relation. In bodies moved, the
motion is received, increased, diminished, lost, according to the
relations of the quantity of matter and velocity; each diversity is
uniformity, each change is constancy.

Particular intelligent beings may have laws of their own making, but
they have some likewise which they never made. Before they were
intelligent beings, they were possible; they had therefore possible
relations, and consequently possible laws. Before laws were made,
there were relations of possible justice. To say that there is nothing
just or unjust but what is commanded or forbidden by positive laws is
the same as saying that before the describing of a circle all the
radii were not equal.

We must therefore acknowledge relations of justice antecedent to the
positive law by which they are established: as for instance, that if
human societies existed it would be right to conform to their laws; if
there were intelligent beings that had received a benefit of another
being, they ought to show their gratitude; if one intelligent being
had created another intelligent being, the latter ought to continue in
its original state of dependence; if one intelligent being injures
another, it deserves a retaliation; and so on.

But the intelligent world is far from being so well governed as the
physical. For tho the former has also its laws, which of their own
nature are invariable, it does not conform to them so exactly as the
physical world. This is because, on the one hand, particular
intelligent beings are of a finite nature, and consequently liable to
error; and on the other, their nature requires them to be free agents.
Hence they do not steadily conform to their primitive laws; and even,
those of their own instituting they frequently infringe.

Whether brutes be governed by the general laws of motion or by a
particular movement we can not determine. Be that as it may, they have
not a more intimate relation to God than the rest of the material
world; and sensation is of no other use to them than in the relation
they have either to other particular beings or to themselves.

By the allurements of pleasure they preserve the individual, and by
the same allurements they preserve their species. They have natural
laws, because they are united by sensation; positive laws they have
none, because they are not connected by knowledge. And yet they do not
invariably conform to their natural laws; these are better observed
by vegetables