to mutual injuries. Society might exist
without love or beneficence, but not without mutual abstinence from
injury. Beneficence is the ornament that embellishes the building;
Justice the main pillar that supports it. It is for the observance of
Justice that we need that consciousness of ill-desert, and those
terrors of mental punishment, growing out of our sympathy with the
disapprobation of our fellows. Justice is necessary to the existence of
society, and we often defend its dictates on that ground; but, without
looking to such a remote and comprehensive end, we are plunged into
remorse for its violation by the shorter process of referring to the
censure of a supposed spectator [in other words, to the sanction of
public opinion].

_Section III.--Of the influence of Fortune upon the sentiments of
mankind, with regard to the Merit and the Demerit of actions_.

Every voluntary action consists of three parts:--(1) the Intention or
motive, (2) the Mechanism, as when we lift the hand, and give a blow,
and (3) the Consequences. It is, in principle, admitted by all, that
only the first, the Intention, can be the subject of blame. The
Mechanism is in itself indifferent. So the Consequences cannot be
properly imputed to the agent, unless intended by him. On this last
point, however, mankind do not always adhere to their general maxim;
when they come to particular cases, they are influenced, in their
estimate of merit and demerit, by the actual consequences of the
action.

Chapter I. considers the causes of this influence of Fortune. Gratitude
requires, in the first instance, that some pleasure should have been
conferred; Resentment pre-supposes pain. These passions require farther
that the object of them should itself be susceptible of pleasure and
pain; they should be human beings or animals. Thirdly, It is requisite
that they should have produced the effects from a design to do so. Now,
the absence of the pleasurable consequences intended by a beneficent
agent leaves out one of the exciting causes of gratitude, although
including another; the absence of the painful consequences of a
maleficent act leaves out one of the exciting causes of resentment;
hence less gratitude seems due in the one, and less resentment in the
other.

Chapter II. treats of the extent of this influence of Fortune. The
effects of it are, first, to diminish, in our eyes, the merit of
laudable, and the demerit of blameable, actions, when they fail of