Hence then arise two questions, according to the sense in which the word right
is taken; the first, in what way an impression of sense may be deceptive, and therefore a conclusion respecting it
untrue; and the second, in what way an impression of sense, or the preference of
one, may be a subject of will, and therefore of moral duty or delinquency. oil paintings for sale
To the first of these questions, I answer that we cannot speak of the
immediate impression of sense as false, nor of its preference to others as
mistaken, for no one can be deceived respecting the actual sensation he
perceives or prefers. But falsity may attach to his assertion or supposition,
either that what he himself perceives is from the same object perceived by
others, or is always to be by himself perceived, or is always to be by himself
preferred; and when we speak of a man as wrong in his impressions of sense, we
either mean that he feels differently from all, or a majority, respecting a
certain object, or that he prefers at present those of his impressions, which
ultimately he will not prefer.
To the second I answer, that over immediate impressions and immediate
preferences we have no power, but over ultimate impressions, and especially
ultimate preferences we have; and that, though we can neither at once choose
whether we shall see an object, red, green, or blue, nor determine to like the
red better than the blue, or the blue better than the red, yet we can, if we
choose, make ourselves ultimately susceptible of such impressions in other
degrees, and capable of pleasures in them in different measure; and because, wherever power of any
kind is given, there is responsibility attached, it is the duty of men to prefer
certain impressions of sense to others, because they have the power of doing so,
this being precisely analogous to the law of the moral world, whereby men are
supposed not only capable of governing their likes and dislikes, but the whole
culpability or propriety of actions is dependent upon this capability, so that
men are guilty or otherwise, not for what they do, but for what they desire, the
command being not, thou shalt obey, but thou shalt love, the Lord thy God,
which, if men were not capable of governing and directing their affections,
would be the command of an impossibility. oil painting online
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