238 HUME 



XI 



is an awful Goddess, whose ministers are the 

 Furies, and whose highest reward is peace. 



It is not improbable that Hume would have 

 qualified all this as enthusiasm or fanaticism, or 

 both ; but he virtually admits it : 



" Now, as virtue is an end, and is desirable on its own 

 account, without fee or reward, merely for the immediate satis- 

 faction which it conveys, it is requisite that there should be some 

 sentiment which it touches ; some internal taste or feeling, or 

 whatever you please to call it, which distinguishes moral good 

 and evil, and which embraces the one and rejects the other. 



"Thus the distinct boundaries and offices of reason and of 

 taste are easily ascertained. The former conveys the knowledge 

 of truth and falsehood : The latter gives the sentiment of 

 beauty and deformity, vice and virtue. The one discovers objects 

 as they really stand in nature, without addition or diminution : 

 The other has a productive faculty, and gilding and staining all 

 natural objects with the colours borrowed from internal senti- 

 ment, raises in a manner a new creation. Reason being cool 

 and disengaged, is no motive to action, and directs only the 

 impulse received from appetite or inclination, by showing us the 

 means of attaining happiness or avoiding misery. Taste, as it 

 gives pleasure or pain, and thereby constitutes happiness or 

 misery, becomes a motive to action, and is the first spring 

 or impulse to desire and volition. From circumstances 

 and relations known or supposed, the former leads us to 

 the discovery of the concealed and unknown. After all 

 circumstances and relations are laid before us, the latter 

 makes us feel from the whole a new sentiment of blame or 

 approbation. The standard of the one, being founded on the 

 nature of things, is external and inflexible, even by the will of 

 the Supreme Being : The standard of the other, arising from 

 the internal frame and constitution of animals, is ultimately 

 derived from the Supreme Will, which bestowed on each being 

 its peculiar nature, and arranged the several classes and orders 

 of existence." (IV. pp. 376 7.) 



Hume has not discussed the theological theory 



