A Treatise of Human Nature - Volume 3

Of virtue and vice in general.

PART I.

Resemblance, contrariety, degrees in quality, and proportions in quantity and number; all these relations belong as properly to matter as to our actions, passions, and volitions. It is unquestionable, therefore, that morality does not lie in any of these relations, nor the sense of it in their discovery^b.

Should it be asserted that the sense of morality consists in the discovery of some relation distinct from these, and that our enumeration was not complete when we included all demonstrable relations under four general heads: to this I do not know what to reply, until someone is so good as to point out this new relation to me. It is impossible to refute a system which has ne-

^b As a proof of how confused our way of thinking on this subject commonly is, we may observe that those who assert that morality is demonstrable do not say that morality lies in the relations, and that the relations are distinguishable by reason. They only say that reason can discover such an action, in such relations, to be virtuous, and another to be vicious. It seems they thought it sufficient if they could bring the word Relation into the proposition, without troubling themselves about whether it was to the purpose or not. But here, I think, is a plain argument. Demonstrative reason discovers only relations; but that reason, according to this hypothesis, also discovers vice and virtue. These moral qualities, therefore, must be relations. When we blame any action in any situation, the whole complicated object of action and situation must form certain relations in which the essence of vice consists. This hypothesis is not otherwise intelligible. For what does reason discover when it pronounces any action vicious? Does it discover a relation or a matter of fact? These questions are decisive and must not be avoided.