they are subjects of approbation or censure. He is formed not only to know,
but likewise to admire and to contemn; and these proceedings of his mind
have a principal reference to his own character, and to that of his fellow
creatures, as being the subjects on which he is chiefly concerned to
distinguish what is right from what is wrong. He enjoys his felicity
likewise on certain fixed and determinate conditions; and either as an
individual apart, or as a member of civil society, must take a particular
course, in order to reap the advantages of his nature. He is, withal, in a
very high degree susceptible of habits; and can, by forbearance or
exercise, so far weaken, confirm, or even diversify his talents, and his
dispositions, as to appear, in a great measure, the arbiter of his own rank
in nature, and the author of all the varieties which are exhibited in the
actual history of his species. The universal characteristics, in the mean
time, to which we have now referred, must, when we would treat of any part
of this history, constitute the first subject of our attention; and they
require not only to be enumerated, but to be distinctly considered.

The dispositions which tend to the preservation of the individual, while
they continue to operate in the manner of instinctive desires; are nearly
the same in man that they are in the other animals; but in him they are
sooner or later combined with reflection and foresight; they give rise to
his apprehensions on the subject of property, and make him acquainted with
that object of care which he calls his interest. Without the instincts
which teach the beaver and the squirrel, the ant and the bee, to make up
their little hoards for winter, at first improvident, and where no
immediate object of passion is near, addicted to sloth, he becomes, in
process of time, the great storemaster among animals. He finds in a
provision of wealth, which he is probably never to employ, an object of his
greatest solicitude, and the principal idol of his mind. He apprehends a
relation between his person and his property, which renders what he calls