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The phrases in their context!

Extract from A TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE:

Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular.
The rules of morality.
therefore, are not conclusions of our reason.
No one, I believe, will deny the justness of this inference; nor is there any other means of evading it, than by denying that principle, on which it is founded.
As long as it is allowed, that reason has no influence on our passions and action, it is in vain to pretend, that morality is discovered only by a deduction of reason.
An active principle can never be founded on an inactive; and if reason be inactive in itself, it must remain so in all its shapes and appearances, whether it exerts itself in natural or moral subjects, whether it considers the powers of external bodies, or the actions of rational beings.
It would be tedious to repeat all the arguments, by which I have proved [Book II. Part III. Sect 3.], that reason is perfectly inert, and can never either prevent or produce any action or affection.
it will be easy to recollect what has been said upon that subject.
I shall only recall on this occasion one of these arguments, which I shall endeavour to render still more conclusive, and more applicable to the present subject.
Reason is the discovery of truth or falshood.
Truth or falshood consists in an agreement or disagreement either to the real relations of ideas, or to real existence and matter of fact.
Whatever, therefore, is not susceptible of this agreement or disagreement, is incapable of being true or false, and can never be an object of our reason.
Now it is evident our passions, volitions, and actions, are not susceptible of any such agreement or disagreement; being original facts and realities, compleat in themselves, and implying no reference to other passions, volitions, and actions.
It is impossible, therefore, they can be pronounced either true or false, and be either contrary or conformable to reason.
This argument is of double advantage to our present purpose.
For it proves DIRECTLY, that actions do not derive their merit from a conformity to reason, nor their blame from a contrariety to it; and it proves the same truth more INDIRECTLY, by shewing us, that as reason can never immediately prevent or produce any action by contradicting or approving of it, it cannot be the source of moral good and evil, which are found to have that influence.
Actions may be laudable or blameable; but they cannot be reasonable: Laudable or blameable, therefore, are not the same with reasonable or unreasonable.
The merit and demerit of actions frequently contradict, and sometimes controul our natural propensities.
But reason has no such influence.
Moral distinctions, therefore, are not the offspring of reason.
Reason is wholly inactive, and can never be the source of so active a principle as conscience, or a sense of morals.