BOOK III PART II
the former, without the direction of the latter,
incapacitate men for society: And it may be al-
lowed us to consider separately the effects, that
result from the separate operations of these two
component parts of the mind. The same liberty
may be permitted to moral, which is allowed
to natural philosophers; and it is very usual
with the latter to consider any motion as com-
pounded and consisting of two parts separate
from each other, though at the same time they
acknowledge it to be in itself uncompounded
and inseparable.
This state of nature, therefore, is to be re-
garded as a mere fiction, not unlike that of
the golden age, which poets have invented;
only with this difference, that the former is de-
scribed as full of war, violence and injustice;
whereas the latter is pointed out to us, as the