man WHY HE USES
EXERCISE; he will answer, BECAUSE HE DESIRES TO KEEP HIS HEALTH. If
you then enquire, WHY HE DESIRES HEALTH, he will readily reply, BECAUSE
SICKNESS IS PAINFUL. If you push your enquiries farther, and desire a
reason WHY HE HATES PAIN, it is impossible he can ever give any. This is
an ultimate end, and is never referred to any other object.

Perhaps to your second question, WHY HE DESIRES HEALTH, he may also
reply, that IT IS NECESSARY FOR THE EXERCISE OF HIS CALLING. If you ask,
WHY HE IS ANXIOUS ON THAT HEAD, he will answer, BECAUSE HE DESIRES TO
GET MONEY. If you demand WHY? IT IS THE INSTRUMENT OF PLEASURE, says he.
And beyond this it is an absurdity to ask for a reason. It is impossible
there can be a progress IN INFINITUM; and that one thing can always be a
reason why another is desired. Something must be desirable on its own
account, and because of its immediate accord or agreement with human
sentiment and affection.

Now as virtue is an end, and is desirable on its own account, without
fee and reward, merely for the immediate satisfaction which it conveys;
it is requisite that there should be some sentiment which it touches,
some internal taste or feeling, or whatever you may please to call it,
which distinguishes moral good and evil, and which embraces the one and
rejects the other.

Thus the distinct boundaries and offices of REASON and of TASTE are
easily ascertained. The former conveys the knowledge of truth and
falsehood: the latter gives the sentiment of beauty and deformity, vice
and virtue. The one discovers objects as they really stand in nature,
without addition and diminution: the other has a productive faculty, and
gilding or staining all natural objects with the colours, borrowed from
internal sentiment, raises in a manner a new creation. Reason being cool
and disengaged, is no motive to action, and directs only the impulse
received from appetite or inclination, by showing us the means of
attaining happiness or avoiding misery: Taste, as it gives pleasure or
pain, and thereby constitutes happiness or misery, becomes a motive to
action, and is the first spring or impulse to desire and volition. From
circumstances and relations, known or supposed, the former leads us to
the discovery of the concealed and unknown: after all circumstances and
relations are laid before us, the latter makes us feel from the whole
a new sentiment of blame or approbation. The standard of the one, being
f