nd present to the mind of the virtuous agent?' The answer is
found in the limits of man's faculties. Every man is not always able,
on the spur of the moment, to calculate all the consequences of our
actions. But it is not to be concluded from this, that the calculation
of consequences is impracticable in moral subjects. To calculate the
general tendency of every sort of human action is, he contends, a
possible, easy, and common operation. The general good effects of
temperance, prudence, fortitude, justice, benevolence, gratitude,
veracity, fidelity, domestic and patriotic affections, may be
pronounced with as little error, as the best founded maxims of the
ordinary business of life.

He vindicates the rules of sexual morality on the grounds of
benevolence.

He then discusses the question, (on which he had charged Hume with
mistake), 'Why is approbation confined to voluntary acts?' He thinks it
but a partial solution to say that approbation and disapprobation are
wasted on what is not in the power of the will. The full solution he
considers to be found in the mode of derivation of the moral sentiment;
which, accordingly, he re-discusses at some length. He produces the
analogies of chemistry to show that compounds may be totally different
from their elements. He insists on the fact that a derived pleasure is
not the less a pleasure; it may even survive the primary pleasure.
Self-love (improperly so called) is intelligible if its origin be
referred to Association, but not if it be considered as prior to the
appetites and passions that furnish its materials. And as the pleasure
derived from low objects may be transferred to the most pure, so
Disinterestedness may originate with self, and yet become as entirely
detached from that origin as if the two had never been connected.

He then repeats his doctrine, that these social or disinterested
sentiments prompt the will as the means of their gratification. Hence,
by a farther transfer of association, the voluntary acts share in the
delight felt in the affections that determine them. We then desire to
experience _beneficent volitions_, and to cultivate the dispositions to
these. Such dispositions are at last desired for their own sake; and,
when so desired, constitute the Moral Sense, Conscience, or the Moral
Sentiment, in its consummated form. Thus, by a fourth or fifth stage of
derivation from the original pleasures and pains of our constitution,
we arrive at this highly c