course strangers to vanity, to respect, to esteem, to contempt; as
they had no notion of what we call Meum and Tuum, nor any true idea of
justice; as they considered any violence they were liable to, as an
evil that could be easily repaired, and not as an injury that deserved
punishment; and as they never so much as dreamed of revenge, unless
perhaps mechanically and unpremeditatedly, as a dog who bites the
stone that has been thrown at him; their disputes could seldom be
attended with bloodshed, were they never occasioned by a more
considerable stake than that of subsistence: but there is a more
dangerous subject of contention, which I must not leave unnoticed.

Among the passions which ruffle the heart of man, there is one of a
hot and impetuous nature, which renders the sexes necessary to each
other; a terrible passion which despises all dangers, bears down all
obstacles, and to which in its transports it seems proper to destroy
the human species which it is destined to preserve. What must become
of men abandoned to this lawless and brutal rage, without modesty,
without shame, and every day disputing the objects of their passion at
the expense of their blood?

We must in the first place allow that the more violent the passions,
the more necessary are laws to restrain them: but besides that the
disorders and the crimes, to which these passions daily give rise
among us, sufficiently grove the insufficiency of laws for that
purpose, we would do well to look back a little further and examine,
if these evils did not spring up with the laws themselves; for at this
rate, though the laws were capable of repressing these evils, it is
the least that might be expected from them, seeing it is no more than
stopping the progress of a mischief which they themselves have
produced.