Oyonale - 3D art and graphic experiments
ThinkSpam
Click on the phrases to see them in context. The original texts by Immanuel Kant and David Hume are available from the Gutenberg Projet.
.
SECT. V SOME FARTHER REFLECTIONS CONCERNING THE NATURAL VIRTUES In this definition it is supposed, that there are such things as right and property, independent of justice, and antecedent to it; and that they would have subsisted, though men had never dreamt of practising such a virtue. It belongs to Grammarians to examine what qualities are entitled to the denomination of virtue; nor will they find, upon trial, that this is so easy a task, as at first sight they may be apt to imagine. Why we annex the idea of virtue to justice, and of vice to injustice. On the other hand, we understand by nature, substantive (materialiter), the sum total of phenomena, in so far as they, by virtue of an internal principle of causality, are connected with each other throughout. 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. These actions are properly what we call justice; and consequently it is on that virtue that the nature of property depends, and not the virtue on the property. Several moralists have recommended it as an excellent method of becoming acquainted with our own hearts, and knowing our progress in virtue, to recollect our dreams in a morning, and examine them with the same rigour, that we would our most serious and most deliberate actions. In another sense of the word; as no principle of the human mind is more natural than a sense of virtue; so no virtue is more natural than justice.