t, because we have neglected
our interest or violated our sympathies, we have on that account done
wrong. The criterion of rightness in particular cases is something
different.

The reasons are apparent. For although prudence, as regards self, and
sympathy or fellow-feeling, as regards others, would comprehend all
the interests of mankind--everything that morality can desire to
accomplish--nevertheless, the acting out of these impulses by each
individual at random would not suffice for the exigencies of human
life. They must be regulated, directed, reconciled by society at
large; each person must be made to work upon the same plan as every
other person. This leads to the institution of Government and
Authority, with the correlatives of Law, Obligation, and Punishment.
Our natural impulses for good are now directed into an artificial
channel, and it is no longer optional whether they shall fall into
that channel. The nature of the case requires all to conform alike to
the general arrangements, and whoever is not sufficiently urged by the
natural motives, is brought under the spur of a new kind of prudential
motive--Punishment.

Government, Authority, Law, Obligation, Punishment, are all implicated
in the same great Institution of Society, to which Morality owes its
chief foundation, and the Moral Sentiment its special attribute.
Morality is not Prudence, nor Benevolence, in their primitive or
spontaneous manifestations; it is the systematic codification of
prudential and benevolent actions, rendered obligatory by what is
termed penalties or Punishment; an entirely distinct motive,
artificially framed by human society, but made so familiar to every
member of society as to be a second nature. None are allowed to be
prudential or sympathizing in their own way. Parents are compelled to
nourish their own children; servants to obey their own masters, to the
neglect of other regards; all citizens have to abide by the awards of
authority; bargains are to be fulfilled according to a prescribed form
and letter; truth is to be spoken on certain definite occasions, and
not on others. In a formed society, the very best impulses of nature
fail to guide the citizen's actions. No doubt there ought to be a
general coincidence between what Prudence and Sympathy would dictate,
and what Law dictates; but the precise adjustment is a matter of
_institution_. A moral act is not merely an act tending to reconcile
the good of the agent with t