Xi THE P1UNCIPLES OF MORALS 229 



be shocked in a pleasant and mannerly way. 

 Now Hume's speculations on moral questions are 

 not so remote from those of respectable professors, 

 like Hutcheson, or saintly prelates, such as Butler, 

 as to present any striking novelty. And they 

 support the cause of righteousness in a cool, 

 reasonable, indeed slightly patronising fashion, 

 eminently in harmony with the mind of the 

 eighteenth century ; which admired virtue very 

 much, if she would only avoid the rigour which 

 the age called fanaticism, and the fervour which 

 it called enthusiasm. 



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 when they are more recondite. 



"We shall analyse that complication of mental qualities 

 which form wnat, 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 



