JB/149/347/001

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The various systems that have been formed concerning
the standard of right & wrong, may all be reduced to the principle
of sympathy & antipathy. One account may serve
for all of them. They consist all of them in so many contrivances
for avoiding the obligation of appealing to any
external standard, and for prevailing upon the reader
to accept of the author's sentiment or opinion as a reason
for itself. The phrases different, but the principle the
same.*

And he observes in a note.

* It is curious enough to observe the variety of inventions men
have hit upon, and the variety of phrases they have brought
forward, in order to conceal from the world, and, if possible,
from themselves this very general & therefore very pardonable
self-efficiency.

1. One man says, he has a thing made on purpose to tell him what is
right and what is wrong; and that it is called a moral sense
and then he goes to work at his ease, and says, such a thing,
and such a thing is wrong is right, and such a thing is wrong —
why? "because my moral sense tells me it is."

2. Another man comes and alters the phrase: leaving out of moral,
and putting in common, in the room of it. He then tells you,
that his common sense teaches him what is wrigh right, &
wrong, as surely as the other's moral sense did: meaning
by common sense, a sense of some kind or other, which,
he says, is possessed by all mankind: the sense of those,
whose sense is not the same as the author's, being struck
out of the account as . not worth taking. This contrivances
does better than the other; for a moral sense, being a new
thing, a man may feel about him a good while without
being being able to find it out; but common sense is as old
as the creation; and there is no man but would be ashamed
to be thought not to have as much of it as his neighbours. It
has another great advantage; by appearing to share advantage
power, it lessens envy: for when a man gets up upon this
ground, in order to anathematize those who differ from him,
it is not by a sic volo sic jubeo, but by a velitis jubeatis.

3. Another mans comes, and says, that as to a moral sense
indeed, he cannot find that he has any such thing; that however
he has an understanding, which will do quite quite as well.

Identifier: | JB/149/347/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 149.
Date_1		Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	149	Main Headings
Folio number	347	Info in main headings field
Image	001	Titles
Category	copy/fair copy sheet	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering
Penner		Watermarks
Marginals		Paper Producer
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number	50201
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