Two Objections To This System

Men seldom love what:

• lies far from them, and
• does not contribute to their benefit.

It also rare to meet persons who can pardon another who opposes their interest, even if that opposition is morally correct.

We are contented with saying that reason requires such an impartial conduct.

But we seldom can bring ourselves to it.

Our passions do not readily follow our judgment’s determination.

This will be easily understood if we consider what we have said concerning that reason:

• which is able to oppose our passion, and
• which is nothing but a general calm determination of the passions, founded on some distant view.

When we form our judgments of persons merely from their tendency to benefit us or our friends, we find:

• so many contradictions to our sentiments in society and conversation, and
• an uncertainty from the incessant changes of our situation.

We seek some other standard of merit and demerit which may not admit of so great variation.

We are thus loosened from our first station.

We cannot then fix ourselves with people who have any commerce with the person we consider, as what we did by sympathy.

We are not as lively as when our own interest or that of our friends is concerned.

This also has no such influence on our love and hatred.

But it is equally conformable to our calm and general principles.

Therefore, it is said to:

• have an equal authority over our reason, and
• command our judgment and opinion.

We equally blame a bad action we read in history, with a bad action performed in our neighbourhood the other day.

Because, we know that the historical bad action would also excite sentiments of disapprobation as the nearby one, if it were placed in the same position.

The second remarkable circumstance is that when a person has a character naturally beneficial to society:

• we esteem him as virtuous, and
• we are delighted with the view of his character, even though particular accidents:
  • prevent its operation, and
  • incapacitate him from being serviceable to his friends and country.

Virtue in rags is still virtue.

The love it procures attends a man into a dungeon or desert, where the virtue:

• can no longer be exerted, and
• is lost to all the world.

This is an objection to the present system.

Sympathy interests us in the good of mankind.

If sympathy were the source of our esteem for virtue, that sentiment of approbation could only take place where the virtue:

• actually attained its end, and
• was beneficial to mankind.

It is only an imperfect means when it fails of its end.

It can never acquire any merit from that end.

The goodness of an end can bestow a merit on the means alone, as if it were complete and actually produced the end.