The only proper object of hatred or vengeance is a person or creature,
endowed with thought and consciousness; and when any criminal or
injurious actions excite that passion, it is only by their relation to
the person, or connexion with him. Actions are, by their very nature,
temporary and perishing; and where they proceed not from some _cause_ in
the character and disposition of the person who performed them, they can
neither redound to his honour, if good; nor infamy, if evil. The actions
themselves may be blameable; they may be contrary to all the rules of
morality and religion: But the person is not answerable for them; and as
they proceeded from nothing in him that is durable and constant, and
leave nothing of that nature behind them, it is impossible he can, upon
their account, become the object of punishment or vengeance. According
to the principle, therefore, which denies necessity, and consequently
causes, a man is as pure and untainted, after having committed the most
horrid crime, as at the first moment of his birth, nor is his character
anywise concerned in his actions, since they are not derived from it,
and the wickedness of the one can never be used as a proof of the
depravity of the other.

Men are not blamed for such actions as they perform ignorantly and
casually, whatever may be the consequences. Why? but because the
principles of these actions are only momentary, and terminate in them
alone. Men are less blamed for such actions as they perform hastily and
unpremeditately than for such as proceed from deliberation. For what
reason? but because a hasty temper, though a constant cause or
principle in the mind, operates only by intervals, and infects not the
whole character. Again, repentance wipes off every crime, if attended
with a reformation of life and manners. How is this to be accounted for?
but by asserting that actions render a person criminal merely as they
are proofs of criminal principles in the mind; and when, by an