By the law, defamation and libel are, very justly, liable both to *criminal prosecution*, as offences against the public, and to *action for damages* by civil process, on the obvious ground that the injury of a man’s character tends to impair his success in business, his pecuniary credit, and his comfortable enjoyment of his property. Chapter VII. MOTIVE, PASSION, AND HABIT. The appetites, desires, and affections are, as has been said, the *proximate motives* of action. The perception of expediency and the sense of right act, not independently of these motives, but upon them and through them, checking some, stimulating others. Thus they, both, restrain the appetites, the former, so far as prudence requires; the latter, in subserviency to the more noble elements of character. The former directs the desires toward worthy, but earthly objects; the latter works most efficiently through the benevolent affections, as exercised toward God and man. Exterior motives are of a secondary order, acting not directly upon the will, but influencing it indirectly, through the springs of action, or through the principles which direct and govern them. *The action of exterior motives* takes place in three different ways. 1. When they are in harmony with any predominant appetite, desire, or affection, they at once intensify it, and prompt acts by which it may be gratified. Thus, for instance, a sumptuously spread table gives the epicure a keener appetite, and invites him to its free indulgence. The opportunity of a potentially lucrative, though hazardous investment, excites the cupidity of the man who prizes money above all things else, and tempts him to incur the doubtful risk. The presence of the object of love or hatred adds strength to the affection, and induces expressions or acts of kindness or malevolence. 2. An exterior motive opposed to the predominant spring of action often starts that spring into vigorous and decisive activity, and makes it thenceforth stronger and more imperative. It is thus that remonstrances, obstacles, and interposing difficulties not infrequently render sensual passion more rabid; while temptation, by the acts of resistance which it elicits, nourishes the virtue it assails. 3. An exterior motive may have a sufficient stress and cogency to call forth into energetic action some appetite, desire, or affection previously dormant or feeble, thus to repress the activity of those which before held sway, and so to produce a fundamental change in the character. In this way the sudden presentation of vice, in attractive forms, may give paramount sway to passions which had previously shown no signs of mastery; and, in like manner, a signal experience of peril, calamity, deliverance, or unexpected joy may call forth the religious affections, and invest them with enduring supremacy over a soul previously surrendered to appetite, inferior desires, or meaner loves.