and of pain in the other. Secondly, it must be capable of feeling those sensations. And, thirdly, it must not only have produced those sensations, but it must have produced them from design, and from a design that is approved or in the one case, and dis|approved of in the other. It is by the first qualification, that any object is ca|pable of exciting those passions: it is by the second, that it is in any respect capable of gratifying them: the third qualification is both necessary for their compleat satisfac|tion, and as it gives a pleasure or pain that is both exquisite and peculiar, it is likewise an additional exciting cause of those passions.
As what gives pleasure or pain, there|fore, either in one way or another, is the sole exciting cause of gratitude and resent|ment; though the intentions of any per|son should be ever so proper and beneficent, on the one hand, or ever so improper and malevolent on the other; yet, if he has failed in producing either the good or the evil which he intended, as one of the ex|citing causes is wanting in both cases, less gratitude seems due to him in the one, and less resentment in the other. And, on the contrary, though in the intentions of any
