"Men make classifications, as they do everything else, for some end. Now, for what _end_ was it that men, out of their innumerable acts, selected a class, to which they gave the name of moral, and another class, to which they gave the name of immoral? What was the motive of this act? What its final cause? "Assuredly the answer to this question is the first step, though Sir James saw it not, towards the solution of his two questions, comprehending the _whole_ of ethical science; first, what _makes_ an act to be _moral?_ and, secondly, what are the _sentiments_ with which we _regard_ it? "We may also be assured, that it was some very obvious _interest_ which recommended this classification; for it was performed, in a certain rough way, in the _very rudest_ states of society. "Farther, we may easily see how, even in very rude states, men were led to it, by little less than necessity.... They had no stronger interest than to obtain the repetition of the one sort, and to prevent the repetition of the other.... And here we clearly perceive the origin of that important case of classification, the classification of acts as _moral_ and _immoral_. The acts, which it was _important_ to other men that each individual should _perform_, but in which the individual had not a sufficient _interest_ to secure the performance of them, were constituted one class. The acts, which it was _important_ to other men that each individual should _abstain from_, but in regard to which he had not a personal _interest_ sufficiently strong to secure his abstaining from them, were constituted another class. The first class were distinguished by the name _moral_ acts; the second by the name _immoral_. "The _interest_ which men had in securing the performance of the one set of acts, the non-performance of the other, led them by a sort of necessity to think of the _means_. They had to _create_ an interest, which the actor would not otherwise have, in the performance of the one sort, the non-performance of the other. And in proceeding to this end, they could not easily miss their way. They had two powers applicable to the purpose. They had a certain quantity of good at their disposal, and they had a certain quantity of evil.... And this is the scheme which they adopted; and which, in every situation, they have invariably pursued. _The whole business of the moral sentiments_, moral approbation, and disapprobation, has this for its _object_,--the distribution of the good and evil we have at command, for the _production_ of acts of the _useful_ sort, the _prevention_ of acts of the _contrary_ sort. Can there be a nobler _object_?"[62]