e,
and entablature, and shaft, and architrave; and give the description and
position of each of these members. But should you ask the description
and position of its beauty, they would readily reply, that the beauty
is not in any of the parts or members of a pillar, but results from the
whole, when that complicated figure is presented to an intelligent mind,
susceptible to those finer sensations. Till such a spectator appear,
there is nothing but a figure of such particular dimensions and
proportions: from his sentiments alone arise its elegance and beauty.

Again; attend to Cicero, while he paints the crimes of a Verres or a
Catiline. You must acknowledge that the moral turpitude results, in the
same manner, from the contemplation of the whole, when presented to a
being whose organs have such a particular structure and formation. The
orator may paint rage, insolence, barbarity on the one side; meekness,
suffering, sorrow, innocence on the other. But if you feel no
indignation or compassion arise in you from this complication of
circumstances, you would in vain ask him, in what consists the crime or
villainy, which he so vehemently exclaims against? At what time, or
on what subject it first began to exist? And what has a few months
afterwards become of it, when every disposition and thought of all the
actors is totally altered or annihilated? No satisfactory answer can be
given to any of these questions, upon the abstract hypothesis of morals;
and we must at last acknowledge, that the crime or immorality is
no particular fact or relation, which can be the object of the
understanding, but arises entirely from the sentiment of disapprobation,
which, by the structure of human nature, we unavoidably feel on the
apprehension of barbarity or treachery.

IV. Inanimate objects may bear to each other all the same relations
which we observe in moral agents; though the former can never be the
object of love or hatred, nor are consequently susceptible of merit or
iniquity. A young tree, which over-tops and destroys its parent, stands
in all the same relations with Nero, when he murdered Agrippina; and
if morality consisted merely in relations, would no doubt be equally
criminal.

V. It appears evident that--the ultimate ends of human actions can
never, in any case, be accounted for by reason, but recommend themselves
entirely to the sentiments and affections of mankind, without any
dependance on the intellectual faculties. Ask a