[xxxvi. 5]

1821. April 26.

Constitut. Code

Constitutional Finance?

1. As to appropriate moral aptitude. If, in the breast of the individual in question,

instead of appropriate aptitude in this shape, the opposite inaptitude be found /have

place/, be the degree of appropriate intellectual aptitude and active talent ever so

great, so it is that, /the result will be/ by any extraordinary degree of appropriate

intellectual aptitude and appropriate active talent, the aggregate quantity of

apprpriate aptitude, so far from being augmented, will be diminished. Appropriate moral

aptitude consists, on this occasion, in the disposition to promote, to the utmost, the

greatest happiness of the greatest number: the inaptitude, correspondent and opposite to

this branch of appropriate aptitude, is - the disposition to promote the particular

happiness /interest/ of the individual in question and his particular connections, at

the expence, and by the sacrifice, of a portion, to any amount larger, of that other and

more extensive interest and happiness. But, the greater the degree of appropriate

intellectual aptitude and correspondent active talent the individual possesses, the

greater is the degree of facility he will possess with respect to the carrying into

effect that disposition of his which, by the supposition, has place: viz. the

disposition to make sacrifice of the greatest good of the greatest number to his own

private interest according to the conception that happens to be entertained by him in

relation to it.

The higher a man's place is in the scale of external felicity, the lower, not the

higher, will naturally, not to say necessarily, be his place in the scale of appropriate

moral aptitude as here explained.

1. Sympathy