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An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume
page 104 of 205 (50%)
private system.

80. The case is the same with _moral_ as with _physical_ ill. It cannot
reasonably be supposed, that those remote considerations, which are
found of so little efficacy with regard to one, will have a more
powerful influence with regard to the other. The mind of man is so
formed by nature that, upon the appearance of certain characters,
dispositions, and actions, it immediately feels the sentiment of
approbation or blame; nor are there any emotions more essential to its
frame and constitution. The characters which engage our approbation are
chiefly such as contribute to the peace and security of human society;
as the characters which excite blame are chiefly such as tend to public
detriment and disturbance: Whence it may reasonably be presumed, that
the moral sentiments arise, either mediately or immediately, from a
reflection of these opposite interests. What though philosophical
meditations establish a different opinion or conjecture; that everything
is right with regard to the WHOLE, and that the qualities, which disturb
society, are, in the main, as beneficial, and are as suitable to the
primary intention of nature as those which more directly promote its
happiness and welfare? Are such remote and uncertain speculations able
to counterbalance the sentiments which arise from the natural and
immediate view of the objects? A man who is robbed of a considerable
sum; does he find his vexation for the loss anywise diminished by these
sublime reflections? Why then should his moral resentment against the
crime be supposed incompatible with them? Or why should not the
acknowledgment of a real distinction between vice and virtue be
reconcileable to all speculative systems of philosophy, as well as that
of a real distinction between personal beauty and deformity? Both these
distinctions are founded in the natural sentiments of the human mind:
And these sentiments are not to be controuled or altered by any
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