that will, perhaps, be regarded by many as a sufficient confutation of it. The qualities, he allows * 1.1, which belong to the objects of any sense cannot without the greatest absur|dity be ascribed to the sense itself. Who|ever thought of calling the sense of seeing black or white, the sense of hearing loud or low, or the sense of tasting sweet or bitter? and, according to him, it is equally absurd to call our moral faculties virtuous or vicious, morally good or evil. These qualities belong to the objects of those faculties, not to the faculties themselves. If any man, therefore, was so absurdly constituted as to approve of cruelty and injustice as the highest virtues, and to disapprove of equity and humanity as the most pitiful vices, such a constitution of mind might indeed be regarded as inconveni|ent both to the individual and to the society, and likewise as strange, surprising and un|natural in itself; but it could not, without the greatest absurdity, be denominated vi|cious or morally evil.
Yet surely if we saw any man shouting with admiration and applause at a barbarous and unmerited execution, which some insolent ty|rant
