Let
these generous sentiments be supposed ever so weak; let them be
insufficient to move even a hand or finger of our body, they must
still direct the determinations of our mind, and where everything
else is equal, produce a cool preference of what is useful and
serviceable to mankind, above what is pernicious and dangerous. A
MORAL DISTINCTION, therefore, immediately arises; a general
sentiment of blame and approbation; a tendency, however faint, to
the objects of the one, and a proportionable aversion to those of
the other. Nor will those reasoners, who so earnestly maintain
the predominant selfishness of human kind, be any wise
scandalized at hearing of the weak sentiments of virtue implanted
in our nature. On the contrary, they are found as ready to
maintain the one tenet as the other; and their spirit of satire
(for such it appears, rather than of corruption) naturally gives
rise to both opinions; which have, indeed, a great and almost an
indissoluble connexion together.
Avarice, ambition, vanity, and all passions vulgarly, though
improperly, comprised under the denomination of SELF-LOVE, are
here excluded from our theory concerning the origin of morals,
not because they are too weak, but because they have not a proper
direction for that purpose. The notion of morals implies some
sentiment common to all mankind, which recommends the same object
to general approbation, and makes every man, or most men, agree
in the same opinion or decision concerning it.
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