BOOK II PART III
fruits ripen and come to perfection in the win-
ter, and decay in the summer, after the same
manner as in England they are produced and
decay in the contrary seasons, he would find
few so credulous as to believe him. I am apt
to think a travellar would meet with as little
credit, who should inform us of people exactly
of the same character with those in Plato’s re-
public on the one hand, or those in Hobbes’s
Leviathan on the other. There is a general
course of nature in human actions, as well as in
the operations of the sun and the climate. There
are also characters peculiar to different nations
and particular persons, as well as common to
mankind. The knowledge of these characters is
founded on the observation of an uniformity in
the actions, that flow from them; and this uni-
formity forms the very essence of necessity.