Note 73 — AN ESSAY ON THE PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN ACTION TO WHICH ARE ADDED SOME REMARKS ON THE SYSTEMS OF HARTLEY AND HELVETIUS
Reading edition
The distinction between the motives to action and the reasons for it cannot affect the argument here insisted on. When it is said, that though I am not really governed by such and such motives, I ought to be governed by them, this must mean (or it means nothing) that such would be the effect of a proper exertion of my faculties. The obligation to act in this or that manner must therefore be deduced from the nature of those faculties, and the possibility of their being impressed in a certain manner by certain objects.