gression thereof? Were pain, as such, eligible, and pleasure, as such, avoidable; rewards and punishments could be no motives to a man, to make him do or forbear any action. But if pleasure and pain have a necessary effect on men, and if it be impossible for men not to choose what seems good to them, and not to avoid what seems evil, the necessity of rewards and punishments is then evident, and rewards will be of use to all those who conceive those rewards to be pleasure, and punishments will be of use to all those who conceive them to be pain; and rewards and punishments will frame those men’s wills to observe and not transgress the laws.
Besides, since there are so many robbers, murderers, whore-masters, and other criminals, who notwithstanding the punishments threatened, and rewards promised, by laws, prefer breaking the laws as the greater good or lesser evil, and reject conformity to them as the greater evil or lesser good; how many more would there be, and with what disorders would not all societies be filled, if rewards and punishments, considered as pleasure and pain, did not determine some men’s wills, but that, instead thereof, all men could prefer or will, punishment considered as pain, and reject rewards considered as pleasure? Men would then be under no restraints.
Sixth argument taken from the Nature of Morality.
VI. My sixth and last argument to prove man a necessary agent is; if man was not a necessary agent determined by pleasure and pain, he would have no notion of morality, or motive to practise it; the distinction between morality and immorality, virtue and vice, would be lost; and man would not be a moral agent. Morality or Virtue,[1] consists of such actions as are
- ↑ Locke’s Essay of H. Un., l. ii., c. 20. Serjeant’s Sol. Philos. Asserted, p. 215.
