which belongs to them as they are men linked with others in some form of political society; nor should they forget that 'as any mans deed past is good as long as him selfe continueth: so the act of a publique societie of men done five hundreth yeares sithence standeth as theirs, who presently are of the same societies, because corporations are immortall: we were then alive in our predecessors, and they in their successors do live still'.[1] There is a third kind of law—that which touches all the several bodies politic, 'so far forth as one of them hath publique commerce with another. And this third is the Lawe of nations. Betweene men and beastes there is no possibilitie of sociable communion, because the welspring of that communion is a naturall delight which man hath to transfuse from him selfe into others, and to receyve from others into himselfe especially those thinges wherein the excellencie of his kind doth most consist. The chiefest instrument of humaine communion therefore is speech, because thereby we impart mutuallie one to another the conceiptes of our reasonable understanding.[2] And for that cause seing beastes are not hereof capable, for as much as with them we can use no such conference, they being in degree, although above other creatures on earth to whome nature hath denied sense, yet lower then to be sociable companions of man to whome nature hath given
- ↑ Compare Burke: 'Society … is a partnership. … As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primaeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place.'—Reflections on the Revolution in France, Works (1823), v, p. 183.
- ↑ Arist. Pol. i, c. 2.
