acquaintance. They ventured to look at her. They felt an inclination
to speak to her. One intimacy led to another, till the suspicion wore
away, and a change of sentiment stole gradually upon the mind; and
having no self-interest to serve, no passion of dishonour to gratify,
they became enamoured of her innocence, and unaltered by misfortune or
uninflamed by success, shared with fidelity in the varieties of her
fate.

This declaration of the Abbe's, respecting motives, has led me
unintendedly into a train of metaphysical reasoning; but there was no
other avenue by which it could so properly be approached. To place
presumption against presumption, assertion against assertion, is a
mode of opposition that has no effect; and therefore the more eligible
method was, to shew that the declaration does not correspond with the
natural progress of the mind, and the influence it has upon our
conduct.--I shall now quit this part, and proceed to what I have
before stated, namely, that it is not so properly the motives which
produced the alliance, as the consequences to be produced from it,
that mark out the field of philosophical reflections.

It is an observation I have already made in some former publication,
that the circle of civilization is yet incomplete. A mutuality of
wants have formed the individuals of each country into a kind of
national society, and here the progress of civilization has stopt.
For it is easy to see, that nations with regard to each other
(notwithstanding the ideal civil law, which every one explains as it
suits him) are like individuals in a state of nature. They are
regulated by no fixt principle, governed by no compulsive law, and
each does independently what it pleases, or what it can.