He takes up, in the third place, actions done by ourselves to others.  Here, when the action is beneficent, the peculiarity is that an expectation of receiving good in return from our neighbours takes the place of a desire to reciprocate; we consider ourselves the proper object of grateful thoughts, &c., on the part both of receiver and of spectators.  We are affected with the gratification of a benevolent desire, with self-complacency, and with undefined hopes.  When we have inflicted injury, there is the expectation of evil, and a combination of feelings summed up in the word Remorse.  But Remorse, like other sentiments, may fail in the absence of cultivation of mind or under special circumstances.

Having considered the three different kinds of actions separately, he next remarks that the sentiment prevailing in each case must be liable to a reflex influence from the other cases, whereby it will be strengthened or intensified; thus we come to associate certain intensities of moral sentiment with certain kinds of action, by whomsoever or to whomsoever performed.  He also notes, that in the first and third cases, as well as in the second, there is a variation of the sentiment, according as the parties affected are friends, neutrals, or enemies.  Finally, a peculiar and important modification of the sentiments results from the outward manifestations of them called forth from the persons directly or indirectly affected by actions.  Such are looks, gestures, tones, words, or actions, being all efforts to gratify the natural desire of reciprocating pleasure or pain.  Of these the most notable are the verbal manifestations, as they are mostly irrepressible, and can alone always be resorted to.  While relieving the feelings, they can also become a most powerful, as they are often the only, instrument of reward and punishment.  Their power of giving to moral sentiments greater precision, and of acting upon conduct like authoritative precepts, is seen in greatest force when they proceed from, bodies of men, whether they are regarded as signs of material consequences or not.  He ends this part of the subject by defending, with Butler, the place of resentment in the moral constitution.

He proceeds to inquire how it is that not only the perfection of moral sentiment that would apportion more approbation and disapprobation according to the real tendencies of actions, is not attained, but men’s moral feelings are not seldom in extreme contrariety with the real effects of human conduct.  First, he finds that men, from partial views, or momentarily, or from caprice, may bestow their sentiments altogether at variance with the real consequences of actions.  Next there is the difficulty, or even impossibility, of calculating all the consequences far and near; whence human conduct is liable to be appreciated on whimsical grounds or on no discernible grounds at all, and errors in moral sentiment arise, which it takes increased knowledge to get rid of.  In the third