A Treatise of Human Nature - Volume 3

by some odd figurative way of speaking, to the action itself. But I can still see no reasonable pretext for asserting that the tendency to cause such an error is the primary spring or original source of all immorality a. One might think it entirely superfluous to prove this, if a recent author, who has had the good fortune to obtain some reputation, had not seriously affirmed that such a falsehood is the foundation of all guilt and moral deformity. To discover the fallacy of his hypothesis, we need only consider that a false conclusion is drawn from an action only because of an obscurity in natural principles; this causes a cause to be secretly interrupted in its operation by contrary causes and makes the connection between two objects uncertain and variable. Now, since a similar uncertainty and variety of causes occur even in natural objects and produce a similar error in our judgment, if that tendency to produce error were the very essence of vice and immorality, it would follow that even inanimate objects might be vicious and immoral.

It is pointless to argue that inanimate objects act without liberty and choice. Because liberty and choice are not necessary for an action to produce an erroneous conclusion in us, they cannot be in any respect essential to morality; and I do not easily see how, under this system, they could ever be considered relevant to it. If the tendency to cause error is the origin of immorality, then that tendency and immorality would be inseparable in every case.

Furthermore, if I had taken the precaution of shutting the windows while I indulged myself in those liberties with my neighbor's wife, I would have been guilty of no immorality; this is because my action, being perfectly concealed, would have had no tendency to produce any false conclusion.

For the same reason, a thief who enters by a ladder through a window and takes all possible care to cause no disturbance is in no way criminal. For he will either not be perceived, or if he is, it is impossible for him to produce any error; nor will anyone, under these circumstances, take him to be anything other than what he really is..

THUS, on the whole, it is impossible that the distinction between moral good and evil can