According to the answer which we give to our own heart, in this respect, an answer which relates to the single feeling of moral approbation or disapprobation,—we shall conceive that we are doing what we ought to do, or what we ought not to do,-and knowing this, we can have no further moral inquiry to make as to the merit or demerit of doing what is previously felt by us to be right or wrong.

Much of the perplexity which has attended inquiries into the theory of morals, has arisen, I have little doubt, from distinctions, which seem to those who made them to be the result of nice and accurate analysis, but in which the analysis was verbal only, not real, or at least related to the varying circumstances of the action, not to the moral sentiment which the particular action, in certain particular circumstances, excited. What is it that constitutes an action virtuous? What is it which constitutes the moral obligation to perform certain actions? What is it which constitutes the merit of him who performs certain actions? These have been considered as questions essentially distinct; and, because philosophers have been perplexed in attempting to give different answers to all these questions, and have still thought that different answers were necessary, they have wondered at difficulties which themselves created, and, struggling to discover what could not be discovered, have often, from this very circumstance, been led into a scepticism which otherwise they might have avoided,-or have stated so many unmeaning distinctions, as to furnish occasion of ridicule and scepticism to others. One simple proposition has been converted into an endless circle of propositions, each proving and proved by that which precedes or follows it. Why has any one merit in a particular action? Because he has done an action that was virtuous. And why was it virtuous? Because it was an action which it was his duty, in such circumstances, to do. And why was it his duty to do it in such circumstances? Because there was a moral obligation to perform it. And why do we say, that there was a more obligation to perform it? Because if he had not performed it, he would have violated his duty, and been unworthy of our approbation. In this circle we might proceed for ever, with the semblance of reasoning, indeed, but only with the semblance; our answers, though verbally different, being merely the same proposition repeated in different forms, and re

quiring, therefore, in all its forms to be proved, or not requiring proof in any. To have merit, to be virtuous, to have done our duty, to have acted in conformity with obligation,-all have reference to one feeling of the mind,-that feeling of approbation, which attends the consideration of virtuous actions. They are merely, as I have said, different modes of stating one simple truth,-that the contemplation of any one, acting as we have done in a particular case, excites a feeling of moral approval.

To this simple proposition, therefore, we must always come in our moral estimate, whatever divisions, or varied references, we may afterwards make. Persons acting in a certain manner, excite in us a feeling of approval; persons acting in a manner opposite to this, cannot be considered by us, without an emotion, perhaps, as vivid, or more vivid, but of an opposite kind. The difference of our phraseology, and of our reference to the action or the agent, from which, indeed, that difference of phrase is derived, is founded chiefly on the difference of the time, at which we consider the action as meditated, already performed, or in the act of performance. To be virtuous, is to act in this way,—to have merit, is to have acted in this way,-to feel the moral obligation or duty, is merely to think of the action and its consequences. We imagine, in these cases, a difference of time, as present, in the virtue of performing it,-past, in the merit of having performed it,future, in the obligation to perform it; but we imagine no other

difference.

Why does it seem to us virtue to act in this way? Why does he seem to us to have merit, or, in other words, to be worthy of our approbation, who has acted in this way?-Why have we a feeling of obligation or duty, when we think of acting in this way? The only answer which we can give to these questions, is the same to all,—that it is impossible for us to consider the action, without feeling that, by acting in this way, we should look upon ourselves, and others would look on us, with approving regard; and that if we were to act in a different way, we should look upon ourselves, and others would look upon us, with abhorrence, or at least with disapprobation. It is, indeed, easy to go, perhaps, a single step or two back, and to say, that we approve of the action as meritorious, because it is an action which tends to the good of the world, or because it is the inferred will of Heaven, that we should act in

a certain manner,-but it is very obvious that an answer of this kind does nothing more than go back a single step or two, where the same questions press with equal force. Why is it virtue, obligation, merit, to do that which is for the good of the world, or which Heaven seems to us to indicate as fit to be done? We have here the same answer, and only the same answer, to give, as in the former case, when we had not gone back this step. It appears to us virtue, obligation, merit,-because the very contemplation of the action excites in us a certain feeling of vivid approval. It is this irresistible approvableness, if I may use such a word to express briefly the relation of certain actions to the emotion that is instantly excited by them, which constitutes to us, who consider the action, the virtue of the action itself, the merit of him who performed it, the moral obligation on him to have performed it. There is one emotion; and it seems to us more than one, only because we make certain abstractions of times and circumstances from the agent himself, and apply every thing which is involved in our present emotion to these abstractions which we have made -to the action, as something distinct from the agent, and involv ing, therefore, a sort of virtue, separate from his personal merit, -to his own conception of the action, before performing it, as something equally distinct from himself, and involving in it the notion of moral obligation as prior to the action.

