XXIII.

Wherever society forms and sustains itself, there must be adopted certain rules and laws to maintain it.

These seemingly arbitrary laws represent the interests, the passions, and opinions of those who establish them, and they differ widely, according to the nature of the men and the climate which they inhabit.

The inhabitants of hot climes and the cold zones present strange contrasts in their natural ideas of justice, as well as in instincts and appetites. The Turk regards intemperance as a crime, and polygamy as a virtue. The Englishman looks upon the one with complaisance, but regards the other with horror. Thus reason yields to physical force, or to the differences of climate; and what men call virtue in one clime, loses its force and beauty in another. Yet there are natural laws older than the empires of force or reason; more ancient than society itself; more powerful and sublime than the passions and interests of men. These laws of kindness, of mercy, of friendship, like elementary language, come from divination.

Nature has planted certain instincts in the bosoms of all the different races of the globe alike; and these become developed according to cultivation, or debased according to degrading influences. The good of society may define the measure between good and evil, but it cannot extinguish the principles, or obliterate the sharply defined distinctions. The will of the Creator has manifested itself clearly in the workings of the natural world, if it has not been revealed to us in those tablets which fell from the skies.