e to crime.

The analysis thus far he claims to be strictly scientific; he now
proceeds to vary the case, taking actions of our own. I am supposed
entrusted by a dying friend with a deposit for another, and a struggle
ensues between interest and probity as to whether I should pay it. If
interest conquers, remorse ensues. He paints the state of remorse, and
analyzes it into the same elements as before, the idea of _good_ and
_evil_, of an _obligatory law_, of _liberty_, of _merit_ and _demerit_;
it thus includes the whole phenomenon of morality. The exactly opposite
state that follows upon the victory of probity, is proved to imply the
same facts.

The Moral Sentiment, so striking in its character, has by some been
supposed the foundation of all morality, but in point of fact it is
itself constituted by these various judgments. Now that they are known
to stand as its elements, he goes on to subject each to a stricter
analysis, taking first the judgment of _good_ and _evil_, which is at
the bottom of all the rest. It lies in the original constitution of
human nature, being simple and indecomposable, like the judgment of the
True and the Beautiful. It is absolute, and cannot be withheld in
presence of certain acts; but it only declares, and does not
constitute, good and evil, these being real and independent qualities
of actions. Applied at first to special cases, the judgment of good
gives birth to general principles that become rules for judging other
actions. Like other sciences, morality has its axioms, justly called
moral truths; if it is good to keep an oath, it is also true, the oath
being made with no other purpose than to be kept. Faithful guarding as
much belongs to the idea of a deposit, as the equality between its
three angles and two right angles to the idea of a triangle. By no
caprice or effort of will can a moral verity be made in the smallest
degree other than it is.

But, he goes on, a moral verity is not simply to be believed; it must
also be practised, and this is _obligation_, the second of the elements
of moral sentiment. Obligation, like moral truth, on which it rests, is
absolute, immutable, universal. Kant even went so far as to make it the
principle of our morality; but this was subjectivizing good, as he had
subjectivized truth. Before there is an obligation to act, there must
be an intrinsic goodness in the action; the real first truth of
morality is justics, _i.e._, the essential distinction