wrong. But yet a very little reflection suffices to show that the two things are certainly distinct. When we say that an action deserves praise or blame, we imply that it is right to praise or blame it; that is to say, we are making a judgment not about the rightness of the original action, but about the rightness of the further action which we should take, if we praised or blamed it. And these two judgments are certainly not identical; nor is there any reason to think that what is right always also deserves to be praised, and what is wrong always also deserves to be blamed. Even, therefore, if the motive is relevant to the question whether an action deserves praise or blame, it by no means follows that it is also relevant to the question whether it is right or wrong. And there is some reason to think that the motive is relevant to judgments of the former kind: that we really ought sometimes to praise an action done from a bad motive less than if it had been done from a good one, and to blame an action done from a good motive less than if it had been done from a bad one. For one of the considerations upon which the question whether it is right to blame an action depends,
