The Authority of the General Moral Rules properly seen as the Laws of the Deity

¹⁰⁰ The general rules of conduct create the sense of duty.

It is a principle of the greatest consequence in human life.

• It is the only principle by which most of mankind can direct their actions.

Many men behave very decently because of the established general rules of behaviour.

Assume that a man has received great benefits from another person, but feels only a small gratitude for that person.

Virtuous education will teach him:

• how odious ungrateful actions are, and
• how amiable grateful actions are

And so he will strive to act more grateful.

He will carefully embrace every opportunity of making a proper return for past services.

He may do all this too without any hypocrisy or blamable dissimulation.

His motives may be no other than:

• a reverence for the established rule of duty, and
• a serious and earnest desire of acting according to the law of gratitude.

In the same way, a wife may sometimes not feel that tender regard for her husband.

However, if she has been virtuously educated, she will try to:

• act as if she felt it,

• be attentive to her husband.

The sentiment of conjugal affection would have prompted her to do this.

Such wife is not the best even if she seriously wanted to fulfill her duty as they will fail in many delicate regards.

If the regard to the general rules of conduct has been very strongly impressed on them, neither of them will fail in the essential part of their duty.

Only the happiest people can:

• precisely match behaviour to the smallest difference of situation, and
• always act with the most delicate and accurate propriety.

The coarse clay of which the bulk of mankind are formed, cannot be wrought up to such perfection.

However, anyone with discipline, education, and example, might be so impressed with a regard to general rules, as to:

• act on almost always with tolerable decency, and
• avoid any considerable degree of blame through his whole life.

¹⁰¹ Without this sacred regard to general rules, no one’s conduct can be much depended on.

This constitutes the most essential difference between a man of principle and honour and a worthless fellow.

The man of principle always adheres steadily and resolutely to his maxims

The worthless man acts variously and accidentally, as humour, inclination, or interest chance to be uppermost.

Everyone is subject to such inequalities of humour.

Without this principle, the man who, in his cool hours, had the most delicate sensibility to the propriety of conduct, might often be led to act absurdly on the most frivolous occasions.

It might be impossible to assign any serious motive for his behaving this way.

Your friend visits you when you do not want to receive him.

• But the general rules of civility and hospitality prohibits rudeness.

That habitual reverence which your former experience has taught you for these, enables you to act on all such occasions, with nearly equal propriety

It hinders those inequalities of temper, to which all men are subject, from influencing your conduct in any very sensible degree.

The duties of politeness are so easily observed.

The duties of justice, truth, chastity, and fidelity are often so difficult to observe.

• There may be so many strong motives to violate them.

What would become of these duties if the general rules and the duties of politeness would be so frequently violated?

The very existence of human society depends on the observance of these duties.