wrong, blameable, on the other; these terms or others similar being, in each case respectively, taken as synonymous.

If we carefully analyze into its several parts that act or state of the mind which we understand to be denoted by the term approbation or its contrary; that is, if we consider what approbation, in its common meaning, consists of, or comprehends; and if, at the same time, we accurately discriminate the different senses in which an action is denominated a good, or a bad one, we shall find we have done much to disentangle the perplexities that have usually beset this certainly very difficult subject.

as, in this respect, merely exercising itself after one specific mode, or on one particular class of its objects?

Secondly. It being, at all events, the fact that we have a perception of such distinctions, do the characters or actions that are thus distinguished as good or bad respectively, possess any assignable quality in common, more than that of being so distinguished—any quality on account of which it is that they are so distinguished,—and if so, what is that common quality?—wherein, as regards the actions themselves, does a good action differ from a bad or an indifferent one? what is the object of approbation in one action, of disapprobation in another? For what is one approved, another disapproved?

To the mode of treatment which the first of these questions has generally received, it may be objected, that such treatment has proceeded too much upon an assumption of the simplicity and uniformity of that operation or state of the mind to which the question refers, and which we designate by the term approbation or disapprobation.

To the mode of treatment generally pursued in regard to the second question it is in like manner to be objected, that, apparently, according to that mode, only one moral distinction has been supposed to exist, as applicable to characters and actions, namely, that denoted by the general terms good, right, meritorious, on the one hand, or bad,

wrong, blameable, on the other; these terms or others similar being, in each case respectively, taken as synonymous.

If we carefully analyze into its several parts that act or state of the mind which we understand to be denoted by the term approbation or its contrary; that is, if we consider what approbation, in its common meaning, consists of, or comprehends; and if, at the same time, we accurately discriminate the different senses in which an action is denominated a good, or a bad one, we shall find we have done much to disentangle the perplexities that have usually beset this certainly very difficult subject.

4

CHAPTER II.

OF SPECIFIC DISTINCTIONS COMPREHENDED IN THE GENERAL

TERM (MORALLY) GOOD.

IF approbation means the perception or feeling that an action is good, and if there are more ways than one in which an action may be reckoned good, then approbation cannot, in every case, be an exercise of the moral faculty in one simple and uniform mode. According to the number of ways in which different actions, or the same action at once, may be good, the act of approbation must, in this respect if in no other, be proportionally varied or complex. Before considering, then, the nature of the moral faculty, it may be proper to advert to some of the principal distinctions about which it is conversant these being, as will appear, more than the mere general one of good and bad.

An action is a good or approved one for this, if for nothing else, that it promotes the comfort or enjoyment of any sentient being. In the greater degree or to the greater extent it produces such an effect, it is even on this account alone so much a better action. It is a good action by which food is given

to one that is suffering the want of it. It is a better action by which both food and clothing are given to one who is at once destitute of both. It is a good action by which one indigent person is relieved; it is a better action by which two, or five, or twenty are relieved.

But, of two actions, each producing the same. amount of good, if one is performed by an agent solely for the sake of, or with a view to the production of good, the other without any such view,

though both actions would be equally good in the sense just given, the latter one would, in another sense, not be a good action in like manner as the former. But in so far as it might proceed partly from a wish on the part of the agent to effect the good, partly from other and different motives, it would so far be a better action than one performed without any view at all to the production of good. And the more anxious an agent were to perform a beneficent action, if his eagerness were so great as to make him entirely overlook the prejudice or disadvantage which the performance of it might occasion to himself, we should pronounce his action to be so much a better action.

Yet again, if another agent, though also disposed to perform a beneficent action on its own account, nevertheless experienced much hesitation and reluctance about incurring the necessary sacrifice, and at last only by doing violence to his own inclination prevailed on himself to pursue the gene