Having applied the ordinary methods of scientific inquiry to the
intellectual phenomena of the mind, it was natural that Hume should
extend the same mode of investigation to its moral phenomena; and, in
the true spirit of a natural philosopher, he commences by selecting a
group of those states of consciousness with which every one's personal
experience must have made him familiar: in the expectation that the
discovery of the sources of moral approbation and disapprobation, in
this comparatively easy case, may furnish the means of detecting them
where they are more recondite.
"We shall analyse that complication of mental qualities which form
what, in common life, we call PERSONAL MERIT: We shall consider
every attribute of the mind, which renders a man an object either
of esteem and affection, or of hatred and contempt; every habit or
sentiment or faculty, which if ascribed to any person, implies
either praise or blame, and may enter into any panegyric or satire
of his character and manners. The quick sensibility which, on this
head, is so universal among mankind, gives a philosopher sufficient
assurance that he can never be considerably mistaken in framing the
catalogue, or incurs any danger of misplacing the objects of his
contemplation: He needs only enter into his own breast for a
moment, and consider whether he should or should not desire to have
this or that quality assigned to him, and whether such or such an
imputation would proceed from a friend or an enemy.
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