Adverting to the usual example of the love of money, he remarks that the benevolent man might begin with an interested affection, but might end with a disinterested delight in doing good.  Self-love, or the principle of permanent well-being, is gradually formed from the separate appetites, and is at last pursued without having them specially in view.  So Sympathy may perhaps be the transfer, first, of our own personal feelings to other beings, and next, of their feelings to ourselves, thereby engendering the social affections.  It is an ancient and obstinate error of philosophers to regard these two principles—­Self-love and Sympathy—­as the source of the impelling passions and affections, instead of being the last results of them.

The chief elementary feelings that go to constitute the moral sentiments appear to be Gratitude, Pity, Resentment, and Shame.  To take the example of Gratitude.  Acts of beneficence to ourselves give us pleasure; we associate this pleasure with the benefactor, so as to regard him with a feeling of complacency; and when we view other beneficent beings and acts there is awakened within us our own agreeable experience.  The process is seen in the child, who contracts towards the nurse or mother all the feelings of complacency arising from repeated pleasures, and extends these by similarity to other resembling persons.  As soon as complacency takes the form of action, it becomes (according to the author’s theory, connecting conscience with will), a part of the Conscience.  So much for the development of Gratitude.  Next as to Pity.  The likeness of the outward signs of emotion makes us transfer to others our own feelings, and thereby becomes, even more than gratitude, a source of benevolence; being one of the first motives to impart the benefits connected with affection.  In our sympathy with the sufferer, we cannot but approve the actions that relieve suffering, and the dispositions that prompt them.  We also enter into his Resentment, or anger towards the causes of pain, and the actions and dispositions corresponding; and this sympathetic anger is at length detached from special cases and extended to all wrong-doers; and is the root of the most indispensable compound of our moral faculties, the ‘Sense of Justice.’

To these internal growths, from Gratitude, Pity, and Resentment, must be added the education by means of well-framed penal laws, which are the lasting declaration of the moral indignation of mankind.  These laws may be obeyed as mere compulsory duties; but with the generous sentiments concurring, men may rise above duty to virtue, and may contract that excellence of nature whence acts of beneficence flow of their own accord.

He next explains the growth of Remorse, as another element of the Moral Sense.  The abhorrence that we feel for bad actions is extended to the agent; and, in spite of certain obstacles to its full manifestation, that abhorrence is prompted when the agent is self.