EXCURSION TO THE REALMS BELOW. 155 



and wifdom, that it may be freely left to its own judge- 

 ment, whether it will be governed, and how. Never- 

 ending confufton, anarchy, and retrogrefiion into the 

 favage ferocity of remoter! times, would be the inevi- 

 table confequences of fuch an emancipation. Accor- 

 dingly, there muft be in every civil conftitution a 

 power, which is founded, not on compact, or the ar r 

 bitrary good-pleafure of the nation, but on the great 

 law of neceffity. Since mankind, without civil rule, 

 cannot be and become that to which they are by nature 

 deftined : fo it is neceffary that they muft obey a fove- 

 reign command ; and becaufe obedience to this fupre- 

 macy cannot be left to their difcretion, but by a difTo- 

 lution of the civil conftitution ; fo it is neceffary, that 

 k arife from the fentiment of the fovereign fuperiority 

 of power, and from fear of the difagreeable effects of 

 refinance. And therefore, well might this ftranger ad- 

 vance that his pofition, 4 6 Command, who can ; obey, 

 " who murl:," was founded in the very nature of things, 

 and that this is the reafon that it is confirmed by the 

 univerfa! experience of all the inhabitants of the earth. 



Menipp. So much the worfe, if it be fo. The 

 right of the ftronger, then, and of courfe an eternal 

 war of the ftronger againft the weaker, is the very or- 

 der and delign of nature ? 



Xenoph. This eternal war is by no means a confe- 

 quence of the neceffity that the ftronger fhould govern, 

 and the weaker obey. So foon as a power is acknow^- 

 ledged as the ftronger (elfe how can it be the ftronger ?) 

 peace much rather follows, or the weaker muft like- 

 wife be fo weak in underftanding as to take the im- 

 poffible for poffible. 



Menipp. 



