effect

evinces that the power of virtue is what he has alike deeply meditated upon, and warmly felt. And it would be with any design but that of controverting or weakening his observations - even if any thing I might be able to say could have that that I should be inclined to object to the theoretical views, which I suppose they may be employed to serve. So long as the supreme happiness which virtue confers upon her votaries, is maintained as a fact; so long as the exhibition of this happiness is employed as the incentive to virtuous conduct, - no statement can be more just and important. But the theoretical principles which I have adopted, make me object to such representation's being used as explaining the nature of moral obligation - as if all that were meant by saying, this mode of conduct is your duty, were, this mode of conduct is that by which you will secure your own greatest happiness. It seems to me, however, that this is the only consistent, at least the most satisfactory, view of moral obligation, which a theorist of the sentimental school can propose. In opposition to this, it appears to me, that the happiness derived from the practice of virtue, instead of constituting obligation, presupposes its existence. I rejoice, I enjoy a felicity, in acting, or in having acted, or in proposing to act so, because I perceive such mode of acting to be my duty. It is only because I suppose it

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my duty, that I feel joy in performing it, or that I could not dispense with the performance of it without uneasiness or remorse. The perception of duty is an intellectual act; the pleasure of doing, the pain of violating duty, an emotive act. This pleasure, conceived or desired, it is my duty to pursue or aim at, in the same sense as it is my duty to pursue or aim at any good of which my nature is capable: and if the enjoyment of this pleasure is my supreme good, the pursuit of it, so far as duty to myself goes, may be my highest duty. But this secondary duty, - secondary at least as regards the mode of its derivation presupposes

a primary duty, as before described and this primary duty is not founded upon a view of a happiness to be enjoyed by myself, but is presupposed in the notion of this happiness. Other instances of obligations in a series, will occur in this treatise; and in cases where such series exists, philosophers have not always sufficiently distinguished between the first, and the following links of the chain. Something is, in its own nature, obligatory. Why? Because we find a happiness in doing it ? - No; why then? We cannot tell, any more than we can tell why the whole must be greater than a part. It is, and must be obligatory: this is all we can say about the matter: and being obligatory, we must find a happiness in acting accordingly.

I would only add, that to rest the obligation of

virtue upon the happiness arising to the agent from its exercise, is really to adopt the selfish theory of morals, which Sir James so justly and earnestly opposes. Any other account of obligation which a sentimental theory can give, must, so far as I can see, have the effect of making obligation to mean nothing different from inclination.

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CHAPTER IV.

VIEW OF THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF OUR MORAL JUDGMENTS

AND FEELINGS, AND OF THE RELATED PRINCIPLES OF ACTION.

SECT. I.

Of Judgments and Feelings strictly Moral. HAVING thus endeavoured to vindicate the agency of reason in our moral determinations, I proceed

with a view to ascertain how far the supposition of such agency is, of itself, sufficient to explain the phenomena - to exhibit the particular modes and effects of its operation.

It is from the nature of pleasure and pain, happiness and misery, that all moral distinctions ultimately derive their origin: and as, among beings, if such could be imagined to exist, whose condition admitted of no diversity in this respect, no moral notions could possibly have birth; so, wherever pain and pleasure are experienced, and perceived to arise from the acts of animated beings, a variety of feelings, in relation to those two states, and the beings who are the instruments of producing them, will be the necessary result of a certain degree of the capacity of thought and knowledge; and in the minds of those beings who may possess such capacity expanded into the faculty of reason, there will also ensue, in regard to those objects of thought, a variety of moral determinations properly so denominated.

Of the various pleasures and pains incident to an intelligent being, some may be said to result from the very nature of mind; others from the peculiar mental or bodily constitution, which it may have pleased the Creator to bestow. Of the first class, are the pleasures derived from the possession of knowledge, as opposed to ignorance or falsehood; from the possession of power; perhaps from that of the love and admiration of other beings: of the second class may be reckoned the emotions of taste, or at least some of those emotions; and the whole class of our bodily pains and pleasures.

But however arbitrary, in some cases, may be the connection between our pleasures and pains, and the sources from which they are respectively. derived, there is nothing arbitrary in the connection between those pleasures and pains, and the emotions of hope and fear, joy and sorrow, to which they severally give birth. Why the touch of a burning body should give us pain rather than pleasure, no reason can be given; why certain sights, or tastes, or smells, should please rather than displease us, may perhaps be equally unaccountable: but it is impossible that a pleasure,