The PREFACE.

...opinions are quite wrong about them. True opinions, however, about both, may enable us to improve our natural powers and to rectify accidental disorders incident to them. And true speculations on these subjects must certainly be attended with as much pleasure as any other parts of human knowledge.

It may perhaps seem strange that, although in this treatise virtue is supposed to be disinterested, yet so much effort is taken, by a comparison of our several pleasures, to prove the pleasures of virtue to be the greatest we are capable of, and that consequently it is our truest interest to be virtuous. But let it be remembered here that, though there can be no motives or arguments suggested which can directly raise any ultimate desire, such as that of our own happiness or public affections (as we attempt to prove in Treatise IV);