BOOK III PART I
tificial, and that of others natural. The discus-
sion of this question will be more proper, when
we enter upon an exact detail of each particular
vice and virtue^14
Mean while it may not be amiss to observe
from these definitions of natural and unnatu-
ral, that nothing can be more unphilosophical
than those systems, which assert, that virtue is
the same with what is natural, and vice with
what is unnatural. For in the first sense of
the word, Nature, as opposed to miracles, both
vice and virtue are equally natural; and in the
second sense, as opposed to what is unusual,
perhaps virtue will be found to be the most un-
natural. At least it must be owned, that heroic
(^14) In the following discourse natural is also opposed
sometimes to civil, sometimes to moral. The opposition
will always discover the sense, in which it is taken.