[5] This source of property can never be explained but from the imagination; and one may affirm, that the causes are here unmixed. We shall proceed to explain them more particularly, and illustrate them by examples from common life and experience. It has been observed above, that the mind has a natural propensity to join relations, especially resembling ones, and finds a kind of fitness and uniformity in such an union. From this propensity are derived these laws of nature, _that upon the first formation of society, property always follows the present possession_; and afterwards, _that it arises from first or from long possession_. Now, we may easily observe, that relation is not confined merely to one degree; but that from an object that is related to us, we acquire a relation to every other object which is related to it, and so on, till the thought loses the chain by too long a progress. However the relation may weaken by each remove, 'tis not immediately destroyed; but frequently connects two objects by means of an intermediate one, which is related to both. And this principle is of such force as to give rise to the right of _accession_, and causes us to acquire the property, not only of such objects as we are immediately possessed of, but also of such as are closely connected with them. Suppose a German, a Frenchman, and a Spaniard, to come into a room where there are placed upon the table three bottles of wine, Rhenish, Burgundy, and Port; and suppose they should fall a quarrelling about the division of them, a person who was chosen for umpire would naturally, to show his impartiality, give every one the product of his own country; and this from a principle which, in some measure, is the source of those laws of nature that ascribe property to occupation, prescription and accession.