can, as it appears to me, excite directly any such opposite sentiments of right in the action, and demerit in the agent, or wrong in the action, and merit in the agent. We take into account, in every case, the whole circumstances of the individual; and his action in these circumstances is indifferent to us, or it excites an emotion of approbation or disapprobation more or less vivid. The agent and the circumstances in which he is placed, the agent and the changes which he intentionally produces, these are all which truly constitute the action; and the action, thus compounded of all these circumstances, seems to us right if we approve of it, wrong if the emotion, which constitutes moral disapprobation, arise when we consider it.

We may, however, as in the instances which I have already used, after approving or disapproving a particular action, consider some other individual, of different habits and different views, or in circumstances in some other respects different, performing a similar action, that is to say, producing a similar amount of benefit or injury, in the same way, as, after having seen a green hill, we can imagine a hill yellow or black exactly of the same figure, -and it is as little wonderful, that the new combination of moral circumstances should excite in us a new emotion, as that a yellow or black hill should seem to us less or more beautiful than a green one. Though virtue, as different from the virtuous agent, is a mere abstraction, like greenness, yellowness, blackness, as different from objects that are green, yellow, black, it is still an abstraction which we are capable of making; and, having made it in any particular case, we can conceive multitudes to exist with different views in the situation in which the single individual existed, whose action we have considered as virtuous. The action, though in its effects it may be precisely the same,-will then, perhaps, excite in us very different feelings. It may seem to us worthy of blame rather than of praise, or scarcely worthy of praise at all, or worthy of still higher admiration; but the difference arises from the change of circumstances supposed, not from any necessary difference in the principle of our moral judgments. In this way, by imagining some other agent with different views, or in different circumstances, and in this way only, I conceive, we learn to consider actions separately from the particular agent, and to regard the morality of the one as distinct from the merit of

even

the other; when, in truth, the action which we chuse to denominate the same, is, as a moral object, completely different.

If we were present, when any one, unacquainted with the nature of the different lenses of the optician, looked at any small animal through a magnifier, or a multiplier, in a piece of plane coloured glass, we should never think of blaming his sense of vision as imperfect, though he were seriously to believe, that the animal, at which he looked, was much larger than it is, or was not one merely, but fifty, or was blue, not white. If, however, we were to conceive others, or the same individual himself, to look at the same object without the medium interposed, and to form the same opinion, we should then unquestionably ascribe to their vision what we before ascribed to the mere lens interposed; and, if we conceived our own sight to be perfect, we could not but conceive theirs to be imperfect. It is precisely the same in that distinction of the virtue of an action and the virtue of the agent, which has produced so much confusion in the theory of morals. We conceive, in the one case, the moral vision of the agent with the lens interposed, in the other case without the lens; and we make in the one case an allowance, which we cannot make in the other. But still I must repeat, that, in making this very allowance, it is only on account of the difference of circumstances that we make it, and that we cannot justly extend the difference from the mere medium to the living principle on which moral vision depends.

When we speak of an action, then, as virtuous, we speak of it as separated from all those accidental intermixtures of circumstances, which may cloud the discrimination of an individual; when we speak of a person as virtuous, we speak of him as acting perhaps under the influence of such accidental circumstances; and though his action, considered as an action which might have been performed by any man under the influence of other circumstances, may excite our moral disapprobation in a very high degree, our disapprobation is not extended to him. The emotion which he excites is pity, not any modification of dislike. We wish that he had been better informed; and when his general conduct has impressed us favourably, we feel perfect confidence, that, in the present instance also, if he had been better informed, he would have acted otherwise.

