Page:Treatise of Human Nature (1888).djvu/702

678 from all other pleasures: it is only excited (a) by the character and sentiments of a person, 472, 575 (cf. 607, 617); (b) and only by these when considered in general without reference to our particular interest, 473 (cf. 499) (v. Sympathy); (c) it must have the power of producing pride (q.v.), 473 (cf. 575); it is not produced in every instance by an 'original quality and primary constitution,' 473: whether these principles are natural depends on the different senses of 'natural,' 474-5; it is at all events most unphilosophical to say that virtue is the same with what is natural, 475; it only remains to show 'why any action or sentiment upon the general view and survey gives a certain satisfaction and uneasiness,' 415 (cf. 591) (v. Sympathy).

§ 3. A. Moral approbation. Sense of right and wrong different from sense of interest, 498 (cf. 523); in society the interest which leads to justice becomes remote but is perceived by sympathy with others, 499; and since everything which gives uneasiness in human actions upon the general survey is called vice, hence the sense of moral good and evil follows upon justice and injustice, 499; self interest the original motive to the establishment of justice, but a sympathy (q.v.) with public interest is the source of the moral approbation which attends that virtue, 500, 553; political artifice can only strengthen not produce this approbation: nature furnishes the materials and gives us some notion of moral distinctions, 500, 573 (cf. 619).

B. our sense of virtue like that of beauty rests on sympathy, viz. sympathy chiefly with the pleasure which a quality or character tends to give the possessor, 577; though our sympathies vary, yet our moral judgments do not vary with them; for 'we fix on some steady and general points of view, and always in our thoughts place ourselves in them whatever may be our present situation,' 581 (cf. 602); thus we only consider the effect of the character of a person on those who have intercourse with him and disregard its effect on ourselves, 582 (cf. 596, 602); again, though a character produces no actual good to any one with which we could sympathise, we still consider it virtuous, 584; owing to the influence of general rules (q.v.) on imagination, 585; we always regard benevolence as virtuous because we judge by a 'general and unalterable standard,' 603: through sympathy the same man is always virtuous and vicious to others who is so to himself, and through it we are even able to blame a quality advantageous to ourselves if it displeases others, 589 (cf. 591).

C. The sentiments of virtue and vice arise either from the 'mere species or appearance of characters and passions, or from reflections on their tendency to the happiness of mankind or of particular persons,' 589; the latter the most important source of our judgments of beauty and virtue; but wit is 'a quality immediately agreeable to others,'