All would be simple hypocrisy; the law would be
hated, or at least despised, while it was followed for the sake of
one's own advantage. The letter of the law (legality) would be found
in our actions, but not the spirit of it in our minds (morality);
and as with all our efforts we could not quite free ourselves from
reason in our judgement, we must inevitably appear in our own eyes
worthless, depraved men, even though we should seek to compensate
ourselves for this mortification before the inner tribunal, by
enjoying the pleasure that a supposed natural or divine law might be
imagined to have connected with it a sort of police machinery,
regulating its operations by what was done without troubling itself
about the motives for doing it.
It cannot indeed be denied that in order to bring an uncultivated or
degraded mind into the track of moral goodness some preparatory
guidance is necessary, to attract it by a view of its own advantage,
or to alarm it by fear of loss; but as soon as this mechanical work,
these leading-strings have produced some effect, then we must bring
before the mind the pure moral motive, which, not only because it is
the only one that can be the foundation of a character (a
practically consistent habit of mind with unchangeable maxims), but
also because it teaches a man to feel his own dignity, gives the
mind a power unexpected even by himself, to tear himself from all
sensible attachments so far as they would fain have the rule, and to
find a rich compensation for the sacrifice he offers, in the
independence of his rational nature and the greatness of soul to which
he sees that he is destined.
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