active, and can never be the source of so active a principle as conscience, or a sense of morals."[1] The "proper province" of reason is "the world of ideas," while "the will always places us in that of realities."[2] Though "reason and sentiment concur in almost all moral determinations and conclusions, the final sentence, it is probable … depends on some internal sense or feeling, which nature has made universal in the whole species."[3] While truth "procures only the cool assent of the understanding," virtue "takes possession of the heart."[4] "Morality, therefore, is more properly felt than judg'd of."[5] "It is impossible there can be a progress in infinitum; and that one thing can always be a reason why another is desired. Something must be desirable on its own account, and because of its immediate accord or agreement with human sentiment and affection. Now, as virtue is an end, and is desirable on its own account, without fee and reward, merely for the immediate satisfaction which it conveys; it is requisite that there should be some sentiment which it touches, some internal taste or feeling, or whatever you may please to call it, which distinguishes moral good and evil, and which embraces the one and rejects the other."[6] We feel "the deformity of vice and beauty of virtue;" we approve, or take pleasure in, the one; we disapprove, or are pained by, the other. And "what other reason can we ever assign for these affections, but the original fabric and formation of the human mind, which is naturally adapted to receive them?"[7]
Hume thus seems to give in his allegiance to the doctrine of a moral sense, already formulated by Hutcheson. "An action, or sentiment, or character is virtuous or vicious; why? because its view causes a pleasure or uneasiness of a particular kind. … We go no farther; nor do we enquire into the cause of the satisfaction. We do not infer a character to be virtuous, because it pleases; but in feeling that it pleases after such a particular manner, we in effect feel that it is virtuous. The case is the same as
