all the governments which exist at present, or of which there remains
any record in story, have been founded originally on usurpation, or on
conquest, or both, without any pretence of a fair consent or voluntary
subjection of the people." If we then ask why obedience is possible, the
sufficient answer is that "it becomes so familiar that most men never
make any inquiry about its origin or cause, any more than about the
principle of gravity, resistance, or the most universal laws of nature."

Government, in short, is dependent upon the inescapable facts of
psychology. It might be unnecessary if all desires could be individually
fulfilled by making them, or if man showed to his fellow-men the same
tender regard he has for himself. So happy a condition does not exist;
and government is the most useful way of remedying the defects of our
situation. A theologian might say that Hume derives government from
original sin; to which he would have replied by denying the fall. His
whole attitude is simply an insistence that utility is the touchstone of
institutions, and he may claim to be the first thinker who attempted its
application to the whole field of political science. He knows that
opinion is the sovereign ruler of mankind, and that ideas of utility lie
at the base of the thoughts which get accepted. He does not, indeed,
deny that fear and consent enter into the attitude of men; he simply
asserts that these also are founded upon a judgment of utility in the
thing judged. We obey because otherwise "society could not subsist," and
society subsists for its utility. "Men," he says "could not live at all
in society, at least in a civilized society, without laws and
magistrates and judges, to prevent the encroachments of the strong upon
the weak, of the violent upon the just and equitable."

Utilitarianism is, of course, above all a method; and it is not unfair
to say of Hume that he did not get very far beyond insistence on that