obligation, small as it is, is yet sufficient to influ ence. As it was formerly shewn how obligation might, in every instance, be deduced from the consideration of certain effects, as fit or unfit, so it is now to be remarked, that it is only in regard to the production of an effect, that obligation can be said to arise; and that it is incorrect to speak of virtue as being obligatory—as if we should say that a man ought to be virtuous, or that it is his duty to be so. To be of moral obligation, is the attribute, not of a mental character, but of an act producing an effect; in like manner as to be virtuous, is the attribute, not of an act, but of the mind of an agent.* * The title of one of Dr. Adam Smith's chapters, runs as follows; "In what cases the sense of duty ought to be the sole principle of our conduct, and in what cases it ought to concur with other motives."- If these other motives ought at any time to be the principle of our conduct, and if we act from these motives because they ought to be the principle of our conduct, we shall still act from a sense of duty: i. e. from a sense of what we ought to do. The just mode of expression, as I take it, would have been this: "In what cases conduct proceeding from a sense of duty is most pleasing or agreeable to others; and in what cases it is most pleasing or agreeable when proceeding from other motives." — If, in another way, we sometimes say that a man ought, in certain cases, to trust to his feelings for direction in conduct, (and there are such cases,) we furnish a precept founded on entirely the same principles as when we direct one to take advice from a parent or instructor, from a physician or a lawyer; because this happens to be the best specification of practical duty — not that there is a duty, properly speaking, in being led by our feelings in the one case, more than by the physician, or lawyer, in the other; but that this is the best means of attaining the performance of what is, in itself, our duty. CHAPTER IV. OF MERIT. SECT. I. Of the Subject to which the Attribute of Merit belongs, and of the Nature of that Attribute. HAVING thus described the dispositions which form the virtue of an agent, I am next to consider the acts of choice or volition for which we ascribe to him the attribute of merit. When we say that certain dispositions make an agent virtuous, we merely give a definition of virtue; when we say that an agent who wills in a certain manner has merit, we express both a definition and a judgment or proposition: we not only say that we give the name of merit to a certain attribute conceived to belong to the agent who thus wills; but our ascribing of this attribute to him is really a judgment that he deserves, or that it is fit that he should obtain, reward. It is the origin and nature of this judgment that I am now to describe. - In the process of evolving our mental conceptions, we find the notions of merit and guilt to be ultimately contained in those of happiness and misery. It is impossible to form the notion of these in the mind, without perceiving that happiness, in its very nature, is something fit to be promoted misery something fit to be prevented. The perception that a thing is fit to be done, necessarily involves the perception that it is proper or right in an agent to do it, that it is what he ought to do, what it is obligatory on him to do. But it is impossible to perceive that there is something an agent ought or ought not to do, without its being implied in such perception, that his state ought to be better if he wills to do what he ought, and worse, if he does not will to do what he ought and better in the one case, in the ratio of the strength of the volition; worse in the other case, in proportion to the want of volition. Whatever we conceive as done by an exercise of free will, we must suppose as what would not have taken place otherwise, that is, without such exercise of free will, or wilful choice: we suppose, in other words, that it is not what the agent would have done, acting spontaneously, from the impulse of the present disposition, affection, or desire. For an agent to have merit, then, we must conceive that he does not act merely from inclination. On the other hand, in attributing demerit to an agent for not willing or choosing in a particular manner, we necessarily suppose that he might have so willed; for by his not willing, in such a case, we do not speak merely as of a matter of fact, the negation of another matter of fact (as we might speak of a stone's not willing) but of the negative exercise of a power of which the agent is conscious. In the other sense, to speak of his not willing, when he could not will, would be a contradiction in terms. As merit then cannot attach to an agent for what he does from positive inclination, not requiring the exercise of free will, so demerit cannot attach to him for what he does under the pressure of a motive excluding the exercise of free will. The exercise of free will may be either positive or negative, but still it must be an exercise— the agent either choosing to do what he would not otherwise have done, or not choosing to do what he might have done; so that not willing must be an act of choice as well as willing. In order fully to comprehend the nature of merit and demerit, we must draw a complete separation between the nature of an agent and his acts. The former does not consist in what he does, but in what he is; the latter do not consist in what he is, but in what he does.* Certainly we have a conception of an agent's * It is obvious that by what he does, I do not here mean the outward act, but the inward act of will, as distinguished from the passive inclination. |