9. In the species, as a whole, reason has experienced the same fate, as in its individual members; for of individual members the whole consists. It has often been disturbed by the wild passions of men, acting with still more violence from conjunction, turned out of its way for centuries, and lain as if dormant beneath its ashes. To all these disorders Providence has applied no other remedy, than what she administers to individuals; namely, that each fault should be followed by its correspondent evil, and every act of indolence, folly, malice, rashness, and injustice, be its own punishment. But as the species appears in collective bodies in such circumstances, children must suffer for the faults of their parents, the people for the folly of their rulers, and posterity for the indolence of their ancestors; and if they will not, or cannot, correct the evil, they may suffer under it for ages.
10. Thus the weal of the whole is the greatest good of each individual: for it is the inherent right and duty of every one, who suffers under its evils, to ward off these evils from himself, and diminish them for his fellows. Nature has not calculated for sovereigns and states, but for the welfare of men. The former suffer not so speedily for their vices and follies as individuals, because they always reckon only with the whole, in which the miseries of the poor are long suppressed; but the state ultimately suffers, and with so much more violent a concussion. In all these things the laws of retaliation display themselves, as do the laws of motion on the shock of the slightest physical substance; and the greatest sovereign of Europe is not less subject to the natural laws of the human species, than the least of his people. This condition merely binds him, to be an economist of these natural laws; and, by that power, which he enjoys only through the means of other men, to be for other men a wise and good terrestrial divinity.
11. In general history, too, as in the lives of careless individuals, all the follies and vices of mankind are exhausted; till at length they are compelled by necessity, to learn reason and justice. Whatever can happen, happens; and produces, what from its nature it can produce. This law of nature hinders not even the most eccentric power in its operation; but it confines all by the rule, that one opposing effect destroys another, and what is useful alone ultimately remains. The evil, that destroys another, must submit to order, or destroy itself. The rational and virtuous are uniformly happy in the kingdom of God; for virtue requires external reward, no more than reason covets it. If their works are not accompanied by external success, not to them, but to their age will be the loss: yet neither the discord nor folly of man can for ever counteract them; they will succeed, when their time arrives.
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