CHAP. II. SECT. III. though limited to the exertions of mind, yet does not accompany PART. II. every useful exertion; nor even where it applies, does it require any actually useful effect. The will alone is fufficient to procure it: This, in other words, is to admit that benevolence, not actual utility, is the object of moral approbation: And, concerning this, moft parties may be agreed. Even Mr Hutchison, who affumed a moral fenfe, as being a specific faculty, required to distinguish between moral good and evil, confidered benevolence, nevertheless, as the effence of moral good, or that quality which mankind, by their fenfe of right and wrong, are enabled to diftinguith as good. The benevolent will concur, one with another, in every thing that is for the benefit of mankind; but, in accounting for moral approbation, we must still return to the confideration of that peculiar fentiment of estimation, of which virtue is the object. And the whole muft end in a confeffion, that virtue, of which a principal part is benevolence, is estimable in itself, not merely as the means of obtaining any other end. If, in the term utility, we include whatever is beneficial, or tends to the benefit of mankind, then is virtue itfelf, or its constituents of wisdom, goodness, temperance, and fortitude, the greatest good of which human nature is fufceptible: And we only risk misleading the mind from its principal object, by fubftituting utility for the more proper expreffion of a blessing important to the person whofe character it is, more than even to thofe on whom any of its external effects are bestowed. It were prepofterous to exprefs the value of happiness, by cal- ling CHAP. II. SECT. III. PART II. ling it ufeful. Or, if a person who is happy in himself be thereby difpofed to be useful to others, it were prepofterous to fay, that the happiness of one person is valuable only fo far as it is ufeful to another. Virtue is, no doubt, fupremely useful, even in the ordinary fense of this term. Justice, liberality, and charity, appear in acts of beneficence; and render thofe who are inclined to practife them, the guardians and friends of their fellow creatures. Even what we term acts of prudence, fortitude, or temperance, though feeming to terminate in the welfare of the perfon acting, are in fact prefervatives of good order, and contribute to the welfare of mankind. The benevolent man is the more ferviceable to his fellow creatures, that he is in himself prudent, fober, and intrepid. The oppofite vices are destructive, pernicious, or unferviceable. This tendency of virtue has been set forth in colours of glowing and fuperior eloquence *. The external effects of virtue are acknowledged ; but we cannot suppose that the sentiment of love, or respect, of which virtue is the object, is resolveable into a mere confideration of convenience or profit; nor can we overlook its value in constituting the worth and felicity of thofe by whom it is poffeffed, for the fake of a convenience it may procure to others, who, without any merit of their own, may wish to derive benefit from the external effects of merit in other men. *See Hume's Moral Effays. Upon CHAP. II. Upon this principle of utility, the diftinction of right and PART II. wrong appears to be refolved into a mere difference of tendency, SECT. Ill. or external effect in the actions of men. In another ingenious attempt to explain the fame phenomenon, the approbation of virtue is refolved into Sympathy, or what may, for ought we know, be a kind of accidental humour in those who approve or condemn a fuppofed virtuous or vicious action. Sympathy, in common language, is limited to commiferation or pity; but, has of late, by men of speculation, been extended to fentiments of congratulation alfo. It may be fuppofed either merely instinctive, and a contagion of fentiment, as when without any knowledge of a caufe, we laugh with those who laugh; become gay with the joyful; or fad with the melancholy: Or it may be fuppofed to proceed from a conception of the occasion or caufe, whether joyful, provoking, or melancholy, that is the motive of action, or object of paffion. And it appears to be in this last fenfe, that sympathy is affumed as the principle of moral approbation. When the obferver feels, in a certain degree, the paffion or motive by which another is actuated, upon a fuppofition that the fame thing had happened to himself; this participation of fentiment is fuppofed to conftitute approbation. Thus, when a perfon complains or exults, if the obferver, upon a state of the cafe, partake in his forrow or his joy, it is faid, that he cannot but approve of it. If the joy or grief exceed what the obferver can go along with, it is condemned as weakness or levity: if it fall fhort of what the obferver is difpofed to feel, it is condemned as infenfibility: if nearly PART II nearly what he himself would feel in a fimilar cafe, it is esteemed or refpected as proper; and fo on of every other paffion or fentiment appearing in the conduct of human life. It may be difficult, in this account of the matter, to fix where the moral quality refides; whether in the perfon obferved, in the obferver, or in neither separately, but in the mere concurrence of one with another. This laft, indeed, or a mutual fympathy, may imply that the parties are fatisfied with one another; but, in the fense of all mankind befides, their agreement may be wrong: And, if the action of one perfon need the fympathy of another to justify it, we are ftill to enquire in what manner is that fympathy itfelf evinced to be right. This theory proceeds upon an affumption, that to partake in any paffion or fentiment, or to be confcious that we ourselves fhould, in like circumstances, be fo affected, is to approve of the motive to action, and to approve of its effects: But it is acknowledged, on all hands, that approbation or disapprobation is a specific fentiment, not a fpecies or degree of any other fentiment: That it concerns the right or wrong of other paffions, whether original or fympathetic, and therefore enabling the mind, on occafion, to pronounce of sympathy itself, whether it be proper or improper. If, in judging of this theory, we recur to the maxims of reafon already cited *, we shall find them violated in this, no less than in *Regulæ Philofophandi Newtoni. SECT. III. in the affumption of utility, for a principle of moral approbation. PART II. That is, the effect will be found without the fuppofed caufe, and the CHAP. I. cause will be found without its fuppofed effect. In refpect to acts of uncommon bravery, we admire the more for being confcious that we ourselves could not have done fo much. Although we are conscious that, in extreme indigence, we ourfelves must have afked for relief, yet we do not admire a beggar. Although we are confcious that with money we ourselves fhould have bought an estate, yet we do not admire the purchaser. Although we sympathize very feelingly with the admirer of a fine woman, we do not mistake his paffion for virtue, any more than we mistake for generofity the choice made by him who bought an estate. There is fympathy, as well as utility, without approbation; and there is approbation without either; for we fometimes have an idea of what we ought to have done, or to have felt, as very different from the part which we actually take in the feelings of other men. And it is remarkable that fympathy should be then only equivalent to approbation, when we fympathife with the benevolent, the disinterested, the courageous, and the just. But, if it fhould be acknowledged, that, to partake in the fentiment of another is to approve, and not to partake is to disapprove of his conduct, it remains, upon this fyftem, to be ftated, by what fympathy it is that we judge of ourselves. If, by the actual participation of others in our fentiments and actions ;-it should follow, that, in actions concealed from the world, there should be no confcience of right or wrong; or that, in actions fubmitted to vulgar judgement, we fhould be in great danger of error; the multitude is often ill informed, and otherwife ill qualified to judge of merit. And this indeed is fo far acknowledged, |