peculiar fentiment, diftinct from every other, I would object; that it is strange that this fentiment, which providence undoubtedly intended to be the governing principle of human nature, fhould hitherto have been fo little taken notice of, as not to have got a name in any language. The word moral fenfe is of very late formation, and cannot yet be confidered as making part of the English tongue. The word approbation has but within these few years been appropriated to denote ресиliarly any thing of this kind. In propriety of language we approve of whatever is entirely to our fatisfaction, of the form of a building, of the contrivance of a machine, of the flavour of a dish of meat. The word confcience does not immediately denote any moral faculty by which we approve or difapprove. Confcience fuppofes, indeed, the existence of fome fuch faculty, and properly fignifies our consciousness of having acted agreeably or contrary to its directions. When love, hatred, joy, forrow, gratitude, refentment, with so many other paffions which are all supposed to be the fubjects of this principle, have made themselves confiderable enough to get titles to know them by, is it not furprizing that the fovereign of them all fhould hitherto have been fo little heeded, that, a few philofophers excepted, no body has yet thought it worth while to bestow a name upon it.

When we approve of any character or action, the fentiments which we feel, are, ac-. cording to the foregoing fyftem, derived from

four

four fources, which are in fome refpects different from one another. First, we sympathize with the motives of the agent; secondly, we enter into the gratitude of those who receive the benefit of his actions; thirdly, we obferve that his conduct has been agreeable to the general rules by which those two sympathies generally act; and, laft of all, when we consider fuch actions as making a part of a system of behaviour which tends to promote the happinefs either of the individual or of the fociety, they appear to derive a beauty from this utility, not unlike that which we ascribe to any well contrived machine. After deducting, in any one particular cafe, all that must be acknowledged to proceed from fome one or other of these four principles, I fhould be glad to know what remains, and I fhall freely allow this overplus to be ascribed to a moral sense, or to any other peculiar faculty, provided any body will ascertain precisely what this overplus is. It might be expected, perhaps, that if there was any fuch peculiar principle, fuch as this moral sense is supposed to be, we should feel it, in fome particular cafes, feparated and detached from every other, as we often feel joy, forrow, hope and fear, pure and unmixed with any other emotion. This however, I imagine, cannot even be pretended. I have never heard any inftance alledged in which this principle could be faid to exert itself alone and unmixed with fympathy or antipathy, with gratitude or refentment, with the perception of the agreement or disagreement of any ac

tion to an established rule, or laft of all with that general tafte for beauty and order which is excited by inanimated as well as by animated objects.

II. There is another system which attempts to account for the origin of our moral fentiments from fympathy, diftinct from that which I have been endeavouring to establish. It is that which places virtue in utility, and accounts for the pleasure with which the spectator furveys the utility of any quality from fympathy with the happiness of those who are affected by it. This fympathy is different both from that by which we enter into the motives of the agent, and from that by which we go along with the gratitude of the perfons who are benefited by his actions. It is the fame principle with that by which we approve of a well contrived machine. But no machine can be the object of either of those two last mentioned fympathies. I have already, in the fourth part of this difcourfe, given fome account of this fyftem.

SEC

SECTION IV.

Of the manner in which different authors have treated of the practical rules of morality.

T was observed in the third part of this dif

course, that the rules of justice are the only rules of morality which are precise and accurate; that thofe of all the other virtues are loofe, vague, and indeterminate; that the firft may be compared to the rules of grammar; the others to thofe which critics lay down for the attainment of what is fublime and elegant in compofition, and which prefent us rather with a general idea of the perfection we ought to aim at, than afford us any certain and infallible directions for acquiring it.

As the different rules of morality admit fuch different degrees of accuracy, thofe authors who have endeavoured to collect and digest them into systems have done it in two different manners; and one fet has followed thro' the whole that loose method to which they were naturally directed by the confideration of one fpecies of virtues; while another has as univerfally endeavoured to introduce into their precepts that fort of accuracy of which only fome of them are fufceptible. The first have wrote like critics, the fecond like gram

marians.

I. The first, among whom we may count all the antient moralifts, have contented themselves with defcribing in a general manner the different vices and virtues, and with pointing out the deformity and mifery of the one difpofition as well as the propriety and happiness of the other, but have not affected to lay down many precise rules that are to hold good unexceptionably in all particular cases. They have only endeavoured to ascertain, as far as language is capable of ascertaining, first, wherein confifts the fentiment of the heart, upon which each particular virtue is founded, what fort of internal feeling or emotion it is which constitutes the effence of friendship, of humanity, of generofity, of justice, of magnanimity, and of all the other virtues as well as of the vices which are opposed to them: and, fecondly, What is the general way of acting, the ordinary tone and tenor of conduct to which each of thofe fentiments would direct us, or how it is that a friendly, a generous, a brave, a just, and a humane man, would, upon ordinary occafions, chufe to act.

To characterize the fentiment of the heart, upon which each particular virtue is founded, though it requires both a delicate and an accurate pencil, is a task, however, which may be executed with fome degree of exactness. It is impoffible, indeed, to exprefs all the variations which each fentiment either does or ought to undergo, according to every poffible variation of circumftances. They are endless, and language wants names to

mark