count of their utility, meaning by this their tendency to produce pleasure, either in particular individuals or in mankind at large. Why does utility please, even when we have no private interest at stake? In Hume's earlier treatment of Ethics, it was just here that he had been obliged to have recourse to the principle of 'sympathy,' thus reducing our apparent altruism to terms of something very like egoism. In the present work, he expressly states that the selfish principle is inadequate, and that the use of it by philosophers to explain the phenomena of our moral life results from a love of fictitious simplicity.[1] Man does have an original altruistic, as well as egoistic, tendency, the one being just as 'natural' as the other. But this is not all. Hume further points out that sensibility to the happiness and unhappiness of others and moral discrimination keep pace with each other. It will thus be seen that he makes the former, i.e., 'sympathy' in its ordinary sense, the foundation of moral development.
Now there is a difficulty here, already mentioned, which Hume quite forgets to take account of in his direct treatment of benevolence. How do we pass from the mere impulse to benevolent action, whether strong or weak, to a virtue of benevolence, which latter, of course, implies an objective standard? It must be admitted that, when Hume incidentally tries to answer this question, somewhat later in the Inquiry, his account of the matter, though interesting, is hardly adequate. His view seems to be that human intercourse involves meeting our fellows half-way; that language is formed, not for expressing that which is merely subjective, but that which may, in a sense, be regarded as objective. He says: "The intercourse of sentiments, therefore, in society and conversation, makes us form some general, unalterable standard, by which we may approve or disapprove of characters and manners."[2] Here, apparently, we have the germ of Adam Smith's characteristic notion of the 'ideal impartial spectator.'
After having argued that benevolence, as a virtue, is actually approved on account of its utility, Hume proceeds to a
