All the
members of human society stand in need of each others assistance,
and are likewise exposed to mutual injuries. Where the necessary
assistance is reciprocally afforded from love, from gratitude,
from friendship, and esteem, the society flourishes and is happy....
Society may subsist among different
men, as among different merchants, from a sense of its utility,
without any mutual love or affection; and though no man in it
should owe any obligation, or be bound in gratitude to any other,
it may still be upheld by a mercenary exchange of good offices
according to an agreed valuation.
Society, however, cannot subsist among those who are at all
times ready to hurt and injure one another. The moment that
injury begins, the moment that mutual resentment and animosity
take place, all the bands of it are broke asunder, and the
different members of which it consisted are, as it were,
dissipated and scattered abroad by the violence and opposition of
their discordant affections...
--Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (h/t: Jennifer Roback Morse)
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