But if you feel no indignation or compassion arise
in you from this complication of circumstances, you would in vain
ask him, in what consists the crime or villainy, which he so
vehemently exclaims against? At what time, or on what subject it
first began to exist? And what has a few months afterwards become
of it, when every disposition and thought of all the actors is
totally altered or annihilated? No satisfactory answer can be
given to any of these questions, upon the abstract hypothesis of
morals; and we must at last acknowledge, that the crime or
immorality is no particular fact or relation, which can be the
object of the understanding, but arises entirely from the
sentiment of disapprobation, which, by the structure of human
nature, we unavoidably feel on the apprehension of barbarity or
treachery.
IV. Inanimate objects may bear to each other all the same
relations which we observe in moral agents; though the former can
never be the object of love or hatred, nor are consequently
susceptible of merit or iniquity. A young tree, which over-tops
and destroys its parent, stands in all the same relations with
Nero, when he murdered Agrippina; and if morality consisted
merely in relations, would no doubt be equally criminal.
V. It appears evident that--the ultimate ends of human actions
can never, in any case, be accounted for by reason, but recommend
themselves entirely to the sentiments and affections of mankind,
without any dependance on the intellectual faculties.
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