In reducing all the various conceptions, or at least the concep

tions which are supposed to be various, of duty, virtue, obligation, merit, to this one feeling, which arises on the contemplation of certain actions-a feeling which I am obliged to term moral approbation or disapprobation, because there is no other word in use to denote it, though I am aware, that approbation and disapprobation, which seem words of judgment rather than of emotion, are not terms sufficiently vivid to suit the force and liveliness of the sentiment which I wish to express, I flatter myself, that I have in some degree freed this most interesting subject from much superfluous argumentation. Why do we consider certain actions as morally right, certain actions as morally wrong? why do we consider ourselves as morally bound to perform certain actions.— to abstain from certain other actions? why do we feel moral approbation of those who perform certain actions,-moral disapprobation of those who perform certain other actions? For an answer to all these, I would refer to the simple emotion, as that on which alone the moral distinction is founded. The very conceptions of the rectitude, the obligation, the approveableness, are involved in the feeling of the approbation itself. It is impossible for us to have the feeling, and not to have these,-or, to speak still more precisely, these conceptions are only the feeling itself variously referred in its relation to the person and the circumstance. To know that we should feel ourselves unworthy of self-esteem, and objects rather of self-abhorrence, if we did not act in a certain manner, is to feel the moral obligation to act in a certain manner, as it is to feel the moral rectitude of the action itself. We are so constituted, that it is impossible for us, in certain circumstances, not to have this feeling; and, having the feeling, we must have the notions of virtue, obligation, merit. It is vain for us to inquire why we are so constituted as it is vain for us to inquire why we are so constituted, as to rejoice at any prosperous event, or to grieve at any calamity;-or why we cannot perceive any change, without believing, that in future the same antecedent circumstances will be followed by the same consequents. I may remark, too, that, as in the case now mentioned, it is impossible for us to have the belief of the similarity of the future to the past, simple as this belief may seem to be, without having at the same time the conceptions of cause, effect, power; so, in the case of moral approbation and disapprobation, it is impossible for us to have

these feelings, however simple they may at first appear, without the conception of duty, obligation, virtue, merit, which are involved in the distinctive moral feeling, but do not produce it, as our notions of power, cause, effect, are involved in our belief of the similarity of the future to the past; but are not notions which previously existed and produced the belief; or, to speak more accurately, these notions are not involved in the feeling, which is simple, but are rather references made of this one simple feeling to different objects.

When I say, however, that it is vain to inquire why we feel the obligation to perform certain actions, I must be understood as speaking only of inquiries into the nature of the mind itself. Beyond it we may still inquire, and discover what we wish to find, not in our own nature, but in the nature of that Supreme Benevolence which formed us. We do not see, indeed, in the nature of the mind itself, any reason that the present should be considered by us as representative of the future. We know, however, that if man had not been so formed as to believe the future train of physical events to resemble the past, it would have been impossi ble for him to exist, because he could not have provided what was necessary for preserving his existence, nor avoided the dangers which would then, as now, have hung over him at every step; and knowing the necessity of this belief to our very existence, we cannot think of Him who formed us to exist without discovering, in His provident goodness, the reason of the belief itself. But if the existence of man would have been brief and precarious, without this faith in the similarity of the future, it would not have been so wretched as if the mind had not been rendered susceptible of the feelings which we have now been considering, the feelings of approbation and disapprobation, and the notions and affections that originate in these. I shall not attempt to picture to you this wretchedness-the wretchedness of a world, in which such feelings were not a part of the mental constitution-a world without virtue-without love of man or love of God-in which, whereever a human being met a human being, he met him as a robber or a murderer, living only to fear, and to destroy, and dying, to leave on the earth a carcase still less loathsome in all its loathsomeness, than the living form which had been animated but with guilt. Our only comfort in considering such a dreadful society is,

that it could not long subsist, and that the earth must soon have been freed from the misery which disgraced it.

We know, then, in this sense, why our mind has been so constituted as to have these emotions; and our inquiry leads us, as all other inquiries ultimately lead us, to the provident goodness of Him by whom we were made. God, the author of all our enjoyments, has willed us to be moral beings, for he could not will us to be happy, in the noblest sense of that term, without rendering us capable of practising and admiring virtue.