But that reason, according to this hypothesis, discovers also vice and virtue.  These moral qualities, therefore, must be relations.  When we blame any action, in any situation, the whole complicated object, of action and situation, must form certain relations, wherein the essence of vice consists.  This hypothesis is not otherwise intelligible.  For what does reason discover, when it pronounces any action vicious?  Does it discover a relation or a matter of fact?  These questions are decisive, and must not be eluded.]

Should it be asserted, that the sense of morality consists in the discovery of some relation, distinct from these, and that our enumeration was not compleat, when we comprehended all demonstrable relations under four general heads:  To this I know not what to reply, till some one be so good as to point out to me this new relation.  It is impossible to refute a system, which has never yet been explained.  In such a manner of fighting in the dark, a man loses his blows in the air, and often places them where the enemy is not present.

I must, therefore, on this occasion, rest contented with requiring the two following conditions of any one that would undertake to clear up this system.  First, As moral good and evil belong only to the actions of the mind, and are derived from our situation with regard to external objects, the relations, from which these moral distinctions arise, must lie only betwixt internal actions, and external objects, and must not be applicable either to internal actions, compared among themselves, or to external objects, when placed in opposition to other external objects.  For as morality is supposed to attend certain relations, if these relations coued belong to internal actions considered singly, it would follow, that we might be guilty of crimes in ourselves, and independent of our situation, with respect to the universe:  And in like manner, if these moral relations coued be applied to external objects, it would follow, that even inanimate beings would be susceptible of moral beauty and deformity.  Now it seems difficult to imagine, that any relation can be discovered betwixt our passions, volitions and actions, compared to external objects, which relation might not belong either to these passions and volitions, or to these external objects, compared among themselves.  But it will be still more difficult to fulfil the second condition, requisite to justify this system.  According to the principles of those who maintain an abstract rational difference betwixt moral good and evil, and a natural fitness and unfitness of things, it is not only supposed, that these relations, being eternal and immutable, are the same, when considered by every rational creature, but their effects are also supposed to be necessarily the same; and it is concluded they have no less, or rather a greater, influence in directing the will of the deity, than in governing the rational and virtuous of our own species.  These two particulars are