BOOK III PART II
assert justice to be a natural virtue, and an-
tecedent to human conventions, to resolve all
civil allegiance into the obligation of a promise,
and assert that it is our own consent alone,
which binds us to any submission to magis-
tracy. For as all government is plainly an in-
vention of men, and the origin of most gov-
ernments is known in history, it is necessary
to mount higher, in order to find the source of
our political duties, if we would assert them to
have any natural obligation of morality. These
philosophers, therefore, quickly observe, that
society is as antient as the human species,
and those three fundamental laws of nature as
antient as society: So that taking advantage of
the antiquity, and obscure origin of these laws,
they first deny them to be artificial and volun-
tary inventions of men, and then seek to ingraft
on them those other duties, which are more