Chap. VI. ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. 117 



Virtue, and belongs only to Man : Whereas good Affedions, tending 

 to the prefervation of the individual and the kind, are as natural to 

 the Brute as to the Man ; and, although we may call them Virtues, 

 it is only metaphorically and improperly, as we fpeak of the Virtue 

 of a Horfe or a Dog. 



The heft treatife upon Virtue in modern times is, I think, my 

 Lord Shaftfbury's Inquiry, But he, too, enlarges a great deal too 

 much upon good Affedions and Difpofitions towards our fociety 

 and kind, and thinks, that he has fufficiently explained the nature 

 of Virtue, when he (hows that thofe AfFedions have a diredt ten- 

 dency to promote the happinefs both of the individual and of the 

 kind : Nor do I remember that he ever mentions the reflex ad of 

 the Mind, which I hold to be effential to Virtue, except once, and 

 that but flightly, and in pafTing. But I muft do him the juflice to 

 own, that, when he wrote his third volume, he appears to have come 

 to a jufter fenfe of the matter ; for there he fpeaks of Virtue being 

 nothing but a noble enthufiafm, of which Beauty, and the higheft 

 and mofl: exalted Beauty, is undoubtedly the objed : And he fpeaks 

 alfo " of the Harmony and Numbers 'of the Heart, and Beauty of 

 " the Affedions, which form the manners and condud of the truly 

 « focial hfe *;' 



As 



• See MIfcellany 2d. — My Lord Shafifbury, whatever his faults in other refpefls 

 ir.ay be, which 1 have prefumed to cenfure pretty freely in the third volume of the 

 Origin and Progrefs of Language, page 284. has moralized, it muft be owned, in a. 

 raoft gentlemanny way, and recommended Virtue upon principles that muft make it 

 highly agreeable to the admirers of Beauty in Charaiflers, Sentiments, and Manners. 

 Thefe are the men of the higheft Tafte, much higher than thofe who admire Beauty 

 and Grace only in outward forms : And it is this Tafte which I hold to be the diftin- 

 guiftiing charaflerlftic of \.he gentleman. I would further obferve of my Lord Shafiftjury, 

 that he is a P.riking example of what a great genius, with the afliftance only of claffical 

 Icarnine, will do, even in philofophy : for, that his Lordlhlp was not learned in An- 

 tienl philofophy, is evident from what he fays of Ariftotle, " That, as his talent was 

 «' more towards polite learning and the Arts, than towards the deep and folid parts of 

 «' philofophy, it happened that, in hij School, there was more care taken of other Sci- 

 " ences than of ^/Zvi-v, Dialed, or Logic; which provinces were chiefly cultivated by 

 «' the fuccefibrs of the Academy and Porch ;" {AJvtcc to an Auik»r, Part H. feil. a.) 



This 



