A Treatise of Human Nature - Volume 3

make us feel its power, which was initially necessary for its discovery. When we leave our private studies and engage in the common affairs of life, the conclusions of philosophy seem to vanish like the phantoms of the night at the appearance of the morning. It is difficult for us to retain even 그 conviction which we had attained with such effort. This is even more obvious in a long chain of reasoning, where we must maintain the evidence of the first propositions until the very end, and where we often lose sight of the most widely accepted maxims of either philosophy or daily life.

I am not, however, without hope that the present system of philosophy will acquire new strength as it progresses, and that our reasonings concerning morals will support whatever has been said concerning the understanding and the passions. Morality is a subject that interests us more than any other. We imagine the peace of society to be at stake in every decision concerning it; and it is evident that this concern must make our theories appear more real and solid than when the subject is largely a matter of indifference to us. We conclude that whatever affects us can never be a chimera original: "chimera"; a mythological monster, here meaning a mere whim or an unreal illusion; and as our passion is engaged on one side or the other, we naturally think