must incur a greater or less degree of his disapprobation: and upon all occasions his own sentiments are the standards and mea|sures by which he judges of mine.
To approve of another man's opinions is to adopt those opinions, and to adopt them is to approve of them. If the same arguments which convince you convince me likewise, I necessarily approve of your conviction; and if they do not, I necessa|rily disapprove of it: neither can I possibly conceive that I should do the one without the other. To approve or disapprove, there|fore, of the opinions of others is acknow|ledged, by every body, to mean no more than to observe their agreement or disagree|ment with our own. But this is equally the case with regard to our approbation or disapprobation of the sentiments or passions of others.
There are, indeed, some cases in which we seem to approve without any sympathy or correspondence of sentiments, and in which, consequently, the sentiment of ap|probation would seem to be different from the perception of this coincidence. A lit|tle attention, however, will convince us that even in these cases our approbation
