Human actions, when with their various
ends, objects, manners, and circumstances, they are framed into
distinct complex ideas, are, as has been shown so many mixed modes,
a great part whereof have names annexed to them. Thus, supposing
gratitude to be a readiness to acknowledge and return kindness
received; polygamy to be the having more wives than one at once:
when we frame these notions thus in our minds, we have there so many
determined ideas of mixed modes. But this is not all that concerns our
actions: it is not enough to have determined ideas of them, and to
know what names belong to such and such combinations of ideas. We have
a further and greater concernment, and that is, to know whether such
actions, so made up, are morally good or bad.
5. Moral good and evil. Good and evil, as hath been shown, (Bk.
II. chap. xx. SS 2, and chap. xxi. SS 43,) are nothing but pleasure or
pain, or that which occasions or procures pleasure or pain to us.
Moral good and evil, then, is only the conformity or disagreement of
our voluntary actions to some law, whereby good or evil is drawn on
us, from the will and power of the law-maker; which good and evil,
pleasure or pain, attending our observance or breach of the law by the
decree of the lawmaker, is that we call reward and punishment.
6. Moral rules.
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