| The whole scheme, however, of law and justice is advantageous to the society; and it was with a view to this advantage, that men, by their voluntary conventions, established it. |
| After it is once established by these conventions, it is naturally attended with a strong sentiment of morals; which can proceed from nothing but our sympathy with the interests of society. |
| We need no other explication of that esteem, which attends such of the natural virtues, as have a tendency to the public good. |
| I must farther add, that there are several circumstances, which render this hypothesis much more probable with regard to the natural than the artificial virtues. |
| It is certain that the imagination is more affected by what is particular, than by what is general; and that the sentiments are always moved with difficulty, where their objects are, in any degree, loose and undetermined: Now every particular act of justice is not beneficial to society, but the whole scheme or system: And it may not, perhaps, be any individual person. |
| for whom we are concerned, who receives benefit from justice, but the whole society alike. |
| On the contrary, every particular act of generosity, or relief of the industrious and indigent, is beneficial; and is beneficial to a particular person, who is not undeserving of it. |
| It is more natural, therefore, to think, that the tendencies of the latter virtue will affect our sentiments, and command our approbation, than those of the former; and therefore, since we find, that the approbation of the former arises from their tendencies, we may ascribe, with better reason, the same cause to the approbation of the latter. |
| In any number of similar effects, if a cause can be discovered for one, we ought to extend that cause to all the other effects, which can be accounted for by it: But much more, if these other effects be attended with peculiar circumstances, which facilitate the operation of that cause. |
| Before I proceed farther, I must observe two remarkable circumstances in this affair, which may seem objections to the present system. |
| The first may be thus explained. |
| When any quality, or character, has a tendency to the good of mankind, we are pleased with it, and approve of it; because it presents the lively idea of pleasure; which idea affects us by sympathy, and is itself a kind of pleasure. |
| But as this sympathy is very variable, it may be thought. |
| that our sentiments of morals must admit of all the same variations. |
| We sympathize more with persons contiguous to us, than with persons remote from us: With our acquaintance, than with strangers: With our countrymen, than with foreigners. |
| But notwithstanding this variation of our sympathy, we give the same approbation to the same moral qualities in China as in England. |
| They appear equally virtuous, and recommend themselves equally to the esteem of a judicious spectator. |
| The sympathy varies without a variation in our esteem. |
| Our esteem, therefore, proceeds not from sympathy. |
| To this I answer: The approbation of moral qualities most certainly is not derived from reason, or any comparison of ideas; but proceeds entirely from a moral taste, and from certain sentiments of pleasure or disgust, which arise upon the contemplation and view of particular qualities or characters. |
| Now it is evident, that those sentiments, whence-ever they are derived, must vary according to the distance or contiguity of the objects; nor can I feel the same lively pleasure from the virtues of a person, who lived in Greece two thousand years ago, that I feel from the virtues of a familiar friend and acquaintance. |