Yet virtue is here
worth so much only because it costs so much, not because it brings any
profit. All the admiration, and even the endeavour to resemble this
character, rest wholly on the purity of the moral principle, which can
only be strikingly shown by removing from the springs of action
everything that men may regard as part of happiness. Morality, then,
must have the more power over the human heart the more purely it is
exhibited. Whence it follows that, if the law of morality and the
image of holiness and virtue are to exercise any influence at all on
our souls, they can do so only so far as they are laid to heart in
their purity as motives, unmixed with any view to prosperity, for it
is in suffering that they display themselves most nobly. Now that
whose removal strengthens the effect of a moving force must have
been a hindrance, consequently every admixture of motives taken from
our own happiness is a hindrance to the influence of the moral law
on the heart. I affirm further that even in that admired action, if
the motive from which it was done was a high regard for duty, then
it is just this respect for the law that has the greatest influence on
the mind of the spectator, not any pretension to a supposed inward
greatness of mind or noble meritorious sentiments; consequently
duty, not merit, must have not only the most definite, but, when it is
represented in the true light of its inviolability, the most
penetrating, influence on the mind.
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