Reason may show that this object is the means of obtaining some other which is naturally either pleasing or displeasing, and in this man|ner may render it either agreeable or disagree|able for the sake of something else. But no|thing can be agreeable or disagreeable for its own sake which is not rendered such by im|mediate sense and feeling. If virtue, there|fore, in every particular instance, necessarily pleases for its own sake, and if vice as cer|tainly displeases the mind, it cannot be reason, but immediate sense and feeling, which in this manner, reconciles us to the one, and alienates us from the other.
Pleasure and pain are the great objects of desire and aversion: but these are distinguish|ed not by reason but by immediate sense and feeling. If virtue, therefore, is desireable for its own sake, and if vice is, in the same man|ner the object of aversion, it cannot be rea|son which originally distinguishes those diffe|rent qualities, but immediate sense and feel|ing.
As reason, however, in a certain sense, may justly be considered as the principle of approbation and disapprobation, these senti|ments were thro' inattention, long regarded as originally flowing from the operations of
