The social element, or love for society, is deeply impressed upon all the animate world. We feel the truth of a very common saying--"birds of a feather will flock together"--every time it is repeated in our hearing. This expression, in its most comprehensive sense, applies to everything having life and volition or the power to will. It is seen in the fishes of the sea, in the birds of the air, and in all the denizens of earth, from insects and worms up to the highest forms of organic brute life, and in man. This love for society, or company, or companionship, is so strong that it is the bond of the universe. Without it nothing living could subsist. To make this thought clear to your understandings, let me just call your minds to reflect a little upon what the state of things would be in the natural world if this law of love were reversed in the brute creation. Our domestic animals, instead of feeding together in harmonious and peaceable flocks and herds, would instantly turn to fighting and seeking to destroy each other. The earth would soon be strewn with the dead bodies of beasts and birds, and the waves of the sea would throw drifts of dead fishes upon the shore. But, fortunately for man, this love has never been perverted in the lower orders of creation. Each kind loves its own kind, and seeks its propagation. But man has fallen from this love, the love of his fellowman, into a state of feeling in some respects the very opposite, which is hate. Let the history of the world but unfold her page, and the truth of what I have just said will appear in lines written with human blood. It is from this, and this alone, that human laws have been instituted. It is self-preservation. This is the one single origin and basis of all human law. What protects me from the wrath or cupidity of those who would destroy or devour me, protects you; and inasmuch as all desire such protection, human governments, and laws with fearful penalties annexed, have been instituted. Right here, in a civil and social sense, the words of my text apply with profound meaning: "For none of us liveth to himself." They apply to every statute in every national code, as well as to every local law in every land.