nd,
when they are thwarted, we feel dissatisfaction. Similarly, we have a
number of affections, of which others are the object, some of them of a
malevolent or resentful, but most of them of a benevolent character,
including a general desire to confer all the happiness that we can.
Here, again, we feel satisfaction, when our affections are gratified,
and dissatisfaction, when they are thwarted. Now these feelings of
satisfaction and dissatisfaction, which are called reflex feelings,
because they are reflected, as it were, from the objects of our desires,
include, though they are by no means coextensive with, the feelings of
moral approbation and disapprobation. When, for instance, we gratify the
appetites of hunger or thirst, or our love of curiosity or power, we
feel satisfaction, but we can hardly be said to regard the gratification
of these appetites or feelings with moral approval or disapproval. We
perform thousands of acts, and see thousands of acts performed, every
day, which never excite any moral feeling whatever. But there are few
men in whom an undoubted act of kindness or generosity or resistance to
temptation would not at once elicit admiration or respect, or, if they
reflected on such acts in their own case, of self-approval. Now, what
are the circumstances which distinguish these acts which merely cause us
satisfaction from those which elicit the moral feeling of approbation?
This question is one by no means easy to answer, and the solution of it
must obviously depend to some extent on the moral surroundings and
prepossessions of the person who undertakes to answer it. But,
attempting to take as wide a survey as possible of those acts which, in
different persons, elicit moral approbation or disapprobation, I will
endeavour to discriminate the characteristics which they have in common.

All those acts, then, it seems to me, which elicit a distinctively moral
feeling have been the result of some conflict amongst the various
desires and affections, or, to adopt the more ordinary phraseology, of a
conflict of motives. We neither approve nor disapprove of acts with
regard to which there seems to have been little or no choice, which
appear to have resulted naturally from the pre-existing circumstances.
Thus, if a well-to-do man pays his debts promptly, or a man of known
poverty asks to have the time of payment deferred, we neither visit the
one with praise nor the other with censure, though, if their conduct
we