the greatest dread and aversion. Other actions, on the contrary, call forth our approbation, and we hear every body a|round us express the same favourable opi|nion concerning them. Every body is ea|ger to honour and reward them. They excite all those sentiments for which we have by nature the strongest desire; the love, the gratitude, the admiration of man|kind. We become ambitious of perform|ing the like; and thus naturally lay down to ourselves a rule of another kind, that every opportunity of acting in this manner is carefully to be sought after.
It is thus that the general rules of mo|rality are formed. They are ultimately founded upon experience of what, in par|ticular instances, our moral faculties, our natural sense of merit and propriety, ap|prove, or disapprove of. We do not ori|ginally approve or condemn particular ac|tions; because, upon examination, they appear to be agreeable or inconsistent with a certain general rule. The general rule, on the contrary, is formed by finding from experience, that all actions of a certain kind, or circumstanced in a certain man|ner, are approved or disapproved of. To
