The PREFACE.

Yet if both are natural dispositions of our minds, and nothing can stop the operation of public affections but some selfish interest, the only way to give public affections their full force, and to make them prevalent in our lives, must be to remove these opinions of opposite interests, and to show a superior interest on their side. If these considerations are just and sufficiently attended to, a natural disposition can scarcely fail to exert itself to the full.

In this essay on the passions, the proofs and illustrations of a moral sense and sense of honor are not mentioned; because they are so in the Inquiry into Moral Good and Evil, in the first and fifth sections. If people would reflect upon what they feel in themselves, all proofs in such matters would be unnecessary.