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between given quantities, of the equality of numbers, or the figure of bodies?

In the last place; let it be considered, that all actions, undoubtedly, have a nature. That is, some character certainly belongs to them, and somewhat there is to be truly affirmed of them. This may be, that some of them are right, others wrong. But if this is not allowed; if no actions are, in themselves, either right or wrong, or any thing of a moral and obligatory nature, which can be an object to the understanding; it follows, that, in themselves, they are all indifferent. This is what is

essentially true of them, and this is what all understandings, that perceive right, must perceive them to be. But are we not conscious, that we perceive the contrary? And have we not as much reason to believe the contrary, as to believe or trust at all our own discernment?

In other words; every thing having a nature or essence, from whence such and such truths concerning it necessarily result, and which it is the proper province of the understanding to perceive; it follows, that nothing whatever can be exempted from its inspection and sentence, and that of every thought, sentiment, and subject, it is the natural and ultimate judge. Actions, therefore, ends and events are within its province. Of these, as well as all other objects, it belongs to it to judge.— What is this judgment ?- One would think it impossible for any person, without some hesitation and reluctance, to reply; that the judgment he forms of them is this; that they are all essentially indifferent, and that there is no one thing fitter to be done than another. If this judging truly; how obvious is it to infer, that it signifies not what we do; and that the determination to think otherwise, is an imposition upon rational creatures. Why then should they not labour to suppress in themselves this determination, and to extirpate from their natures all the delusive ideas of morality, worth, and virtue? What though the ruin of the world should follow ?-There would be nothing really wrong in this.

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A rational agent void of all moral judgment, incapable of perceiving a difference, in respect of fitness and unfitness to be performed, between actions, and acting from blind propensions without any sentiments concerning what he does, is not possible to be imagined. And, do what we will, we shall find it out of our power, in earnest to persuade ourselves, that reason can have no concern in judging of and directing our conduct; or to exclude from our minds all notions of right and wrong in actions.

In short; it seems sufficient to overthrow any scheme, that such consequences, as the following, should arise from it-That no one being can judge one end to be better than another, or believe a real moral difference between actions; without giving his assent to an impossibility; without mistaking the affections of his own mind for truth, and sensation for knowledge. That there being nothing intrinsically proper or improper, just or unjust; there is nothing obligatory 1; but all beings enjoy, from the reasons of things and the nature of actions, liberty to act as they will.

621 The following important corollary arises from these argu

ments :

That morality is eternal and immutable.

Right and wrong, it appears, denote what actions are. Now whatever any thing is, that it is, not by will, or decree, or power, but by nature and necessity. Whatever a triangle or circle is, that it is unchangeably and eternally. It depends upon no will or power, whether the three angles of a triangle and two right ones shall be equal; whether the periphery of a circle and its diameter shall be incommensurable; or whether matter shall be divisible, moveable, passive, and inert.

1 Moral right and wrong, and moral obligation or duty, must remain, or vanish together. They necessarily accompany one another, and make but as it were one idea. As far as the former are fictitious and imaginary, the latter must be so too. This. connexion or coincidence between moral rectitude and obligation will be at large considered hereafter.

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Every object of the understanding has an indivisible and invariable essence; from whence arise its properties, and numberless truths concerning it. Omnipotence does not consist in a power to alter the nature of things, and to destroy necessary truth (for this is contradictory, and would infer the destruction of all wisdom, and knowledge) but in an absolute command over all particular, external existences, to create or destroy them, or produce any possible changes among them. -The natures of things then being immutable; whatever we suppose the natures of actions to be, they must be immutably. If they are indifferent, this indifference is itself immutable, and there neither is nor can be any one thing that, in reality, we ought to do rather than another. The same is to be said of right and wrong, of moral good and evil, as far as they express real characters of actions. They must immutably and necessarily belong to those actions of which they are truly affirmed.

No will, therefore, can render any thing good and obligatory, which was not so antecedently, and from eternity; or any action right, that is not so in itself; meaning by action, not the bare external effect produced, but the ultimate principle of conduct, or the determination of a reasonable being, considered as arising from the perception of some motives and reasons and intended for some end. According to this sense of the word action, whenever the principle from which we act is different, the action is different, though the external effects produced may be the same. If we attend to this, the meaning and truth of what I have just observed will be easily seen. Put the case of any action, the performance of which is indifferent, or attended with no circumstances of the agent that render it better or fitter to be done than omitted. Is it not plain that, while all things continue the same, it is as impossible for any will or power to make acting obligatory here, as it is for them to make two equal things unequal without producing any change in either? It is true, the doing

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of any indifferent thing may become obligatory, in consequence of a command from a being possessed of rightful authority over us: But it is obvious, that in this case, the command produces a change in the circumstances of the agent, and that what, in consequence of it, becomes obligatory, is not the same with what before was indifferent. The external effect, that is, the matter of the action is indeed the same; but nothing is plainer, than that actions in this sense the same, may in a moral view be totally different according to the ends aimed at by them, and the principles of morality under which they fall.

When an action, otherwise indifferent, becomes obligatory, by being made the subject of a promise; we are not to imagine, that our own will or breath alters the nature of things by making what is indifferent not so. But what was indifferent before the promise is still so; and it cannot be supposed, that, after the promise, it becomes obligatory, without a contradiction. All that the promise does, is, to alter the connexion of a particular effect; or to cause that to be an instance of right conduct which was not so before. There are no effects producible by us, which may not, in this manner, fall under different principles of morality; acquire connexions sometimes with happiness, and sometimes with misery; and thus stand in different relations to the eternal rules of duty.

The objection, therefore, to what is here asserted, taken from the effects of positive laws and promises, has no weight. It appears, that when an obligation to particular indifferent actions arises from the command of the Deity, or positive laws; it is by no means to be inferred from hence, that obligation is the creature of will, or that the nature of what is indifferent is changed: nothing then becoming obligatory, which was not so from eternity; that is, obeying the divine will, and just authority. And had there been nothing right in this, had there been no reason from the natures of things for obeying God's will; it is certain, it could have induced no obligation, nor at all influenced an intellectual nature as such.

-Will and laws signify nothing, abstracted from something previous to them, in the character of the law-giver and the relations of beings to one another, to give them force and render disobedience a crime. If mere will ever obliged, what reason can be given, why the will of one being should oblige, and of another not; why it should not oblige alike to every thing it requires; and why there should be any difference between power and authority? It is truth and reason, then, that, in all cases, oblige, and not mere will. So far, we see, is it from being possible, that any will or laws should create right; that they can have no effect, but in virtue of natural and antecedent right.

625 Thus, then, is morality fixed on an immoveable basis, and appears not to be, in any sense, factitious; or the arbitrary production of any power human or divine; but equally everlasting and necessary with all truth and reason. And this we find to be as evident, as that right and wrong signify a reality in what is so denominated.

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I shall conclude this chapter, with observing; that the opinion of those, who maintain that our ideas of morality are derived from sense, is far from being entirely modern. There were among the antients, philosophers, (Protagoras, in particular, and his followers) who entertained a like opinion; but extended it much further; that is, to all science; denied all absolute and immutable truth; and asserted every thing to be relative to perception. And indeed it seems not a very unnatural transition, from denying absolute moral truth, to denying all truth; from making right and wrong, just and unjust, dependent on perception, to asserting the same of whatever we commonly rank among the objects of the understanding. Why may not he who rejects the reality of rightness in beneficence, and of wrong in producing needless misery, be led, by the same steps, to deny the certainty of other selfevident principles? Why may he not as well deny the reality, for example, of straitness in a line drawn the shortest way