Cleo. Your demand is very reasonable, and I will satisfy you as well as I can. A man of sense, learning, and experience, that has been well educated, will always find out the difference between right and wrong in things diametrically opposite; and there are certain facts, which he will always condemn, and others which he will always approve of: To kill a member of the same society that has not offended us, or to rob him, will always be bad; and to cure the sick, and be beneficent to the public, he will always pronounce to be good actions: and for a man to do as he will be done by, he will always say is a good rule in life; and not only men of great accomplishments, and such as have learned to think abstractly, but all men of middling capacities, that have been brought up in society, will agree in this, in all countries and in all ages. Nothing likewise seems more true to all, that have made any tolerable use of their faculty of thinking, than that out of the society, before any division was made, either by contract or otherwise, all men would have an equal right to the earth: But do you believe that our wild man, if he had never seen any other human creature but his savage consort and his progeny, would ever have entertained the same notions of right and wrong?
Hor. Hardly; his small capacity in the art of reasoning, would hinder him from doing it so justly; and the power he found he had over his children, would render him very arbitrary.
Cleo. But without that incapacity, suppose that at threescore he was, by a miracle, to receive a fine judgment, and the faculty of thinking and reasoning consequentially, in as great a perfection as the wisest man ever did, do you think he would ever alter his notion of the right he had to every thing he could manage, or have other sentiments in relation to himself and his progeny, than from his behaviour it appeared he entertained, when he seemed to act almost altogether by instinct?
Hor. Without doubt: For, if judgment and reason were given him, what could hinder him from making use of those faculties, as well as others do?
Cleo. You seem not to consider, that no man can reason but à posteriori, from something that he knows, or supposes to be true: What I said of the difference between right and wrong, I spoke of persons who remembered their education, and lived in society; or, at least, such as plainly saw others of their own species, that were independent of them, and either their equals or superiors.
Hor. I begin to believe you are in the right: But at second thoughts, why might not a man, with great justice, think himself the sovereign of a place, where he knew no human creature but his own wife, and the descendents of both?
Cleo. With all my heart: But may there not be an hundred such savages in the world with large families, that might never meet, nor ever hear of one another?
Hor. A thousand, if you will, and then there would be so many natural sovereigns.
Cleo. Very well: what I would have you observe, is, that there are things which are commonly esteemed to be eternal truths, that an hundred or a thousand people of fine sense and judgment, could have no notion of. What if it should be true, that every man is born with this domineering spirit, and that we cannot be cured of it, but by our commerce with others, and the experience of facts, by which we are convinced that we have no such right? Let us examine a man’s whole life, from his infancy to his grave, and see which of the two seems to be most natural to him; a desire of superiority, and grasping every thing to himself, or a tendency to act according to the reasonable notions of right and wrong; and we shall find, that, in his early youth, the first is very conspicuous; that nothing appears of the second before he has received some instructions, and that this latter will always have less influence upon his actions, the more uncivilized he remains: From whence I infer, that the notions of right and wrong are acquired; for if they were as natural, or if they affected us as early as the opinion, or rather the instinct we are born with, of taking every thing to be our own, no child would ever cry for his eldest brother’s play-things.
Hor. I think there is no right more natural, nor more reasonable, than that which men have over their children; and what we owe our parents can never be repaid.