It is necessary, therefore, that before an author be
charged with plagiarism, one of the most reproachful,
though, perhaps, not the most atrocious of literary
crimes, the subject on which he treats should
be carefully considered. We do not wonder, that
historians, relating the same facts, agree in their
narration; or that authors, delivering the elements of
science, advance the same theorems, and lay down
the same definitions: yet it is not wholly without
use to mankind, that books are multiplied, and that
different authors lay out their labours on the same
subject; for there will always be some reason why
one should on particular occasions, or to particular
persons, be preferable to another; some will be clear
where others are obscure, some will please by their
style and others by their method, some by their
embellishments and others by their simplicity, some by
closeness and others by diffusion.
The same indulgence is to be shown to the writers
of morality: right and wrong are immutable; and
those, therefore, who teach us to distinguish them, if
they all teach us right, must agree with one another.
The relations of social life, and the duties resulting
from them, must be the same at all times and in all
nations: some petty differences may be, indeed,
produced, by forms of government or arbitrary customs;
but the general doctrine can receive no alteration.
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