I shall conclude this part of my subject by one reflection more; supposing, even in the sovereign authority, an exertion sufficiently general to prevent or repress evil, religion would still have this great advantage, that it inculcates the beneficent virtues, which the laws cannot reach; and yet, in the actual state of society, it is become impossible to omit those virtues. It is not sufficient to be just, when the laws of property reduce to bare necessaries the most numerous class of men, whose weak resources the most trivial accident disconcerts; and I hesitate not to say, that such is the extreme inequality established by these laws, that we ought at present to consider the spirit of beneficence and forbearance, as constituting a part of social order; as in all places and times, it softens by its assistance the excess of wretchedness, and by an innumerable multitude of springs spreads itself as the vital juice, through forlorn beings, whom misery had almost exhausted. But if this spirit, properly intermediate between the rigour of civil rights, and the original title of humanity, did not exist, or should ever be extinct, we should see all the subordinate ties relax imperceptibly; and a man, loaded with the favours of fortune, never presenting himself to the people under the form of a benefactor; they would more forcibly feel the great extent of his privileges, and would accustom themselves to discuss them. Men must then find a way of moderating the despotism of fortune, or render homage to religion, which, by the sublime idea of an exchange between the blessings of heaven and earth, obliges the rich to give what the laws cannot demand. Religion then comes continually to assist the civil legislation, it speaks a language unknown to the laws, it warms that sensibility which ought to advance even before reason; it acts like light and interior warmth, as it both enlightens and animates; and what we have not sufficiently observed, is, that in society its moral sentiments are the imperceptible tie of a number of parts, which seem to be held by their own agreement, and which would be successively detached, if the chain which united them was ever to be broken: we shall more clearly perceive this truth, in the examination we are going to make of the connexion of opinion with morality.