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PART II.

CHAP. II.

Such offenders, on the returns of reflection, are capable of SECT. VII. fincere repentance, and they may be reclaimed by fuch measures of punishment or animadverfion as awaken their remorfe, and put them on their guard against like flips of temper or effects of provocation.

Under the latter denomination of a fault, we may conceive, and often have occafion to admit, a lower degree of demerit than is implied in either of the former titles. Of this a perfon may be guilty, if, from ignorance or inadvertency, he shall be the cause of harm to his fellow creatures, although he have not either the deliberate intention of the criminal, nor the unruly paffion of the offender.

Faults of inadvertency, or of ignorance may have unequal degrees of demerit. Where the cafe by its general importance, or by any peculiar circumstances of perfonal concern calls up the attention in a special degree, inadvertency is proportionally inexcufeable, and may juftly incur high measures of punishment.

Ignorance of what, by the general condition of our nature, by our profeffion, or by any peculiar opportunities of instruction, we ought specially to know, becomes faulty in proportion as these circumftances accumulate.

On this account it is a juft maxim in the cognizance of crimes, that ignorance of the fact may be admitted as a plea of innocence, but that ignorance of the law never can be admitted to justify what is illegal. Thus a perfon, who, in fhooting his arrow to a distance, fhall wound his fellow creature, may plead

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SECT. VII

CHAP. II.

his ignorance of the fact, or his ignorance that there was any PART. II. perfon in the way of being fo wounded; but he cannot plead ignorance of the law, or that he did not know it was a crime to injure or wound his fellow creature.

The law of nature, fuggested by the regard which a man naturally has for mankind, cannot be fuppofed unknown, without an implication of the greatest depravity; and if any one, accused of an action pernicious to his neighbour, fhould plead that he did not know it was wrong to do harm, he would, in that very plea, establish a heavier charge of depravity against himself, than any occafional or tranfient action could imply.

The fum of this argument is, that although external actions confidered apart from will, intention, or difpofition of mind, like mechanical caufes of any other fort, may be productive of benefit or harm; yet they do not appear to be vested with any moral quality, until the movement performed is traced to its connection with the difpofition of mind from which it proceeds. This is admitted not only with refpect to involuntary or convulfive motions, in which the arm of one man, in a fit, may be fo thrown about as to wound another: It is admitted, alfo, with respect to voluntary actions, in which a person may casually, or without any blameable inadvertency be the phyfical caufe of harm to another.

The diftinction of moral good and evil cannot be afcertained in the defcription of mere external action; nor can the merit or demerit of a man be known until he has acted. Infomuch, that although in abftraction we may take afunder, and state apart, qualities of the mind and movements of the body, yet these in

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reality

PART II. reality are combined together in the conception which men mutually form of their moral distinctions.

CHAP. II.
SECT. VII.

Wisdom and goodness are the constituents of merit; proper and beneficent actions are the evidence of wisdom and goodness. A feries of beneficent actions implies benevolence; a feries of pernicious actions implies malice; proper conduct implies wisdom; improper conduct implies folly: And, wherever wisdom and goodness exist, proper and beneficent conduct will follow, as the tree produces its fruit, or the caufe in any other instance is followed by its effect.

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External action, confidered as a feature of the human character, or as an emanation of good or ill difpofition, is a proper fubject of moral approbation or cenfure, or comes properly within the direction of moral government or law.

The fame law, that recommends the love of mankind as an excellence and a bleffing to the mind of man, must likewise recommend beneficent actions under the predicament of moral duty; and the law which reprobates malice must reprobate pernicious. actions alfo.

When we have thus traced the approbation of external actions to that wisdom and goodness, which is the fource of fuch actions, we may fuppofe a queftion to be put on the subject of moral action, the fame as that we fuppofed on the fubject of natural beauty; If external actions be approved on account of the wifdom and goodness from which they proceed, on what account are wifdom and goodness themfelves approved? And we may repeat, That wisdom and goodness are approved on their own account: Or, if this answer fhould not be fatisfactory, we may change the terms, and fay, That wifdom and goodness are

approved

SECT. VII.

approved as constituents of perfection and happiness, and in this PART II. terminate our series of reafons, which, however continued through CHAP. II. any number of steps, must lead at last to something that is estimable on its own account.

The husbandman values a manure because it promotes the fertility of his land. He values fertility on account of its produce; the produce on account of its application to the purposes of fubfiftence and accommodation; and thefe on account of their effect in preferving life; and if he values life, on account of the happiness of which it is fuceptible, still in the end there must be fome confideration that is valued on its own account. No feries in human affairs is infinite, and every choice which is made of one thing on account of another, implies, that there is fomewhere, and however remote from the prefent ground of our choice, an object that is actually valuable upon its own account.

In the scale of created beings the intelligent is fupreme, and approaches nearest to the eternal fource of existence and excellence. If intelligent beings themselves may be unequal, and rise above one another in their unequal approaches to Supreme wifdom and goodness, such gradations acknowledged amount to an acknowledgement alfo, that in perfect intelligence there is an excellence or a good which is in itself the Supreme object of veneration and love.

SECTION

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PART IL MORAL law in the most general form, as has been already SECT. VIII. ftated, is an expreffion of what is good, and therefore an object

CHAP. II.

of choice.

Το every rational choice there is an obligation and a fanction. These terms are not fynonymous: and yet their distinction is more easily understood than expreffed in any other form of words.

Obligation, in the original sense of the term, seems to imply fome tie or bond, which is incurred by the perfon obliged; while fanction implies the confideration by which he is induced

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Obligatio eft juris vinculum, quo, neceffitate aftringimus alicujus rei folvendæ fecundum noftræ civitatis jura.

Inft. Just. lib. III. titulo decimo quarto.

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