If we had not been capable of making such abstraction, the action must have been, to us, only the agent himself;-and the virtue of the action, and the virtue of the agent been, therefore, precisely the same. But we are capable of making the abstraction, of considering the good or evil deed, not as performed by one individual, in certain circumstances peculiar to him, but as performed by various individuals, in every possible variety of circumstances. The same action, therefore,―if that can truly be called the same action, which is performed perhaps with very different views, in different circumstances, -is, as we might naturally have supposed, capable of exciting in us different emotions, according to this difference of supposed views, or of the circumstances in which those views are supposed to have been formed. It may excite our approval in one case ;— or in another case, be so indifferent as to excite no emotion whatever, and in another case, may excite in us the most vivid disap

probation. The mere fact, however, of this difference of our approbation or disapprobation, when we consider the circumstances. in which an action is performed to have been different, is evidently not indicative in itself of anything arbitrary in the principle of our constitution, on which our emotions of moral approbation or disapprobation depend; by which an action, the same in all its circumstances, is approved by us and condemned, since it is truly not the same action which we are considering, when we thus approve, in one set of circumstances, of an action, of which we perhaps disapprove when we imagine it performed in different circumstances. The action is nothing, but as it is the agent himself, having certain feelings, placed in certain circumstances, producing certain changes. The agent whom we have imagined, when the emotion which we feel is different, is one whom we have supposed to have different views, or to be placed in different circumstances; and though the mere changes, or beneficial or injurious effects produced in both cases, which seem to our eyes to constitute the action, may be the same in both cases, all that is moral in the action, the frame of mind of the agent himself, is as truly different, as if the visible action, in the mere changes or effects produced, had itself been absolutely different. The miser, whose sordid parsimony we scorn, exhibits, in his whole life, at least, as much mortification of sensual appetite, as the most abstemious hermit, whose voluntary penance we pity and almost respect. The coward, when it is impossible to fly, will often perform actions which would do honour to the most fearless gallantry,-the seeming patriot, who, even in the pure ranks of those generous guardians of the public who sincerely defend the freedom and happiness of the land which they love, is a patriot perhaps most unwillingly, because he has no other prospect of sharing that public corruption at which he rails, will still expose the corruption with as much ardour as if he truly thought the preservation of the liberty of his country a more desirable thing than an office in the treasury,— and he, who, being already a placeman, has of course a memory and a fancy that suggest to him very different topics of eloquence, will describe the happiness of that land, over the interests of which he presides, with nearly the same zeal of oratory, whether he truly at heart takes pleasure in the prospect which he pictures, or think the comforts of his own high station by far

the most important part of that general happiness, which is his favourite and delightful theme. If we were to watch minutely the external actions of a very skilful hypocrite for half a day, it is possible that we might not discover one, in which the secret passion within burst through its disguise; yet, if we had reason before to regard him as a hypocrite, the very closeness of the resemblance of his actions, in every external circumstance, to those of virtue, would only excite still more our indignation. They excite these different feelings, however, as I have before said, because the actions, in truth, are not the same;-the action, in its moral aspect, being only the mind impressed with certain views, forming certain preferences, and thus willing and producing certain changes;—and the mind, in all the cases of apparent similarity, to which I have now alluded, having internal views, as different as the external appearances were similar.

Obvious as the remark may seem, that an action cannot be any thing distinct from the agent, more than beauty from some object that is beautiful,-and that when we speak of an action, therefore, as virtuous, without regard to the merit of the particular agent, we only conceive some other agent, acting in different circumstances, and exciting in us consequently a different feeling of approbation, by the difference of the frame of mind which we suppose ourselves to contemplate, it strangely happens, that little attention has been paid to this obvious distinction,— that the action has been considered as something separately existing, and that we suppose accordingly, that two feelings are excited in us immediately by the contemplation of an action, -a feeling of right or wrong in the action, and of virtue or vice, merit or demerit in the agent,-which may correspond, indeed, but which may not always be the same;—as if the agent could be virtuous, and the action wrong, or the action right, and he not meritorious, but positively guilty. In this way, a sort of confusion and apparent contradiction have seemed to exist in the science of morals, which a clearer view of the agent and the action as one would have prevented, and the apparent confusion and contradiction, where none truly exists, have been supposed to justify in part, or at least have led in some degree to conclusions as false in principle, as dangerous in their practical tendency.

No voluntary act, intentionally productive of benefit or injury,