On Natural and Moral PMiioSpphi/. d-Oh 



Arc no moral verdicts recorded, where the 

 subject on which the sentence passes, can 

 hardly by any ingenuity be brought home to 

 scit ; or if it can, where the advantage to self 

 is so remote and involved in so nwny chances, 

 that it can hardly be deemed to weigh a feather 

 in the scale ? Or, if even this evanescent ad- 

 vantage be allowed to intiuence, are not these 

 moral judgments pronounced, where the very 

 idea of a selfish interest is not present to the 

 thought, and there being a non-entity to the 

 mind, cannot possibly contribute any thing 

 whatever to its judgment ? Is not the sacrifice 

 of self often, and in the . most important 

 instances, the immediate consequence of the 

 moral sentence, but yet in despite of the strong 

 remonstrances of self, something in the consti- 

 tution of the mind demands the sentence, and 

 it startles with a kind of horror at the thought 

 of a contrary decision ? I would ask also, 

 whether the sacrifice of self be not essential to 

 the acknowledgment of a praise-worthy deed, 

 whether the rate at which the deed is estimated 

 be not in proportion to the magnitude of the 

 sacrifice ; and whether the praise be not uni- 

 versally withdrawn, if an act of the highest 

 moral form be discovered to have tprung from 

 a selfish motive ? Is not the hero in morals 

 always represented, and always the more ad- 



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