The
relation of other modes may certainly be perceived, as well as those
of number and extension: and I cannot see why they should not also
be capable of demonstration, if due methods were thought on to examine
or pursue their agreement or disagreement. "Where there is no property
there is no injustice," is a proposition as certain as any
demonstration in Euclid: for the idea of property being a right to
anything, and the idea to which the name "injustice" is given being
the invasion or violation of that right, it is evident that these
ideas, being thus established, and these names annexed to them, I
can as certainly know this proposition to be true, as that a
triangle has three angles equal to two right ones. Again: "No
government allows absolute liberty." The idea of government being
the establishment of society upon certain rules or laws which
require conformity to them; and the idea of absolute liberty being for
any one to do whatever he pleases; I am as capable of being certain of
the truth of this proposition as of any in the mathematics.
19. Two things have made moral ideas to be thought incapable of
demonstration: their unfitness for sensible representation, and
their complexedness. That which in this respect has given the
advantage to the ideas of quantity, and made them thought more capable
of certainty and demonstration, is,
First, That they can be set down and represented by sensible
marks, which have a greater and nearer correspondence with them than
any words or sounds whatsoever.
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