Page:A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (3rd ed., 1735).djvu/80

 void what seems evil; the necessity of rewards and punishments is then evident, and rewards will be of use to all those who conceive those rewards to be pleasure, and punishments will be of use to all those who conceive them to be pain: and rewards and punishments will frame those mens wills to observe, and not transgress the laws.

Besides, since there are so many robbers, murderers, whoremasters, and other criminals, who notwithstanding the punishments threatn’d, and rewards promis’d, by laws; prefer breaking the laws as the greater good or lesser evil, and reject conformity to them as the greater evil or lesser good: how many more would there be, and with what disorders would not all societies be fill’d, if rewards and punishments, consider’d as pleasure and pain, did not determine some mens wills, but that, instead thereof, all men could prefer or will, punishment consider’d as pain, and reject rewards consider’d as pleasure? men would then be under no restraints.