by some views of interest) 'the immediate
cause of moral approbation.' Now, anything to be had from men could not
raise within us such affections, or make us careful about anything
beyond external deportment. Nor could rewards from God, or the wish for
self-approbation, create such affections, although, on the supposition
of their existence, these may well help to foster them. It is
benevolent _dispositions_ that we morally approve; but dispositions are
not to be raised by will. Moreover, they are often found where there
has been least thought of cultivating them; and, sometimes, in the form
of parental affection, gratitude, &c., they are followed so little for
the sake of honour and reward, that though their absence is condemned,
they are themselves hardly accounted virtuous at all. He then rebuts
the idea that generous affections are selfish, because by _sympathy_ we
make the pleasures and pains of others our own. Sympathy is a real
fact, but has regard only to the distress or suffering beheld or
imagined in others, whereas generous affection is varied toward
different characters. Sympathy can never explain the immediate ardour
of our good-will towards the morally excellent character, or the
eagerness of a dying man for the prosperity of his children and
friends. Having thus accepted the existence of purely disinterested
affections, and divided them as before into calm and turbulent, he puts
the question, Whether is the selfish or benevolent principle to yield
in case of opposition? And although it appears that, as a fact, the
universal happiness is preferred to the individual in the order of the
world by the Deity, this is nothing, unless by some determination of
the soul we are made to comply with the Divine intentions. If by the
desire of reward, it is selfishness still; if by the desire, following
upon the sight, of moral excellence, then there must necessarily exist
as its object some determination of the will involving supreme moral
excellence, otherwise there will be no way of deciding between
particular affections. This leads on to the consideration of the Moral
Faculty.

But, in the beginning of Chapter IV., he first rejects one by one these
various accounts of the reason of our approbation of moral
conduct:--pleasure by sympathy; pleasure through the moral sense;
notion of advantage to the agent, or to the approver, and this direct
or imagined; tendency to procure honour; conformity to law, to truth,
fitne