Page:An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals - Hume (1751).djvu/225

 please to call it, which distinguishes moral Good and Evil, and which embraces the one and rejects the other.

the distinct Boundaries and Offices of Reason and Taste are easily ascertain'd. The former conveys the Knowledge of Truth and Falshood: The latter gives the Sentiment of Beauty and Deformity, Vice and Virtue. The one discovers Objects, as they really stand in Nature, without Addition or Diminution: The other has a productive Faculty, and guilding or staining all natural Objects with the Colours, borrow'd from internal Sentiment, raises in a Manner, a new Creation. Reason, being cool and disengag'd, is no Motive to Action, and directs only the Impulse, receiv'd from Appetite or Inclination, by showing us the Means of obtaining Happiness or avoiding Misery: Taste, as it gives Pleasure or Pain, and thereby constitutes Happiness or Misery, becomes a Motive to Action, and is the first Spring or Impulse to Desire and Volition. From Circumstances and Relations, known or suppos'd, the former leads us to the Discovery of the conceal'd and unknown: After all Circumstances and Relations are laid before us, the latter makes us feel from the Whole a new Sentiment of Blame or Approbation. The Standard of the one, being founded on the Nature of Things, is eternal and inflexible, even by