e added, that when virtue is become habitual, when the temper of
it is acquired, what was before confinement ceases to be so by becoming
choice and delight. Whatever restraint and guard upon ourselves may be
needful to unlearn any unnatural distortion or odd gesture, yet in all
propriety of speech, natural behaviour must be the most easy and
unrestrained. It is manifest that, in the common course of life, there
is seldom any inconsistency between our duty and what is _called_
interest: it is much seldomer that there is an inconsistency between duty
and what is really our present interest; meaning by interest, happiness
and satisfaction. Self-love, then, though confined to the interest of
the present world, does in general perfectly coincide with virtue, and
leads us to one and the same course of life. But, whatever exceptions
there are to this, which are much fewer than they are commonly thought,
all shall be set right at the final distribution of things. It is a
manifest absurdity to suppose evil prevailing finally over good, under
the conduct and administration of a perfect mined.

The whole argument, which I have been now insisting upon, may be thus
summed up, and given you in one view. The nature of man is adapted to
some course of action or other. Upon comparing some actions with this
nature, they appear suitable and correspondent to it: from comparison of
other actions with the same nature, there arises to our view some
unsuitableness or disproportion. The correspondence of actions to the
nature of the agent renders them natural; their disproportion to it,
unnatural. That an action is correspondent to the nature of the agent
does not arise from its being agreeable to the principle which happens to
be the strongest: for it may be so and yet be quite disproportionate to
the nature of the agent. The correspondence therefore, or disproportion,
arises from somewhat else. This can be nothing but a difference in
nature and kind, altogether distinct from strength, between the inward
principles. Some then are in nature and kind superior to others. And
the correspondence arises from the action being conformable to the higher
principle; and the unsuitableness from its being contrary to it.
Reasonable self-love and conscience are the chief or superior principles
in the nature of man; because an action may be suitable to this nature,
though all other principles be violated, but becomes unsuitable if either
of those