| This will best appear upon a particular enquiry. |
| As some qualities acquire their merit from their being immediately agreeable to others, without any tendency to public interest; so some are denominated virtuous from their being immediately agreeable to the person himself, who possesses them. |
| Each of the passions and operations of the mind has a particular feeling, which must be either agreeable or disagreeable. |
| The first is virtuous, the second vicious. |
| This particular feeling constitutes the very nature of the passion; and therefore needs not be accounted for. |
| But however directly the distinction of vice and virtue may seem to flow from the immediate pleasure or uneasiness, which particular qualities cause to ourselves or others; it is easy to observe, that it has also a considerable dependence on the principle of sympathy so often insisted on. |
| We approve of a person, who is possessed of qualities immediately agreeable to those, with whom he has any commerce; though perhaps we ourselves never reaped any pleasure from them. |
| We also approve of one, who is possessed of qualities, that are immediately agreeable to himself; though they be of no service to any mortal. |
| To account for this we must have recourse to the foregoing principles. |
| Thus, to take a general review of the present hypothesis: Every quality of the mind is denominated virtuous, which gives pleasure by the mere survey; as every quality, which produces pain, is called vicious. |
| This pleasure and this pain may arise from four different sources. |
| For we reap a pleasure from the view of a character, which is naturally fitted to be useful to others, or to the person himself, or which is agreeable to others, or to the person himself. |
| One may, perhaps, be surprized. |
| that amidst all these interests and pleasures, we should forget our own, which touch us so nearly on every other occasion. |
| But we shall easily satisfy ourselves on this head, when we consider, that every particular person s pleasure and interest being different, it is impossible men coued ever agree in their sentiments and judgments, unless they chose some common point of view, from which they might survey their object, and which might cause it to appear the same to all of them. |
| Now in judging of characters, the only interest or pleasure, which appears the same to every spectator, is that of the person himself, whose character is examined; or that of persons, who have a connexion with him. |
| And though such interests and pleasures touch us more faintly than our own, yet being more constant and universal, they counter-ballance the latter even in practice, and are alone admitted in speculation as the standard of virtue and morality. |
| They alone produce that particular feeling or sentiment, on which moral distinctions depend. |
| As to the good or ill desert of virtue or vice, it is an evident consequence of the sentiments of pleasure or uneasiness. |
| These sentiments produce love or hatred; and love or hatred, by the original constitution of human passion, is attended with benevolence or anger; that is, with a desire of making happy the person we love, and miserable the person we hate. |
| We have treated of this more fully on another occasion. |