far as virtue allows. The moral sense, and the
truest regard for our own interest, thus recommend the same course as
the calm, generous determination; and this makes up the supreme
cardinal virtue of Justice, which includes even our duties to God.
Temperance in regard to sensual enjoyments, Fortitude as against evils,
and Prudence, or Consideration, in regard to everything that solicits
our desires, are the other virtues; all subservient to Justice. In no
station of life are men shut out from the enjoyment of the supreme
good.

Book II. is a deduction of the more special laws of nature and duties
of life, so far as they follow from the course of life shown above to
be recommended by God and nature as most lovely and most advantageous;
all adventitious states or relations among men aside. The three first
chapters are of a general nature.

In Chapter I., he reviews the circumstances that increase the moral
good or evil of actions. Virtue being primarily an affair of the will
or affections, there can be no imputation of virtue or vice in action,
unless a man is free and able to act; the necessity and impossibility,
as grounds of non-imputation, must, however, have been in no way
brought about by the agent himself. In like manner, he considers what
effects and consequents of his actions are imputable to the agent;
remarking, by the way, that the want of a proper degree of good
affections and of solicitude for the public good is morally evil. He
then discusses the bearing of ignorance and error, vincible and
invincible, and specially the case wherein an erroneous conscience
extenuates. The difficulty of such cases, he says, are due to
ambiguity, wherefore he distinguishes three meanings of Conscience that
are found, (1) the moral faculty, (2) the judgment of the understanding
about the springs and effects of actions, upon which the moral sense
approves or condemns them, (3) our judgments concerning actions
compared with the _law_ (moral maxims, divine laws, &c.).

In Chapter II., he lays down general rules of judging about the
morality of actions from the affections exciting to them or opposing
them; and first as to the degree of virtue or vice when the ability
varies; in other words, morality as dependent on the _strength_ of the
affections. Next, and at greater length, morality as dependent on the
_kind_ of the affections.

Here he attempts to fix, in the first place, the degree of benevolence,
as opposed to private