action, and regard the person towards whom it is directed as its proper and suit|able object.
2. In the same manner, we cannot at all sympathize with the resentment of one man against another, merely because this other has been the cause of his misfortune, un|less he has been the cause of it from mo|tives which we cannot enter into. Before we can adopt the resentment of the sufferer, we must disapprove of the motives of the agent, and feel that our heart renounces all sympathy with the affections which influ|enced his conduct. If there appears to have been no impropriety in these, how fa|tal soever the tendency of the action which proceeds from them to those against whom it is directed, it does not seem to deserve any punishment, or to be the proper object of any resentment.
But when to the hurtfulness of the action is joined the impropriety of the affection from whence it proceeds, when our heart rejects with abhorrence all fellow-feeling with the motives of the agent, we then heartily and intirely sympathize with the resentment of the sufferer. Such actions seem then to deserve, and, if I may say so,
