ETHICS There are certain calm desires and tendencies which, tho’ they be real passions, produce little emotion in the mind, and are more known by their eVects than by the immediate feeling or sensation These desires are of two kinds; either certain instincts originally implanted in our natures, such as benevolence and resentment, the love of life, and kindness to children; or the general appetite to good, and aversion to evil, consider’d merely as such When any of these passions are calm, and cause no disorder in the soul, they are very readily taken for the determinations of reason (T, 417) Moral judgements are calm passions of this kind: they are not ideas, but impressions Morality is more properly felt than judged of Virtue gives us pleasure, and vice pain: ‘An action or sentiment or character is virtuous or vicious; why? because its view causes a pleasure or uneasiness of a particular kind.’ But of course not every action or person or thing that gives us pleasure is virtuous: wine, women, and song may be pleasant but the pleasure they give is not the special pleasure taken by the moral sense Well, what are the marks of the particular kind of pleasure involved in favourable moral judgement? Hume oVers two: that it should be disinterested and that it should involve approbation These seem insuYcient to mark oV moral from aesthetic judgement Surely we need to distinguish one from the other if morality is not simply to be a matter of taste Hume oVers us no general criterion adequate to diVerentiate moral judgement, but proceeds to investigate individual virtues The two most important are benevolence and justice Benevolence is universally admired: we all esteem those who relieve the distressed, comfort the aZicted, and are generous even to strangers But in a natural state, benevolence extends only to those who in one way or another are close to us ‘There is no such passion in human minds, as the love of mankind, merely as such, independent of personal qualities, of services, or of relation to ourself ’ (T, 481) Benevolence alone, then, cannot be the foundation of justice; of our obligation to repay our debts even to strangers and enemies We must conclude that justice is not a natural virtue, but an artiWcial one Human beings are impotent outside society; but society is unstable unless social rules are observed, in particular property rights What we need is a convention entered into by all members of society to leave everyone in possession of the external goods acquired by their fortune and industry Justice is founded therefore on utility, on self-interest broadly interpreted: 262