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.without a moderate share, atleast, of parts and understanding.Since then natural abilities, tho',perhaps, inferior, yet are on the same footing, both as to their causes andeffects, with those qualities which we call moral virtues, why shou'd wemake any distinction betwixt them?Tho' we refuse to natural abilities the title of virtues, we must allow, thatthey procure the love and esteem of mankind; that they give a new lustreto the other virtues; and that a man possess'd of them is much moreintitled to our good-will and services, than one entirely void of them.Itmay, indeed, be pretended.that the sentiment of approbation, whichthose qualities produce, besides its being inferior, is also somewhatdifferent from that, which attends the other virtues.But this, in myopinion, is not a sufficient reason for excluding them from the catalogueof virtues.Each of the virtues, even benevolence, justice, gratitude.integrity, excites a different sentiment or feeling in the spectator.Thecharacters of Caesar and Cato, as drawn by Sallust, are both of themvirtuous, in the strictest sense of the word; but in a different way: Nor arethe sentiments entirely the same, which arise from them.The oneproduces love; the other esteem: The one is amiable; the other awful: Wecould wish to meet with the one character in a friend; the other characterwe wou'd be ambitious of in ourselves.In like manner, the approbation.which attends natural abilities, may be somewhat different to the feelingfrom that, which arises from the other virtues, without making thementirely of a different species.And indeed we may observe, that thenatural abilities, no more than the other virtues, produce not, all of them,the same kind of approbation.Good sense and genius beget esteem: Witand humour excite love.(21)Those, who represent the distinction betwixt natural abilities and moralvirtues as very material, may say, that the former are entirely involuntary,and have therefore no merit attending them, as having no dependance onliberty and free-will.But to this I answer, first, that many of thosequalities, which all moralists, especially the antients, comprehend underthe title of moral virtues, are equally involuntary and necessary, with thequalities of the judgment and imagination.Of this nature are constancy,fortitude, magnanimity; and, in short, all the qualities which form thegreat man.I might say the same, in some degree, of the others; it beingalmost impossible for the mind to change its character in anyconsiderable article, or cure itself of a passionate or splenetic temper,when they are natural to it.The greater degree there is of these blameablequalities, the more vicious they become, and yet they are the lessvoluntary.Secondly, I wou'd have anyone give me a reason, why virtueand vice may not be involuntary, as well as beauty and deformity.Thesemoral distinctions arise from the natural distinctions of pain andpleasure; and when we receive those feelings from the generalconsideration of any quality or character, we denominate it vicious orvirtuous.Now I believe no one will assert, that a quality can neverproduce pleasure or pain to the person who considers it, unless it beperfectly voluntary in the person who possesses it.Thirdly, As to free-will, we have shewn that it has no place with regard to the actions, nomore than the qualities of men.It is not a just consequence, that what isvoluntary is free.Our actions are more voluntary than our judgments;but we have not more liberty in the one than in the other.But tho' this distinction betwixt voluntary and involuntary be notsufficient to justify the distinction betwixt natural abilities and moralvirtues, yet the former distinction will afford us a plausible reason, whymoralists have invented the latter.Men have observ'd, that tho' naturalabilities and moral qualities be in the main on the same footing, there is,however, this difference betwixt them, that the former are almostinvariable by any art or industry; while the latter, or at least, the actions,that proceed from them, may be chang'd by the motives of rewards andpunishments, praise and blame.Hence legislators, and divines, andmoralists, have principally applied themselves to the regulating thesevoluntary actions, and have endeavour'd to produce additional motives,for being virtuous in that particular.They knew, that to punish a man forfolly, or exhort him to be prudent and sagacious, wou'd have but littleeffect; tho' the same punishments and exhortations, with regard tojustice and injustice, might have a considerable influence.But as men, incommon life and conversation, do not carry those ends in view, butnaturally praise or blame whatever pleases or displeases them, they donot seem much to regard this distinction, but consider prudence underthe character of virtue as well as benevolence, and penetration as well asjustice.Nay, we find, that all moralists, whose judgment is not pervertedby a strict adherence to a system, enter into the same way of thinking;and that the antient moralists in particular made no scruple of placingprudence at the head of the cardinal virtues.There is a sentiment ofesteem and approbation, which may be excited, in some degree, by anyfaculty of the mind, in its perfect state and condition; and to account forthis sentiment is the business of Philosophers [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]