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A Review of the Principal Questions in Morals
A Review of the Principal Questions in Morals Author:Richard Price Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3already to have the ideas we want to trace ; and therefore cannot give rife to new ideas. No mind can be- engaged in inveftigating it knows not what; or in endeavouring to find out any thi... more »ng concerning an object, of which it has no. conception. When, from the view of objects to which they belong felf-evidently, we have gained ideas of proportion, identity, connexion, and c. we employ deduction, or realbning, to trace thefc amongft other objects, and in other in- ftances, where they cannot be perceived immediately. SECT III. textit{Of the Origin of our Ideas of moral Right and Wrong. LE T us now return to our firft enquiry, and apply the foregoing obfervations to our ideas of textit{right and textit{'wrong in particular. 'Tis a very neceflary previous obfervation, that our ideas of textit{right and textit{'wrong are fimple Sj and muft therefore be afcribed to fome powerpower of textit{immediate perception in the human mind. He that doubts this, need only try to give definitions of them, which fhall amount to more than fynonymous expreffions. Moft of the confufion in which the queftion concerning the foundation of morals has been involved has proceeded from inatention to this remark. There are, undoubtedly, fome actions that are textit{ultimately approved, and for juftifying which no reafon can be afligned ; as there are fome ends, which are textit{ultimately defired, and for chufing which no reafon can be given. Were not this true; there would be an infinite progreflion of reafons and ends, and therefore nothing could be at all approved or defired. Suppofing then, that we have a power textit{immediately perceiving right and wrong : the point 1 am now to endeavour to prove, is, that this power is the textit{Under/landing, agreeably to the afiertion at the end of the textit{Jirft fedtion. I ...« less