(2) Sympathy, or Fellow-feeling, the source of our disinterested actions, must next be taken into the account.  It is a consequence of our sympathetic endowment that we revolt from inflicting pain on another, and even forego a certain satisfaction to self rather than be the occasion of suffering to a fellow creature.  Moved thus, we perform many obligations on the ground of the misery (not our own) accruing from their neglect.

A considerable portion of human virtue springs directly from this source.  If purely disinterested tendencies were withdrawn from the breast, the whole existence of humanity would be changed.  Society might not be impossible; there are races where mutual sympathy barely exists:  but the fulfilment of obligations, if always dependent on a sense of self-interest, would fail where that was not apparent.  On the other hand, if we were on all occasions touched with the unhappiness to others immediately and remotely springing from our conduct—­if sympathy were perfect and unfailing—­we could hardly ever omit doing what was right.

(3) Our several Emotions or Passions may co-operate with Prudence and with Sympathy in a way to make both the one and the other more efficacious.

Prudence, in the shape of aversion to pain, is rendered more acute when the pain is accompanied with Fear.  The perturbation of fear rises up as a deterring motive when dangers loom in the distance.  One powerful check to the commission of injury is the retaliation of the sufferer, which is a danger of the vague and illimitable kind, calculated to create alarm.

Anger, or Resentment, also enters, in various ways, into our moral impulses.  In one shape it has just been noticed.  In concurrence with Self-interest and Sympathy, it heightens the feeling of reprobation against wrong-doers.

The Tender Emotion, and the Affections, uphold us in the performance of our duties to others, being an additional safeguard against injury to the objects of the feelings.  It has already been shown how these emotions, while tending to coalesce with Sympathy proper, are yet distinguished from it.

The AEsthetic Emotions have important bearings upon Ethical Sentiment.  As a whole, they are favourable to human virtue, being non-exclusive pleasures.  They, however, give a bias to the formation of moral rules, and pervert the proper test of right and wrong in a manner to be afterwards explained.

10.  Although Prudence and Sympathy, and the various Emotions named, are powerful inducements to what is right in action, and although, without these, right would not prevail among mankind, yet they do not stamp the peculiar attribute of Rightness.  For this, we must refer to the institution of Government, or Authority.

Although the force of these various motives on the side of right is all-powerful and essential, so much so, that without them morality would be impossible, they do not, of themselves, impart the character of a moral act.  We do not always feel that, because we have neglected our interest or violated our sympathies, we have on that account done wrong.  The criterion of rightness in particular cases is something different.