irrefragable.-Of discretion. THE rights of man have, like many other political and moral questions, furnished a topic of eager and pertinacious dispute more by a confused and inaccurate statement of the subject of inquiry than by any considerable difficulty attached to the subject itself. The real or supposed rights of man are of two kinds, active and passive; the right in certain cases to do as we list; and the right we possess to the forbearance or assistance of other men. The first of these a just philosophy will probably induce us universally to explode. There is no sphere in which a human being can be supposed to act, where one mode of proceeding will not, in every given instance...
ESSAY IV OF THE DURABILITY OF HUMAN ACHIEVEMENTS AND PRODUCTIONS There is a view of the character of man, calculated more perhaps than any other to impress us with reverence and awe. Man is the only creature we know, that, when the term of his natural life is ended, leaves the memory of himself behind him. All other animals have but one object in view in their more considerable actions, the supply of the humbler accommodations of their nature. Man has a power sufficient for the accomplishment of this object, and a residue of power beyond, which he is able, and which he not unfrequently feels himself prompted, to employ in consecutive efforts, and thus, first by the application and arrangement of material substances, and afterwards by the faculty he is found to possess of giving a permanent record to his thoughts, to realize the archetypes and conceptions which previously existed only in his mind. One method, calculated to place this fac...