The author, considering his thesis established, deduces from it the corollary, that morality is eternal and immutable.  As an object of the Understanding, it has an invariable essence.  No will, not even Omnipotence, can make things other than they are.  Right and wrong, as far as they express the real characters of actions, must immutably and necessarily belong to the actions.  By action, is of course understood not a bare external effect, but an effect taken along with its principle or rule, the motives or reasons of the being that performs it.  The matter of an action being the same, its morality reposes upon the end or motive of the agent.  Nothing can be obligatory in us that was not so from eternity.  The will of God could not make a thing right that was not right in its own nature.

The author closes his first chapter with a criticism of the doctrine of Protagoras—­that man is the measure of all things—­interpreting it as another phase of the view that he is combating.

Although this chapter is but a small part of the work, it completes the author’s demonstration of his ethical theory.

Chapter II. is on ‘our Ideas of the Beauty and Deformity of Actions.’  By these are meant our pleasurable and painful sentiments, arising from the consideration of moral right and wrong, expressed by calling some actions amiable, and others odious, shocking, vile.  Although, in this aspect of actions, it would seem that the reference to a sense is the suitable explanation, he still contends for the intervention of the Understanding.  The character of the Deity must appear more amiable the better it is known and understood.  A reasonable being, without any special sensibilities, but knowing what order and happiness are, would receive pleasure from the contemplation of a universe where order prevailed, and pain from a prospect of the contrary.  To behold virtue is to admire her; to perceive vice is to be moved to condemnation.  There must always be a consideration of the circumstances of an action, and this involves intellectual discernment.

The author now qualifies his doctrine by the remark, that to some superior beings the intellectual discernment may explain the whole of the appearances, but inferior natures, such as the human, are aided by instinctive determinations.  Our appetites and passions are too strong for reason by itself, especially in early years.  Hence he is disposed to conclude that ’in contemplating the actions of moral agents, we have both a perception of the understanding and a feeling of the heart;’ but that this feeling of the heart, while partly instinctive, is mainly a sense of congruity and incongruity in actions.  The author therefore allows something to innate sense, but differs from Shaftesbury, who makes the whole a matter of intuitive determination.