Page:An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals - Hume (1751).djvu/219

 discover'd. The whole Circumstances of the Case are suppos'd to be laid before us, 'ere we can fix any Sentence of Blame or Approbation. If any material Circumstance by yet unknown or doubtful, we must first employ our Enquiry or intellectual Faculties to assure us of it; for a Time all moral Decision or Sentiment. While we are ignorant, whether a Man was Aggressor or not, how can we determine, whether the person, who kill'd him, be criminal or innocent? But after every Circumstance, every Relation is known, the Understanding has no farther Room to operate, nor any Object, on which it could employ itself. The Approbation or Blame, which then ensues, cannot be the Work of the Judgment, but of the Heart, and is not a speculative Proposition or Affirmation, but an active Feeling or Sentiment. In the Disquisitions of the Understanding, from known Circumstances and Relations, we infer some new and unknown. In moral Decisions, the whole Circumstances and Relations must be antecedently known; and the Mind, from the Contemplation of the Whole, feels some new Impression of Affection of Disgust, Esteem or Contempt, Approbation or Blame.

the great Difference betwixt a Mistake of Fact and one of Right; and hence the Reason, why the one is commonly criminal and not the other. Errata