an immediate feeling and finer internal sense; whether, like all
sound judgement of truth and falsehood, they should be the same
to every rational intelligent being; or whether, like the
perception of beauty and deformity, they be founded entirely on
the particular fabric and constitution of the human species.

The ancient philosophers, though they often affirm, that virtue
is nothing but conformity to reason, yet, in general, seem to
consider morals as deriving their existence from taste and
sentiment. On the other hand, our modern enquirers, though they
also talk much of the beauty of virtue, and deformity of vice,
yet have commonly endeavoured to account for these distinctions
by metaphysical reasonings, and by deductions from the most
abstract principles of the understanding. Such confusion reigned
in these subjects, that an opposition of the greatest consequence
could prevail between one system and another, and even in the
parts of almost each individual system; and yet nobody, till very
lately, was ever sensible of it. The elegant Lord Shaftesbury,
who first gave occasion to remark this distinction, and who, in
general, adhered to the principles of the ancients, is not,
himself, entirely free from the same confusion.

It must be acknowledged, that both sides of the question are
susceptible of specious arguments. Moral distinctions, it may be
said, are discernible by pure reason: else, whence the many
disputes that reign in common life, as well as in philosophy,
with regard to this subject: the long chain of proofs often
produced on both sides; the examples cited, the authorities
appealed to, the analogies employed, the fallacies detected, the
inferences drawn, and the several conclusions adjusted to their