judge of them.

If you assert, that vice and virtue consist in relations susceptible
of certainty and demonstration, you must confine yourself to those four
relations, which alone admit of that degree of evidence; and in that
case you run into absurdities, from which you will never be able to
extricate yourself. For as you make the very essence of morality to lie
in the relations, and as there is no one of these relations but what is
applicable, not only to an irrational, but also to an inanimate object;
it follows, that even such objects must be susceptible of merit or
demerit. RESEMBLANCE, CONTRARIETY, DEGREES IN QUALITY, and PROPORTIONS
IN QUANTITY AND NUMBER; all these relations belong as properly
to matter, as to our actions, passions, and volitions. It is
unquestionable, therefore, that morality lies not in any of these
relations, nor the sense of it in their discovery.

[Footnote 13. As a proof, how confused our way of thinking
on this subject commonly is, we may observe, that those who
assert, that morality is demonstrable, do not say, that
morality lies in the relations, and that the relations are
distinguishable by reason. They only say, that reason can
discover such an action, In such relations, to be virtuous,
and such another vicious. It seems they thought it
sufficient, if they could bring the word, Relation, into the
proposition, without troubling themselves whether it was to
the purpose or not. But here, I think, is plain argument.
Demonstrative reason discovers only relations. But that
reason, according to this hypothesis, discovers also vice
and virtue. These moral qualities, therefore, must be
relations. When we blame any action, in any situation, the
whole complicated object, of action and situation, must form
certain relations, wherein the essence of vice consists.
This hypothesis is not otherwise intelligible. For what does
reason discover, when it pronounces any action vicious? Does
it discover a relation or a matter of fact? These questions
are decisive, and must not be eluded.]

Should it be asserted, that the sense of morality consists in
the discovery of some relation, distinct from these, and that our
enumeration was not compleat, when we comprehended all demonstrable
relations under four general heads: To this I know not what to reply,
till some one be so good as to point out to me thi