ged into torments would complain _justly_; he would consider
that violence had been done to a perception of the human
_understanding_.

He next brings out a metaphysical difficulty in applying right and
wrong to actions, on the supposition that they are mere effects of
sensation. All sensations, as such, are modes of consciousness, or
feelings, of a sentient being, and must be of a nature different from
their causes. Colour is in the mind, not an attribute of the object;
but right and wrong are qualities of actions, of objects, and therefore
must be ideas, not sensations. Then, again, there can be nothing true
or untrue in a sensation; all sensations are alike just; while the
moral rectitude of an action is something absolute and unvarying.
Lastly, all actions have a nature, or character; something truly
belonging to them, and truly affirmable of them. If actions have no
character, then they are all indifferent; but this no one can affirm;
we all strongly believe the contrary. Actions are not indifferent. They
are good or bad, better or worse. And if so, they are declared such by
an act of _judgment_, a function of the understanding.

The author, considering his thesis established, deduces from it the
corollary, that morality is _eternal and immutable_. As an object of
the Understanding, it has an invariable essence. No will, not even
Omnipotence, can make _things_ other than they are. Right and wrong, as
far as they express the real characters of actions, must immutably and
necessarily belong to the actions. By action, is of course understood
not a bare external effect, but an effect taken along with its
principle or rule, the motives or reasons of the being that performs
it. The matter of an action being the same, its morality reposes upon
the end or motive of the agent. Nothing can be obligatory in us that
was not so from eternity. The will of God could not make a thing right
that was not right in its own nature.

The author closes his first chapter with a criticism of the doctrine of
Protagoras--that man is the measure of all things--interpreting it as
another phase of the view that he is combating.

Although this chapter is but a small part of the work, it completes the
author's demonstration of his ethical theory.

Chapter II. is on 'our Ideas of the Beauty and Deformity of Actions.'
By these are meant our pleasurable and painful sentiments, arising from
the consideration of moral right and wrong, expressed b