The imagination runs not along them with facility, nor is able to transfer the honour and credit of the ancestors to their posterity of the same name and family so readily, as when the transition is conformable to the general rules, and passes from father to son, or from brother to brother.
SECT.

X OF PROPERTY AND RICHES But the relation, which is esteemed the closest, and which of all others produces most commonly the passion of pride, is that of property.

This relation it will be impossible for me fully to explain before I come to treat of justice and the other moral virtues.

It is sufficient to observe on this occasion, that property may be defined, such a relation betwixt a person and an object as permits him, but forbids any other, the free use and possession of it, without violating the laws of justice and moral equity.

If justice, therefore, be a virtue, which has a natural and original influence on the human mind, property may be looked upon as a particular species of causation; whether we consider the liberty it gives the proprietor to operate as he please upon the object or the advantages, which he reaps from it.